Weekly Update - 85 (Patreon)

First off, Lethe was promoted from Squatter to full-on Redtail!  That's definitely something that doesn't happen every day!  Thank you so much!  I really greatly appreciate the support!

Speaking of support, everyone understands how the Kuserran Hero Patreon tier reward works, right?  I'm actually losing sleep lately over the fact that I might not be explaining clearly enough.  I may update the wording on some of the tiers this week for clarity's sake, but the rewards will not be changing.

The whole point of the patron rewards is that I don't really have any good ways I can thank you for donating money to this whacky thing I'm doing.  You're throwing money at me out of the kindness in your hearts because you like what I'm doing and you want to see me keep doing it, and that's... honestly... incredibly humbling.  I'm... just an artist.  A slow one at that.  And I have very little to give you in addition to this thing I'm already doing besides gratitude.  So the only way I was able to think of to thank you was to invite you to help design a character that will come to Kuserra and live out a story there.  I think it's awesome that you guys want to help me build out this complex world and contribute your own ideas and characters and their stories to it.  There are thousands of potential stories going on inside of (and underneath) Kuserra that could be told, but I'm only one person, and I'm capable of only telling one or two stories at a time.  I want to hear about YOUR stories, and I wanna know what's happening to your characters, in parallel with my stories.  Then, I want to take parts of those stories and showcase them in the comic from time to time, when, on occasion, the paths of these characters cross.  Sometimes I might even ask you about them, because I'm genuinely curious to know what your characters are doing.

Your characters coming to live in Kuserra can have an impact on the city's ecosystem, just like Kiva, especially depending on what you want your character to do.  But Kiva's story is already mostly written, and he's just retelling it.  Your characters might show up in his story, they could have some spoken words in the comic, they could perhaps even interact with the main cast from time to time, but the patron reward isn't such so that these interactions will impact or change Kiva's story in any significant way.  I feel like everyone gets that... I just felt like I needed to get this off my chest so I can get back to sleep and stop worrying about it so much.

Now... kinda on this same topic... lately I've started gaining patrons faster than I can keep up with, which is probably a good problem to have... but as I mentioned, I'm a slow artist.  So... for the time being, here's a queue/tracker for both your sanity and mine!

Kuserran Hero Queue:

Zephyr - I have all I need for now, and thank you so much for all the refs and images!  Now I just need to draw your character sheet!

Lethe - Thank you again for upgrading to Redtail tier!  Need to reach out to you and get your character details!

Martin - I still need to get your character details, whenever you have time.

Robyn and Scott - I owe you guys both updated character sheets that aren't quite so sketchy/unfinished!  You were some of the first to receive heroes so I want to make sure I upgrade you to the current standard.

On second thought, the weekly update is already long enough, maybe it's best to make this a totally separate thing, perhaps monthly.  I'll think on it.

The possibility may exist where I have to kill the Kuserran Hero reward entirely, if the day ever comes where my Patreon ever blows up and reaches a point where it's simply impossible for me to fulfill all the character sheets and cameos and other stuff.  I don't want to spend every Friday just drawing character sheets on stream.  If anything I'd like to keep it around 2 a month, maximum, so, with any luck, you can see how quickly that might spin out of control.  If that ever happens, though, all patrons who received a Kuserran Hero from me in the past will get to keep it, and we will continue on with them as we have.  So, effectively, you will all be grandfathered in, and I'll simply stop accepting any new ones.

Comic This Week:  Nope!  Taking the week off.

Next Week:  Page 121!  Well, hopefully.  We are travelling this weekend and I'll have less time than usual to work on it because I timed things poorly and it's really NEXT week I should have taken off, not this one, but it's way too late to finish it this week... you know, I'm doing a lot of rambling today, and the weekly ramble hasn't even started.

Drawing:  Halloween post and gonna start on page 121

Playing:  Cyberpunk 2077 and Teardown

Weekly Ramble:  (As if I haven't already rambled enough)

I think the best thing I've ever done is make a habit out of ignoring my phone.  I still check it semi-regularly, of course, but my phone is not the most important thing to me at any given time.  The important thing is I don't let the Technology Square decide when it gets my attention, I give it my attention willfully when I have nothing more important to do.  This has resulted in improved focus on things I want to do.  This has allowed me to sit down and draw for hours at a time without interruption.  Because I've deprioritized my CONSTANT and OBNOXIOUS Notification Cube, I've been a lot happier and a lot more productive in all areas of my life.

People will often apologize for messaging me, as if they are interrupting me or bothering me, but that's not the case at all.  I will read their messages when I am available, so it's no inconvenience to me.  The thing is, you would think that constantly ignoring my phone would hurt my relationships with people, but I don't think it has.  I think people who know me understand that I treat my phone more like an answering machine than like a chat program.  It is merely one degree of separation more from chatting normally.  Like slow-motion chatting with a delay between responses of hours or sometimes even a day or more.  Since I take this extra time, however, it does mean that I almost always try to reply to messages I receive.  It's very rude, and I feel bad about it, when I read someone's message and then forget to respond and never acknowledge that I received it, even with a simple "lol."

The problem is that my habit of ignoring my phone and my notifications leads to a lot of times where I've missed some important messages.  I TRY to regularly check my phone, if and when I think about it, but some days when I'm drawing, I don't... ever... think about it.  For like, hours.  Then I eventually check my phone and see that I've missed 172 messages and two missed calls that I should have answered.  (Just kidding, no one ever actually calls me unless they are scammers).

My point, I guess, is that I highly recommend ignoring your phone.  Unplugging and just doing something for awhile that doesn't require it.  There's definitely a balance that needs to be struck, but I feel like the ideal balance lies more on the side of not letting the Cyber Rectangle control your thoughts.  :P