Update // Ba-du-da, it's September! (Patreon)

Hello my lovelies. I am here to remind you that it is, in fact, September - in case you took a 10 minute nap in February and woke up here. We’re all just as confused as you are.

This update is going to be a hodge-podge of random topics and general catch ups on where I am with life and work and everything in between, so put on some sweatpants and let’s leg it!

Workflow and MCM Comic Con

As always, here’s a link to my workflow so you can see the order and progress of things in chart format.

If you opened that, you might have noticed that it says “MCM Prep” in there. That’s because I have been invited to the Artist Alley of the London Comic Con - happening next month, October 22-24, in the Excel Arena - which has me both excited and projectile ejecting bricks out of my derriere.

This will be my first convention appearance and I have no idea what I’m doing, so the prep is going to eat into my time and most likely throw my schedule off its planned course for the next couple of months, which is quite likely to mean that my current work on commissions and rewards for the next 2-3 months is going to be somewhat delayed. This will probably domino into the reopening schedule and push the next batch sometime into the winter.

Because I have never prepped for a con before, I can’t estimate how much time this is realistically going to take so once the convention has passed I’ll make another update with a more specific outline of future plans.

StarStickers

So as those of you in the Discord will know, we recently started the review of StarStickers as mentioned in this post from last month. The first phase of this was dealing with an unforeseen incident involving some major system bugs, which took the better part of a day to resolve.

Once that was through, we then changed the point costs of all rewards as well as the availability in the system to no longer trigger the moment the month rolls over, but instead to open gradually over the course of the first 2 days of the month. This already proved to be a much better way of handling things, so hopefully this will be the start of alleviating some of the system hold ups as promised in the link above.

FFXIV Art Party

As many of you know, I’ve successfully managed to host two of these in a row, so I’m pretty pleased to say that we’ve now established these as a monthly feature for patrons. Whee!

If you haven’t been to one of these events before, they’re a very chill and easy going opportunity for all patrons to get together in FFXIV and draw, take screenshots or talk trash in voice chat over the course of a few hours, while our avatars hang out together in a specific in-game location.

I will be posting specific details in a patron-locked post shortly, but in the meantime here’s some sketches I made during the last event if that helps to tickle your curiosity into joining us on the dark side.

Birthdays and Bonus points

Finally, as is probably common knowledge by now (and if it’s not, trust me, I’ma tell you until it is), it’s my Birthday this month! Sunday 19th, to be specific. Will accept donations of cake.

To celebrate this momentous occasion, I am going to be giving everyone who’s currently a patron - or becomes one this month - an extra 5 points on StarStickers, so y’all can get something pretty with them. These will be allocated at the end of the month so that I only have to press the button once.

Additionally, I’m doubling up the  ‘Bring a friend’ bonus, so if you’re a patron and bring a friend during this month, you’ll both get double points on whatever tier your friend signs up to (i.e, if your friend signs up to the Intermediate tier at 10$, you’ll both get an extra 20 points on top of whatever your monthly allowance was).

Lookit me, I’m Oprah now.

Personal updates

And last - and probably least - just an update on me and where I’m at, as I keep fielding shoes and shouts from people kindly threatening me to catch a break.

As you may have perceived over the last few updates - here and on Discord - it has been an intensely busy, wall-to-wall productive and, at times, stressful year- particularly since I went full time into art. Although I really, really enjoy what I do and would hate for anyone to think otherwise, a combination of long working hours, lack of breaks, health issues, pet issues and real life drama has also forced me to reluctantly accept that I am struggling with burnout and injury.

One prominent issue is my wrist swelling up over the last week to the point where the pain has now extended to my shoulder blade. I’ve been wearing a compression band and stretching daily, but I also know that if I don’t hold out from drawing for a few days it’s going to become a much larger issue.

That’s why I decided to take a week off - starting Monday next week - from working on comms/rewards. And of course this naturally has me twisting myself into a pretzel with the anxiety over causing disappointment, which is a pretty glaring indicator of where the burnout is coming from.

I know that people will understand delays and be accepting of me looking after myself. The problem is that I haven’t learned to do that myself, which is how I’ve manufactured a schedule and expectations that would be ruthless by 19th century standards.

So why am I writing all of this out? I have no idea because I know that I could just take the time off and nobody would bat an eyelash. But there’s something about holding myself accountable to the things I write in these updates, as well as the reassurance that I’m being as honest as possible with all you lovely people who help me pay the bills, and maybe that’s just what I need to start formulating a path towards a healthier working pattern.

Either that or I somehow figure out how to upload my conscience to an intricate web of iPads and make myself into the first digital sweatshop.

Whatever happens first, really.