crowncosmo
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Poll results announcement! ...and a long discussion on my current workload and plans
🕑 Added 2023-06-10 07:38:41 +0000 UTCSo, announcing the results of the poll! It appears that “Gothic Lingerie” won! Heck yeah, thank yall for participating, will be getting to work as soon as possible! I caught wind of the conversation Xiska and Loorcker had regarding their tiebreaker scenario and have already contacted them about potentially doing some kinda shared victory reward! I think it will make for a fun compromise for all of us without stuffing a lotta additional work onto my plate.
I’m actually gonna talk about that last part for a bit, because I do think I do need to talk about what my intended plans are, a few tough decisions I’ve had to consider in terms of how to handle the workload, and some of the context surrounding my life that’s leading me to a pretty place in my career as artist right now. Right off the bat, don’t expect any drastic changes, but I do feel the need to meditate on a lotta stuff going on and preemptively give some explanation for y’all for some stuff I’m probably going to be doing in the (what I hope to be -- near) future. Strap in for a lotta text!
I Basically Have Two Full-Time Jobs
So, without getting public about it, I work a day job for a studio on a buncha different editing and live filming projects, and it’s a lot. It’s based on work I feel very capable and am experienced in, I’ve been working on a few neat projects, and have met some really interesting but mostly nice people... and it takes A LOT from me. I enjoy the work in a vacuum, but it’s very much HARD work requiring long hours, and it’s a very pressure-based kind of work where I need to do a lot within a very set period of time.
I do have a lotta free time... or at least, I assumed I did until I really thought about it. A few weeks ago when I went back to Vancouver, caught up with my sister and family and all that jazz, and was asked on how my personal life outside of work was, and my answer was always the same: “I’m always busy.” Was asked if I wanted to catch a movie or play the new Zelda game, I’m always so occupied. I thought “huh, why is that? I finish work for the day, head back home with a coffee, watch some streams, do some writing, and then draw all my art stuffs listed in my schedule, which is...”
“...oh wow, I AM always busy.”
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To be clear right off the bat: I LOVE drawing and creating in general. Comics? Hell yes. Writing? My jam. Animations? SUPER excited to do more of it again! Creating the content that I do here is far more of my passion than what editing and set filming is to me. All the projects I do here, I do not because it’s my “job” that I’m obligated to do in order to pay rent and feed myself and my cat, but because I want to do everything I want to do. The issue is that... well... I want to do EVERYTHING, but I am a finite person.
This collision of obligations has really kinda messed up my health over the last few weeks. My sleep schedule got really erratic in trying to make the hours after my day job count, and I’ve found myself feeling less focused and more fatigued while working at the studio and more prone to doing power naps when I arrive at home, which I keep short because I want to regain the energy for my drawing and other creative duties without losing time... which stunts more of my long sleep schedule. I’ve felt slightly more dependent on caffeine but am also in a state where I start to feel that they’re not affecting me, only succeeding in making me feel jittery and anxious and unable to sleep rather than actually helping me regain my acuity.
I had talks with my therapist on how I’m handling my current work/life balance, and in describing what I do for the art side of my life, she admitted to me that SHE felt exhausted just listening to all the activities that I’m working on, and figured that actually being the person in place doing everything must be even more intense. And... yeah, I can’t disagree. Right this second, my current schedule involves runner-up isekai sketches from last month, a entire TG animation, finalizing the scripts and drawing all the roughs along with completing the first page of TEN new Creator Crownie comics. And I’m still trying to convince myself I’m able to get to “Friends on Another Side” within the end of the month???
The way I gotta approach this now that that yeah: I am working two full-time jobs. One of them is reliable and pays well and provides majority of my income right now, the other is very much my passion I want to accomplish as much out of, and is enabled because I’m blessed enough to have an audience that’s willing to support me through views and Patreon contributions (the fact I’m making as much on Patreon as I am now is itself a miracle, I cannot thank you all enough for helping me reach this point). It’s just... hot damn, it’s a lot.
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Now, a reminder: I do art stuff because I am incredibly passionate about it and I WANT to do it. I chose to do these isekai one-shots because they sound really fun to do, I’ve wanted to do animations again for quite some time now (I’ll talk about that a bit further down), and I’m especially excited for these Creator Crownie comics because yall tier members have been so open to collaboration and expansion; they’re just as much my own kind of commissions as much as they’re yours haha, I’m so stoked to see them finished! And for Friends on Another Side... goddamn I just want to get a really nice thorough longform story out soon haha
My issues right now ultimately come down to time management, figuring out what I’m actually able to accomplish and scheduling myself better in terms of balancing my day job, my art jobs, and the rest of my personal life. This is actually something where me being so passionate about the art half of my life actually gets kinda rough, because not only do I not like having to cancel or icebox projects, but with the way that I’ve pursued so much of my artstuff as being born of collaboration (with my friends and my patrons), I also worry a lot about breaking promises and mishandling the trust I’ve gained from yall.
Yall support me because you like what I do and want me to make more cool stuff, which is insanely humbling to think about and I cannot stress just how much it means to me, though it cuts me up to think about the idea that I may need to compromise on some of that because of issues with my own personal bandwidth, something that only I alone can deal with in ensuring that creation happens. It’s also not very happy to think about it when I am in such a fatigued state, where I don’t entirely trust my ability to make good judgement calls and am aware of the possibility of alienating people if I make the wrong one.
But I will try my best. I’ll lay this down now and see how it goes:
My Long Term Goals! (subject to change)
So, in case the implication's not clear from what I’ve been on about for many paragraphs now lol, I REALLY would like to be able to make the art side of my life my “actual” full-time career.
As much as I do find satisfaction and security in my current editor/studio job, it’s not a very flexible one, and I’m not entirely sure what my future in it is going to be like, because truth be told, video editing isn’t my passion. I’m really good at it! But I don’t think of it and kinda don’t want it to be my endgame as a creator, and I’m not sure this job will be directly translatable to other opportunities that do align with my most type of work, at least more than what I’m currently developing here. Of course, what I’m making on my Patreon and artstuff alone isn’t enough to sustain me (well technically, it does manage to cover a lot, but I’d like to have more security and cashflow than $800-900 per month haha), I’m not really keen on quitting it any time soon, so I’m just going to do my best until I can carve something out for myself that’s more agreeable.
So to start, for a really long time now, I’ve been really interested in diversifying my works. I’m still eager to do stuff with a gender-bending, transpositive twist, but I’ve been feeling like slanting towards a more SFW and broadly accessible kind than lewds (though we will have fun with that from time to time; we got some spicy Creator Crownie comics hehehe).
“Friends on Another Side” is a personal priority for me because I would like to put on my wider portfolio that I have a fully SFW longform TG/TF comic lol, and I can share it with folks who are not necessarily into the transformative fetish-y bits and just want a quirky, funny transformation story with a supernatural twist but a lotta heart, kinda like a Ranma 1/2 but less kicking and more spookems lol. I really wanna tell longer stories that do more than be just fun and enjoyable than what I do with my current one-shots (though again, they ARE fun and enjoyable!), and comics are my jam to tell them! I still haven’t forgotten about other projects I also wanna do like “Thanks For Listening” (the more slice-of-life music thing I teased last year) or “RunGunBun” (that one scifi proposal I did a while back)
Animation is also within my itinerary! My excursions into it last year I think were really successful, and I’ve been meaning to find time to do more since January, but again, real busy. I may never be able to reach the robust quality of a Diives or Vivziepop or even jWHG, but I am really charmed by limited animatic-style animations (check out CPTNameless’ Pop Team Epic animations and the account “Vtuber Animatics” to see what I mean) and think I can do a lot of fun TG/TF stuffs with the style. Similar to above, I do wanna increase my potential foothold in the medium by skewing to more SFW-friendly kinds of TG content, so I can’t imagine I’ll be getting into Surody-level horny transformations anytime soon, but hey, never say never!
Some Proposals and Possible Patreon Plans!
So let’s get this out of the way first: for the Monthly TG Poll, I’m going to be slowing things a bit down (NOT STOPPING).
Restating: I’m going to continue this reward! It’s just that I’m not sure if yall have noticed, but there has been a gradual creep in size and scope in terms of what I do for it over the last several months that I worry is maybe getting a smidge out of hand. Originally I just intended for the monthly projects to be single-page sequences with like 5-6 poses each, but over the last while they’ve basically become much more dense comics with 4 rows each of detailed backgrounds and all that stuff. This reward rules and I love seeing your ideas and giving yall what you want (I got plenty of prompts to choose from in the future!), but out of necessity considering my cramped schedule and expectations, I’m going to tone down the actual size of these for a while back to shorter sequences once this animation is complete until further notice (or when I end up finding myself drawing them big again on my own lol)
That’s the bad news out of the way. Let’s get onto more fun stuff!
If I am skewing to pursuing my longer comics and animations more, it’s only natural that I also create new Patreon rewards and ways to engage with it 😄. I don’t believe I’ve publicly discussed how I’m gonna be doing the release of “Friends on Another Side” yet: For FoAS, I’m strongly leaning on releasing on a page-by-page basis, with Patrons of $5 and up receiving them early (I wanna trickle out public releases in a staggered form, like 4-6-ish comics ahead for early birds, rather than waiting for the whole thing to be done before releasing like “School Spirit”).
In terms of schedule, I want something more consistent than that of “School Spirit”, though despite my most optimistic of projections, I think right now it might very much be a “1 page per week” thing rather than “2 per week”. Perhaps changing that is can make that a long-term goal where if I reach like above $1k-per-month, I can increase the production rate, but I gotta be pragmatic here!
Aside from that, I considered maybe adding a bonus tier for those who want WIPs even earlier (like lineart before colors) and stuff, though I dunno if that’s an interesting draw. I may periodically do things like YCH’s and stuff for cameos and the likes also like “School Spirit”, though nothing else set in stone now.
I may also end up doing an early-bird model for if I do animations, and that also might be up for consideration in terms of getting to see my WIPs (individual cells, separate backgrounds, maybe music and SFX, basically all the raw assets I use and stitch together for the process), which might be more exciting? Who’s to say, haha 😅
It’s a little tricky to brainstorm relevant rewards for me, because I REALLY enjoy the interactivity aspect of being here and want to continue incorporating that -- I know that if yall like me enough to support me monetarily, we must have similar tastes in stuff, and I’d really like to hear your contributions! I just may need to get especially creative with ideas for these kinds of projects that have significantly different forms of production, workflow, and turnaround than what I usually do. Additionally, I worry about doing rewards that may scale far beyond my control where it exponentially increases my workload to the point of unfeasibility (technically I cooooould open up more Creator Crownie slots and I know some of yall would jump on that in a heartbeat, but that might actually give me cardiac arrest, haha).
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Something I’ve also been thinking of in the name of general diversifying is perhaps doing general character sketches, perhaps as a means of doing more fanart or OCs! I’ve been considering doing a model found with Twokinds’ Patreon: basically, patrons suggest their ideas for characters to draw and short one-shot scenarios for them to be in, with the artist picking their favorites for the month and drawing in a sketch/monochrome fashion, where Patrons can then additional vote on which of them to fully color/make robust “completed” pieces. Something like this may require some level of specificity to not be too open-ended (maybe it’s based on a general theme prompt?), but maybe that might also be something folks are into?
Tying into the thought of doing one-off sketches, I also thought of perhaps doing what Transformistress does of having a monthly livestream to do live sketches via viewer lottery system, though that is likely going to be something requiring a lotta additional prepwork and coordination to figure out. Streaming might be fun to do if I can work out a good setup for it, maybe I’ll just save it for like a Patron milestone or anniversary or something haha
Ahh now I’m kinda rambling. All these ideas are up for consideration, I’m just gonna move onto what I think is the important thing for yall:
Soooo.... what now?
Alright, so to summarize what my current work schedule and to-do list for this month I’m imagining it to be like:
- Finishing up one-shot runner-ups from last month (should be finished this week)
- Get to animation! (starting by next week, finished by end of the month!)
- Releasing first pages of new Creator Crownie comics (finished by end of the month!)
- Begin “Friends On Another Side” (start of next month! hopefully! gghghghgh)
Expecting to add new reward for early access to longform comics (including “Friends on Another Side”!), as well as a long-term financial goal to boost from 1 new page per week to 2!
I’ve also got a list of some other potential Patreon rewards for relevant (and some irrelevant) developments to consider:
- Early WIP (linework) access for comics!
- Early assets access for animations!
- Regular general character sketch requests, votes to determine which get colored!
- Art streams!
I think tomorrow or so I might actually do some general free-form polls/surveys to gage interest in these ideas, will keep yall posted on it.
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But yeah! Wow... that was a lot. Again, haha. This was a lot on my mind and took way longer for me to write down, but as you can probably tell, I have A LOT of thoughts on what my plans are gonna be like and how to approach them, and if nothing else, I’m gonna be busy for the next few months just THINKING about them even before I actually start drawing, heh.
I apologize if there are some decisions that I’ve made here and conclusions I’ve come to that may be disappointing and different to the reasons why yall are following me; I tried to do the best I can to provide the logic and context for where I’m at right now. I want to do as much as I can as a creator, stepping forward to do what I can to evolve this pursuit as perhaps being something both more adventurous and also potentially more rewarding, while also maintaining my personal responsibility to understand my limits and work with them. I intend to keep as many promises that I can, and I hope I brought a level of transparency here that can help assure that I keep mine with yall as my supporters.
Once again, I thank you SO so so so so SO incredibly much for your support. The fact that yall are willing to chip in 3 or 5 or so bucks per month just because you like my work is a show of gratitude that I cherish with all my heart, and what I wish to repay in the best kind.
Comments
CrownCosmo
Hoiya, thanks for the insight! :D Yeah I can't say for certain that animations are in any way going to be "easy", I just do wanna try it more because folks really do seem to enjoy it as well as my current track record on it, thought it might be at least something to consider hehe
TGedNathan
As someone who now does animations, it's super fun to make and will get a lot of attention when it goes public, it helped me, at least. But it is a monster to make. I'm glad you're aware that you also need to focus on your self and your happiness. Don't end up getting a burn-out. Take care <3
Loorcker
Yeah I can see that. For me, the commission tier was a well balanced deal when it comes to pricing, given how much I can pay per month, but it depends on the person. Remember that as long as you increase the price for a completely new batch, everyone taking part knows about it from the start and pays the same amount from the first to the last pledge in the whole period. That might make some people decide not to take part because it'd be too much, so that's worth considering too. I'm sure you remember when I backed out of commissioning you back in I think late 2021 or early 2022. It's a hard thing to decide, so I can understand not wanting to change it.
CrownCosmo
Hoi, thank you so much for your kind words and understanding! I'll try my best to keep a handle on things and get nicer stuff to relay in the future regarding my productivity and ability :D I did consider the idea of potentially raising my prices for bigger commission rewards, though I've been strongly against it in part because I feel like it's the kind of bad news a lotta patrons are dreading about any other artists they support feeling a crunch and needing to adapt, and I've always felt like I'd much rather take the burden and maintain a level accessibility rather than place it on my patrons. At the very least if I ever did, I'd need to give notice waaaaaaay in advance, and even then I don't wanna potentially upset folks and gotta read the room, so... yeah. 😅
Loorcker
I was getting a feeling that it's too much work for you. I mean it was a suspiciously big amount of work done month by month. That's partially why I recently asked you about your workflow, I am impressed by how much you did over that time, you always have something on the way to publish. I wish it was actually some secret about getting super productive with no drawbacks instead, at least then I could try to follow it :D That being said, I unfortunately also have had problems with trying to squeeze more time out of the day and it's something I experienced a few times over the last few years. Please focus on getting good sleep every single day. Sleeping less, filling in gaps with naps and trying to stay up as long as possible takes away from the quality of not only your work but most importantly your day. And also it ends up taking away more time than just getting healthy sleep. Issues with mood and health are not uncommon in such cases too, be aware of it. I think we all here feel very much satisfied with how you handle deciding on your goals and workflow. I know that making sure no one is disappointed is important to you, and I strongly believe everyone is happy regardless. I mean, you and your well being are the most important here. If that means that monthly comics are going back to sequences, so be it. It was not even once specified that is must be comics in the first place, so I'd say it's good that you can flex it back to the original (the tiers explicitly say sequences btw). I was about to propose maybe skipping the monthly poll once as a way to get more time for other stuff, but if you feel good with sequences, that seems like a better decision. And if it's still a bit too much, remember that you can always change decisions again as time goes. We're all supporting an artist that has needs like everyone else, and not a robot that works without a break. For the new tiers/rewards, as long as you can handle it, it feels like a good option. I'm not sure how I feel personally about some of the things listed, like WIPs are cool but it's also not something I can see myself getting a higher tier for (unless you want to put it in the existing higher tiers, then that sounds like a good way to do it, I feel). Art streams are time zone limited, so there might always be someone who would not be able to attend simply because they'd be sleeping at that time, but at the same time doing them from time to time sounds fun even if not everyone can attend (and don't try to accommodate hours for everyone because it's impossible. If you end up doing streams, just do them at the time best for you). My suggestion is introducing higher tiers or increasing the price of the Creator tier once the current batch finishes. I mean, being fully honest, with inflation in recent years, 25$/month in 2022 is gonna be a bit different than 25$/month in 2024. Hard decision, I know, but worth considering. And last thing, I'd love to take part in YCH for longer comics, so if that's gonna be an option I'm up. I very much hope you can be a full time artist as soon as possible, so after Friends on the Other Side are finished, put it up on itch.io or something, for people to buy. That's a very well structured update btw, thank you for reaching out and saying how things are going. And play that Zelda cause everyone talks about how good it is :P
Xiska
Just happy to be able to support you in what you love doing <3
