HAPPY NEW YEAR! (Patreon)

Hi, everyone!

A HAPPY 2019 to all my supporters here on Patreon. Thank you so much, for being a part of my artistic journey and for being ever so patient while I work on my craft! 2018 was just crazy challenging. I still distinctly remember returning from JMoF 2018 and the reality of things hitting me so hard, that I developed a ocular migraine mid February. At that time, I just couldn't see any future ahead of me, no more than a month beyond. For the most part, I was resigning to the possibility that JMoF 2018 may be the last furry convention for me in a long while...

It was really through a stroke of luck and friendship that an industry peer recommended a job for me, and I was fortunate enough to have secured it by early March 2018. Since then, I've been working at this current animation studio for the past 10 months, and having a regular monthly salary has eased off my insurance payments, phone bills and monthly rental. With my finances and paperwork in order, I have also been able to apply for government housing. I'm expecting to do my unit selection on the 15 Jan 2019 and after that, it'll be an ongoing process of sorting out more paperwork and readying my finances.

With a full-time job, I am able to apply for a government housing loan. The unit I'm currently looking at is expected to be around US$100k. The numbers alone are frightening and even with everything signed and done, it'll take another 4 years before the flat construction is complete. This means I'll have to build up my finances during those 4 years if I'm to have enough money to pay off that sum, and that's actually the smallest available unit in the area I'm looking at, for single Singaporeans! Crazy city prices.

Moving into the new year with a renewed sense of optimism, I cannot express how grateful I am to have full-time work now. While I was reeling from a sense of loss having to give up on Meatier Showers (for now), the stable monthly income also meant creative opportunities in other forms. It has freed up the need to constantly put out new comic pages, and allow for more artistic exploration.

With this New Year's weekend, I was able to stream again and figure it out what it was I really wanted to do:

FANGRA: Revisited

Every once in a while, I do have folks asking me about the state of Fangra. While it is currently not feasible to work on a full-length comic, I am leaning more towards the reality of doing more visual development work for the series. In other words, world building. The original Fangra comic books focused a lot on the Eastern, oriental aspects of the world. But the North also exists, and it's something I've never had the chance to cover.

The Game Plan

As much as I love my current job, one can never be too complacent about job security. For the most part, "security" is just an illusion we tell ourselves so we can sleep easier at night. Ever since I made it past probation phase, I've been thinking of a contingency plan in the event that I needed to find employment again for whatever reason. Storyboarding is a very rare and deeply misunderstood position in our local industry, and not as highly respected as say the role a concept artist holds. I needed to build up some sort of jumping board and resources for a new, up-to-date portfolio to branch out into concept art related jobs in both animation and gaming fields.

World Building Project

With Fangra resurfacing as a feasible reality, my goal right now, is to spend 6-months developing 6 different "races" in Fangra North. The visual development work will include locations, mechanical designs and the works to help visually flesh out the world. The results will then translate into monthly, exclusive content here on Patreon - especially since these are still highly developmental concepts that aren't ready to go right out just yet.

 Online Portfolio 

After 6 months of development work, I'll gather the best pieces of material to revamp my Patreon front page - which, honestly speaking, is in a deplorable state now - and attempt to rebrand myself. The rebranding effort will be a monumental task, and I think 6-months worth of content development should at least yield some usable material for a new front page and marketing campaign. What's more, having a new stockpile of material means I have a framework to base my new online portfolio on - as much as I enjoy drawing hyper dongs, there aren't many existing jobs out there that are hiring on that account.

Transition Period

During this phase, I'll be working on fan art projects as well. But as concept work on Fangra ramps up to a more regular pace, I'll be moving the fan arts more towards Twitter to help build up a larger following. In other words, I'm shifting the dynamics of my content  - hopefully with Fangra being substantial enough of a world building project that people will want to support over the course of 6-months.

Purpose of Funds

As mentioned before, I try as much as possible to reinvest my online earnings back into my businesses. With last year's Patreon's earnings, I have signed up for an entire year's Premium subscription for Picarto. This means I can invite other artists to join me on my multistreams and enable up to 10 live recordings on my channel here: https://picarto.tv/snares

With the new year, I've also subscribed to Adobe Cloud... since losing my CS3 CD... which is a monthly subscription fee of around US$10, which I need Photoshop to do layout work for graphical banners and promotional material.

So that's what Patreon helps me with - services and software that go back into adding more value into what I'm able to create and share with everyone. And I want to keep doing this for as long as possible.

Streaming is essential for me, because it forces me to "show up" and be accountable. It helps me stay productive while being able to share my more personal stuff, and interact with my followers over the weekends. It's therapeutic to say the least.

The rest of the funds go directly to my savings account, because I am so going to need it for when the mortgage kicks in.

 TLDR

Above you'll have noticed the 2 new characters from Fangra North (tentative title). The left being the Hunter class and the right being an Assassin. For January this year, I'll be focusing my efforts on fleshing out the Deer race, creating notes and lore on its culture and generally just working on conceptual art for the character and its society - and how it all ties back into Fangra itself.

The next 6-months will commence the start of my Fangra world-building project. No changes in pledge amounts. I want to keep things simple and straightforward, enough to continue my Picarto and Adobe subscriptions.

Please hang around and check back for new stuff around the corner!

PS: I've changed my Twitter "AD account" to an "Art Dump account"... yes, it's another rebranding project I'm working on, kinda bare bones atm but the new handle is: @snaresart (on Twitter)

WISHING YOU ALL A GREAT YEAR AHEAD!
THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING ME!

Snares,
Jan 2019