Sneak peek #169 + year results

It was decided to put this year results into this sneak peek post

First of all it was one more hard year. And its finish was the hardest one I guess. I was trying to get through all the problems I faced in October, but things were getting worse and worse

It all started with Ezra broke his pelvis. The kitten somehow climbed the window, fell from there and got that injury. Those were extremely stressful days with visiting vet and helping the kid to get well. It took him about three weeks to recover and now he is the happiest and most active kitten I've ever seen. I still freak out each time he fells though

At the beginning of December I was at a concert. I had a good time and was happy to have some rest, but this concert turned into a disaster for me. The next day I had very high temperature, cough, weakness, etc. Not Covid, but this crashed all my plans for this month and I couldn't work for about two weeks. YumiCH saved my ass as always

We still had to go on hiatus, because neither my health nor my nerves could hold everything happening. Our vk.com Russian community is currently our most active one, but it caused other problems. During these stressful months we received tons of hate instead of the support we needed. Every day different people were writing in comments, to my personal messages, claiming they know how to tell our story better, trying to steal our characters or just bullying us. We banned those people, removed their hating comments, but this is still hard to stand against. 

We made it though. And then we had to face our last trouble - money. Webtoons is this year's worst disappointment. As I've mentioned many times, they have special leagues depending on the amount of page views. We got into Silver League which meant $300 per month payment. And we were there for a couple of months, but then Webtoons started to do some weird things and our page views suddenly dropped (while likes, comments, etc were on the same level). This happened to many other artists too. And that kicked us out of the Silver League to Bronze one, which meant only $100 per month. 

This put me in a disastrous situation. At the beginning of this year I officially registered as an artist. But official registration means I have to pay taxes, and, well, they are not the cheapest thing. Dropping out of the League, Ezra's injury and my illness lead to a situation where I have neither time nor money. I took many commissions, much more than I could physically do in this situation. I made people wait for too much, of course most of them weren't happy with that. I've dropped patreon schedule once again and honestly feel completely desperate.

YumiCH helped me with money, but it isn't easy for her either. Anyway, together we are making through all of this and I just hope things won't get worse. Never give up on fighting :3

There were a few more disappointing things, like my alcoholic uncle and total ignorance on Tapas and Webtoons' Discord servers. It was extremely demotivating when servers' staff always picked newbies to show off and "The Fate!" with its 3 years of existence was ignored even though I took part in each and every activity. Bad luck I guess

Anyway at least one aim of this year was reached! I started those in May, but finally all of the icons are finished. Well, there will be a few more, but later, because some characters don't have their designs yet

William and Felis Fiet - James and Luka's parents

Olivia Brown, Karen Dickson, Elery Baker, Colin West, Frederic Dukakis - teachers from Sheas' school

Ren Shiro - Sheas' classmate, student from class 4-1
Natan Decker and Adrian Danon - Ren's friends, both are students at local university
Aiden Evans, Hazel Lones, Eliot Cotton - students from class 3-1
Adam Lorence - student from class 4-2
Kei Shiro and Ryan Finley - Sheas' classmates

Desmond Frye, Maximillian Watson, Dorian Grey, Shakar Hudson, Mendy Coleman, Tyler Ross - Rivalle's racing team

Sandra Cooper - medic of Rivalle racing team
Persia Heart - Silvia's personal assistant
Violet Crosby - Shelby's fiancee 

Grandma Jade - no comments :)
Hanna (no surname yet) - Victor's maid
Lucky Rivera and John Wayne - too many spoilers

And now some plans on "The Fate!" for the next year.

First of all I will take a break until January, 9. There will be 2 pages of the comics (Jan, 5th, Jan, 7), and I also want to finish the rest of the commissions I have. 

Since the icons are finished, there will be no more "daily" updates (they were daily for vk.com actually, Patreon received them in every sneak peek). There will only be 4-5 drawings each month (instead of 20-25 I used to do), one update per week. I guess this means there will be only one Sneak Peek each month with all the updates at once. And I will be able to put all the energy into drawing new pages

As for the number of pages I'm still aiming for 3 pages on Patreon per week. I know I can do this when I'm not ill or stressed, and now with the reduced number of daily drawings, I should be able to achieve this goal. 

However, we strongly depend on Webtoons. We hardly reached Silver League in December (payment in January) and we don't know what is going to happen next. In case Webtoons cuts our page views once again, I will have to take a huge pile of commissions again, and this will kill the schedule. I don't want this to happen, but if it does, we will reduce the number of pages to 2 pages per week for patreon, 1 page per week for free access. And I will focus on commissions until either patreon grows to about $300 per month or Webtoons shows better stats.

In 2022 I hope to change the system and draw all the updates a month before so I could make some kind of a calendar with tiny spoilers of upcoming pages. It is almost impossible with my current load, but maybe I will start to work on this system somewhere in February

The next thing is our Discord server. We had many doubts, but people asked many times and we decided to give it a try. The thing is our Russian community is much stronger than English speaking one, so we are a bit confused about the server's language. We don't feel like we want to have a multilanguage server, so I guess there will be two servers at least. And this is very confusing and we will definitely have to look for moderators and all

The next thing is merch. We were expecting to launch it in September, with chapter 7 start, but we failed. And haven't done anything proper yet. We were going to make stickers, pins and hoodies, but none of those is ready. And we also found an online shop that prints on hoodies but turns out it works in Russia only, so that's the trouble. We still hope to solve all these problems next year

The next thing I want to do is to show some adorable fanarts we received:

Shelby by DeltaAkella

Luka and Sheas by J_Fox

Shayera and Luka by F∆LLΞΝ

Shelby by W e e D

In conclusion, I'd like to say thanks to all of you! Making comics is not an easy thing to do, especially when you have another job. But with your love and support "The Fate!" is already 3 years old and it's growing every day. I am willing to give it all to this story and even with all the challenges I believe there will be the day I will work only on my comics