Small Rewards Restructure? And Information About June

Scary title but I promise the change isn’t huge lol! This post is long because I love to yap yap yap, so there is a TLDR at the end. This post was originally posted to Patreon, and I don't have the time rn to go through and change every instance to Substar, but just know that I am talking about both websites here hahaha.

June marks my 8th month of posting here on Patreon, and in that time I’ve learned a lot about what works for me and the kinds of things yall seem to like the most. Things have been going extremely well! I’ve been able to make a lot of fun art, and art that I’m super proud of. But I started this account knowing I’d probably want to make some changes here and there based on areas that I feel could be improved.

First and foremost, I am an illustrator—the kind who likes to take his time on a piece to REALLY polish it and make it the best it can be. The main reason I started a Patreon is because I want to be able to justify pouring so much time and effort into my erotic art. An illustration takes me anywhere from 15-50 hours depending on complexity and that is a time sink I cannot commit to unless I’m getting paid, even if I really love the subject matter. And my god, it’s probably stupid obvious that I LOVE doing this hahaha. The roadblock I have run into is that my promise to deliver two polished, full color illustrations per month (one of my choice and one decided by poll) is actually making me feel like I can’t pour the amount of energy I WANT to into each piece. I have to divide my time between them in addition to my day job and other projects I’m working on. It may not be apparent, but I have a certain level of finish that I like to meet with my pieces. It’s not really perfectionism, it’s that I have been taught to meet a certain industry standard and man, I want to feel like these images that I love creating are good enough to be in a curated portfolio, if I ever want to set one up.

With this in mind, I’d like to test out a change: I deliver one full color illustration to you all (the poll illustration) per month, and it is something that I get to noodle over for a few weeks so the final piece is professional, polished, and looks really damn good! To replace the illustration of my choice, you will still get other exclusives! But they will be less finished, and can essentially be whatever I want. It may be comics, sketches, b&w in the style of my kinktobers, etc. I think this will be a healthy change in the long run because without the stipulation that I have to deliver a full pic I’ll be able to experiment. I have a backlog of thumbnails that are interesting but not suitable for a full render, or that I want to take risks with technique-wise, etc. I also want to explore Shiloh, Yahya, and my other characters more—which sketchier art would be great for! I feel like while I have plenty of nice art of them, I haven’t drawn as much as I’d like to develop them as characters for you to get to know. Those 2-3 page one off comics I did of them a little bit back were really fun and made me feel like I could play around with them more! So expect more of that in the future.

It’s a pretty small change hahaha. We will see how well this plan works out for the next few months! If it turns out that this sucks I’ll try something new. Also, if this is a deal breaker for you, don’t sweat it! I understand lol.

Now, with all this being said, I am actually planning for the month of June to be a little different! The reason for this is…I am going on a trip for the last two weeks of the month and I will not have access to my drawing tools. Because of this, I will be opening prompt submissions for June EARLY so the poll can be run immediately, giving me time to do that illustration. As for the other exclusives, I am going to be going back in and polishing up past exclusives that I feel need more work. I’ll be posting side by side comparisons and explanations of the changes I make. IWEMF will update as normal, and you will see me posting things while I am away because I plan on scheduling posts so that they’re evenly spread out (I don’t want to spam yall in the beginning and then be silent for the rest of the month lol).

This means July will be the real first stress test for the new rewards! I’m looking forward to it, I think I’ll be able to share some exciting stuff. July is also when IWEMF’s final update will be, which means it’s also the month when the ebook will be made available to patrons. Yay!

With IWEMF ending, I’d also like to talk about the next comic I’m going to work on. I know yall are here for erotica lol. I’ll make damn sure you get your erotica 😤 ! But I have a ~50 page sfw comic that I actually started in…2021? And never finished, that I’d like to revisit! It’s a drama about a family of mushers that get caught in an avalanche while doing a Balto-esque medicine run over a mountain, during which infidelity is exposed. The story has been rewritten some and there are some finalized pages that need redone entirely. I think this will be an interesting thing to share! I mean lol I’m a freak about peeking in on people’s processes and editing things, I could talk about it for hours, so it’s interesting to me! 

As for the far future, I’m chomping at the bit to start going in on one of my serious, long form stories starring Shiloh and Yahya. IWEMF proved to me that I can keep up with a schedule. I’m ready to commit. But before then I’ve got all these short term goals to iron out. 

So, TLDR, to quickly recap: from now on you get one super professionally polished illustration per month decided by poll while the other exclusive illo is replaced by low-stress, sketchy exclusives, and we see IWEMF through to the end then move into my sfw comic. For the month of June you get a new poll illo + revisions to a few previous exclusives. If this change doesn’t work, we try something new!

Thank you all again for the support these past few months. It means so fucking much to me. I lowkey expected Patreon to flop but it has been so much fun and I’ve been able to make some really damn cool art because of it. Your generosity is incredible fr, and I am so, so, so grateful. There's a bunch of posts coming throughout this week, so keep your eyes peeled.