It Happened

The default text is suggesting I "tell a story", so I'll do exactly that. This is a wall of text, so strap in and get comfy.

It's been a little over a year since my Patreon first opened, and much longer since I first started considering it. It was on a bit of a whim, honestly, and I expected very little to come of it, if anything. I knew at the time that I was offering very little, and was trying to test the waters a bit to see how viable producing consistent content would be, given my penchant for throwing schedules to the wind and forgetting things seemingly at random, much to everyone in my life's dismay.

With that in mind, I was quite surprised to find it decently easy to keep track of, at least for my standards. Granted, I was basically just doing a couple things with an entire month to do them, but I really cannot emphasize how often I just forget to do things, or lose motivation entirely. However, after a year of managing to keep up with this page (and only falling behind a couple times) combined with January's... let's say "assessment" of my life, the restructuring of this page seemed like a necessary step forward, and I really wasn't prepared for the results.

I mentioned before that the sudden influx of followers in early February was quite surprising, along with the equally unexpected sight of the goal bar being completely filled! I very honestly never expected it to actually reach that point, and I wasn't remotely prepared for it. In fact, I was already working on two (technically three) separate art packs around that time, and now they're all being put on the backburner to try and plow through this new one before the end of March to meet the deadline. Don't get me wrong, though; I'm not bitter or upset about it, quite the contrary. I have work on this pack planned out ahead of time, evenly paced across the next couple weeks to make consistent progress and leave some extra time to stream when needed, work on other things, and relax for a few hours. While $200 a month isn't enough to survive on by a long shot, you have no idea how much of a difference your support has made.

As you all know, my work is entirely digital. Pencil and paper went out the window years ago when I got a drawing tablet, and it was one of the best investments I've ever made. What made for a strong contender for best would one I just made last month that was only possible because of this extra security. Over the years, I'd complained to anyone that would listen about how awful my old computer was, and it truly was a technological relic. The tower itself is over ten years old, and the parts inside were all second hand, overused and years old already when I got them, and I trailed behind in tech by around half a decade. Over the last couple years, the old thing has been steadily tanking in usability, sometimes outright refusing to turn on for as much as an hour of constant troubleshooting. It had very little power, rapidly deteriorating parts, and frankly, not much time left as a usable machine in the modern era. Basic functionality was slipping away as the guts just couldn't keep up.

However, I've been saving for years to finally fix that. Pack money helped get that started, but it was never able to build beyond a certain point; until Patreon, of course. Over the last year, I've been able to save up enough to not only get a new computer, but to have one custom built to last for years. I'm on that machine right now, and while it stills needs some ironing out, it's still night and day looking at the two of them. It's not only about two thirds the size of the old one, it's half the weight, completely silent, and multitudes more powerful in every possible way. It took weeks to finally settle things, order the parts, get it built and take it home, but here we are. I don't have to worry about whether or not the hard drive will fail tomorrow and I'll lose god-knows how much work, or for how long it will run the programs I need to get things done before crapping out completely; if anything does screw up or need replacing, everything can be swapped out whenever needed, and it even has support for up to five monitors. I won't be using more than three most of the time (as opposed to the previous two) and that alone will make streams much smoother. No need to worry about Picarto, OBS, the chat, Discord, music, the drawing program and references all having to fight over screen space, since I can just dedicate certain screens to these things! Hell, even just regular day-to-day work will be better, since the same thing can be applied to sketching away while watching YouTube and being able to pull up as many references and notepads as necessary.

But now, back to the pack. I don't know if I've officially stated what the goal reward pack is going to be, so just in case, I'm going to talk about that now. I'm going to use this opportunity to finally, finally, finish an idea I've had kicking around since back when I was still working on paper: the Gag Sequence pack. Currently, it features eight characters, all of which were meticulously chosen from a pool of gaming's most annoying or obnoxious female characters, with the intent of providing viewers with the much-needed relief they desire. As opposed to a pack featuring the characters with simply a variety of gags and alternates to choose from, each variant will add on to the previous one, increasing the gag's size and potency to absurd levels. And, of course, there will still be additional variants as well, like the usual stripped and/or futa options for those that want them. In fact, the image used for this post featuring Daisy is straight from the pack, so consider that a little bonus for the time being. Since this pack is going to be free, I'll be posting regular updates on its progress alongside images and previews exclusively to Patreon, so keep an eye out for those. The pack will be available to everyone, but this is the only place you'll be able to see it early!

And, lastly... thanks. It's because of you guys that this stuff can even happen, and I really can't express how grateful I am that you decided to follow what I do. While I have no idea what the next goal will be, I'll figure something out, and when I do... hopefully I won't forget what it is before writing it down.