Update // New Year, who dis?

Well, looks like we made it. Haggard and beaten and scuffed and limping, but we got over 2021. Please give yourself one (1) pat on the back on my behalf.

With this here being the first update of the year, I’m gonna try to keep it short and sweet and to the point. So let’s get on with it and then rendezvous in two hours once you’ve reached the bottom:

StarStickers & Merchandise

As you might remember, last month I locked StarStickers temporarily to make some wiggle room for myself to catch up to my workflow. I also opened up the merchandise rewards and people cashed in a whopping 67 bundles, totalling at 625 items (inc prints, bookmarks, badges and books). I am still stunned - and my fingers are still numb from sealing envelopes.

So as an update on both of the above:

Starsticker illustrated rewards became available again this month, though at a slightly reduced capacity to make sure I don’t undo the purpose of closing them in the first place. Although this month’s rewards have all been booked, please remember that more availability opens every month on the 1st and 2nd, at different points throughout the day. These points are random to allow people from different timezones equal chances. If you are after a reward, please set an alarm for the 1st of the month to guarantee yourself better chances.

I am aware that this still doesn’t guarantee everyone a chance every month and over the last few days we have been discussing this in our Discord community (which I strongly encourage you to join if you haven’t already) and coming up with potential solutions. To add to that, in the next few weeks I’ll be issuing a survey on StarStickers with some general questions about existing rewards, potential rewards and system changes that I would love your input on.

This will be especially important as this year we’re determined to release StarStickers 2.0, which will look to update and address many of the issues that currently exist, as well as add new functionality and options to spend points on. Once we have a roadmap planned for this, I’ll post an update to let you all know what that’s going to look like.

On the subject of shipping the merch: all parcels have now been packaged and I’m finishing up writing up the address labels. Once that’s done I will start shipping these in batches of 10 throughout January and February - mostly to make sure that I’m doing things right, but also to be mindful of customs and other unpredictable circumstances arising from Brexit.

Lastly, please note that I’ll be shouldering the cost of shipping the parcels via regular untracked mail. I am offering the possibility to upgrade this to tracked mail for 6 gbp (half of the full shipping cost). If you have booked merchandise and you wish to opt into tracking (bearing in mind it just gives you tracking, not faster shipping), please DM me on Discord or Patreon and I will send you a link through which you can do this.

Bonus Patreon reward: there might be enough fur in these parcels to assemble your own dog. 

Workflow Schedule

Not much of an update here that I didn’t already say in my update last month.

After taking the tiniest of breaks in December, I’m going into January with the determination to bust my derrière and catch up to this insanity and hopefully stick the landing for comms opening in March.

May the art gods have mercy on my soul.

General Updates

It’s probably because it’s the start of the year and I have that ‘shave your hair off’ kind of energy, but I am very eager to make a ton of housecleaning changes this year - not just on Starstickers - but here on Patreon too. Review all tiers, redo graphics (which I already started with - check out the new header banner!), make guides and generally do a bunch of quality of life changes that, while not really life changing, will hopefully make everyone’s stay and journey in here easier.

To that end, if you have any suggestions as to things you’d like to see improved, please write a comment below! All ideas and suggestions are more than welcome.

And because it’s also the new year and we’re all done eating our weight in turkey, it’s time to resume our monthly art parties in Final Fantasy XIV, so please look forward to the announcement of that sometime later this week.

I am going into this year with the determination to take better care of myself, to have a more optimistic but also bolder approach to things and make the changes I need to ensure I stay healthy and enjoying what I do for as long as possible. For too long I’ve had this idea that packing as much as I can in a tighter timeframe was the best way to do things for everyone, but the truth is that if I kept that philosophy up it’ll be another year before I have to quit and leave everyone hanging. So although we’re working through a load and there will be inevitable delays, I’ve learnt that if we can handle it for the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV, then surely we’ll survive this too.

So with that, I bid you a merry Get Out of Here and On With Your Resolutions.

Much love to you all!
Ony