Upcoming updates to the Patreon for 2023

Hi all, it's been just about a year since last time I changed the Patreon benefits so it's high time to re-evaluate.

tl;dr: Commission-related patreon benefits are ending. Highest tier supporters will have one more priority batch. Considering other benefits to replace, but no promises. Future comms will be less regular, mostly at-will, and available to general public.

The Change:

It is with heavy heart that I announce that I'm discontinuing priority commissions at the "There Will Be Bl8d" tier. I may still open occasional patron-only commission batches, but not with a promise of frequency sufficient to really call it a benefit.

The Reason:

My motivation for making this change is twofold: First, having priority commissions as a benefit became a weight on me to always push to open the next batch. Those who have commissioned me or waited on a slot know that this didn't really lead me to work any faster, but it did place a latent source of stress on me that I found stifled inspiration at times, and it prevented me from being able to take a guilt-free break from offering or working on slots when I needed recharge time. Not long ago I announced I would take longer breaks between batches but this didn't sit well with me in practice.

The second reason for the change is that I would like to be able to freely open commissions to non-supporters as well. To be clear, I am not complaining about the options I had among your commissions, but I have had to turn down opportunities that I would have liked to take because they weren't from supporters. I'd also like to keep open the option to offer YCHs or potentially even adoptables but those are difficult to fit in around batches as well.

Benefits moving forward:

Much like the change I made to benefits around this time last year, I don't want to completely pull the rug out from under supporters who were waiting on a chance for a commission, so I will offer one last batch under this benefit to current supporters. It should open either at the end of this month or the start of January, and I will accept all "There Will Be Bl8d" tier requests. Depending on volume, these may take longer than normal to fulfill, but I'll do my best.

Following that, and for new supporters, I have no concrete plans for other tier changes. Obviously this weakens the benefits offered, so I encourage supporters to drop to the lower tier or discontinue if they feel that this change warrants it.

This leaves the "There Will Be Bl8d" unique extra benefits at viewing WIPs, giving WIP input, making poll option suggestions, and (so far unlisted iirc) participating in the discord brainstorming channel. I will consider suggestions for alternate benefits to offer to replace what is being dropped if you have any, but I make no promises. Things to consider may be, for example, including the project (.clip) file at that level, tutorial requests, or reviving the benefit idea of personalized critique for artists, but only if people express interest.

I am toying with the idea of a monthly sketch benefit, but that will have to be at a new, significantly higher tier. "But Blue," you ask, "Why add new obligations to do regular sketches when you just got rid of the obligation to offer regular commissions because of the stress and time involved?" To that I answer: this is why I am carefully considering it and will be charging more for it if I do proceed. Furthermore, I'll only go with it if I can confidently settle on a sketch style that is reproduceable, quick, and not prone to requiring back-and-forth feedback with the recipient. To whit, my currently pending supporter-exclusive comm batch is focusing on practice such a style.

Commissions moving forward:

After the last batch for supporters I mentioned above, commissions will be on a purely at-will basis. I'll maintain an interest list, not to be confused with a wait list because a wait list implies priority order and an eventual trickle to the top. If the list is empty I may occasionally open for a batch, but in general the process will be: if I have bandwidth for a commission, I check the list, confirm with a client that they are still interested, and take off with their idea. The choice of request will simply be whichever one I want to fulfill at the time. Since this process could easily mean someone waiting indefinitely, I'll try to be tactfully sincere about any request's likelihood of being fulfilled.

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I hope these changes aren't too disagreeable for anyone. Things may change again down the road, particularly if I finally make the ill-conceived decision to quit my day job. For now, though, I believe this is the best approach to avoid art blocks like several I've had over the last couple months.