PROGRESS REPORT 4.07.25

Hey, y'all~! Time for another progress report to let y'all know what's going on.

First off, as a lot of you know, the U.S. tariffs have more or less gone into effect. This is going to make money tighter for everyone. My plans to weather this remain largely unchanged--parsing down what merch I get made and focusing on more practical goods so that folks can make purchases for fun items without feeling like it's frivolous. There will be a lot less focus on items like acrylic charms and prints, and more emphasis on accessories (such as earrings and pendants) and stationery (notebooks, pens, notepads). Stickers are largely to remain unaffected as well since they're a consistently lower cost price point.

MERCH PLANS: I'm going to parse down what merch I'll be making; the Final Fantasy Host Club is still on the docket, and I'll be including school-themes--Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, Tekken, and Rival Schools. Stationery based on my original ideas are also going to be in the works. Fighting game bean pins will still be worked on as well, but otherwise I will not be preparing as much merch for fighting games for the time being. Ideally, I want to be creating less merch so I can work on more comics and zines.

The first drafts for the school line will start showing up sometime in May (my April priorities are finishing the Easter artworks, FFXV fancomic, and April's Copic Challenge).

I'M NOT GOING TO CEO: I mentioned in Feburary's progress report that I was preparing for CEO. This is no longer the case; I decided to hold off on applying to any artist alleys this year due to travel concerns, expenses, and economic concerns. With a recession imminent, I feel it'll be best for me to keep my operations online as the financial risk in traveling and manufacturing is just too great. Plus, a lot of these events attract international attendees...and there's going to be a considerable drop in international clientele as traveling to the U.S. is incredibly ill-advised under the current regime.

Also, to be honest...I really just wanna work on comics and zines.

THE FREE TIER: Okay, so I admit; I forget that there's a free tier membership. I am going to start making posts for free members to access--these posts will consist of artwork compiled from the past 2-3 months and finished merch--basically, this is no different from artwork that gets posted publicly weeks after dropping here. That said, artwork downloads, rewards reservations, and comic updates will remain exclusive to paid members. I wanted to be transparent here.

That's about the gist of it. Again, there's not tooooo much that's changing, rather I'm picking and choosing my battles and staying the course.

Thank you as always for your support. c: