Ocean Club changes in 2023 (Patreon)

Hello wavies~!
Happy New Year!!!!🎉 Hope you're all doing well!!💜
I have a bit of news today regarding how Ocean Club will be moving forward over the next couple years! Let me just say it out right and then I will get into the details. The upcoming changes are:

1.) We will be aiming to leave Patreon and be fully moved over to Ko-fi (or some alternative platform) by early/mid-2024

2.) My art quality/style is subject to change this year

3.) We will be changing the way we run our polls this year

My Patreon has grown with rapid succession over the past 2 years especially, which is great - but the monthly deadlines has caused me to become easily burnt out and has become not-good for my health. But at the same time, I enjoy putting out monthly rewards, and I think it's such a fun staple for my business model that I don't want to ever let go of!
All that being said, let me get the big one out of the way first:

1. We will be leaving Patreon and be fully moved over to Ko-fi by 2024

For starters, I don't want to do this, just for the sheet amount of work I know it's gonna be. But as of a couple months ago Patreon has been pushing a new billing model, which is very difficult for our physical-goods-monthly-service.

Venting here but: It's frustrating, because Patreon originally marketed itself as a "monthly rewards" service, but now they are pushing a new billing model on us so that every single one of you(my Patrons) has a different charge date. (IE. If you joined my Patreon January 12th, you would get charged again February 12th.) This works fine for something like Netflix, but this doesn't work for us considering we offer physical rewards over a certain period of time (which is what Patreon's business model was marketed as!) - So it's very frustrating that they are pushing this complete change in business models.
We also changed our billing model to 'charge up front' a couple years ago (rather than it to charge only on the 1st), and they do not allow people to change back to any of their old billing models. So if we changed our billing model to their new one, we wouldn't be able to move back even if we wanted to... which is really not cool in my books.

TL;DR: Anyway, I'm just venting now; I feel like over the past couple of years I've been constantly let down by their services, and it has become alienating. So we are moving.

We will be taking a break from January~Feb (potentially March), so no rewards for the next couple of months. Because of this, the Patreon shop will remain fully open to the public for the next 1~2 months.
I will be aiming to open our Ko-fi in February/March, and be slowly moving content there over the course of a year.
We apologize for any inconvenience this might cause for any of you.

But that being said, it does look like Ko-fi has a lot of benefits! For example, we can do fundraisers, take donations, and I can do one-off commissions, all through their service! It looks very artist-friendly, so I'm really looking forward to the move.
Thanks for all of your understanding.

2. Art quality/style is subject to change in 2023

I have been thinking about this for many years, but I seem to fall into my same old personal trap of making my art way too detailed lol. And listen - I love my detailed art so much... but I do need to think about my health. Unfortunately, I am an anal af painter, I'm a bit slow (albeit I have gotten faster this year), but I also have arthritis and pinched nerves and all of these other things, so it can be very difficult on this time constraint making such detailed paintings.

On a personal level it is discouraging for me, because I see so many of my peers creating several detailed pieces in one month, but I struggle to just make one, while keeping up with my regular work. It has been a hard thing for me to face, but I have a lot of work going on behind the scenes, so for now, I will be changing my style a little bit in this new year to accommodate the nature of my crippled vessel. Lol

I promise it'll she be kawaii, shoujo, and colourful as hell. And more stickers!!

3. We will be changing the way we run our polls in 2023

Here's another I know you guys were kind of interested in, and I've been thinking about how I wanted to do it, too!
So basically, I was thinking I might split them up into each quarter of the year...(3 months per quarter) so for example: I will make a post taking suggestions for all of Quarter 2.
Then, all the suggestions in this quarter move into 3 categories:

1.) April: Super popular series (such as Tokyo Mew Mew, Sailor Moon, Ghibli, etc)
2.) May: Semi-popular series (Maid-sama, Lovely Complex, Danganronpa, etc)
3.) June: Everything in-between (Sugar Sugar Rune, Kitchen Princess, Paradise Kiss, etc)

How I am going characterize what belongs where - I am not entirely sure yet! But this will definitely at least give some more lesser-known characters a chance, instead of the popular ones always beating out the lesser-known ones. We'll see how it goes!
Also, I may take a month or two this month to make some original art options. I hope you don't mind!

~

That's about it!! For now, my Patreon in on pause, so none of you should've gotten charged this past January 1st.
My online shop is going to be re-opening this Friday at 11am with the Patreon being open to the public for the first time ever. We'll also have a couple new prints.💜

As always, thank you for your continued support, I hope I can continue to make nostalgic & cute paintings and create happiness for all of you!
Thank you!!