December 2019 News - Recap, Imgur, Plans (Patreon)

Hey all! New month, new stuff, etc. Let me recap last month and update on current and upcoming stuff.

November Recap

November was a good month, generally speaking. My Patreon support increased a whopping $100, though $70 of that was a planned upgrade to a higher tier. There's now a tier for a colored request. Only one slot for now, but the plan is to add more down the line as I get regular commissions and bigger projects organized or finished. Right now I just don't have the capacity for more.

I managed to do all the art I had planned to do, and some more.

Ongoing Issue - Imgur

One unresolved issue that's been a thing for about couple months now is Imgur. The platform which I use to share content, like rewards on. The issue is that a while back Imgur made it a requirement to login at the site to view content flagged as NSFW. While I don't personally flag my content as such, Imgur does it automatically at times, somehow. Obviously, some of you don't want to register an extra account just for viewing rewards. I respect that. For the time being, I've been sharing monthly compilations on a different site as a bandaid solution.

I posted a poll recently asking about the severity of this issue, and while about a third of voters deemed Imgur logins to be an issue, only one patron out of 59 voted that monthly archives aren't a sufficient solution. Based on this, while I certainly want everyone to be happy, the Imgur issue is not crucial enough to require immediate action. Don't get me wrong here, I still want to find an alternative that works for everyone, but this month is going to be super busy, so I likely won't be making changes during this month, at least. I've looked at some solutions suggested by several people, but it is extremely hard to find a site that accepts the kind of nsfw content I do, and is secure, affordable and reliable. I'll keep looking, but in the meantime I just have to ask for some patience.

Plans

Art wise the plans for December are pretty much the usual. To continue both of the ongoing series/comic by 1-2 pages, the usual requests by high-tier supporters, and if time permits, some extra personal stuff, or commissions. Chances are this month might have slightly less content than usual, what with Christmas and stuff eating into my schedule.

Regarding the sustainability of doing art for a living, the situation hasn't improved much, though I'm feeling slightly more optimistic. The increase in Patreon support was definitely nice, and couple more bumps like that would do wonders, but also offset by a ton of bills piling up specifically on November. I'm working on doing some changes to my living budget, getting rid of monthly subscriptions that I really don't need, as well as optimizing taxes and looking to put a portion of my mortgage payments on hold for a while (waiting on bank to confirm). These should help me stay afloat for a bit longer. But I still can't stress this enough. I do need your support. So if you can upgrade to a higher tier, even if just for a few months, or buy something in my Gumroad store, it'll improve the chances of me staying in business for a bit longer. Regardless, thanks to everyone for your continued support!