2022.06.21 Ready's Ramblings Episode 037 (Patreon)

Hello everyone and hope you’re all doing well!

Wanted to drop an update on how things are going with the Patreon overall. The short answer, everything’s great! The art and animation have all been happening on schedule or early. I’m also working to drop in as much extra content as I can. Mostly, I make it a point to give you more than your money’s worth each month.

How is your support used? That’s a good question. Right off, every single cent goes right back in the making more art and animation. That means everything from software, to site maintenance, and any miscellaneous expenses like reference books or even training videos are all done with the goal of bringing YOU more awesome art.

When I first started doing transformation art I was mostly influenced by comics and old movies. At that time there wasn’t a lot of transformation reference. Nowadays, there are tons of great art books, movies, manga, anime and more to check out and be inspired by. I work to keep up with current shows and books when possible. I also check out sites to get reference for clothing, environments and the like. I still buy reference books when they really hit me as inspirational. It might not be surprising to hear I’ve made a few purchases in the last few years of anatomy courses. I’ve never felt my anatomy was the strongest and it’s something I do work on. Working digitally has helped my art come along and I feel my characters are a lot more grounded now than they used to be. Still, I have a long way to go.

I also use your support to get things like training videos for coloring and inking. Mostly these are small one-off purchases by artists from their site or online stores. A lot of times I’m on YouTube looking at the great tutorial content and occasionally looking to support some of those fantastic artists by checking out the offerings they have.

As for animation, that’s always been a big interest of mine and I regularly check out shows for ideas and inspiration. It might not surprise you to hear I’ve advanced many a show frame by frame to see how they do things. Haha. Really, I like checking new stuff out just for the fresh outlook.

Beyond all that, I put aside a portion for long-term upgrades. For instance, a monitor recently took a dump and needed to be replaced. I’ve had hard drive crashes, new tablets and various computer parts upgraded over the years. I might’ve mentioned this in an earlier post but my old Wacom Intuos tablet was nearing 13 years old before it was replaced. I can point to the Growth Lab comics where I got the new tablet and you can just tell the art jumped up a bit. My old tablet had far less pen sensitivity and the new one was FOUR times as sensitive. That sounds like a lot and it is. It basically meant my drawing strokes could be far more delicate with the same amount of work. Things like coloring got better automatically because of this too. Basically, with that one upgrade everything took a jump up.

So yes, your support means a lot to me. Whether you’re donating money or not, even checking out my work is great and I appreciate it. For everyone that is donating money please know all of it is turned right back and art and animation. As much as possible I look to get back to this community and all you fine folk out there. I don’t take any of this for granted and I’m thankful every day for your support.

Thank you again so much and back to work for me. I’ll talk with you soon.

-Ready