Update // State of the Nationy

Well will you look at that - we all blinked and suddenly we’re 142 days away from Christmas (but only 30 or so days away from seeing tinsel in your local supermarket). How’s that for temporal discombobulation? I’ll give you a minute to put yourself back together.

In a way, I’m very glad July is over. Not that it was July’s fault, but you know when you get one of those months where everything seems to be lining up to kick you in the ass? Although I managed to gather my bearings towards the end, two thirds of the month slipped through my fingers and took my schedule with it so I am a little further behind on things than I’d like. You can see my current workload here.

This might mean that my plans to keep to a seasonal commission schedule might waver a bit, though it’s too early to say so I will keep you guys posted on that. It also means that I have not been very kind to myself when planning my workload as it never catered to actual life happening. Oops?

Though speaking of kindness, I did indulge myself a little and managed to wedge in a piece of personal art. I didn’t realise how much I needed that, but it really helped me restore some of the momentum I’d lost while dealing with issues. It also made me reconvene with how much it matters towards your growth as an artist, in ways that commission work cannot really fulfill. So although it might mean sacrificing some of the time I put into commercial work, I want to make a goal of at least producing one personal piece a month going forward.

So that’s it for the “Ony’s stream of consciousness that we didn’t really need to know about but thanks anyway I guess” part of the update. Now for the actual relevant information:

StarStickers

As you all know (and if you don’t, check this page out and sign up if you’re a patron) StarStickers is the core of my reward system, by which you gain points for pledging that you can then spend on art, lessons, discounts and - hopefully soon - merchandise.

StarStickers was completely developed by myself, my partner and a friend over the course of 7 months and has worked much, much better than expected since we launched it just over a year ago - with over 125 rewards cashed in so far.

Of course it hasn’t been without its issues; given that our testing ability and our ability to predict how people would use it was limited, there have been many hotfixes and challenges to deal with, as well as a lot of thought being given to how we evolve the system going forward.

To start with, I’d like to explain how the system actually works - as I appreciate that although it’s completely obvious to me, it’s actually technomagic if you can’t see the back end.

StarStickers revolves entirely around its point system - both the ones you receive and spend, and also as per how rewards are made available in the system. A common misconception is that reward availability is related to the reward itself (ie, a month may have 2 slots for a couples bust, 4 slots for emoji…), which is not actually the case.

The way it works is that a month is allocated a set amount of points that can be cashed into. For example: most months start with an allocation of 700 points. This means that multiple people could cash in 2 color busts and 2 lineart busts (700 points in total), or a couple’s bust, a mystery box and a lineart bust (660 points in total) at which point the system would display there’s no more availability. At this point, depending on my workload, I can choose to add more points to the system to allow people to book more rewards, or leave it as it is if I know I’m going to have a particularly busy month.

Up to this point, the new availability would appear at the start of the month - around midnight GMT which is what the system is coded to- and those who refreshed the page fast enough would get dibs on this allocation. This was causing most, or all availability to be gone by the time most people woke up the following day (actually the 1st for them) or by the time the new monthly points were allocated.

In order to make the system a little fairer, we decided to change the way allocation would be opened: from this month, instead of full availability opening at midnight GMT, we would have a staggered opening between the 1st and the 2nd of the month, with 200-300 points being added to the availability system every few hours. While ultimately the number of available rewards remains the same, it gives a standing chance of booking one to those on different timezones and it allows me to better gauge the type of reward being booked based on my ability to cope.

Which brings me to the next point: the nature of StarStickers as a shop that is intrinsically connected to a single person’s output (aka, moi). I know that some people have been disappointed in the past when all rewards have been booked up before they had a chance to spend points and I completely understand why. It’s because of this that I have been pretty much doubling the capacity on StarStickers for nearly 6 months to make sure that as many people get in as possible, but in doing so my workload is becoming largely unsustainable (a link to my workflow, again, in case you missed it) - particularly on months where something goes wrong (Yes July, I am talking about you).

As with everything else, this is a problem for me to resolve. To that end, I have been working on several things to help swing things around without giving myself a hernia. Here’s a general outline:

Merchandise: I’ve been saying this for a while and it’s finally taking shape; in the near future, I will be adding physical rewards to the shop, including pins, stickers, notepads, bookmarks and other fun stuff. These will be added as little bundles at various point costs so it’s accessible to as many people as possible.

The reason that this has been delayed in the past was because of Covid making finding suppliers a challenge. As of now, the main barrier is actually figuring out how to produce this merchandise and making sure I have enough for the overheads (it’s unsurprisingly not cheap), but once I receive a few samples I’ll be adding these into the shop as a pre-order for anyone interested.

Original traditional art: this was an option I contemplated a while ago and that seemed really popular in a poll I hosted last year. This would be an A5 or A4 unique piece of art, drawn in pencils, ink and/or watercolor, signed and mailed to you. The cost of this reward would be fairly high, making it the first premium/rare type of reward.

Community Pools and Point Sharing: both of these ideas are in the current development pipeline and don’t have a set date to be released, but we should hopefully have more news about them soon.

The principle of Community Pools will be similar to the Ishgard Restoration (if you’re familiar with Final Fantasy XIV) in that it’ll allow for multiple people to throw points into a developing project, which could be anything from having me make more emojis for the server to a particular piece of fanart or tutorial. The Pool would have different stages and those who put points into it would be able to vote on the shape of each stage (from deciding what I make to how I make it).

Points Sharing on the other hand is a frequently requested option by those who live in the same household and pay into different accounts, whereby one person wishes to give their points to their partner/friend/cat. We’re currently looking into how to work this into the system in a way that will be fair and sensible, so more on that soon.

Changing the costs of some rewards: the cost of rewards has been the same since launch, and a year of observing booking trends has given me some insight into how people spend their points. Additionally it’s allowed me to see how the cost balances out with point accumulation and in that, I have noticed some growing patterns among the different tiers. Without going too deep into this, I believe that a re-evaluation of the cost of some rewards is overdue, and so from September the point value of rewards will shift as follows:

Item: NOW > SEPTEMBER

• Chibi: 100 pts > 75 pts
• Discord Emoji: 150 pts > 125 pts
• Lineart Bust: 150 pts > 125 pts
• Color Bust: 200 pts > 225 pts
• Mystery Box: 225 pts > 250 pts
• Couple Lineart Bust: 285 pts > 300 pts

By lowering the cost for the simpler rewards, I hope to give patrons on the lower tiers a better chance at obtaining a reward during their pledge, and by increasing the more complex rewards I hope to ease up on the point congestion happening in some of the higher tiers, while overall trying to work on as many rewards as possible in a month (to give you an idea, a single lineart bust can take me 4-6 hours, while a couple piece can take nearly 2 days, so it benefits my schedule and patron satisfaction if more people book multiple single pieces).

Finally, I would like to clarify on something that has caused some confusion in the past due to wording on my website, StarStickers or Discord: while original we launched the reward system with a 300 point cap (meaning you couldn’t earn more after you hit that mark) we have since raised that cap to 500. I appreciate that wasn’t made entirely clear and I am currently working on rewording a lot of the text in the system to make this a lot more obvious.

As a wrapping note, I would like to ask you guys the same question I asked back in April when these matters started emerging, just to see if feelings have changed:

• Would you rather I widen the capacity for freebie rewards on StarStickers while offering fewer/less complex commission slots?
• Or would you rather more commission availability while keeping rewards as they are right now?

And of course, as ever, if you have any additional thoughts or suggestions I would absolutely love to hear them. If anyone actually managed to get this far. This post got long enough that you probably need to rapel through it.

If you did though, thanks for being here and putting up with my rambling! I’m looking forward to catching up with life this month and hopefully delivering a ton of content - including art, timelapses, art parties, challenges and more - to make your stay here worthwhile.

Also please remember to join us in the Discord if you haven't already (account settings > app > connect your account)! This is the best way to stay in touch, contact me and get instant answers to all your burning questions, such as how can I possibly have the most photogenic dog ever?