2019 for us. (Patreon)

Hey there, It's not very often I write to the patrons out there.

It's a new year and thus a new opportunity to renew myself and the way I approach my work. I want to reflect on the previous year just to get us up to speed. 2018 was an eventful year for me so allow me this space here to to just recap.

I think i had just gotten settled into moving out here with Andrea. Though there were some adjustments to how living out in the US versus the UK. Not only in environment but also company. It was all for the better, I was no longer hobbled up in a house that was falling apart and suffering with depression.

2018 was a busy year for me and it was beginning with a lot of problems. We were currently in the process of trying to acquire a Social Security Number. My unique situation was that I was born an American citizen but I was living in Wales. I had to prove to the Immigration office of where i've been my entire life with yearly documentation. This task had come under the great opposition of being raised in a rural town without comprehensive records.

While trying to get this mess sorted out I had to try and live a normal american life without a social. This means no credit card, no phone network, no getting other forms of ID besides my passport and one scary thing was no health insurance. Which was concerning since my teeth and gums were in dire needs of attention. I had dental infections regularly and the pain would be very impairing at times. So last year's January was also about to get much worse.

I didn't know many people out there in US as I moved and I was in brand new territory. I had one relative out here that I know and met. That was my grandfather, Harold. He lived in Covina, California and I had met him for the first time formally in 2016. I had heard that he passed away in January, 2018. Though, I had assumed he died the night before or maybe even the week before at best and it turned out he died around 8/9 months prior. Why didn't any of us (referring to the overseas family and myself) find out until now? Apparently there was some bad blood between my Father and him. So much, that it meant he was cut out of the will and disowned. It shook me a lot because I felt really disconnected to any of my family. The distance didn't help, but finding out that there was great conflicts of interest and  politics meant that I just couldn't see them the same way. Pettiness and emotional callousness was abundant. 

My friends from Wales eventually came to see us on a trip to Vegas. It was a good trip in some parts but it did serve to remind about how much i've personally changed since seeing them. They reminded me of a time where I didn't care about myself and the way I fitted in the world. It was interesting to see how far I had come but also again just made me feel distant from them even more. I had adapted to having a broader scope of the world around me while they seemed regressive in some sense.

This sad bullshit is front loaded here to bring to light what marriage has done for me. We married on the 6th October, and it was the happiest day of my life. Not only did it meant that I was going to be with Andrea for the rest of my life but it helped me overcome my feeling of loneliness. I am always going to have her by my side, her family is the family I never had, the person who married us was our neighbor and my new best friend. It all made sense. I never regretted the decision to come here but seeing her in that wedding dress reaffirmed the best choice I ever made.

Anyway, that's all the gooey shit outta the way! WHAT ABOUT THE ART?

Yeah, so 2018 wasn't a great year for me. I wanted to finish SS5 but that was not feasible because I needed to do commissions to help pay for a lot of things that year. I fell a bit on myself and made a hell of backlog, of which I'm still working through. I ended up getting pretty lethargic about doing work most days

 I wanted to take the time here to apologize to people who had to wait a while and those that are still waiting. I want to say sorry to everyone who wanted to see more of my own work. Though, I want to say Thank you for any of you are still here or have just followed me. Your patronage is the very thing that keeps me doing this and I'm glad I still mean a lot to you people.

As you can tell, it's hard for me to convey my feelings a lot of the time which makes me come off as cold and evasive. I'm just a bit anxious to tell people how I feel sometimes. I thought it's better if Lemonfont never spoke much, but that just means you means you don't connect the world around you. 

2019 is a chance to do something new and I want to approach my work with reinvigorated gusto. I've started to post more and I feel like the feedback is definitely rewarding. I put off making this announcement until now because I didn't want this to be a seasonal spur of the moment thing, but rather something I get a running start at.

So 2019 will start off with more my own work being made and posted, along with commissioned work here as well. There will be no more SSZ and instead it will be replaced with it's successor, Pepper, The Strong. A comic that takes a lighter, more stylish-er tone and Shapeshifter with it's trademark dramatic tones interlaced with adult themes will conclude this year.

But I want to hear from you as well, all 200+ of you. I'm opening up the dialog here.
What can I do to improve the quality of this patreon and be of better service to you?

Do you care about exclusive content or would you rather everything be public as it's always been?
Do you want to see tutorial, I can maybe do some videos on youtube?
Should there be creative input from the patrons? Polls on design choices?
Should I make Pledge rewards?
Tell me any of your ideas and i'll be pleased to hear them.

I'm eager to here feedback and integrate into growth for this account. We can hopefully increase my wage where I am able to dedicate more time to making original content and be able to make something truly incredible.

If you made this far, Thank you.
-Connor Hall