2023 Update and Recap! (Patreon)

Hey everybody! 

I hope you had a good holiday season and a good 2022, let's get started with 2023!

It's a long read, but please give it a look for some important information!

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TLDR;

• Wrap-up of last year, and brief talk about what's to come.
  
• New game project in the works, "My Office is Full of Yokai"
  
• I want your opinion on the direction of future Variety Comics.
  Comments and feedback appreciated!
  
• Cup O' Love is definitely coming back this year, with a redesign and new format.
  
• Got rewards? Hold on to 1 month and upgrade the next month's reward.
  
• Commissions will open again this year, including stream comms.
  
• Starting a new week-based schedule, I work on 1 project per week, then release new comic pages each Wednesday and Saturday.

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2022 Recap

Last year was a lot better for me than 2021 by a mile, even with the ups and downs, so let's take a look at what happened.

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Sequoia State

I put out my game with Hizzacked, Renezuo and EventSpawn that did really well for all of us, selling 10,000+ copies!

A lot of hard work and tears went into that game, but we stuck through it all and made it happen. Thank you to all of you who got the game and helped us out, we truly appreciate it!

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Growth

I also saw a lot of growth here on Patreon as well, it was an incredibly surprising summer that really helped me out overall. We nearly got to 600 patrons thanks to Tommie the Tomboy, which is NUTS to think about! owo;;

However, I'm not going to get tunnel-vision and chase that high, but try to continue  what I always do and think works best for me overall.

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The Future of My Comics

This year, there are plans to continue making new stories and characters, including continuing the Curtain Jerk comic. But more importantly, I do want to finally, FINALLY bring back Mya and Janet.

It's been over a year since the last page of Cold Brew, and I need to wrap-it up and move on to the next part of their story. I've been meaning to revamp the series in a new style and format but just haven't had the motivation, and honestly I know that it sucks to leave you all hanging on that. 

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Sad Times and Travel

This year, our family had some tragedy, and this caused a lot of traveling to see things through. It didn't help that 2021 had its own share of sad times as well, but we are still going forward in our lives and are looking forward to 2023. 

I don't like to talk much about personal life stuff, but I do want to let you all know when I need to take breaks and why.

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Plans

Now that things are calming down, with the game and all the events, I am going to come up with a new monthly schedule that may help me get more content out regularly. More on this in the sections below.

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What's Next in 2023

So let's get into it right away, I have ideas for making my schedule better to produce work and manage my time more efficiently. 

There are new things I want for this year and will try my best to make them happen. 

Let's go over what I have in mind.

Projects

• New Game - My Office is Full of Yokai!
• Variety Comics Ideas
• Cup O' Love Revamp
• Reward Streams & Commissions
• Scheduling

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New Game

Work has begun on another game project, this time based on my two comics "My School is Full of Yokai" series.

It will be a maze-runner style game, with light Visual Novel aspects, and sexy animations as rewards for completing levels.

Right now it's in the conception phase; this is where I come up with the ideas for gameplay, develop the visual style, story elements and plan out assets.

This game is a little more interesting in scope, but will hopefully be easier to produce. I want to have it done by late Summer if possible.

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Variety Comics Ideas

For my variety comics, I have some ides that I do want feedback on from everyone who enjoys my work, your opinions really do matter to me and I want to know what you all would like to see.

So, what I want to know is what sort of route I should take when coming up with the comics.

• A new story and characters each time I make a comic
• Would you like to see parody/doujinshi of popular characters at all?
  (i.e. Video games, cartoons, anime)
• Continue previous comics and make more sequels
  (i.e. Perverted 3, Gym Partner 2, Tower of the Mage 2, etc.)

Now I realize I am allowed and can do all of these ideas, but it's a tricky balance since I can only do 2-3 comics per year on a weekly release schedule of 2-3 pages per week.

So, when I get into my scheduling section of this post, that may help answer this question on how I plan things out.

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Cup O' Love Revamp

The elephant in the room; No, Mya and Janet have not been forgotten!

I really do miss drawing these gals, and I know there are a lot of you who miss them too. I am going to make an effort this year to bring them back to the forefront of my work.

The revamp will consist of two elements; a redesign and format change.

The Redesign 

The girls will be drawn in a simpler, cartoony style that will be easier for me to draw, as well as giving the girls new outfits and personality.

My goal with a redesign is to make producing the comics faster, with the idea being that I can make a complete page in a 1–2 days, preferably in a single sitting.

The Format change 

Each new page, will be its own mini-story, with the over-arching plot being in every few pages. 

This will be like a Daily Comic strip format, where there is a setup-punchline style situation, and sometimes this may be at least 1–3 pages of a single event happening. 

Basically, I want to make it more of a webcomic... just with sex.

The goal for this is to make the story move faster, give more depth to the characters, have opportunities for new characters to come in, and overall not get so burned-out that I stop making the comic for over a year again!

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Rewards & Stream Commissions

Rewards

One of the issues I've struggled with is Patreon rewards, devoting a single weekend to 15-20 individual pieces is a challenge for sure, but it still is a nice thing to have.

I am not changing anything, but rather I would like to really reinforce the idea of upgrading that I've been doing recently.

For those in the Latte, Macchiato, Barista and Manager tiers, this is an open offer for you all to use at your own discretion.

If you would like to save one month of your reward to upgrade the next months, then I encourage you to do so, but again, only if you would like to.

This basically helps me save some time and gets you all better quality art.

Commissions

I am almost finished with commissions from last year, and will be taking on some new ones this year.

With a scheduling change, I may be able to do livestream commissions again, but for now, I will post when I am open for regular comms as I can.

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Scheduling

This is where things get interesting.

Now that you know what projects I have planned, here I will lay out my idea for a new schedule and releases of content.

My Plan

• Spend an entire week, devoted to a single project.

That's it, that's the plan!

Instead of juggling multiple projects per week, I want to spend 4–6 days completing a single task.

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Let me give you the breakdown:

• January, Week 1 - Work on Game
  
• January, Week 2 - Work on Variety Comic pages
  (1–2  per day, total of 5–10 pages)
  (Release Variety Comic, 2 pages, every Saturday onward)
  
• January, Week 3 - Work on Cup O' Love
  (1–2  per day, total of 5–10 pages)
  (Release Cup O' Love, 2 pages every Wednesday onward)
  
• January, Week 4 - Work on Rewards & Comms
  (Reward streams on last weekend of current month, no longer on first weekend of next month)

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I hope this makes sense to everyone, and want to let you know that January will be a test month to try and implement this schedule.

The schedule will be a 5-day work week, with the weekends allotted for breaks or squeeze days if I need to take a day off during the middle of the week.

But, with this type of schedule, I feel like I can get more consistent work done, with less stress, with more content production overall.

The weekly Variety comic will still be released weekly.
Doing a bunch all in one week will give me a backlog that I can rely on should I need to take extended breaks at any time.

This will also give me time to work on Cup O' Love, especially with the new format, I should be able to make a bunch of pages and also give them out weekly.

So basically, instead of 2 pages of a single comic per week, it will be 4 pages of two comics weekly. 

Cup O' Love will remain free-to-read as well!

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End of Post Wrap-up

All in all, I am going to be doing all of this to avoid burnout and produce more content for people to enjoy.

I've learned a lot about myself and what I can and cannot do, and with dedication and structure, I'm hoping to really do well this year.

Thank you all again for your support, it has always and still does mean the world to me that people enjoy what I do!

Love you all and Happy New Year!

-D