November Newsletter

Helloo!

I hope you had a good October. I feel like I say this every month but I can't believe it's November already! The weather has turned cold, it's dark most of the time (but not as dark as it will be) and despite everything, I'm appreciating how cosy it's starting to feel. 

I made pumpkin cookies yesterday which was, I think, the most early November thing I could possibly have done so I think I'm over my post-Summer blues and I'm settling into the season finally. 

I don't have a lot to talk to you about this month, but there is one really big important thing I need to let you know about. After months of deliberation, I've finally made the very hard decision to remove the sketch rewards from the $7 tier. Many of you will have seen this coming from the posts I've been making about how much I'm struggling with them but it's just completely unsustainable for me to do them and it's getting in the way of my ability to do other things and work towards my goals. $7 Patrons will have noticed that I haven't posted any work for my GN pitch in the last month and the reason is pretty much because I've been swamped with Patreon sketches and as a result I've been in a deep burnout and pretty depressed and it's not been super great ;;;;;

It's also impacting the other tiers' rewards too. I haven't been posting as many of my regular comics on the $2 tier either, but I am working to fix that this week! Two comics are already up and I hope to have at least two more by the end of the week.

Anyway, everyone who has already pledged will still get the sketch reward(s) I owe them, but as of today, I'm removing the option from the $7 tier and any new patrons who pledge after the reward has been removed will not be eligible to receive it. 

I still have a huge backlog of sketches to get through. I was hoping to have them all done by the end of October so that I could focus on my GN pitch this month but I'm not even halfway so it's still going to take some time. Please know that I am still working on them though, and I guarantee that every single person will get their sketch, even if it sitll takes me a couple of weeks.

Thank you so much to everyone who has been understanding and supportive and extremely patient with regard to the sketch requests. I'm so sorry it has taken me this long, and I'm sorry if I'm being a bit of a downer about it, I just feel a lot of guilt and I want to be transparent about my experience with the sketches so that hopefully you can understand why I need to remove them from the tier rewards.

I've decided, for the time being at least, to not fill the gap with another reward. My hope is that through stopping the sketch rewards, I'll have Significantly more time to work on my projects which means there should be a lot more to show you. I'm also just very wary of taking on more than I can handle and making the same mistakes again. The last thing I want to do is overpromise and then let people down.

I think if I am going to fill the gap with something else though, it would probably be a phone wallpaper pack for every month? I'm hesitant to commit to it because I'm not actually sure if that's a thing people would want and use, and if it's not then I think it would be silly to spend my time on it.... Maybe a monthly illustration would be better?

I'm also looking into how it would be to add physical rewards, like a sticker pack or prints every month. My main concern is the cost of shipping so it might end up having to go in a more expensive tier but I just wanted to let you know that that's something that I'm researching right now :>

With that said, I hope that I can still make the $7 worth your support, but if you want to revoke your pledge or drop down to a lower tier, I understand completely! Thank you for supporting me thus far, I appreciate it more than you could know <3 

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On a lighter note, I've been doing a lot more self-care this month. It's slowed me down a lot in terms of productivity but I'm feeling a lot better because of it. Basically I've been more or less committed to stopping work at 5-6pm every day and giving myself the evenings to spend time with my partner and play videogames (with the exception of last night... uh... don't look at what time I posted those comic sketches ok :3).

It's been really nice for me to feel more like a person again? With hobbies? Rather than just a work horse. My most recent comic that I posted just before making this post kinda touches on this but I think this year my coping mechanism has basically been to do as much work as possible in order to feel good about myself, but it's finally caught up to me and in September/October, my burnout was so bad that I just needed to put my foot down and let myself have fun again!

I think that once I'm caught up again and things balance out, this will probably make me more productive in the long-run but for right now it feels slower. Thank you for being patient with me as I go through this adjustment!

So my plan for this month is

• Post 3 new comics a week on the $2 tier. (I will probably dip that back down to two after this month when my backlog is more replenished but we'll see)
• Finish and deliver all of the Patreon sketches by the end of the month
• Rework my GN pitch: Script rewrite + more development drawings + test pages
• THDA guest comig ($7 tier) 

I think that's just about everything I wanted to say! Thank you so much for your support. Thank you so so so so much to everyone who's been patient and kind about the sketch commissions. Thank you to everyone who supported my comic on Tapas last month too! God, I really just have like... a lot to be thankful for.... I couldn't do this without you at all, so thank you for being here and supporting me <3

Chat to you again soon!

Your artist,
Bex