July 2018 Summary

Hello Everybody, I hope you're surviving the summer heat better than I am! This month's summary is going to be beefy, so I'll break it into bullet points.

-First of all, Patreon did some internal changes, and that resulted in a lot of payments being declined by certain banks, particularly the Chase Bank. As I'm writing this, it seems that the issue is being taken care of, and only 10 or so patrons remain to be approved on here. If you think you are among them, check your email to see if you received a warning from patreon that your payment got declined, you might have to retry manually. You can always message me as well and I can tell you your current status. This is a patreon-wide bug, so if you're pledging several other creators, you may want to check with them as well. If unsure, contact Patreon support, they'll be able to help you better than I do.

-Second, July was a mess! As I mentioned earlier, I got my new pen display tablet and it's great, but I'm still adjusting to it and this is resulting in a slowdown in my content output. I wanted to change my tablet since April, but the tax season was awful for me and delayed things greatly. Now my wife has my old tablet and is in charge of coloring the comic, while I do the rest with the new tablet. Hopefully together we'll catch up on the late work, but while we're in the midst of important changes I decided to go all in, which bring me to the next point.

-Third, Complete overhaul of the 10$, 20$ and 30$ tier! This month will be the last month with the contest picks and character questions; during August I will roll out the full changes to those higher tier so it's your chance to upgrade or downgrade depending on your feelings regarding the changes. The new tier will be to gather Commission tokens, which will act as both a support for fvt and a piggy bank to commission anything you want from me, given you have earned enough tokens! Here's a breakdown of the new tier perks:

Dual fairy Tier (10$): previous tier perks, 1 token per month, able to see the 10$+ content.

Arch fairy Tier (20$): previous tier perks, 1 additional token per month (total 2), able to submit ideas for official content (new dark forest entry, pic featuring their favorite chars, etc)

Star fairy Tier (30$):Previous tier perks, 1 additional token per month (total 3), Early bird access to the commission queue.

As you can see, each slice of 10$ is worth an additional token, so if you decided to pledge above the tier limit, for example  50$, you'll get 5 token a month.

The reason for these changes is that I know a lot of people want to commission me pictures, fvt related or otherwise, but those character questions and bonus pictures take a lot of my time, so I decided to change it. Using this system, you are able to commission me AND support fvt, as a fraction of the token value go to support fvt and not just pay for commission. It also remove the random element for good and anyone will be able to get their own artworks as long as they gather the tokens for it. To make sure I will be able to do all the potential commissions, the tiers will be capped. 10$ will be capped at 25 patrons, 20$ at 20, and 30$+ at 15. In the current situation, I believe nobody on those tiers will be kicked out.

The commission queue will have 10 slots, that once filled need to be emptied before it's open for submission again, in the meantime patrons on those tiers keep earning tokens for more commissions. To be clear, those commissions can be about anything, they don't have to be fvt related. If they are fvt related, they will be visible to the lower tiers. If not, only to the higher tiers. This reform basically mean the higher tier are commissions tiers. My patreon is not just for fvt anymore, but for commissions as well.

Now for those among you worried that fvt will have less fvt related content, fear not. By removing the contest pictures and character questions, I get a lot more free time, as creating those questions were more work than it seem at first glance. I will use this additional time to start producing New Dark Forest entries and character sheet again, along with more designs sketch which will become very necessary by the end of the year as we'll move onto chapter 4.

And if someone still want to ask the characters some question, it is entirely possible to do so by using their commission token.

Finally, what about the token's worth? I will soon post an image that show explicitly what tokens are worth using artworks as example, but on average a simple solo character image in full color would be worth 7 token, a fullcolor comic page could be worth about 12-15 tokens, etc.

And to thank everyone who supported me on the old tier system, everybody currently on those tiers will start with 5 tokens, and will get additional ones matching their tier when the queue open in September!

To summarize, here's a breakdown of what you'll be able to expect each month with the new tiers:

9 page sketches

9 fullcolor pages

1 DE page

1-3 bonus color artworks & sketches

1-3 "commission" artworks

Now I understand this is a lot of info to take in, and you might have questions or concerns, feel free to post a comment below, or DM me here or on Discord, and I will do my best to answer your questions. Most people seemed happy about this concept on discord but were concerned about it getting out of hand, workload wise, which is why I decided to cap the tiers in the near future, and might increase their limits if this seems reasonable. It's a brand new system so it's hard to gauge right away, as some people might want to commission every couple months while other might wait a full year or more to commission a mini comic! It's hard to tell how it's going to go.

PHEW! Now, for August, the Last Contest Winners(10$+):

First Prize Winner is: StrangerHood!

Congratulation Strangerhood! You get a picture of your choice!  You can comment here or pm me your idea, and we'll work out the details. Please do so within the next 10 days, so I can get the picture completed before the next month. Restrictions apply: No gore, no scat, no loli, not overly complex.  

Second Prize winner is Colin Edger!

Congrats Colin! you get to pick a character of your choice, either from the comic or perhaps your own character, and have it drawn into  one of the following scenes. Just comment or PM me about the details and I'll get started as soon as possible!   

Now, the last character questions, Including last Month's backlog (30$+Tier):

From Grip:

Myri, what are some things you like another fairy to do with your tail?

Holly, ever been bound up and had your tail used on yourself by another fairy?

From Argenten:

Leonne: Seems like you enjoy getting filled up, how often to you get filled to your max and how big a belly is that?

From Laura:

Holly, has there ever been an embarrassing situation you have been in which was caused by something your tail did?

From Wraith:

314, that was a real nifty rifle you had when dealing with pinky. Care to tell us about it? 

From Mdefender:

Nadisha, do you work closely with anyone in your research on a regular basis? 

Celestia, do fairies have anything that allows them to see plays or theatre in a pre-recorded fashion or do they need to see everything live?

From StrangerHood:

Beautiful Star, what is the purpose of your battle armor, and does it affect your magic abilities significantly?

From Anonymous:

Ominae, do you have any pets?

Now, I want to tell to both Contest winners and people on the question tier that if you wish so, you can withhold/remove your artwork/question(s) and get an additional 2 tokens per item in return for September, this is a one time offer! You could use the loot to get a bigger. better commission, or instead splurge it all on a color character question, whatever tickle your fancy! XD

So here we go, this is all for now, thank you all for your everlasting support and bearing with my late updates in this time of heatwaves and hardware adjustments, thank you very much, you're all awesome!