Update + plans - April-May 2022 (Patreon)

Hullo all! It's been a little while since the last update, so I'll try to make up for that a bit!

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I suppose I should start off with what I've said I would delve into a bit, that being the fact that my main Instagram account was shut down earlier this month. I'm still not sure why it happened, just guesses; sometime around April 9th or so, my page started getting loads of traffic, an influx of new followers all in the one day (over 1k), a mix of positive and negative comments. From what I gathered, some of my work had been going viral on TikTok, particularly the Russian-speaking community; the ton of new followers tells me that at least a bunch of them liked it, though from some of the comments, not everyone did (and I'm fairly certain that brought with it some report spamming, etc).

Whatever the case, my account got locked later that day for "suspicious activity", no doubt spurred by the fact that so much of the traffic was from Russia and Ukraine addresses, combined with the current political situation (my personal site also had a surge in traffic to match, which gave me some extra insights on just how much of the traffic was from elsewhere). Submitted info to get it reviewed. Waited a day.

And then account deactivated the next. Instagram is exceedingly bad at telling you why an action was taken, and even worse at letting you contest it. I did try, multiple times with no responses, and while there's maybe ways I could have tried further, it's honestly not worth it to me to go through all of that stress and strain. IG doesn't care about individuals, there's reason they don't even have a "contact support" option anywhere.

So yeah, I gave up on it. It sucks, I'd hit about 28k followers at the time it got shut down, by far my biggest audience on any platform. But it's IG, they also don't care if you just start up again. I've got a new account, it's already regained some 500+ followers within a couple of weeks, I've still got contact with some of the fashion clients I had, folks letting their audiences know about the page change. It is what it is!

Needless to say, that was both a time sink and a mental crush for a while, but it's also been an odd kick in the pants? Despite my success on IG, the fact is that it was never my main audience, it's the one I made because others told me I should be on there. DeviantArt is where I started, and has most of my art; Pixiv is a lovely backup to that and a site I personally use way more anyway. Twitter may have its own issues, but it's the better option for just communicating with people as well as being fairly lax on what you can post.

And of course there's here, which may not go back quite as far as the others, but has way more of my content and actually provides me with support from you all! IG was/is the best way for me to reach commission and collaboration clients in realms like fashion, but that's also not exactly what I'm after. (Still very thankful to have that available.)

And so...

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Partly in thanks to all of that mess above, I've been finally getting around to some page cleanup here! Starting with some re-editing of my intro and some of the tier descriptions; no actual changes to what you're getting, just more clarity on some of the perks.

"Early access" for example has always been a bit vague, sometimes I post content a week or more in advance of any public release, sometimes it's only a few days. Mostly my fault on that, since when I started, I didn't know what my plan was; other artists have Patreon early-access backlogs that stretch for months ahead of their public releases, but I've quickly realized that ultimately, I'm making a lot of my art because I want to share it, so having to hold off for so long after finishing a piece was tough for me to handle! That said, I usually don't post art the day I finish it anyway, I take a few days for it to 'settle' and to wait for a better upload day; Early access here means that you're getting to see it exactly when I finish it, regardless of how long I might take to do a public post. (And if I can ever catch up to myself and actually finish some holiday and event pictures well in advance, those will get even earlier posts here too!)

I've also been trying to make the Discord access a bit more clear too, since I don't know if everyone actually knows it's there. Definitely not a requirement - plenty of folks who simply don't use Discord - but for those that do, I don't think I was making it obvious enough that it was available. I do sometimes post WIPs in the Discord server before I condense them into a post on here, for example, as well as just chatting about ideas or sharing other stuff. I'll probably be reworking the server too, on that note, maybe adding a channel where folks can browse some of my art (not as a replacement for proper galleries, but as a convenience and backup), that sort of stuff.

Beyond that, there's one other perk I haven't added yet, but intend to: Commission priority. I should say straight away, I don't do first-come-first-served commission slots, I always aim to take on commissions I know I can enjoy and put my all into. But (probably this month) I want to make it more 'official' that current patrons will always be higher on the priority list; not only as a reward for your support (which I can never thank you all enough for), but simply the fact that I'm way more confident working with people I've dealt with before. It's a simple perk, one that's not always going to be relevant on months when I'm not taking commissions and such, so I also don't want to advertise it as a perk worth pledging for specifically. But I think it's only fair that those who support me already should get that extra benefit!

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And this is getting pretty long now, hopefully it's not too much of a run-on! There's a lot I'd like to do, and honestly I'm still struggling mentally to keep up with much of it. I want to resume writing character profiles and posting pages to my website; I'm working on setting up a Mega or Drive folder so people can have easier access to a lot of my older works, since even I have trouble figuring out how much of it is buried in posts on various sites and how much has disappeared off the web. I managed, somewhat unexpectedly, to finish two pictures in April (barely), and I'd like to try to do another two for May, if I can make it work. (Maybe a submission form or a Discord channel for people to send me suggestions too? I'll have to think about that.)

But for all of the downs and ups, I'm feeling pretty good, even if it's still so fragile. There's a lot of smaller things I can achieve that lead to those bigger things, and at the end of the day... Even if I'm not making a full income from my art, just getting a small paycheck every month to keep me going is already more than I could ask for, especially given how slow I've been for a while.

So, onward! I hope you're all having a good year so far, or at the very least, that today is a good day for you. Love you all!