IMPORTANT: News & Survey (Patreon)

Hello everyone! I hope you’re enjoying the Holiday season, however you celebrate it!

(Stay tuned to the end of the post where I’ll have a survey for those of you who are interested! If you want to share your opinions and have a voice in the Patreon’s future, please do take a look.)

2023 in Review

As we close in on the end of 2023, I look back on the past year with a lot of pride and gratitude. I couldn’t ask for a better community, for a better team, who helped make this the biggest year yet for Tamberlane. We ran an extremely successful Omnibus Kickstarter (Thank you again oh my god), we grew the Patreon significantly, we released an animated trailer with help from Ashley Nichols and the Far-Fetched team, and all of that while diving into the deep end (sorry Jonas) of Chapter 5 and the beginning of Arc 2!

That being said, this year wasn’t without its challenges. My health has continued to be a hurdle as I’ve worked through chronic pain and other medical struggles, and the amount of work on me and the team has caused exhaustion and risk of burnout. Two whole month-long hiatuses this year speak loudly about that!

Moreover, as I reach my mid-thirties, I'm thinking a lot about how I want my life to look. I believe strongly in the value and beauty of art for its own sake, and I find myself chafing against its commoditization. I want to find a way to create in a way that's sustainable, healthy, and exciting. Figuring out the best way to take care of my and my team’s mental and physical health is a huge priority moving into the next year, because why do what you love if you’re wrecked while doing it?

Important Patreon Changes

With that in mind, and with a desire to focus next year on the comic’s production, I have decided to remove monthly commission slots from the Patreon starting in January 2024. This means that December 2023 is the last month to offer Patreon commissions. I will finish all claimed commission slots, so don’t worry about that!

This was not an easy decision to make as it’s been a core incentive for years, but I realized that the amount of work required to keep up with so many illustrations, on top of all of the comic production, was not only slowing down page rate, but was also straining my ability to manage my team effectively. I have frequently struggled this year to get comic pages to a point where I can hand them off. Not to mention, Patreon is a terrible venue for commissions, and I would love the chance to open up slots to people outside Patreon for once!

So what would I do with the extra time by not having to do monthly commissions? Well, for one, I could produce pages faster than before. This wouldn’t change the weekly public release, of course, but would mean a bigger backlog available to Patrons earlier! I really can’t wait for you all to see where the story is going so getting pages out faster would be a dream come true. It would also allow me to utilize my team better for comic production, and also let Ari and I have meetings again (instead of me constantly delaying them due to exhaustion).

Not only that, I could use some of my extra time and energy to engage in projects that interest me but which I haven't been able to spare a thought to until now. Like studies! Or streaming! Or hosting more fundraisers! There's a whole world of possibilities outside of me churning out as many sketches as I can then dropping dead from exhaustion, while my very lovely and patient patrons wait forever to get something they asked for months ago.

Some other adjustments we're looking into: the promised monthly stream with Ari and I is getting nixed, because we just like to stream on the Foxglove Discord whenever we feel like it, and not get tangled up in obligations -- and we want to be able to answer questions whenever folks ask them, not keep it to just a Q&A stream. And as for the Ask the Cast Q&As, those are sticking around, but we're going to find the right, sustainable format for them. We know they didn't show up this year, and we want to fix that.

How You Can Help

To fix everything said above and more, we need your feedback! We want to hear from you about the Tamberlane Patreon: your opinions, your wishes, your disappointments. We've created a survey to help us navigate a drastic reduction in responsibilities while still providing value. So if you would be so kind as to gift me your time by giving your thoughtful answers to our questions, I would be so glad to hear from you. Help us steer this ship into 2024, and another year of Tamberlane!

Thank you all again! You’ve made this an incredible year and we can’t wait to share many more years of Tamberlane with you!