November Roadmap + Shallow Sleep launch info

Hello my gemlins 💜

I'm shocked that it's already November. I paused Patreon last month in order to get some things done outside of the platform but - - - that didn't happen, lol ;;;; I just spent of the month working on Shallow Sleep anyway. I guess it's a lesson learned, I simply need to learn to do everything all at once without stressing out, because I'm really bad at compartmentalizing, I'll always end up jumping between a million tasks, even with a different plan set in place, so pausing last month ended up being kind of a waste 😂

That said, I am very happy to announce that the first chapter of Shallow Sleep will begin here on Patreon on December 6th!
There's only some fine-tuning left aka some backgrounds, some lettering fixes and then a last sweep over all 23 pages to check for anything I might have missed.

So here are my plans for this month:

• finish SS chapter 01, begin sketching chapter 02 
• draw 2 Shallow Sleep cover illustrations (for the whole comic + for chapter 01)
• finalize Shallow Sleep logo

(bullet point 1+2 will be happening on Twitch)

Things you can expect to see here in November:

• sketches & WIPs of both Shallow Sleep comic pages as well as illustrations
• 3 more pages of the #MUTED "Home" special (spicy)

And then hopefully as December rolls around we can fall back into a semi-regular comic-update schedule!

Some thoughts in regards to the Shallow Sleep launch:

I'm not quite sure how I want to handle the comic yet. Thinking back to #MUTED I gotta say it felt good to have a signifcant buffer for the very last pages of the comic, it alleviated much of the pressure I had felt over the previous years. So my initial plan for Shallow Sleep was to have basically most of the comic finished before I would begin to post it anywhere.

However, that's just not realistic, especially not when I look at the slowly dwindling numbers of Patreon supporters. There's definitely pressure and worries there in regards to my livelihood. Looking further out at platforms like Webtoon who are about to take away most of the financial support for their independent creators (which we knew would happen eventually, so at least it didn't come as a surprise), I can't help but feel a bit panicked on how the webcomics landscape is going to look like in even just a few months, and what I can do to keep it mostly livable for myself in order to tell the stories that I still want to tell. Even further out are all the global issues that all of us are facing and worrying about, so it's pretty difficult to gauge what the best steps forward might be.

For now, Shallow Sleep will be posted on Patreon for 4.50€+ gemlins, because without all of your support I wouldn't even be able to work on it!

I also want it to be publicly available for free in the future (I want all of my comics to be free for everyone to enjoy, I'm quite fond of the idea of being able to point to a small directory of my own work and give someone a few hours of entertainment and pretty pictures to look at 😂 I know how very needed distractions from life can be at times, and I want to provide that for people as much as I can ; -;) but I'm not sure yet how and where that is going to be.

Webtoon now seems like a way less interesting place to post for me. I probably still will because it's where most of my audience is, but uploading to that place will be leaving quite the bitter aftertaste now, I'm not very happy about earning WT money by posting there, without getting a decent chunk of money back from them, especially knowing how they treat their Original creators.
But before jumping the gun I'll wait and see what their new monetization system is going to look like. I don't have much hope that it's going to be worthwhile (they want to implement a tips system, but the idea of relying on WT users to spend money doesn't sit right with me and I don't think it's going to work. I'd much rather funnel them to Patreon)

So, long story short, Shallow Sleep begins here on Patreon on December 6th, hopefully in a similar schedule as #MUTED. I'm aiming for 2 updates a month with an average of 5-6 pages each!
Public release is still tbd.

And finally, monthly reminder that I have a DISCORD SERVER FOR ALL PATREON GEMLINS AND TWITCH SUBS! We share pet pictures, sometimes I may post some WIPs there, as well as quick important information. We also have a small Guild Wars 2 guild, if that's something you're interested in :3 Everyone is welcome to join and hang out in the server, feel free to engage or just lurk for a bit!
(I currently have a visitor 🦆💜 at my home so I probably won't be around to say hi to any new people but please know I'm sending you a warm welcome in spirit :D)

Have a great weekend, everyone! I'll see you soon with more new stufff~ 💜💜💜