February Newsletter (Patreon)

Hello all! Haven't written a newsletter for a bit. This is another one that will be a bit short.

Health

Health has been rocky. Between still trying to adjust meds and a flare-up that just won't quit, I've been pretty up and down this month. Still hanging in there! However, mentally I've never been better, and I'm really feeling myself settling down into a comfortable and healthy mindset. Heck yeah~

I'm turning my priorities towards improving my health and routine, finding ways to exercise despite my disability, and working closely with my doctors to find a healthy and sustainable path to a more functional body. This means that my daily output may continue to be quite up and down for a while as I integrate new habits and spend my limited energy on other things. But considering the lead I've got going, that should be alright.

Comic Production

And the buffer is holding real strong with 12 completed pages sitting pretty ahead of the public. Wowzers! Looks like between Ari's help with the story, my flatters' help with the process, and streamlining how things work, it's finally starting to come together.

Ari and I have been meeting constantly to talk about the story and really hash out the entire rest of the comic in a more concrete way than it has been. We are diving deep here and making sure that all of the zillions of threads get touched on and wrapped up, that all the cameos have a place, and that the story that is being told is the one we want to tell.

Tales from Treehollow

We're still working out the best process for these, so there are still some bumps in getting things delivered. January's didn't go out, so we beg your forgiveness and, in order to ensmoothen things in the future, we're moving that mostly-completed one to July so we have more buffer to work things out. It also wasn't advertised so...we don't feel TOO bad?

We do however have a solid schedule of the stories we're going to tell for the entire rest of the year, including comics, and who will be illustrating or drawing for each. Thanks for your patience while we figure out how to massage the schedule around Ari's 5 other gigs!

Charity

Last month I participated in a charity stream for Ari's cat, and in March I will be doing another stream for Anastasia. More info about that here. I also started up a separate merch collection to benefit Anastasia, also in the image of this post! Admittedly a lot of my extra energy is going toward coordinating, designing for, and executing these events. 

Caring for community is one of my most treasured values, and it's one of the reason the Tales from Treehollow program exists, so that I can use whatever platform I have to try to fairly pay artists and writers, and spread their work.

I'd love to be able to do some charity work for Ukraine as well, but I think I must admit to myself I'm at my limit. One can only do so much!

Style Exploration

I've been noodling here and there with trying to refine and fix my style. I haven't been happy with my style for several years -- mostly because very little of it is intentional or grounded in foundations so much as just whatever I can do the fastest. I think I'm getting closer to one I really like. Rest assured, it's not that far from what I'm already doing. Most folks will probably barely notice it.

But I do. I sure do.

On this journey, I did some style studies of other artists I admire, by copying some of their pieces. As ever, I would like to stress that this is an exercise, and all credits for the original artists can be found here.

Farewell

With that, I'm gonna just flop over and rest a bit. Actually, that's a lie, I have a lot more work to do today. But I'm still gonna rest and have lunch! Normally this is where I'd link the posts that went up last month and all the new/returning patrons, but unfortunately I don't have the brain space to do that this month!

So I hope you enjoy the post, and I hope you're staying safe wherever you are!