Caeora in Review! (Patreon)

First things first, Happy New Year everyone! I hope anyone reading this had a wonderful holiday and the following year of 2024 is a good one, full of gaming and fun! Today I want to take some time to write down my thoughts on that past year and my ideas, hopes, and dreams for the next one!

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Reflecting on my work during 2023 has been generally very positive! I'm extremely happy with how my artwork has improved and certain things have solidified. I wont be changing anything major about my art going forwards per say, just carrying on and making more of it. I think the current Token Hoard is a big highlight, not only because with every month the amount of creature tokens increase which makes it more and more useful but above all Ive been able to really focus on quality.

Looking out across the industry in general, I can't help but compare myself to others, there are so many talented and wonderful artists out there that do similar work to my own. I always question if my work is good enough (imposter syndrome hello!) and I question whether I don't make enough per month constantly, but I know that my decision to make smaller packs of detailed high quality tokens is really paying off when I scroll through and see what I've made across a longer time period.

As of writing there are 375 unique creature tokens in the hoard, with 200ish being added this year alone! If I manage to keep that up for 2024 I will be very happy and although it might take a while to achieve my lofty goal to have a truly massive hoard of tokens, plugging away year after year is going to get me there :)

As for other types of content I feel like my attention on certain things has waxed and waned throughout the year. I wish I was able to create my asset packs, with the same focus on quality more regularly. One major hope and wish is that I can make a real dent in some iconic and useful assets for battlemap creation this year and bring a little more consistency to the release schedule!

One thing I do want to try and focus on or change slightly is my approach to which monsters and creatures I make. Previously its been a little more basic, doing a lot of what people use the most, animals, goblins, trolls etc. While fun, I absolutely want to try and do more outlandish, rare and cool tokens that are on the higher CR end for DnD and take a lot more inspiration from Pathfinder and Pathfinder 2, as the artwork and imagination is so rich with ideas. It's a great motivator to bring those to life in token form!

The next version of my Foundry module for the Token Hoard is ongoing as well, though there have been some delays to the release I’m hoping the way version 2 makes things even easier to actually use my artwork in a game makes people very happy, now and even more so in the future after the update! On that note, and somewhat related, I do have a secret project of my own that I've been working on, a creature token related idea that I've been trying to bring to life for some time now. Hopefully 2024 is the year that it comes together and makes the usability of my artwork even better for people :)

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It's something of a tradition here on Patreon that I will occasionally give people an update into my thoughts, processes and what's been going on with me personally. This gives people a bit of better understanding of how the Patreon works, what content to expect and if anything impacts releases, which if you support me with money each month is hopefully something you appreciate from a transparency sense! In today's post I’ve mostly talked about work and not my personal life however, which I feel like I must apologise for. I do think keeping people at least vaguely connected to what's up with me is good but I’m not quite at a stage where I can talk openly about things. I will simply say, many, many things have changed and despite the good things that happened to me.. last year was the most challenging year of my life.

I will at some point fill people in but not today...

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Still, there is one thing I’m again very happy about and that is the support people give me here on Patreon and in general. I’m sure every content creator says similar things but honestly it's incredibly heartwarming to see my Patreon remain pretty stable despite releasing so much free content. I must be doing something right anyway and so no matter if you've been with me on this journey for years, or you've just found my content and subbed, I want to thank you, really thank you, from the bottom of my heart and I hope I can keep doing this for a long as a I can!

Much love to everyone and one final thank you! <3 <3

~Caeora