Important Changes to the $7 Tier (Poll) (Patreon)

Hello everyone! This is going to be a bit awkward and difficult for me to write but I really need to talk to you all about the sketch rewards that are a part of the $7 tier. This is also going to be a really long and wordy update and I'm so sorry about that but please bear with me!

I think it's probably been pretty clear to everyone that I've been struggling with the sketch rewards for a while now and what I'm about to say has really been a long time coming. With 48 patrons in the $7 tier (THANK YOU!!) it's far past the point where it's sustainable for me to offer sketches to everyone in the same way that I've been doing so far.

It was a challenge for me even when there were only a handful of patrons supporting me, but despite my best efforts it's really clear to me now that I need to make some big changes.

Since I started this Patreon in January, it's been my aim to make sure that my patrons are getting something out of supporting me. Especially with the $7 tier - since I think that's the same amount as a Netflix subscription in the US* - I've been obsessed with making sure that it's 'worth it' to support me and it's been having a really negative effect on my life, career and mental health.

(*I actually found out just before posting that Netflix in the US is $12.99 so that makes me feel a bit better but I'm keeping that part in because it's been weighing Heavily on my mind. I know that no one expects me to be a Netflix haha, I am but a simple comic artist, but you know how brains do that thing sometimes where they make everything worse..? Yeah, that.) 

What this means in practice is that I've been putting too much time and effort into the sketch rewards. Instead of being sketches, it would be more accurate to describe most of them as commissions. I've been trying to tone it down lately but for many months I was doing commission-quality lineart and spending hours on each one.

  
Of course, this is entirely my fault. I want to be really clear that not a single patron of mine has ever made me feel like I need to go plus ultra on the sketch rewards. I have received nothing but kindness, support, understanding and patience from each and every one of you and I am forever grateful.

But even despite that, I can't seem to get over my own need to make these sketches 'good' and in doing so, I end up spending too long on them. For context, minimum wage in my country is  £8.72  and $7 is about £5.60 so I think it should be pretty clear that I cannot continue to justify spending hours on each of these sketches. I would need to be able to do them in half the time.

Unfortunately, I am just not very fast at drawing and even though I've been trying to change that and I've made significant strides in getting faster, it's not enough. My actual sketches that I would be able to comfortably do in that amount of time are also very very messy and rough and I'm just not sure that I would feel good about offering those up as a reward, especially now that I've already set a precedent for high quality rewards. I feel like the depreciation in quality might leave a lot of people disappointed and that's the last thing I want.

Another significant problem with continuing to do the sketches in the way that I have been thus far is that they are coming at the expense of new work, including the comics that I put out every week but also my GN pitch and freelance work.  The whole situation is taking a heavy toll on my mental health as well.

All the hours that I'm spending on sketch rewards are hours that I'm not using to develop my other projects or make new comics. I haven't touched my GN pitch since I posted the first rough draft, and with all the Patreon sketches I still have left to do, I won't be able to work on it for at least another three weeks.  I'm also woefully behind with my regular comics. I like to have a backlog of 10 comics so that people can read them over a month in advance but right now that backlog is down to 4 and that just feels really not good.

I might be way off in saying this and I'm sorry if I'm wrong, but my assumption is that you're choosing to support me on Patreon because you want to see me grow and make more comics and bigger and bolder projects, not because you want a sketch request. So to me, it seems really counter-intuitive to sacrifice those other projects and stifle my career growth for sketch rewards. I don't think anyone wants that, but that's what's happening right now. (And I also cannot stress enough that this is something I have done to myself and you are not responsible!!)

As for mental health, I spend a lot of time feeling either anxious about the mountain of sketches I have left to do, or feeling crushing guilt for being so behind with them. I'm constantly aware that I still owe people sketches from the end of August and the September sketches are going to be late too. It's a horrible feeling that bleeds into basically everything I'm doing. It makes me want to just collapse into a puddle. 

Anyway all of this is not to say 'please feel sorry for me!', I'm just trying to be open and honest about where I'm at right now wrt these sketch rewards and explain in the most genuine way possible why things need to change.  I just really can't see a way forward right now without making some significant changes.

I also want to preface these changes by apologising to everyone whose sketch is late, and to everyone who hasn't received their sketch request message yet for this month. I've been putting it off because I wanted to make this update first, but I wasn't sure how I was going to solve the problem and it just kind of got away from me. But yes, I just want to be clear in that every $7 patron will still get the sketches that they're entitled to thus far:

• Patrons whose sketches were due at the end of August will still get their August sketches (some people have received theirs already but I know a couple of you are still waiting). 
• Patrons whose sketches were due at the end of August will still get a new sketch for September-October
• Patrons whose sketches are due at the end of September will still receive those (although they will be late, I'm so sorry!)
• Patrons who pledged in September will still get a sketch request for September-October

And with all of that finally said and after a lot of thought on my end, here are the potential solutions that I've come up with:

#1 Simpler Style Sketches

Instead of offering sketches in the same way as I would do a commission, I could do sketches in my more 'chibi' comic style instead. This is how I've been doing them so far: 

But drawing the sketches in my comic artstyle which would mean simpler proportions, bean faces, probably some ball hands and no noses. Doing things this way would mean that I can simplify and spend less time on them while still maintaining a high level of polish.

#2 Messy Sketches

Instead of making the sketches nicely lined, I could just embrace the messiness. I'm a fan of this idea but I'm just not super confident with my messy sketches haha... I want to make sure that if you're supporting me, you're getting something that you're happy with and I'm worried that my messy sketches would not spark joy :<

But if people would be OK with this kind of quality, that would be a good solution from my point of view haha. You've seen these already but this is the kind of thing I'm talking about when I say messy sketches:   

#3 Less Frequent Sketches

I could offer sketch rewards only every three months instead of every other month. These sketches would still be the same quality as they have been so far.  The main downside of this is that it's still a lot of work and if more patrons choose to support this tier, eventually I'll just end up with the same problems that I'm having now. This is probably the solution I'm the least keen to act on if I'm neing honest.

#4 YCH

Another option is for me to release a YCH every other month and draw your characters onto the base. The advantage of this would be that I could keep the visual quality high while helping with the workload. For those not in the know, YCH stands for Your Character Here and it's basically just a base for characters to be drawn over the top. 

(I did not draw this example, I found it on Pinterest. The artist is called Kiemwell) Another advantage of doing this is that I could upload the bases so that you could also use them for your own OCs! 

#5 No More Sketches 

I could cut the sketches out of my rewards entirely and focus on making more exclusive comic stuff instead. This would mean that I would be able to work on my GN pitch a lot more and a lot faster and I would also be able to make more personal autobio comics that are Patreon-only. Check out the #trauma comics tag to see the kind of thing I'm talking about.

In summary, without the sketch rewards my $7 tier would look like this:

• Graphic novel pitch and development
• Freelance comic projects
• More intimate and personal autobio comics

I still can't help but feel like I would need to add something else to make sure that I'd still be worth that $7 pledge though. I don't know if without the sketches I would genuinely not be offering enough or if I'm just too anxious about the whole thing. It's really hard for me to tell. 

#6 Something Completely Different

If anyone has any suggestions for a reward that could replace the sketch rewards, please let me know!

I should mention that I'm thinking of doing some sort of merch club in the not-too-distant future where I would ship out exclusive postcard prints and stickers to my patrons. This is something I'm going to need to do a bit of planning for though and I think to make it financially viable it would have to be its own tier.... but I just wanted to let you know that that's a thing I'm planning on doing before anyone jumps in and suggests it :>

Heck. I know that was a lot, I'm really sorry for making you read and think about all that! I've made a poll in an attempt to see what kind of changes you think would be best. Please vote in it!

I've set the poll to expire on 1st October. I'm sorry for not making this update sooner, I know it's very close to the end of the month, I've just been really fighting with myself over the choice to even do this at all and it's been a bad time. I hope you can understand.

Thank you for hearing me out and I'm looking forward to seeing what you think of these potential changes!

And as always, thank you so so so much for continuing to support me here, I don't know what I would do without you. Thank you <3