Monthly Community Update - AUGUST 2024 (Patreon)

GOOD EVENING EVERYONE, A happy Sunday to all of you!

Hope y'all arrived well in the month of August! I'm excited to share a video this week on Youtube that my Dusk-and Latias-pledgers already got to see last week :D I'm CERTAIN you'll enjoy it too, HEHEHEHE...

ANYWAY, I have an actual LIST of projects that I'll be working on this month SUCH AS...

• Commissions (As per usual lmao)

• Custom Card Printing

• Gardendragon Manuscript work

• Merch Planning

• Pokemon Comics

BUT Before I go further into detail, a quick shout-out to my community on Discord, because you'll find something new on our server! :D

We now have a ROLE MENU, where you can get custom roles and sign up for pings for special community events on the server! Patrons such as Gojira and Jack have been organising Movie nights or set up a custom Minecraft server for the community and I am incredibly grateful for how they keep bringing life to the community, especially when I'm unable to stream due to the summer heat! Thank you for the love and joy you put into the server! 🥰 (Patrons who haven't joined the Discord server yet can find a link to it on my Patreon page, first pinned post of my feed!)

I'm sure the Role Menu will expand over time with new little fun events and I'm looking forward to hosting game streams again once the summer heat has cooled off and I'll be more indoors again!

ALRIGHT, now back to my schedule for this month:

COMMISSIONS
...kinda self-explanatory, I'm in the middle of working on another Alola-themed one right now, will post a WIP soon!

CUSTOM COLLECTABLE CARD PRINTING

If you still remember, a little over two months ago in May I finished a whole set of custom Bella Sara-inspired cards. I named the set Galloping Guardians and last month in July, I actually seeked out a copy shop who assured me they had experience with printing custom play cards.

It unfortunately didn't give me the results I was hoping for:

 While the colors came out great, the cutting was a disaster - not to mention that the backside was off to the right by 2 mm and they hadn't noticed and called me about the issue as they had assured me they would.

Luckily heaven was on my side, because after sending in photos of the damaged cards and a rational complaint of how I cannot offer these cards for sale in this condition, the copyshop, actually, ON THEIR OWN, offered to take the entire stock back and return my money.

So now we're back to zero, but with new experience gained. I recreated the entire card layout and the final printing files in Illustrator and will be going to a new printing company this month. I have my eyes on a new one that is offering appointments for professional consultation and layout refinement by their own graphic designers (if needed).
I'll call them soon to ask for an appointment and then we'll see if they'd be up for printing a test-set of cards, see if they can accomplish a higher printing and cutting quality than the previous shop.

I REALLY want to hold these cards in the HIGHEST possible quality I can get and offer you guys a set that I can be truly proud of, so I hope this month will be a fruitful one!

MANUSCRIPT WORK

I wasn't able to find the time nor concentration to work on my Gardendragon Guidebook Manuscript last month, but I am able to now! I am currently fact-checking all of my plant information in the guidebook and throwing out some flowers in my listings and replacing them with new ones, checking which ones are native and also which ones are easy to grow for a kid-and-beginner-friendly guide for gardening!

...and then I still have to translate it all to english and check which flowers of said lists are native or INVASIVE to the UK but HEY ONE STEP AFTER ANOTHER

MERCH PLANNING

...that one is a bit all over the place right now - I want to make stickers and some NEW CUSTOM ONES, not just working from what I already have on my Redbubble shop - Although I definitely have to make a list of stickers from my online shop I definitely want to include on my next convention (Like Astarion or the Nugget / Joltik stickers)
And posters. I REALLY want to make a new exclusive "Els Alolan Adventures"-themed print but man. I'm still waiting for inspiration to STRIKE on what I should draw for it :'D

I am also thinking about how I may include my Faemons into my merch haul - should I make stickers of some of them as well? Should they be place all onto a poster? Should I make custom cards of them TOO??? And there's so many designs still to finish...

COMICS
Ok I have to confess something - I'm in a bit of a slump with the current comic?? It's frustrating, I HAVE all the base poses drawn out, it's supposed to be a simple setup with only differing expressions I need to draw and slight changes in the pose I can quickly adjust!
But I've been having a hard time last week making any progress with it... Maybe it's because my priorities just lie elsewhere right now, I really want to get done with at least ONE of my ongoing projects - The comics will ALWAYS be ongoing, so I feel like I need a WIN and a COMPLETION of something, like my current commission, the german base version of the manuscript or the printing of my horse cards.

Don't panic though, I'm very sure we'll still see progress on the comic this month - sometimes my motivation just shifts and I have to go with it, because I know I will accomplish the most that day if I simply follow the flow. And then one day I wake up with a BURNING energy and excitement again for the comics and I get working on it.

Either way, I think we can look forward to a quite colorful month of wips and previews for various projects and I hope you're excited for it! I'd be happy to share good news with you all this month of the completion or further progress of any of these projects! :D

As always, thank you SO SO MUCH for your contineous support, it means the world to me! :D I wouldn't be able to work on my book manuscript or all these new ideas if it weren't for you guys! 💖🧡💛💚💙💜✨💕🥰✨

See you with new updates soon!
Best wishes,
Eleanor ☺️💖