Published: January 4th 2024, 7:24:32 pm
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about changes for the future. Coincidentally, I’ve also seen similar videos from 8 or 9 different YouTubers I follow talking about a lot of the same things I’ve been thinking about. 2024 seems to be the year that a lot of creative people want to make a significant change in their lives and work.
Originally I wrote this as stream-of-consciousness, but there’s so much to say it was hard to organize well, so I stuck with bullet points instead.
Some of the issues I’ve been dealing with:
• I feel like I’ve reached a point of stagnation with my art.
• I don’t really see a path forward creatively if I continue doing art and Patreon the way I have been.
• I’ve got several bigger projects / ideas that I simply can’t make progress on with the way I currently do things.
How I can address these issues:
• For both my own creative fulfillment and professional development, I need to shift my attention to longer term projects that can’t be completed in just a few days or weeks.
• It’s hard for me to get started on a project or make decent progress unless I know I have a large enough block of time to really dive into it.
• I know myself well enough to know I’m most productive when I can work on projects in chunks of several days or weeks at a time. I’ve never really been much of a multitasker. I do better when I can do a deep dive into a single project or aspect of a project for several weeks—not only to gain more of an understanding, but also to allow myself time to practice and to fail.
Unfortunately I still feel like I’m stuck in this rut where I’m prioritizing posting art I can do quickly over longer term development for better / more ambitious projects. That’s just the nature of Patreon. I’ve talked about it last year but it’s still been a struggle. There’s a constant demand for new, new, new. But the bigger, more creatively fulfilling projects don’t work that way.
So with that in mind—
Changes I’ll be making to my Patreon in 2024:
• I won’t be uploading art to this account on a regular weekly or even monthly basis anymore.
• I’ll be spending more time on longer, more complex projects.
• I’m going to be spending a lot more time on 3D modeling and animation in particular. I really want to do longer and more complex short films, which unsurprisingly take a lot longer to do.
• I need to focus on some professional development as well—doing things that aren’t porn that I can use to support my professional work.
• I also want to do more 2D animation just for fun, which obviously takes longer too.
What you can expect:
• I will still be maintaining Patreon and posting. I’m not shutting anything down or going away. I’m just not sure what the schedule is going to be like yet.
• Perspective Shift will continue as normal. I really like how this comic is going, I’ve got some great ideas for it and I really want to keep working on it. What’s nice about this change is that now I can batch working on PS for like a week at a time rather than trying to squeeze in doing a full page on just one or two days. Like I said above, I work better that way anyway and I think I’ll actually be able to make more progress faster if I can work on 3 or 4 pages at once. I've been doing that this week actually, and its going really well.
• I already upload some art WIP to the $12 tier, but I’m going to start uploading various WIP to the $6 tier as well, things like screen shots of new 3D characters or renders of scenes. And of course when I do finish animations (both 2D or 3D) I’ll post them for $6+ patrons as usual.
• I’m still planning to finish Megafauna because I like how that’s going too. It probably just won’t be a regular upload.
• I will still be drawing and posting art occasionally too, of course. I still like drawing, and I like doing horny ideas. But I think I’m going to try and keep sketches more for fun and not a weekly obligation.
• I won’t be taking commissions in 2024
I really appreciate the support over the years! I fully understand if this isn’t what you’re looking for and you want to move on to other creators. But I would suggest maybe stick around for a few months and see how things go. This is a pretty big risk for me because I’ve come to rely heavily (though not exclusively) on Patreon income. But like so many others, I just feel like 2024 is the time to make some changes. I want to use this year to try and advance myself creatively in some new directions.
Happy new year and thanks for everything! :>
PS—If you have any questions about any of the points above, please ask in the comments and I can expand on it. I tried to just keep it to the main points and not get bogged down in a lot of detail as I tend to do. Suffice it to say I’ve been thinking a lot about all of this for months now.