UPDATE: How's it been?

Hey everybody!  I wanted to thank you guys again for your support. As small artists, this Patreon has helped me and my spouse so much over the past 6-7 years, to both keep us afloat and to help us feel legitimized a little while freelance projects set us back from our personal (more public) projects.  We are so grateful.  I wanted to let you know I'm FINALLY free from freelance contracts at the moment, so I’m eagerly getting back into my original projects! So I wanted to keep you guys up to date on the goings-on...

I’m very excited about all the ways I can make use of this time, so I’ve got a few plans cooking up. The first thing I want to address is that I have not posted anything to my main Youtube channel in 5 years, so I’m kinda anxious about the eventual return!  I’m impressed my subscribers haven’t dropped off yet, but I realize that could very well change, considering my original cartoons are not usually what I get attention for.  Still, my audience was smaller and meaner the last time I posted original content, so maybe the tides have changed.

I’m thinking it’s time I make a new video to serve as the channel introduction. I feel the need to reintroduce the Patreon more focused on my original content this time (and not on funding Bro Show).  I’m nervous about how to successfully cut ties with Bro Show, but that'll come in due time.  I would like this new video to quickly describe my “voice” as an animator, run through the history of my animations, what I’ve done recently and what I want to do next. This could be quite a time-consuming endeavor (I’ve got clips and video editing programs so I guess that’ll be easier now at least), but mainly because it involves having to be “real” on a public forum, the thing that makes me most anxious!  But it must be done in order for me to feel ready to move forward, so creating a new Channel Intro/Patreon video is the first new public thing I have to make.

On a smaller note I’d also like to update my Demo Reel, possibly to be part of the channel introduction, which I last updated in 2018:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU77CrAG17g

Another idea I had after backing up my full history of animations: make some sort of video series that reposts my old cartoons (since I’ve largely avoided co-mingling my teenage deviantART animations with my college-age-and-on Youtube channel).  I would want this video series to have some sort of framing device to give the right amount of context for where my weird old videos came from/how I feel about them now, since they’re nowhere near my current quality, but I know audiences appreciate being able to go back and see that kind of growth.  There are also honestly a LOT of “lost” animations from my teenage years that I could perhaps do a clip reel of-- stuff that was meaningless or short, or less embarrassing parts of my 2005 webcartoon Weeklings.  I could also attempt to finally publicly post my favorite freelance projects from the last few years using this format.

I’ll get into my original content plans in a separate post, but those are the biggest plans...  I'll mention here that I also want to expand to Newgrounds finally.  I was intimidated by it when I posted there at age 13, but I know the animation community is always struggling and that Newgrounds needs to grow, so I should try to include that in the "return" list.

THE PIECE DE RESISTANCE, FOR PATRONS-ONLY:  Among my lost high school-college age animations, I discovered PART 1 of a wondrous old project of mine titled SuperEd, completing the backup of my 90 minute animatic for a full Ed, Edd n Eddy fanfilm (it used the audio from SuperBad, so the full length would have been 2 hours had I reached the end of my animatic stage).  I will go more into this in a separate post soonish, but I think now that I have part 1, I’m ready to unveil my oddest, largest, most ambitious lost Ed, Edd n Eddy fanfilm, which was produced simultaneously with Bro Show back in 2009-2012. By the very nature of being a Superbad-reanimation, it’s a cease-and-desist waiting to happen, and some humor from the aughts of course doesn’t age perfectly, so I would prefer for this to be a PATREON-EXCLUSIVE release. I’ll start planning a private release date for that soon in its own post.  If any of you have advice on how to really make it private, I'd be interested to hear.

Next, I have to be personal with you guys for a moment.  I’m generally uncomfortable talking about myself online, so it’s been a while since I’ve mentioned this in much detail, but I live with Crohn’s Disease.  It is currently in remission, but I was first diagnosed when I was 15 (nearly 15 years ago) and I tend to be reclusive because of how emotionally drained I still am from all the procedures, medications and physical side effects I’ve endured from the beginning and in the time since then.

Lockdown came at a very bad time for me-- I spent the last 3-4 years of the 2010s fighting my dayjob to get health insurance I was overdue to receive, insurance being the main reason I NEED a day job since art doesn’t provide reliable health coverage.  So I finally got health insurance at the start of 2020, and started seeing a massage therapist to work out pain I have from working on computers all day, and before I could make any other medical appointments, quarantine began.  We were very well locked down the entire year, but I was too anxious to try and START seeing new doctors in a pandemic, as Crohn’s put me on the immunocompromised list, and massage seemed like the riskiest quick fix in that scenario, so I waited out about 6 months before returning.  At that point, I had to accept that I now had chronic pain all over my body, and new medications made my Crohn’s flare, so it all was spiraling into medical mysteries I would not be able to solve without going places.  My new massage therapist discovered my shoulders and hips were becoming misaligned, and that I was becoming bow-legged, so I needed to work on improving my muscles big-time.   All this most likely being linked to how I typically work a computer dayjob and animate at a computer afterward.

It’s been a LOT, trying to take better care of my body while dealing with depression and body dysphoria. My spouse and I are fully vaccinated now, and have started seeing my doctors again.  Two weeks ago, I went through a lot to have my first Crohn’s procedure in 10 years, a long stressful experience I haven’t gone through before in Florida, without my parents present, or the old dog I used to rely on for emotional support.  I’m glad I had insurance for it, but it still is going to cost a ton.  The good news is that I’m still in remission and my main problem seemed to just come from stress. Stress is gradually diminishing now that I have answers and I don’t have that procedure looming over me, though I still deal with psychosomatic issues I'm working on.

Anyway, I mostly just wanted to open up a bit about all that, so you know HOW MUCH you guys have supported me through, even though I’m not usually open enough to talk about it!  Thank you again for understanding through all these years and helping us to breathe a little more easily.  :)