Important: Updates to Tiers, Rewards, Stuff

Nothing overly dramatic here. Starting in 2019, I'm updating my reward structure slightly. This should affect... no one that is already donating. I also noticed that despite believing I'd already updated the reward structure a year or two ago and made the process for contacting me about it more concise, I apparently never did! Thanks, Past Eli. What an idiot, that guy.

I'm doing this because when I began the Patreon, my time was worth less. That was 2012, I think? Jeez. But these days, I'm being bombarded with commission requests I can't avoid, and it's severely restricting my ability to even attempt grander projects, like Scary Lessons or more elaborate animations. As I get older (I'll be 37 this year), it becomes more and more important that I accomplish more, and expand so I'm at less financial risk if anything goes wrong. Which it eventually will, because age, unmarried, no kids, no health care, etc. So, I can't get bogged down.

So, to that end, I rearranged things slightly. Now, the $1, $5 and $10 are more or less the same, and just a matter of how many McDonald's dollar menu items you'd like to shove in my mouth per month. I did move the unlisted video reward up from 5 to 10, but considering the wait is usually one day and I'd often ignore it as a gift to everyone anyway, it won't affect much.

I'm now treating $20+ as more serious business stuff. I'm going to attempt to generate more direct involvement at this tier, with more WIP stuff and questions about future content. I'm the type of person that will start a project when I think of it, so it's kind of wonky to me. Plus most of my content shows the process anyway. But! I'm going to utilize you more and see what happens.

The 'big news' of the update is I'm moving my sketches and color images up a tier, from 20 and 50 to 50 and 100, respectively. When I started this gig, I was much more down on my own ability (not that much had changed hur hur), so I priced my time very low. Color images can take entire days out of my time, and charging $50 for a day of work was pretty stupid of me. Same with drafts, which sometimes can take absurd amounts of time. Especially if it's a subject I've never seen before.

But more effectively, it discourages people from using the big tiers all that much. Which pleases me not only because, sure... time. But also because it will hopefully deter people from just sitting in the tiers and draining their bank accounts, after I very clearly ask them to just use the lower tiers. You kids... See, donating $50 once is fine. But what if you donated $5 for ten months? That's better for you and it also means I'm engaged with you for a longer amount of time. It also makes my patron number bigger, which makes me look more impressive than I really am! Everyone wins.

Anyway. As you can see, probably nothing changed for you. If you never claimed your sketch or color drawing prior to 2019, you still have nothing to worry about. Just make sure you let me know if you ask later that you did so, and also let me know when you did it so I can verify it.

Otherwise, the only thing that's really changing is that you $20+ people will get more direct involvement in the future. That's it. Enjoy your new years and another year of not-a-furry pictures and animations.