Yearly Report - 2022

Hi all, i'd like to give some transparency for how i've been doing this year and what i'm thinking of for us in the coming year.

This will be a little lengthy, so ive included a table of contents here, feel free to skip to the parts you care most about (a summary will be at the very end if you dont have the time to read the whole thing):

- The Artificially Generated Elephant in the Room
- The Numbers
- My Skills
- Behind the Scenes
- Plans Going Forward
- In Conclusion

The Artificially Generated Elephant in the Room
Let's cut to the chase; AI has made me totally unsure of my future here as an artist, at least one that can support themselves financially through their art.

While i've always had severe self-doubt for whether I can make this dream of mine a reality, now I am seriously reconsidering things in light of the leaps AI art has made in the last few years.

I'm sure most professional artists of my type are feeling a similar pit of dread when it comes to this but are keeping a smile on their face and their schedule trucking along because what else can we honestly do? (At least as individuals without a formal organization to take action through)

The best case scenario for me and other artists is that AI art will create a 'mass produced VS artisan' environment as is now seen with luxury commodities like furniture, coffee and ready-made meals vs restaurant, chef-made meals. Time will tell whether this will be the case or effectively all but the most famous, superstar artists will be automated out by the bots and we will have to abandon this entirely.

Right now I am seriously considering what else I can do besides this in case the worst-case scenario becomes reality, and this is what's most scary: I really don't want to do anything else besides this.

I don't want to do graphic design for some slimeball ad agency, I don't want to slave away at a animation studio being paid peanuts working 150 hour weeks and I certainly don't want to give up and retrain as something totally unrelated. I don't want these last 10 years of my life to have been for nothing.

Some might call that inflexible, but I know what I want. What I want is what i've got going on right now (albeit with some more eyes on me) but yet again it seems like it's going to be stolen from me along with everything else i've worked so hard to achieve.

With all that said, I will continue to maintain this account and my commission business but... I don't know. I hoped I would have a more definitive thing to say to reassure you all and myself on this, but I don't. As if I need any more stress and anxiety.

The Numbers
This year i've finished 34 pieces of art, of which 14 were commissions and the rest being either fanart poll pieces or personals.

I doubled my followers on twitter, from 2K to 4K over the course of the year. I reached 4K just before the twitter exodus, so the end of the year until now was me making up for that.

The Tsunade piece I did for September's monthly fanart poll was a surprise smash hit, a result of a simple, attractive piece with a very popular character and probably being found by the right people to amplify it further and further until it ballooned in its reach.

The Projects
I'll be honest and say I didn't really plan my year out at all, my experience at the beginning of it with Decembdraw and it's bleeding over into the new year pushed me against committing to anything beyond commissions, especially publicly.

My specific problem when it comes to this is my reaction to failing to follow through on plans I create for myself.

My biggest 'project' for the coming year is to keep my posting consistent and frequent, but I also aim to create at least 3 unique OCs for myself, which is really quite overdue for me I think.

Behind The Scenes
Things have been very up-and-down for me this last year, personally speaking. I mean, it's never really smooth sailing for any of us, but I do really mean it in a general sense.

It's not been any big, objective downs for me like a family member dying, losing a limb or my finances getting fucked; nothing big and devastating like that. Instead its a death by a thousand cuts kind of situation, lots of smaller, horrible things that have come up and fucked me over in ways I could never plan for, at least not with any concrete foresight. 

Again, I imagine those reading this can attest to a similar string of unfortunate, crippling events that populate the days of our modern living. But what this means for me is that I have went through so many 'downs' this year, so many days where I literally couldn't get out of bed because I couldn't see the point. My will to live had evaporated, and each time it took a week or more to fully recover.

You have probably seen the result of this on my twitter where I occasionally publicly meltdown and sometime after delete all trace of this having happened. On the flipside this has also meant I simply haven't been able to do as much as I would have liked to when it comes to commissions and personal work.

I'm not telling you this to farm sympathy from you all, I am trying to remedy each problem as best I can however I can, but I know a part of that is to not suffer in silence anymore. And, let's be honest, I don't really have anyone else to speak to about this who could really understand what i'm saying.

Plans Going Forward

Right now, I am planning for the next six months instead of the year. That's more practical for me to visualize, map out and act on (Plus, it coincides with the ultimatum I gave myself about 6 months ago now).

My immediate goals are increase my followers on twitter to 10,000 and my patronage to at least £100/month. Stretch goals for both are 50,000 and £300/month respectively.

To do this I will commit to posting pieces at least two days a week, specifically on Tuesdays and Thursdays, both at 9AM across all my platforms. With that base of consistency in place, I aim to expand this to three days a week and maybe even four days a week. To clarify, this will be either finished pieces or sketches, but I aim to also tweet cropped WIPs and stuff of that nature on my accounts as well to fill the gaps, but I don't want to flood you all too much with unfinished stuff.

All this will mean I will have to cut down on production time by making rougher, sketchier work, likely both anime-style drawings and looser paintings as i've done before.

This will also increase my workload a hell of a lot, but my hope here is that with consistency of posting and quality, I can play the social media game to get my posts better promoted, even if that means I have to more carefully plan and ration my time and effort. This effort should pay off with subsequent number growth and thus a wider audience enjoying my work.

This will also help me loosen up with my work, something i've wanted to do for some time, as well as help me draw more characters both in fashion right now and ones ive wanted to draw and redraw for ages but felt unable to with my workload and unorganized nature thus far.

This will affect my commissions production as well somewhat, but I will still make that an equal priority to fulfill them as much as I can, maybe on the weekends instead since that's a dead zone for posting work online.

To finish up here, if anyone reading this can be so kind as to recommend any tips or strategies for marketing my work in the specific niche I occupy that would be much appreciated.

Also, I will be upping my commission prices somewhat. Blame the 'cost of living' crisis on that.
I won't be upping my patronage prices on here though, you are all too kind already.

In Conclusion
I got a decent amount of work finished this year with a few real hits.

This AI shit is really scaring me and my prospects with this project, but i'm not backing down yet.

I will continue to work as hard as I can to make this a reality, especially if AI art fades out from the limelight like NFTs and other tech fads/'get rich quick' schemes.

I will be posting more frequently and consistently, with a sketchier quality to my work.

And you can look forward to more monthly fanart polls, and other juicy rewards if you are subscribed here :3

Expect another one of these midway through 2023.