May 2024 Battle Plan (Newsletter) (Patreon)

Busy, busy, busy, busy, busy. Man, where did April even go? Wait, what do you mean we're already a week into May?!? XD Thank you all for the support <3 There have been so many new patrons recently and I can't thank you all enough. It really does make a difference and keep the lights on and my belly full.

MoEx's and ITL's

I think I'm going to be replacing the MoEx with the new ITLs, at least for the time being. As it stands, I've been putting a lot more time into animations which has been drastically improving the quality and for larger projects like the recent calico animation that time really adds up. Now that I've got the first ITL out of the way, I have a better idea of how much time I want to dedicate towards those each month. What I want to think about more is how often I want to run ITLs, because they do still take a LOT of time. I intended for the Fern one to take about half the time as it did but oh well, I'll try to do at least one every month while I'm still grinding out comms. I might bump it up to 2 if I ever feel like I need more things to work on and I'm more fully supported here.

At the very least I'll continue running the suggestion threads every month to build up the list of characters to draw. The more characters I've got, the more themes I can put together to try and hit each of the different suggestions eventually. Its nice to have a little more control over the groupings since it means I can make sure I'm working on animations that I'm personally interested in which keeps me motivated to see it through to completion.

OC Content and Merch

For the people who want to see more of my OCs, don't worry, they aren't going anywhere. I love my characters and want to draw more of them when I have the chance. I just probably wont leave it up to polls like before with the MoEx's. I want to work on the projects I'm most inspired to do and practice more aspects of animations that I dont always get to work on with the usual sex stuff. I have an ever growing ideas doc and there are so many little things I want to draw featuring my characters, some of them silly, some of them sexy, some of them a little terrifying (thanks Beatrix). I just wish I had more time to draw them XD I just been thinking about my OCs a lot recently and its just inspiring me to make more content. We're coming up on 100k soon and I want to do a little celebration piece for it. The follower count has been zooming recently and I feel like I haven't been able to properly celebrate, but 6 digits is a HUGE milestone and worth doing something for. I've got some silly ideas in mind, we'll see if I've got time once things settle above it.

If you've been in the discord, you may have caught wind that I've been in contact with some merch people. I've been slowly assembling a bunch of ideas for merch that I think people might enjoy. At the very least there's a lot of calico ideas in there XD My merch contact does a bunch of different stuff from dakis and titty mousepads to stickers and acrylic standees and keychains. If you have any ideas for merch, feel free to toss them in the comments here I'd love to see what people are most interested in!

Upcoming projects and Commissions

First and foremost I need to get back to working on commissions this month. I put them off pretty much all of April and I need to actually work through them this month. I'm currently working on wrapping up the Eryxx + Aylen animation. Then I'll finally be wrapping up the sketch comic that's been on the back-burner for so long, I think I'll start releasing that as some of the monday doodles around the 20th to make sure I actually make continued progress on it. After that is a few different Dragonmaid commissions featuring Tohru so be on the look out for those. There is a private animation comm slotted in the queue somewhere too but hopefully that should be on the smaller end and not take up too much time.

Outside of comms, the next larger project is actually a sponsored item featuring everyone's favorite bunny boi Alex! I've got the script and shot planning approved, so I'll make a project tracker once I've got the rough animation started. I'm so excited, he looks so freaking cute in all the thumbnails <3

Mental health

I can't thank everyone enough for all the love and support y'all have given me over the past month <3 I've been doing a lot better now that I've started slowing down and making sure to take the time I need to get things done right. I felt like a lot of my work was suffering due to the time constraints and arbitrary deadlines, making things feel rushed and lower quality than I know I'm capable of. Breaking up the larger projects into multiple posts was honestly the best idea I've had in a while, I feel like I have so much more time to tackle some commissions and and get ahead on projects again, I just need to try and keep that lead while I've got it. I've been working on taking a little more time to myself to take breaks and have a little fun and but also being mindful of the amount of time I'm actually spending on those. I feel like I often get distracted on days I schedule as work days and end up falling behind on my work schedule if I'm not too vigilant but I've been managing.

The weather's been really nice over here recently, think I'm gonna go take a little walk. :)