feguimel
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Cracking the conundrum / night awake / please read
🕑 Added 2019-01-29 11:43:55 +0000 UTC
Hey guys, it's me again! While I'm tiredly awake in this sickening hot night (yep, south hemisphere) I've been thinking back to some messages I got after my last post, and perhaps in my own replies I found a possible way out of the constantly-delayed-monthly-packs conundrum. But I need to elaborate, and is not easy for me, so please equip your +1 endurance items... Got 'em on? Thankyou. ;v; Ok, here we go.
The next part is mostly for those of you who are newer in my Patreon, not so much for the older patrons who already know the complications and trust my dedication (you guys are awesome <3 and also can skip two paragraphs).
One key point is that the monthly amount of work has remaining pretty much the same for the past 3 years. And yet, the time when each new pack was wrapped up for delivery, had always been bound to (or tainted by) my intention to keep them thematically consistent/distinct... A priority that emerged from seeing my art packs as "collectible items": if people wanted to acquire the packs later on, it would be best if each pack held inside a clear set of contents, when it existed (as image-series or sequenced pages).
So it happened that whenever a new series of images/pages begun spontaneously around the middle-of-month, it would push the entire pack's completion time beyond the estimated end-of-month dates... because those arts are usually the detailed time-consuming types, and I'm all "I can do this! I can fit everything in!!" ...yeah. Repeat that pattern enough times in a year, while keeping the strict rule of naming packs after a monthly sequence (not skipping any!)... and you arrive to the current scenario. Delivering "monthly packs" with a label 30 days old. It makes noooo sense...
It's a dumb situation that keeps happening, is getting worse, and is causing me A LOT of stress. There is guilt, there is the feeling I'm never doing enough, even if I know I'm trying my best. I still try to repress it, I try to shelter in the amazing positive comments I get from some of you (I swear I can't thank you enough), but the stress is there. And I don't want it.
But most importantly, at this stage I can't deny the "time slips" are a natural condition of my work style: the canvas remains unpredictable, even to myself. And I like it that way. I need to keep it that way, unruly. Fresh.
I know that might just sound whimsy, even unreasonable. But if you've been a long while doing what I do... you might start to realize you need that element of surprise. Surprising yourself, by letting spontaneous things take shape on your creative space. But if you also want to pursue quality and follow those unpredictable gifts of creativity with dedicated hours of work, it will irremediably clash with the grindy and arbitrary limits set by the rolling months. So... if you guys allow me, I would ask to let go of those limitations.
There are some options for such a change. The logical one, I think, is dropping the whole monthly labeling, adopt simple numbers, and stop worrying so much about the dates. The packs would still come out on the same frequency (or even faster, since I won't worry about full content quotas, but instead go with ready-to-deliver sets of content) but they won't carry funny names anymore, like "December 2018" twenty-nine days into 2019... Actually I've looked back on my history while writing this, and realized I've made 41 content packs since my beginning on Patreon... I feel kind of amazed, and humbled too. Because I didn't do that alone, but with the necessary help of the incredibly generous people who's chosen to stick with their support and their trust in what I do, throughout all the years.
If we go that way, the current one will be "pack #42". Pretty impressive number!
Even smaller (more frequent) packs can follow from there, since the numbered label won't signify a full period's work anymore, but a unity of content.
Another option... way more drastic —and I'm not sure if I have the logistics figured out yet— would be delivering content (PSDs, sketches, the usual waifu extras, etc) thru Patreon posts whenever each art is finished. That would be a more advanced degree of "freedom", but also require more steps to manage and could become confusing to everyone (considering the different Tiers) So... not for now. If ever.
Anyway, whichever way we go from here, the pledging->rewards system won't really change. Patrons still get what is delivered during the month their pledge is active. Would only mean getting bonus contents more often, since I'll probably divide the usually big packs into smaller more frequent ones, sending out sets or single illustrations+extras as soon as they're ready. I'm pretty excited with the possibilities, tbh.
So yeah, that's all I have to say now, guys. Thank you for reading, and sorry for the mountain of text. It's been a long wobbly night awake, so I might have overextended beyond what I usually consider logical. TwT
I'll leave a little poll here too, so you can express your preference even if you feel shy to comment ( which I 100% understand, being myself... it also takes a lot of me to bring words out :'3 )
