Blog 12 - An Honest Look (Patreon)

Alright! I actually forgot I did blogs here lmfao. I tend to have a pretty uhh... spontaneous? personality? where i do a lot of the same thing for like a month and then get bored lmfao. Anyway though, I feel like it's been a while since I gave an update, so I'll go into some details about current stuff+the future. I'll make it extra juicy to make up for me forgetting my patreon existed for a year LMFAO

First off, ITGR will be ending sometime in the next two or three years. I actually don't really want to prolong it too much and am going to try to get there sooner rather than later, simply because doing my WT has kind of stagnated me, especially with the current state of the WT platform. I was a much bigger fan of it when I was picked up in 2019, where it really felt like they cared about creators and treated them like individuals. Nowadays its hard to not feel like I'm on a conveyor belt of content directed straight into the consumer's mouth so they forget there's a world outside of the WT app.

"Well that's just business! They're just trying to maximize profits!" - To that I say, I invite you to take a look at WT's stock price trend.

I don't want to get into it but I have a lot of grievances with WT. A lot of it is stuff I am straight-up not allowed to talk about due to it being ongoing and NDA related. All I can say is there's a reason I have three lawyers and an agent lmao. (Note this has nothing to do with my editors as they're usually the first to take the fall in the public eye for some reason. I love both my editors at WT and they truly do the best they can with the hand they've been dealt.)

My recent experience is far departed from my first two years at WT which were amazing and I had a ton of fun back then. That's also when I made all my WT friends because basically everyone had an awesome experience and was excited to meet like-minded creators.

If you want to support me and my work, I really recommend supporting me through the books, as I've really been treated far beyond what I deserve when working with VIZ media. They are a legitimate delight to work with and I just want the books to do well so they can get something back for treating me so nicely...

Anyway, there will definitely be a new project after ITGR, but I have nothing about it to announce at this moment. Just know I am deep into concepting it, but I really hate to talk about things unless they are very solidly set in stone!

Also! Sorry for the super long break. There's quite a few reasons-

1. I really was working a ton on the physical editions, they actually required a lot more work that I thought they would, we're talking like a month of working every single day on everything from proofreading to editing to drafting every book. Basically it came out to 4 months of my break went to working on the books.

2. I wanted to work on convention merch and my online store because it makes me happy and it's what I did when I started drawing for a living all those years ago, so it holds a place in my heart.

3. I absolutely needed a break from the weekly grind of pumping out WT to completely reset my brain and my life which i did. I took trips to new york, canada, and san diego during the break and it was amazing! I've also acquired enough spare buffer that I'll be going to japan twice later this year.

4. Speaking of Japan, I also have been going much harder on my japanese studies, as when I was with VIZ in NYC, the other talents spoke japanese and i was unable to communicate very well with them. I met the voice actor for ichigo kurosaki (bleach) and I was only able to babble out a little bit about how i loved his work when i was a kid and hes meccha sugoi desu yo ne. It made me realize that japanese is a very beneficial language to learn for the future of my work. Anyway I was doing 6-hour daily studies for a couple months on break, but I've since reduced it to 2-hours a day now that I've gotten back to WT. I am still not N4 level, I would say just below it as I am still learning a lot of nouns, but I'm pretty good with grammar and I know a lot of kanji!:3

Anyway, I hope you all found this interesting, and as always thank you for supporting me here even though I almost never update lol.