2023 Art Summary, and Year In Review (Patreon)

Well hello again Patrons!

Here we are at the end of another year, one filled with tons of beefy ladies and bigness of many varieties. I was once again able to get a picture done each month, though for most months there were actually several images completed, which is an enormous improvement over last year. Though while there was a good amount of art from me, there were also just as many issues that hampered things in my opinion. It was a wild year for me both positively and negatively, personally and professionally. 

In a weird way, there was a similar pattern of ups and downs as last year, though thankfully in most cases not nearly hitting the same level of lows, though still enough of a matching pattern to be strangely coincidental. 

As a quick aside, I'm writing this on Patreon first, but this post is going to cover a lot of stuff that isn't Patreon specific, and if you're reading this on other sites, I may or may not have the energy to tweak the Patreon specific content to make more sense for consumption on other sites, so forgive me if things are a little confusing in that area!

The Highs

Despite the weirdness, there were a lot of things that I feel went reasonably well. Not perfect by any means (there will be plenty of reflecting on that in the next section), but a lot of things went a lot better than they did last year.

Macro March (The Good Stuff)

Let's start off with one of the biggest projects of the year (pun not intended), the Macro March Growth Drive. In a lot of ways, this year's drive was a huge success, from a standpoint of money raised, content created and delivered, and overall engagement. Not only that, but despite drawing two characters for each picture along with dozens of other drawings, layouts, and managing all the posts and tracking all the numbers, the burnout afterwards (while still present) was not *nearly* as bad as it was last year. To be fair there was still a noticeable dip in productivity afterward, but the fact that I was still able to not only work on pieces afterwards but complete pieces as shortly as a couple weeks after the last piece in the main series is a huge improvement over last year. That said, I still didn't deliver on everything I wanted to, but that'll be expanded on in The Lows.

Onyx (The Character)

By far one of the most surprising highs this year was the degree of positive reception Onyx had after their introduction and in subsequent pictures. A lot of people, both here on Patreon as well as the general fanbase outside Patreon, have mentioned to me directly that Onyx is one of their favorites of my OCs, and frankly I didn't expect her to resonate so strongly with folks. It's been incredibly heartwarming to see folks enjoy Onyx as much as I do, and while I feel like I could've drawn them a little more frequently, given the amount of work I had loaded myself with over the months following their introduction, I'm fairly happy with the amount of pics they starred in. I'll definitely be drawing more Onyx moving forward, so look forward to that! 

Riptide, and Shark Girl Summer

Another surprise for me was the response to the Riptide themed commissions and the overall response to my participation in Shark Girl Summer. This year was one I definitely cemented my association to muscles and growth, and a lot of that is directly due in part to Riptide. After the sketchpage I did for Glitch took off and I started doing growth themed pieces featuring the Riptide brand, a good handful of folks have taken particular interest in it outside of just the work I was doing at the time. If you'll allow me to be ambitious, my goal with Riptide is for it to be a "known product" in the community, kind of like how Gro+ is a thing a lot of folks know of and some use. I'd at least like Riptide to be something that other people would want to draw and include in their settings, and it looks like that might not be as far fetched as I thought, so that's something that brought me a lot of joy this year!

Retrospring Asks

This is just a quick bit, but I really enjoyed working on the Retrospring Asks as a means to do some quick sketches as well as do some character exploration while connecting more with the community and you, the fans. The only reason I stopped doing them was simply due to the workload I was under, and I'll be starting them back up again in the New Year.

Incremental Patreon Improvements

This one is minor in the broad scale, but while last year I felt like I perpetually under-delivered on my Patreon, this year I felt like I've made some pretty decent, albeit small, improvements to what I've delivered to Patrons this year. More Patreon Exclusive content, and not just sketches, but more completed pictures as well! It's still not quite to the level I want it to be at, but it's getting there slowly but surely.

The Lows

"The Meltdown"

This is what I'm calling the last.. what, 7 months of stress and art slump? Of course this is starting out The Lows. Hell I don't think I've ever made a large post like the one I did in October before.  The argument can be made that I shouldn't kick myself too hard over everything that lead up to it, as so many of the factors that contributed to the stress and inability to work effectively were outside of my control, but I still feel at least partly responsible for letting it get so bad. Granted, serious medical scares and family members passing are never easy to deal with, but there's still the side of me that thinks I could've handled it better. I dunno, I'm not going to dwell too much on that, because the real kick in the teeth was the months-long art slump that came about from it. I have no idea how I could've managed that better, even as I feel like I'm just now coming out of it finally. That's probably the most frustrating thing about it, how it got to the point that for the first time I actually started hating doing art. Not just "being frustrated" with art (that happens all the time), but actively *hating* doing art because of how it was affecting my mental health when mixed everything else that had built up over the months. Which leads us to the next sections.

Effects of the Meltdown - Commissions

As I mentioned in that big post, I found myself in a no-win situation of needing to take work to pay the bills, but struggling to get work done in a reasonable time, leading to an ever growing backlog. One that I'm admittedly *still* trying to finish. Yes there were a lot of factors at play when I was dealing with that decision, but the fact of the matter at the end of the day is that commissions wound up taking way too long during that stretch of time, and frankly in any other circumstance the wait for work owed would be inexcusable. Hell you could make the argument that even with those circumstances the wait is still inexcusable. But if there's one positive that came out of that mess, it's the plans for changes I came up with to make sure that sort of thing never happens again.

Macro March (The Bad Stuff)

There are still a couple pieces related to the Macro March Growth Drive that I've yet to deliver on. A part of the reason why is the general art struggles I was dealing with from The Meltdown, but the other part was just poor planning and management on my part during the window of time where I wasn't dealing with all that stress. I could've shifted some projects around to get everything for the Drive finished, but I had opted to work on other owed work instead, and then The Meltdown happened. Was that the right call? I don't know, probably not, but then that was just one of many choices that probably didn't have a "right" answer during that time.

Still Figuring Out My Capabilities - Workflow and Workload

So between The Meltdown, the commissions and backlog that came from it, all the other projects I've ideated and wanted to do but didn't or couldn't, if I could summarize the worst parts of this year, it was simply the fact that I wasn't able to work to the extent I wanted to, and in some cases that I needed to. There were easily dozens of warmup sketches this year that I wanted to turn into completed pieces; story settings, one-off illustrations, character reference material, comics and sequential art pieces, themed art packs, adoptables... And there were just as many more ideas that never made it to canvas, even in sketch form. I don't know that I'll ever get to a point that I'm able to do every single idea that pops into my head, especially when there are other things like commissions I'll be working on, but with how severely my creative process suffered this year from all of the things I mentioned, the number of things I missed because of it hits particularly hard for some reason. 

Deep down though, there's a part of me that knows I *can* do more, and that's part of what's driving me forward, but unfortunately this year I wasn't able to figure out how best to be able to do more when times were good, and when times were bad I still feel like I wasn't doing enough with the resources I had, though maybe that's only a judgement call I can make now that I'm not dealing with that level of stress. It's easy to forget how bad things can be when you're not in the middle of it.

The Future

As the saying goes, "This Too Shall Pass", and I've never been so relieved to be able to say goodbye to an art slump. As I've mentioned elsewhere, the last week or two I've really started to feel "normal" when it comes to art again, and while I'm still cautious about how "back" I am, I'm still taking that newfound energy with me along with some lessons I learned throughout this year to make 2024 an even better year for my art.

Planned Changes to Workflow and Commissions

One of the major changes I'm going to be making this year is I'm going to be a lot more strict on the scope of work I'll be taking on at any one time. Part of the downfalls of the year was stockpiling more work than I could do in a reasonable time frame, and I had wanted to get to a point to where I could open up for a smaller number of commissions, but open up more frequently (like every 2 weeks instead of say, every couple months). 

Part of the changes include being more transparent, and in particular more up front, about how my current workflow and work load is affecting turn-around times for pieces. So to that end, all commission openings will now have expected turn-around times listed on any price-sheets, which will be subject to change as I both fine-tune my ability to accurately predict times as well as account for any changes that may come about as a result of external factors. I will also be doing a fairly substantial overhaul to my offerings, with more strict limitations to the number of "larger projects" I'll have ongoing at any point in time. This may also result in some types of art having their costs adjusted, or specific qualities altered, so that everything can be kept manageable. 

The change is meant to make sure that I don't repeat this last year's problem of people waiting an unexpectedly long time for a piece, and with me being more strict on the number of projects I have at any point in time, that should hopefully help to reach the goal of opening more often, so that folks who do want art are able to get something in a reasonable time frame.

Another change I'm going to be implementing, starting sometime in in the first quarter of the year (ideally in January), is regularly scheduled art streams. The content of the streams is subject to change (it may be general commission work, personal drawings, in-stream commissions, or any other number of things), but the line of thinking here is that if I want to make more content, having a scheduled stream as a way to effectively "keep me accountable", similar to having a personal trainer at a gym, will provide an extra push for me to keep creating when I might otherwise struggle to find motivation. I will say right now that a major factor for this is dependent on if my computer is able to run streams regularly without issue. There was a period of time this year where my computer was suffering with basic performance, and while I haven't had any issues with that lately, most of my hardware is still over 10 years old, so that very likely may change without me having any kind of advanced warning.

Potential Changes to My Patreon 

As I mentioned in this week's Snapshot update, I also have a couple of changes I'd like to run by Patrons for how I run my Patreon. I'll go into greater detail on a separate Patreon post, but some of the changes I'm thinking about include more general site-usage features, like how I should tag and/or group posts, to more specific handling of content and rewards, such as how votes are handled, figuring out to what degree votes are preferred for rewards, if alternative benefits or rewards are desired (such as a private discord group), things like that nature. This last year I've been trying out a few different things both in an attempt to increase engagement as well as streamline processes, and there have been varying degrees of success with different options, so as well as propose changes, I want to see what would best fit my Patrons' wants.

Alright, I could feel my eyes glaze over towards the end there. This is a wordy post even by my verbose standards, so I'll wrap this up really quick. 

To everyone who has supported me on Patreon, thank you so much for your support, no matter how big or how small. Every bit means more to me than I can easily describe, especially for the continuous support through The Meltdown, it was one of the factors that kept me going and allowed me to get past that ordeal. And to everyone else who follows my work, whether it's on Twitter, FA, Co-Host or any of the other sites I post to, thank you for your support as well. Each comment, even the simple like or favorite, brings a lot of joy to me, and the happiness I get from your enjoyment of my work is one of the main reasons I do this at all. I hope you all have a wonderful New Years celebration if you have anything planned, and that 2024 is your best year yet!