tamberlane

December Newsletter & Looking Ahead to 2021 (Patreon)

Published:

2021-01-06 18:55:06

Edited:

2021-03-18 08:46:12

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Hello all! It is time to do the December newsletter, and also share with you the results of the roadmap poll and my plans for the year.

What a whirlwind it's been on my end!

Bonus Comic Processes

December's bonus comic was the first bonus comic to need an extended deadline. And it's not surprising, because I've had some difficulties getting scripts written and out to artists in a timely fashion. I'm still learning how to coordinate these, and while I was in a bit of despair about it at the end of December, I've gotten a solution (which you'll see in the 2021 roadmap below!)

Although I was very worried about delivering on time, I've released the pressure by giving my artists deadlines if they need them. (And myself, if I need to take extra time to polish!)

Also this month, in order to help relieve the pressure, I polled you guys for bonus comic ideas and have now taken the top 5 requests. Scripts are now in process, so the most time-sensitive part of beginning these is in the bag.

I also polled you guys in general about how you guys liked the bonus comics, and gathered some data about some of the things I was curious about. I'm always surprised by what I get from you guys, and this was no different.

Thanks to your responses, the bonus comics have changed slightly: though they'll be released on the one day still, after a month, they'll be available for all $5+ patrons to purchase on the shop. After 3 months, even the public will be able to purchase as well. And best of all, the contributing artists will get half the sales!

Birthday Week

My birthday is December 14th, so I had my birthday week this month! I initially took the week to try to catch up on buffer and responsibilities, but someone -- and by someone, I mean the lovely patrons on Foxglove -- convinced me to draw something for myself instead.

TECHNICALLY, I drew something for my husband's Christmas gift, but it was for myself because I got to play and experiment with painting some more. This is something I love to do, but rarely get to outside of a timecrunch (painting backgrounds).

It was relaxing to get to do this and also test some new techniques. This is the first time I ever actually utilized the Liquify tool in Photoshop, which CSP is lacking.

It is SO COOL. No wonder people use this all the time! And did you know they now have face recognition and sliders??? I was able to individually control each part of her face like she was in the Sims!!!! TECHNOLOGY IS COOL!

I have a timelapse of this piece that I was initially hoping to have knitted into a full video but due to shifting priorities this year (see below), I'm dropping that off my plate. The plain timelapse will be up soon though!

And truly, thank you patrons for forcing me to take some time for myself. Y'all rock. I promise to take better control myself in the future ;)

Another thing I did for my birthday was I took a day to draw headshots for anyone who asked for them in my patron stream on the Discord! This was a ton of fun, and I got a lot of great sketches out to folks :D

Holiday Marketing Efforts

This is the first year I actually tried to get holiday merch off the ground before December, and the first year I actually put any effort into Holiday Marketing.

Well...more specifically, I had the intention and Hope and Thornwolf really ran with it and made it happen! I made the merch at the end of November and as a result we had some neat offerings this year!

As a result of Thorn's campaigns, I had the best month of sales on the shop yet. I spent a lot of mornings going through and fulfilling orders, which is actually a really fun thing to do when I'm doing it often enough!

I love getting to pick little extra goodies and fun stuff for everyone's packages. I also hand-write thank you notes and do little doodles! (If I'm not feeling well, I keep the thank you notes cursory, don't worry lol.)

But it means a lot to me to be able to make sure people who order from the shop get extra love and care while I still can offer it. Once the shop hits a certain point I'm going to have to offload fulfillment to a company and systematize it. So for now, enjoy the personal touch. ;)

But hey speaking of marketing posts -- it's such a delicate balance. I don't want to over-market at you guys, because god knows it gets annoying. But posts get missed all the time just in the bustle of life, so repetition is kind of necessary! I doubt there will be as many markety-posts a month in non-December times, but regardless -- was it too much? Let me know.

Izzy's Fundraising Stream

Also in December, Jonas organized a couple of fundraising streams to help IzzySqueakzy out on her new life as a self-sufficient adult! We had started talking about this before Thanksgiving and finally got a chance to make good on it in December.

It was fun to take time to draw requests for other people. I genuinely love getting to do this! And even better, between Jonas and me and some anonymous separate donors, we raised a total of roughly $1300 USD for her! That is an incredible safety net and I'm SO happy we were able to help!

If you want to check out the results of the stream, check out the posts below!

Ongoing Organization Efforts

Like I did in November, I spent December trying to figure out the best way to get through all my tasks and keep things on my plate. One of my chief difficulties with fibro has been brain fog, so things just kind of fade from my perception if I don't keep them written down in some place.

December, I spent a lot time trying to figure out ToDoist in hopes of using it for that, but after watching tons of videos and noodling with it for most of the month, I found it just didn't work with my workflow.

However, its competitor TickTick -- which includes a calendar view that ToDoist doesn't -- did work for me!

This combines my to-do list and Google Calendar together into one place! Huzzah!

With intent to spend 2021 smoothing out merch production and social media marketing, I set to figuring out how to plan for those things ahead of time.

For merch, I spent time figuring out exactly what goes into making new merch first:

(I know it says 11/25; I jotted that all down at the end of November and then did the bulk of the planning in December ;3)

After that, I spent time figuring out roughly how long each task takes me by way of how many days I'll take an hour or two to work on it (since I rarely take All Day to work on one thing, but instead make sure I have lots of things to work on so I don't get too burnt out on one thing).

While I was developing this overlapping calendar, I learned about the retail/business 4-5-4 calendar, which serves to keep all quarters in a year equal in terms of days and weekdays. So I used that in my planning.

As you can see, developing a new piece of merch is a 2 month process if I do it in a way that is actually not stressful!

Then, to continue planning, I wanted to make sure I knew ahead of time what sort of days and holidays and sales and stuff were typical in a year so that it wouldn't creep up on me like usual. "Oh, Christmas is in a week. I should probably, like, market something or something, idk." So I charted out all the holidays, events, and hashtags I wanted to keep track of in a year that I could think of:

I then handed this over to Thornwolf so she had it handy when she plans social media campaigns and stuff for me!

By the end of December, I had a foolproof schedule! I had all my patreon commitments on the calendar, everything I wanted to keep track of, all the deadlines I could ever want!

...and I burned right the heck out in a spectacular explosion.

Burnout

In trying to set myself up for success this year, I didn't take any time off for the holidays at first. I even started working on the weekends, just trying to get systems in place so that things would run smoothly for me and my contractors this year. By the time New Years was approaching, I was exhausted and practically in tears from how stressed out I was.

I had a day where I just slept through most of it. I couldn't stay awake, and that's very atypical for me. I had a day where I had crippling internal pain -- the kind that fibro likes to flare up when I'm not taking care of it right. I had sleepless nights and whirling brain constantly.

When I went to my friends begging them to tell me it was okay to take a break, I knew it was time to, well, take a break. So I took the last few days of December off and pumped the brakes hard.

I had planned on using 2021 to get ahead on marketing and merch, and intended to deal with work/life balance after those systems were in place. Which in hindsight is dumb! How many times have I told other people that you can't fill someone else's glass with an empty cup yourself?

So I spent some days readjusting my expectations. What if I...didn't do merch? What if I...didn't focus so much on marketing? What if I just... kinda... pulled back a bit and didn't pursue new things this year?

And as it turns out, you guys agreed.

2021 Roadmap

I will focus on three things this year, and three things alone:

Creating the main Tamberlane comic
Facilitating the production of the Tamberlane Bonus Comics
Work/Life Balance

This means I'm dropping all my other ambitions for the time being. I'm not going to worry about timelapse videos. I'm not going to make any merch. I'm not going to redesign and improve the shop. I'm not going to strive to increase Patreon rewards or reward frequency, and I'm not going to try to deliver better quality than I already was.

Instead, I'm going to focus on making the comic and doing so in a gentle, sustainable manner! This is really hard for me, because I am ambitious by nature, and I always strive to do more than I am capable. I always want to give you guys more and more, but you have shown me time and again that y'all are mostly focused on just supporting the comic and, by extension, me as well.

I'll admit, I haven't been able to wrap my head around this goal yet. I have a business to run now, with a lot of interlocking parts. And I'm not sure how to do that while being gentle and taking all the time I need. How do I take breaks when I have people waiting on me for direction? Or feedback, before they can continue their jobs? So that's something I'm still working on right now. It's getting a little easier each day to figure it out.

So, here's my broad year plan (so far, at least):

Hire more people to help me out
Make sure all of my planning includes a lot of padding
Take time off whenever I can
Most of my focus is on getting ahead on Tamberlane updates
The rest of my focus is on coordinating the bonus comics
And getting existing Patreon rewards out in a more-or-less timely manner
Let my marketing team deal with the marketing (that sounds so official lol!)

With that all in mind, January's Goals are Thus:

Hire someone to help me write Tamberlane and the bonus comics, as writing/story planning are by far my highest stress points.
(This is already done! I hired Ari "Metajoker" Borhanian of Mothorial fame, and oh my god I cannot tell you how much of a joy and relief it's been these last few days! Everything is shaping up INCREDIBLY)
Sort out what else I can and should hire people for in the future
(Also kind of done; I picked up Koda/Puddle to help with webtoon conversion! And I know what my next steps are here.)
Make a new schedule based on my monthly owables (oweables? ... this isn't a word lol)
Do Not Strive For More. REST, MY GOD.

I'll keep y'all updated on progress when February rolls around!

Posts That Went Live in December

Pages

Commentary

Page 244

Illustrations

Bonus Comics

Polls

Marketing

News

How Do I Do a Business????

New, Returning, and Upgrading Patrons

I know this is a few days into January so I'm just gonna include all the new folks up to today, and then I'll just double-up on acknowledgements in the January newsletter! :3

My sincerest, most amazingest, most wonderingest thanks to the following patrons who joined, returned, or upgraded their pledge this month: Aelius, Sophie, Kohlissac02, O.C.R, Lester, Aardin Edar, Maciej, Benjimator, T_Applesmith, Kurtchen, Dzib, Tyler, Brandon, Zohatu, Brett, Katia, Andrew, Saverio, BallofFloor, Victor, Eira, ShuSquirrel, CCateni, Hayaikawa, Ben, Lady Hatty, Chris, Leo, StudioRat Productions, Pinemarten, Righteous Sinn, Felix_Catling, Akai, Moonrabbit55, Fruitso, Chuckles, Trejaan, RootGryph, and TinaRiva!

Good lord, you guys are incredible! Thank you so much for supporting me!!!

That's it for December's newsletter! Wow, writing this took a lot longer than I anticipated. WHEW! It's fun to look back though!

Content

2021 Roadmap

Posts That Went Live in December

New, Returning, and Upgrading Patrons

Files