Blog: Thoughts Moving into 2025 - #1 (Patreon)

As the end of the year approaches, it is customary to reflect on my career and plan for the future. I feel like that's become harder than ever though, between my exhaustion, poor health, and corporations making everything harder than it needs to be.

I should get back to drawing soon now that the weekend is over, but I figured I'd share some thoughts - as I always do this time of year. With everything being the way it is, I feel like I need to make a serious change to my career, health, and finances... Or this next year could end up being my last as an artist. Maybe it won't, but it certainly feels that way right now.

Recent Notes:

Female Link Friday has been (publicly) consistent for the last 2 months. Having a weekly illustration as my primary goal might be a worthwhile consideration for the future, as my Female Link content is probably the most unique form of value I can offer consumers.

I've been trying to relax for the last week or so; playing Tears of the Kingdom.

I am aware that I'm behind on Patron Sketch Requests. I also haven't opened December's requests either; it's obvious that I'm exhausted, so I didn't want to promise more if I could not immediately follow through. I don't know how I'm going to handle that. My apologies.

Creation still feels mostly pointless.

Reflections:

Patreon is getting more difficult to work with; they don't allow me to advertise and they control what I'm allowed to draw & how I'm allowed to share it with you. I am not allowed to circumvent these rules by sharing prohibited content through other means (as long as they are funded by Patreon). This is difficult to manage because you, as consumers, are also a source of pressure in the other direction, and naturally expect / deserve to receive ALL of my art through Patreon for your support via Patreon considering my rewards were originally built with that in mind. If I produce this art elsewhere for free, then there's less reason to support me - and it's easy to feel like you're getting screwed out of exclusive content. I just wanted to make cool things, not deal with this crap.

I also don't want to treat SubscribeStar and Patreon drastically different from each other. I don't think it's fair to you, and I don't want the stress.

The public does not care about artwork that I find emotionally enriching; paintings or comics. That makes it difficult to justify working on art like that when I'm trying to grow - which is an exhausting way to feel about my own art.

I'm tired of creating FOR faceless consumers & corporations that don't actually care. I'm tired of having to please other people. I'm tired of consuming and producing shallow art. I'm also tired of operating in a work field rife with creator & consumer exploitation.

I'm tired of having to strictly adhere to a reward tier system I created 8+ years ago but can't reasonably stop using instead of focusing on creation. I feel bad that I can't make every single reward tier feel meaningful on a regular basis with the changing times.

I'm tired of not having time to work on cool projects because I'm too busy with other work, reaching quotas, or chasing social media numbers that are never good enough.

Concept Art has become non-existent; it's difficult to force interesting ideas every month and there's no project to support with concept art. This disappoints me because concept art was always one of the most interesting rewards, I think.

Game Development doesn't seem to be a particularly interesting reward for many of you - and the wait doesn't seem to provide much value. This is not a surprise since most of you came here for illustrative art. This makes it even harder to commit to the work at times, but it's also just really time-consuming to program.

Don't forget to eat & sleep.