An open letter [on a break in may] (Patreon)

Edit : thank you very much for the support, your comments and overall understanding. I don't want to stop making models but I need to find a more sustainable way to do it and some of you shared ideas. I'll be keeping you posted on future developments as I figure them out. For now, the billing is paused so if you're still a patron on may 1st, you won't be charged.

Hi everyone,

I usually keep the posts about content only but I wanna share a bit of my current state of mind as lately my motivation for making models has been dropping really hard.

When I started making models 3 years ago, I used to rely entirely on models ported to daz by other people. That gave me the face/body shape and textures, as well as clothes and rigging.

I basically "only" ported those to blender and a simple model could be done sometimes in less than 2 hours.

That allowed me to deliver stuff at a fairly fast and regular pace (accounting I have a full time job as well), setting a rythm of monthly releases that I'm trying my hardest to keep up with but it's becoming impossible to sustain because models take a lot more time than they used to.

To try to improve quality (and my skills), I've been gradually doing more stuff myself, to the point where nowadays, I don't rely on daz porters anymore.

From head/body shapes, to textures baking, to outfits import and rigging and sometimes even character ripping from games, I basically do everything myself.

To give you an idea, a simple model with one outfit now represents at least 20 hours of work (probably 30) so it's a different dimension entirely. And of course, since a single outfit takes much more time than before, the more oufits there is, the more you multiply the heaviness.

I've tried to do more renders to at least make the work on models worth the investment but when I'm doing a render, I'm not working on models and so I end up feeling guilty because I either deliver less or have to work more to keep the release rate.

Adding new higher tiers was also an attempt to take into account a bit more accurately the increased workload, and I can't thank you enough for the awesome support, but it also put a lot more pressure on my shoulders because I tried (and failed) to deliver to each tier on a regular basis because that's twice as much tiers to satisfy compared to when there were only 2.

Almost all my free time is now dedicated to work on models which means when I get home from work, I work again, the evenings, the weekends.

I've been silently fighting to keep the rate of releases constant and so far I managed with an average of more than 3 releases per month for 3 years, not counting the model updates and outfit/pose libraries.

However I'm at my limit and realized my life balance isn't okay. The amount of work required on a single model also isn't worth it anymore, especially if I'm not going to use it at all.

Making models has always been a means to an end, but now the end is mostly unreachable and I keep delaying renders or even updates to existing models, because I've got to keep delivering new stuff.

Anyway, that's where I'm at now and I have a choice to make, which is either to stop everything, or change things so that they're more reasonable, fun and sustainable for me.

As a result, I'll be taking the next month off (at least), and you won't be charged. That will give me some time to think about what I want to do next and how.

I'll try to deliver Silver Sable (poll winner) before the end of april.

tl;dr : burn out, suspended billing on May, see you later