I Need One More Week Off and Have Announcements to Make (Patreon)

In general, I've always avoided discussing my personal problems with my audience. It's my job to provide escapism/entertainment after all. Why bog my readers down with my issues unless I absolutely have to?

Well this time I absolutely have to. Recently, the nature of the work I do has had serious negative repercussions on my personal life. As a result, I've decided two things: I need to work a little bit less, and I can no longer present outright pornography in my art. Moving forward, TRW will be R-rated instead of X-rated. These aren't decisions I've come to lightly. If you're interested in the details, please read on.

Let's start with the work part. I have been a full time artist since 2015. It's the best job in the world. But as a result I've thrown myself at it 110% for nearly a decade now. In that time, between the comics, strips, pin ups, writing, commissions, and game development, I've worked seven days a week with rare exception the entire time. I was of the mindset that if you enjoy your job it's impossible to work your life away, but now I'm not so sure of that anymore. I've decided to cut down the number of Monday strips and pin ups I do each month from four down to two.

Again, not an easy decision. The $5 tier is the most popular one and I wince at the idea of lessening the rewards for it. But I just need more time for myself. I'm not saying things won't get restructured as time goes on, this is just where I'm at as of this writing.

Next, the content. TRW will still be sexually charged, just more like what you would see in a regular smutty movie rather than a porn movie. Basically I still want to present sexy naked women but I've painted my last cumshot. I don't want to get into the details but last week the stigma of creating a comic featuring graphic sexual depictions of barely legal teens came down on my head like a brick from the sky. A change has to be made if I'm to continue.

The obvious concern of course is that without said graphic sex the public interest in my comic will wane. And make no mistake, if my decision makes you want to drop your pledge there are no hard feelings from me. What you're paying for has changed. If you leave, go with my thanks for supporting my work in the first place. But there is a potential upside in that as much as I liked drawing long and detailed sex scenes, they often grind the story to a halt when they occur. Sometimes for months on end. Maybe I'll manage to make a comic that's still engaging without the crutch of explicit sex scenes to lean on? Time will tell, but I look forward to the challenge all the same.

And so the plan as of this writing is to spend the next year or so tying off narrative loose ends for TRW and giving it a proper finale. After that, I can't say for sure what the next evolution of my comics will be. Meanwhile I'm still figuring out some things like what the best path forward for the game we're working on should be as well. Your feedback will be very helpful as I go along if you're up for sharing.

And that covers it for now! There is still a lot for me to sort out and I don't know how it's all going to go. But if you're reading this I want you to know I am extremely grateful to you for reading my comics and supporting my work. I will be back on Monday, the 29th.