Status Update: January 2022 (Patreon)

Hey there, Oxdarock here!

Thanks everyone for another great month, and another great year at that! For those who read my reflection post yesterday, I said I'd write about my plans for this year once 2021 was over and it's time to do just that! They're pretty major updates, so I can't really make a short version, so I'll instead break it into sections. 

Cleanup, Squish Vouchers, and Slight Tier Change.

First off, I need to do some spring cleaning with the descriptions of my Patreon and the FAQ page, just to make sure people understand what they get when they join and to lower the number of tags so it's easier to find stuff. 

Earlier today, I released Squish Vouchers as another way to encourage people to purchase my works. Not sure how popular it'll be, but I do hope to draw some people in who wouldn't have purchased my works otherwise. I just hope that it doesn't overwhelm me one day, since I'm handling it manually. 

And lastly, as of today, the Chibi ($2) tier will no longer be allowed to participate in voting polls (unless they're a High-End Patron). However, I will replace that with another reward, which I'll explain further down. 

Regarding Characters for Patron Pick Polls

Straight to the point, from now on, I will be selecting the characters for Patron Pick Polls. While it would be nice to branch out what I draw without it being almost completely of my own volition, I care much more about who I'm drawing than how I'm drawing them. I had a very noticeable difference in enthusiasm when it came to the past four polls, with the peak being in November, as there were a lot of ideas I would have enjoyed drawing. Even at the risk of repetitively drawing the same characters over and over, I'd much rather do that than to draw a character I have little attachment to for hours on end without some other source of motivation. Plus, I can always throw in some ideas of my own to stir things up.

That said, there's still a part of me that wants to make as many people happy as possible, so I will be taking character suggestions from patrons in the latter half of the month for the following poll. Most of the time I'll go with a specific theme (like how this month was Light Novel characters + Symphogear), from which I'll pre-select the first fifteen choices, with last three suggested by patrons. However, every other month, I'd like to try leaving the suggestion pool open, allowing patrons to suggest fifteen of the characters (the first three will always be Symphogear characters though). 

Of course, as there are a limited number of slots, I won't accept every suggest sent to me, nor will I reveal if I accept them or if they're already in the poll here on Patreon (although I'm perfectly fine with discussing the latter in private). In the event that I don't particularly care for any character suggestions sent my way (or all fifteen for the open months), I'll simply fill in the slots myself. And lastly, my apologies, but there's no hope of me accepting any original OCs that aren't a part of a franchise as character suggestions. 

Apologies to those who feel that this is very limiting, but I simply don't possess the mental fortitude to continue drawing possibly two or three requests a month that I'm not somewhat enthusiastic about drawing. 

Publicly Posting Comics

This one is a biggie. I really want to get back into drawing comics this year, to have them more well known, and to attract more supporters. To that end, I will be publicly posting the MikoXMonster and Lusty Lamp Tour series. 

Before I continue, let me express my heartfelt gratitude to everyone who's purchased my works from my online store. It means just as much to me as those who support me here on Patreon, especially when I just started out. While it wasn't a super hit, the sales of my MikoXMonster comic back in 2013 really motivated me to continue being an artist as a career. Despite sales of my older comics dipping quite a bit, what's kept me from offering them for free all this time is that I always found it disrespectful to those who went out of their way to buy it and felt that there's little point in doing so, for both my audience and myself, if I put it up for sale, only to release it for free later anyway. However, a lot of successful artists (or at least the ones I follow) on Patreon have webcomics that are viewable for free, so I feel that doing so is the best way for me to move forward.

That said, as arrogant as it sounds, I do feel that I'm much more business oriented compared to a lot of other artists I follow, so I still plan to play off of people's impatience and curiosity. For one, I'll only be posting the MikoXMonster and Lusty Lamp Tour series publicly. I feel that, compared to other comic ideas I have, these are relatively tame and serve as an introduction to the worlds I'm creating. Two, releases will be massively timegated, with one page posted a day to the Chibi ($2) tier and two pages posted per week publicly. At that rate, everything from those series currently on the OxShop  will be up on Patreon by the end of late May, while publicly, everything should be up around mid-2023. Three, the public version will be censored, ranging from passively annoying to incredibly obstructing (particularly when it comes to the Enchantavators). And finally, I intend to make it a point to include extra illustrations in the store version of comic releases, so those who pay are always getting something extra. 

So, as you can see, I'm very much sticking to the Time=Money equation. To those who intend to continue supporting me here on Patreon or purchase my works, know that you are definitely getting your money's worth. Regarding the scheduling, as I said, I intend to post one comic page a day from all the MikoXMonster and Lusty Lamp Tour comics currently available on my store, alternating between the two. As for the public release, I intend to post one page on Tuesday and Thursday every week, again, alternating between the series, on my website, the OxRockBlock.com. 

New Comics

Finally, and obviously, if I'm releasing old comics, that means I'm going to be releasing new ones as well. I'll definitely have something sketched out and ready to post by the times all the current pages go up on Patreon, let alone publicly. These pages I will post as they are completed to the Big ($5) tier and up as they're completed. Once they're available on my store, I start releasing them to the Chibi ($2) tier (and publicly, but people waiting for that won't see them until next year). 

That's pretty much all I have to say in terms of my plans for this year. I'll be cleaning up my Patreon and other administrative stuff over the next couple of days before drawing again, so look forward to my next works!

That's all for now!