IMPORTANT UPDATE: very likely hiatus on fetish content starting next year.

(By the way, just want to remind everyone that there will be NO fetish picture beginning of November: I have one in mind but, it might come in later, but definitely not during Halloween season, so don't forget to unsubscribe if needed)

Hi everybody,

I am truly sorry for the lack of updates and for the message I'm about to post. :(
I’ve been busy as hell due to my IRL job. I actually started writing this a week ago but didn’t have any chance to come back to it until now...And even still, it's not a good idea based on everything I have on my plate...

Still, it’s a bit of a special time of the year, because Happy Anniversary to us I guess! It’s been a year since I’ve launched my patreon and...Well, there’s no point in lying: things unfortunately haven't gone as I had planed, and I take full responsibility. It’s not the type of one-year patreon anniversary or post mortem I wanted to post, but this how things are, and I’ll post this message on all of my socials.

Before all, I want to thank everybody who has been supporting me on patreon, even if it was for a month and just at the €1 tier. With everything going on with AI art and the threat of artistic careers disappearing, it gave me some hope for the future.
Thank you so so much for your kindness and help, and for trusting in me, every single one of you. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to deliver as much as I would have wished, and that I have to take a drastic decision about patreon.
(Quick EDIT: Since some people have reached out to me since I first posted this message, please know that absolutely none of you are to blame for this. I'm fully responsible for this situation since it's the result of my own wrongdoings and mistakes.)

For the sake of it, I’ll deal with it right away and warn you all so you can unsubscribe if necessary. I am absolutely sorry to deliver this news. I wish I hadn't to, but I can't keep pretending everything is fine. I've hit a massive burnout and I hope you understand my situation:
Starting next year I’ll strop produce fetish content for patreon on a monthly basis, and will instead only draw it when inspired.
(Oh, if only patreon allowed me to create specific a tier that would only charge per creation!).

In the event I get enough inspired to work on a fetish comic, I'll draw as many pages as I can while still inspired before posting anything on patreon: that will secure, I hope, a few weeks or months of content.
I'll also be changing the description of the €5 tier to remove the art suggestions.
Other type of content will be released on patreon first and then on my galleries later one.

I've reached this point because I’ve been trying to juggle between the patreon and my IRL career, to the point I’ve had a lot of trouble focusing on normal tasks these last few days: overwork > burnout > procrastination. That's the cycle I'm in. It is so bad that I pretty much haven’t done any kind of public work for my personal galleries.
And even then, I need to dedicate more time to my IRL career as well because I have bills to pay...
Just so you'll know I've barely had any time of myself for several months: no gaming, no movie theater, just some youtube while I work and a 1 hour pause to watch something and unwind (I do try to keep a bit physically active to avoid health issues). Wake up, get to work, IRL duties/food/etc, stop working and then bed.

On a completely unrelated note, I’m also ditching krita and moving back to photoshop. I didn’t want to: I wanted to create as much as possible with krita since it’s open source and rather effective, but the lack of proper photoshop/concept art brushes on that program plus its abysmal performances forces me to return to photoshop.

I know I mentioned and debated about many things in the past: new tiers, new type of content, etc. The truth is I won’t be able to handle any of that before a while: my IRL duties are simply taking me too much of my time. More tiers, even simple ones with alts or streaming, are not doable at the moment.
So I’ll try to have two pics done: a Halloween pic that will be released later in November and another one for Christmas, sometime in December.
After that, I’ll be slowing down on fetish art, and will be focusing on more SFW-like personal projects for my patreon. Fetish art will certainly happen again, but occasionally,  when I’ll be inspired since that's when I produce my best fetish pieces.
So fetish art might pop-out again, I might return to a streak where I produce some fetish-oriented material, but I can’t say when it’ll happen: maybe sometime in 2024...or maybe not at all before some years…

Once again, I have the feeling that the ideal for me would be to instead work at my pace and release special packs on Gumroad when I have something new. Still not sure if I’m going to pull the trigger, I’m not 100% certain I can remain anonymous as a seller there, and to be frank I’d rather try and sell products tied to my IRL career instead.
The other option could be to create a second patreon page for the fetish material where patrons would be charged by creation only???...

Obviously, if I were doing the patreon alone, with no IRL job on the side, I think I would have been able to mitigate it better since I would have had to juggle only between personal and fetish art. Because in terms of activity, the patreon didn’t do too bad actually. Granted, it started very slowly and plateaued a few months ago: the only two bumps I noticed where with Death & Puss and the Starfox comic. I am pretty certain that if this was my fulltime job and I was posting different type of content every single week, I would be closer to making a minimum livable wage.

But, as it is right now, I'm drawing 95% of the time for my IRL job.

Concerning my IRL art job, while it’s technically part time it’s clearly keeping me busy almost as much as a full time job due to my lack of experience. Pay is okayish but could be better.
Right now I’m making way below minimum wage (including patreon and commissions). Now, I'm not asking for money nor charity. I’m still “okay” financially: I have a safety net, an awesome family that can help me in case of needs, I have a super frugal lifestyle, so for the time being I can make ends meet without being in danger.
But even then, that part time job is paying me much more than commissions + patreon, so I have to keep it it no matter what. I pretty much got this job due to a stroke of luck: I absolutely did not expect to have this type of art opportunity land on my lap, and I'm so grateful for that.
Patreon has been a very useful little extra income, even if it’s not financially viable, and I thank all of you who have supported me for all of these months.

Here’s another thing about my IRL job: I really like it, I’m really happy, and I enjoy going to work! I don’t even care about the money, right now I feel so incredibly lucky to be able to do this job that I’m just thankful and humble about it. I fear the worst due to AI art, and maybe all of this will disappear in 5 years max, but for the time being I’m sticking up with it and will try to navigate around similar types of jobs in the future.
What I mean here is even if I somehow win the lottery, become independently wealthy and have enough money to build an entire animation studio to produce my own animated series, I’ll still try to make time to keep this type of job (or anything similar) just because I like it.
So as you understood, this job is taking me a lot of time. But if I keep at it, and with enough experience, I believe I could work faster and be able to juggle between it and other stuff.

Now that I've talked a bit about what I do IRL, let's talk about what I do as Xss...
The type of art I do IRL and the one I do as Xss are very different: they fulfill different creative parts of myself, but also drain my general energy in different ways. It’s as if they exist and complete opposite rooms of a same house. I don't even use the same art style and techniques for both, though there's a tiiiiny bit of overlap...
So unfortunately, the Venn diagram of my IRL art and my Xss art is far from being a circle. More like a line or very small overlap, where some art skills are used in both sides.

I don’t share what I do IRL online, and there’s no way I can let anyone IRL know about what I do as Xss. At best I could fired and blacklisted, at worst you all know what happens when people in the fandom or online are doxxed.
Now, I know some of you are thinking "you're being over dramatic, look at someone like JayAxer who is an industry veteran and totally open about being a furry foot fetish artist". That's exactly the difference: he's already an industry veteran, with amazing skills, professional known. He can do whatever he wants because no one will blacklist him for that.
I'm not.
I'm not even a junior artist. My skills are mediocre at best (by industry standards). AI art obliterates me. I'm a nobody and I won't make waves.
Plus, as much as I like my job, I'm working in a very anti-furry place, hence the I could be fired and blacklisted.

The amount of people who know about both of my identities and type of art can be counted on some fingers. Anything I draw as Xss is not shared IRL, and anything I draw IRL is not shared as Xss: Those are like two completely separate artists/businesses…
I am juggling between two professional art careers, both that would demand complete time, focus and attention to be successful, with all the issues it entails.

I lie about the side gigs I do IRL to my colleagues, while struggling to get the patreon to work.
And if my current IRL job stopped there’s nothing else I could do to pay the bills. So, I need dedicate more time to my IRL career, so I could get some side gigs, maybe some automated revenue streams, etc...

I’ve tried to juggle too much between IRL stuff and the patreon, and I’ve burned out. Because I’m just one person, trying to handle two different career jobs and lives at the same time.
Are there things I want to do as Xss? Of course there are, I’ve mentioned them several times. But I can’t do them properly with that other career: the main issue is, as always, time and mental energy.

And here comes the fetish art dilemma.

NSFW art pays more when one starts, obviously...But it still clearly pays way less than my current IRL job.
And is fetish art my top artistic priority? Unfortunately no.
That does NOT mean I dislike producing fetish work! After all I've been doing that for more than a decade and I created this patreon! Oh yeah, you know I can get kinky when I want to!
But are there more important things on my list? Yes, of course.
I want to dedicate more time to all the other top priority projects I have.

I’ve forced myself to mass produce fetish content on a monthly basis instead of when I was inspired, and so here I am with my massive burnout.

Don’t get me wrong: I keep coming up with some fetish ideas and scenarios, there are even some that I might be able to turn into interesting ideas that would fuel my creativity without burnouts while also entertain you (if you’re okay with long comics where there won’t be any tickling for tens and tens of pages, which at my current speed would be...a few years?).
But right now, with this burnout, I’d rather see other people draw most of those ideas. Mass-producing fetish content like a machine is not for me.

It's even worse: right now I don’t even like my own fetish content.
Yes, you heard it right, but I have to come clean. We artists are our worst critics, and I've eaten too much of my own cake: I no longer can stand looking at my own stuff! I just hate the way I draw feet, toes and faces. Every time I have to draw feathers, or hands or whatever, it feels like a burden and I don’t like the end result. I feel I need to stop everything and just practice anatomy for months to fix everything that is wrong!
So many other artists are doing such a better job than me on patreon with fetish art (look at what LadyDino does!), I don't think it's fair for me to propose my content at the level it is right now.

I’m supposed to work on some commissions that I have lined up, and I’m struggling so much with just one at the moment (a supposedly easy one!): between the lack of time, motivation, plus the burnout, I just can’t.

I believe you understood me by now: I need a break.


In other words

concerning NSFW content on patreon: starting next year, I’ll just produce fetish art when inspired. I’m sorry, but that’s the only way for me keep my sanity and make time for my own projects.

Trollangina remake: I don't think that will be happening, even though I'd like to. There are things I want to do with it, I have some ideas that inspire me and, I guess I can spoil it now, the idea is to tie the end of it with Kylian's Adventure (Nydia and Samy are now secondary characters).

Regarding commissions: I will only take commissions that inspire me and where I have close to total freedom. You show me the character(s) you want me to draw, the type of art and scenario you like, and if I see there is something I could draw I’ll propose the scenario/idea to you. It'll be “take it or leave it”. No backseat driving, no constant revisions: you pay me so I can do what I do best if I’m inspired.
It truly sucks, because I know how much of an annoying backseat driver I am myself when I commission or do an art trade.

YCHs: I know a lot of people hate them, but I might give it a try just to test the waters, once again when I’m inspired.

Regarding other content on patreon: ...As I’m writing this, I realize the best for me would be to indeed win the lottery and pay other artists to draw everything as I serve as a scriptwriter, or just build an entire animation studio…
And this doesn’t even include all the other projects I want to do IRL instead of as Xss…
You can recheck my list of silly projects here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/my-huge-list-of-85756724

Monster Crowd, aka “the story I was working on with Crazy-Wolf”: I’ve had zero time to work on it since the last update, other than starting to write the prologue. Also, due to the current world and political climate, I’m considering shelving it for some time. While I’ve decided to use different symbols since it’s taking place in an alternate world, at the core of it the main character is basically Jew and one the other main one is Muslim (both allies, not enemies). I just don’t see how to release that right now without being called any name in the book and both sides antagonizing me.

Kylian’s adventure: I’ll release the only two other pages that I have later next month and then...I don’t know. I might keep drawing some pages, but I have to be honest with myself. Due to the scope of the story, Kylian’s adventure alone would be a full time job on its own (50+ hours a week) that would last for more than a decade. It’s a project that truly terrifies me, due to its scope. Even if I shelved all of my other personal projects, with just one page per month at best there’s no way I’ll be able to finish this story in my lifetime. I’m getting old, there’s a history of illnesses in my family, I don’t even think I’ll make through another 10 years.
Maybe I’ll just release some sort of script with a few images, like Monster Crowd?...I'll see...

Unnamed supernal story: I might switch focus to that one. It’s much shorter than Kylian’s adventure, I really like it as well, it potentially can please more the furry crowd (or just bring a lot of hate and get me canceled…), and I can include a few fetish stuff as “deleted scenes”. If that story allows the patreon to pick up more steam and revenues, I could slow down on my IRL job (aka request less hours at my workplace) so I can focus more properly on my personal art.

All the other projects that I mentioned previously: I love them dearly, but there’s no way I could work on everything simultaneously.

So that's it. Not the "one year anniversary" message I wished to post. I'm deeply sorry this patreon thing didn't go the way I expected, and also to everybody I've disappointed.
But at least, I hope you enjoyed the short ride until now.

To those staying anyway, let's see what the future brings.