I didn't have much to say for the past few months as I've honestly mostly been struggling with certain things in art that I felt like were not actually all that note-while to mention, so I didn't write anything at all. But, now I feel like I do!

 

I'm going to put efforts into doing comic work. I've wanted to do comics for a while, but never felt like I have to appropriate skills for them. Lately that feeling has changed, and I feel like the time is write to actually put more efforts into it. I have two general ideas about comic work which I have mentioned before, most likely multiple times by now. Frame-by-Frame Comics (FFC?) and Tradition Page Comics (TPC?). FFC is a picture a page, a sequential picture story telling comic, like the "Heat in the Laundromat" comic (NSFW!). A TPC is a pretty typical comic layout, like from webcomics or manga. At the moment, my idea is to work on comics in between commissions and other stuff. I made up the bracket way of commissioning to help organize myself and for it's first real 'use' I really like it. In between each bracket, I will work on 1 full set of an FFC, or a page of a TPC back and forth. So, it might look like this:

[Bracket 1] Commissions

FFC

[Bracket 2] Commissions

TPC

[Bracket 3] Commissions, and so on.

 

Though I think I may indulge in a short comic before I accept commissions again, heh. I will see how the next batch of commissioning goes as I don't want to overload myself, but I've been having thoughts of making a return of Weekly Vote stuff as well. We'll see.

 

As I mentioned at the start, I actually had a bit of a struggle with the last few months of art. I've been distracted, and frankly unwilling to do art in general. I think I've narrowed down why that is, and my solution to it is to completely drop the "complex shading" category (again). I honestly feel happier with "simple shading" and I believe there are some parts of it I can improve in general with it, but because I classify and separate what "simple" or "complex" shading is, I stop myself from doing certain things. I think it would be easier on my mind if I merely just say "Shading," and do what I feel like is correct with the piece without those fake limitations.

 

Because of both the comic work and the shading issues, I want to try limiting what can actually be commissioned. The simplest solution I've come to is to say "no Medium or High level backgrounds," (Low is OK tho!)

The start of the month was pretty good. I tried out my new stream/drawing schedule, but after only 2 days I dropped it, and now aim for much more relaxed times. September has been the month of “I’m tired.” and while I did get an ‘adequate’ amount of work done, it could have been more. I had a lot of days where I struggled to even focus on anything, with my head in a sort of warm foggy daze. Odd to explain, but there it is.

Of the work completed this month, I’ve changed a few of my commission form terms / wording, such as saying, “Clean Lin-Art” instead of just “Line-art,” because technically anything that has lines is a line-art piece. So, I’m now using Rough Line-Art and Clean Line-Art for the different line-art styles I can offer, since one is rough and the other is clean. I decided not to go with “Sketch” for the rough line-art terming, because what people determine to be a “sketch” varies incredibly wildly.

The other thing I’ve changed in my commissioning process is changing which commissions I will work on. I actually had to sit-down and think about it for a few hours and I’m pretty happy with this new system for myself. Ultimately, nothing changes for the commissioner! This system is all just for me, and it takes a load off of my mind.

Old Commissioning Format: People who have stated interest in getting a commission ‘in the future’ (While my commissions are currently Closed) would get put on a “call-back” list of sorts, and I generally accept all of them, while also still keeping commissions closed to everyone else.
What people would commission, in terms of “difficulty level” were kind of random, but usually on the Larger end. I use the terms Small, Medium, Large, Turbo and Titan to help quantify the commission for myself.
This system makes it hard to accept commissions from newer sources, and it’s a little awkward to accept new commissions from people while I have the “Commissions Closed” banner posted.

New Commissioning Format: Bracket Commissioning! A Commission Bracket is sort of like a Slot, but instead of a fixed number of slots, it based on the Difficulty Level of the commission. I have assigned a value number to each Difficulty Level and I’m currently trying out a Bracket limit of 15, with three Brackets that can be filled.

What this means is that a Bracket could look like this: [Large, Large, Large, Medium, Turbo]. This means that there are 5 commissions to do in that bracket. Bracket 1 commissions will get their invoices sent and worked on right away, whereas brackets 2 and 3 will have to wait a bit until the prior bracket is cleared. If all three brackets are filled, then I will close commissions entirely until all three brackets are completed. Asking / Accepting a commission is still by a first-come-first-served sort of way, since I’ve yet to actually be overloaded with commissions, heh.

I know, how wonderfully complicated.

A newer thought that occurs to me while writing this, is that if commissions fill up frequently enough for me to close them, then I may look into dropping bracket 3 entirely in favor of trying out YCH (Your Character Here) type commissions/auctions. I don’t want to make YCH a main thing though.