Update // Pumpkins rising (Patreon)

Shh come here, quick, hide. Do you hear them? They lurch ever closer, mindlessly ambling in search of pumpkin lattes and the first browned leaf to harvest unto their Instagrams. Cover your ears and don’t listen to them harp on about 'Fall being their favorite season' or you too might end up cursed by plaid and the pretense that 6$ is an acceptable price for any beverage.

In an effort to not see my birthday come and go whilst writing this update, I’m going to keep it simple: all the important need-to-know information for September was in last month’s update, which you can read [ here ]

I’ll sprint through the key points below, but for extended information please refer to the link above.

StarStickers

• Illustrated rewards: these were closed for August and September. Limited availability is likely to reopen in October, but this will be evaluated later this month.
• New Rewards: New high-value options for illustrated rewards to be implemented for October. Please refer to the August update for a breakdown on what they will be.
• Artbook: A new batch of 10 artbooks will be available on the shop next week. This will be the last batch for a while.
• Prints & merch: New prints, bookmarks and sketchbooks will be added to the shop.

Please note that I’ll be away between Sunday 3rd and Thurs 7th, so all point allocations (including points for the last art challenge), new rewards and the release of the artbook will happen between Friday 8th and Saturday 9th.

Art & Events

So last month I set up a fanart poll to figure out which characters you’d like to see me draw. This is something that used to be somewhat of a regular activity, but I hadn’t had a chance to do since late 2019, when the Patreon  ballooned and all my time was eaten up by StarStickers and commissions.

Although I don’t fully know how I’m going to achieve this, the poll gave me a well needed burst of energy and excitement to make these pieces happen - hopefully in time to make prints for MCM London in October.

If you’re curious about the results, here was the final tally:

Although everyone shared a similar amount of love, nobody could hold a candle to fire mommy Karlach (hurhur yes, I said what I said).

My single brain-cell mission now is to complete as many character pieces as I can by the end of October in the order that they were voted in. I have already started the WIP for a large chunk of them, which I’ll be sharing shortly after this update.

And speaking of events… the London FFXIV Fanfest is almost here! I was extremely lucky to get a ticket and I’m incredibly excited to be going (my first one in ten years!).

I’d also love to have the chance to meet some of you there! For those of you in the Discord, I’ll be looking to create a separate channel or role to keep in touch and possibly organise a quick catch up so if you’re interested please let me know.

More information on all of that and more to follow in October.

Other

And now for my usual reminder that all tiers remain limited and are constantly reviewed and trimmed down in order to balance my workload and manage expectations.

That said, should you wish to bump up or down into a tier that's not currently available, please let me know and I'll be more to figure something out for you.

With that, please remember that if you delete your pledge your points will remain on StarStickers for 6 months before they expire.

At the time of this post, the available tiers are:

• Easy tier: 1 slot
• Intermediate tier: 1 slot
• Advanced tier: 1 slot

Personal

As I mentioned above, I’m going to be away for about 5 days this week in a remote location, in the middle of the woods, with terrible internet and phone reception and I am so excited.

I will be taking my work with me and plodding along, lest my deadlines eat me, but I’m intensely looking forward to having a bit of downtime before things get especially crunchy from later in the month.

I’ll be posting a follow up update after my holiday to confirm the release of the last Artbook batch and new merch into the shop, as well as additional notes on the new Art Challenge and more.

For now, I’m going to sit by my suitcase in quiet decision paralysis over whether to take long sleeves, shorts, a scarf or a toga to my seasonably-confused retreat.

—

With love from the wilderness,

Ony