Hello my gemlins!HOW ARE YOU ALL DOING I HOPE LIFE IS TREATING YOU WELL ππππ
I have a lot to talk about and I wasn't sure how to approach this most efficiently, so in the end decided a public post that covers all of the ground makes the most sense. I'll try to keep it short(ish) and organise it for easier readability! π
Let me start off by saying:β NO ONE DIED, I'M NOT QUITTING COMICS, I'M ALSO NOT DYING OR QUITTING COMICS ANY TIME SOON. βJust in case anyone immediately heard alarm bells go off in their head π
πΈ GENERAL COMIC MAKING STRUGGLE TALK:
You probably noticed that I've been posting very little over the last few months, hell, the last few years probably. The reason for that is that I simply have nothing to show next to comic updates/WIPs, and even those are far and few in-between. Work on Shallow Sleep has been brutal for me, in part due to the themes, but also in terms of pure workload.
The story is very personal to me, and I'm realising more and more that I'm kind of using it to try and make peace with some past experiences that have affected me more than I ever actively noticed (I am an emotional sloth, it takes a while until my brain connects emotional dots, sometimes years LOL). However, it's a rough and draining process, which sometimes makes the work really difficult. I still love it and I want to see it through to the end (only 2.5 chapters to go π€).
I am also determined to give it my all when it comes to bringing Shallow Sleep to life. There are barely any shortcuts I feel that I can take, I don't use 3D assets (unless I've made them myself), everything is hand-drawn, I do not have the funds to pay an assistant, and I run out of stamina often (due to the reasons I mentioned above), so production is going quite slowly.
Putting in this amount of work, while also being too slow for what's "acceptable" in the industry, especially with a new project & the stress of losing 2/3rds of my income basically overnight when #Muted ended, paired with the clearly dwindling interest over the past years, is a perfect recipe for some burnout, and I keep falling back into that, no matter how hard I try. Which in turn only makes me even slower and audience interest decline even faster π It's a bit of a vicious circle.
However, please rest assured that I will keep on keeping on, because anything else is not an option. I just wanted to explain properly why things are so slow right now. It's not because I'm lazy or forgetting about you all, I'm just really really overwhelmed 95.7% of the time.
Which leads me to my next topic:
πΈ EMERALD GOODIE PATREON TIER:
To everyone, who is, or has ever been in that tier - from the bottom of my heart: Thank you so much!I'm fully aware that I'm extremely behind on sending out goodies to you guys.
I'm really, really sorry about the long wait times and poor communication on my end. I know I disappointed some of you a lot with that :( I have no excuse and I will send y'all some cool stuff that should 100% make up for it!! (both to current and past emerald gemlins who haven't gotten their money's worth yet)
Lack of stamina, as well as irl issues (my health, also my dog's old age), as well as other work to somehow make ends meet, has caused me to fall behind more month after month. I wanted this tier to be something special for a select few, so I made it a goal to draw extra illustrations for it, and print them only in very limited amounts, but it turns out that I underestimated how much extra work & also production cost that would end up being. And I wanted to put more and more into the packages every time to make it more worthwhile, but that's not sustainable for me, sadly.
So in the end I just feel guilty all the time, and you don't get what you deserve (which is only the best!!) on time. I am in the process of shipping out what I owe in the next few days, and I will be shipping another goodie package in a few months but then I will be retiring the goodie tier. Starting 2026 it will turn into more of a tip jar for those who can and want to support my work with more money than I would usually feel comfortable with, but I will not be sending out any more items.
πΈ GENERAL FINANCIAL PATREON SITUATION:
Now, here's something I hate doing, because it always makes me feel icky - which is try to encourage people to pay me money πππ But I am desperate enough at this point to do it.
As I mentioned above, income has been constantly dwindling for years now while cost of living keeps rising, and despite that I have still tried to keep my Patreon as affordable as possible and to not raise prices unless I absolutely have to. They will not change for the foreseeable future either.
However, I've been getting slammed with costs in recent months, and just this week Fynni (my dog) got into a bit of an emergency situation that is still ongoing and very costly. By Friday I will have spent almost 400β¬ with only 3 vet appointments (ignoring the other 250β¬ from unrelated vet visits in the last week), and I don't even know yet whether it'll be over afterwards or keep going. Basically, he has something stuck in his foot (foxtail grass most likely), it got infected, doc can't get it out, we're trying drawing salve now, because due to his heart condition the vet wants to avoid surgical removal at all cost. Fynni is struggling and needs a lot of help and care (he is a 16 year old man after all, basically a 2nd full time job at this point), which currently reduces my time and energy to work even more (cries into hands).
So, for the first time I think ever, I would like to actively encourage any free members on this Patreon to please consider supporting my work financially, if my art has ever brought you a bit of joy, but only if you can afford it, of course. it doesn't have to be a permanent subscription, it can also be a one time donation to my Ko-fi! I also put up full Shallow Sleep chapter downloads both on Patreon and Ko-fi, for affordable prices (Ko-fi offers "pay what you want" in case anyone is feeling super generous and wants to spend more then 3-4β¬ per chapter). You can also get a 15% discount here on Patreon if you get chapters 01-08 in one purchase. I'll add the remaining chapters as I finish them.
A Patreon subscription is of course also incredibly appreciated! There are well over 1000 free members here, if only a fraction of you decided to pledge 1.50β¬ it would make a huge difference.
If you become a paying member in any capacity, you get access to my Discord server, too! Which is full of very lovely people, and we have really good custom emotes, all hand-drawn by me, too! π If Twitch is more your thing, then you can sub to me on there, too! I've been streaming much more regularly again this year, and hopefully once Fynni's situation has improved enough again, I can return to 2-3 streams per week. A subscription on Twitch also gives you access to my emotes, and the Discord server too, of course.
πΈ OTHER STUFF:
I think that's most of it for now. I wanna make clear that I do not want to beg y'all for pity or free money or anything, please get yourself some Shallow Sleep chapters! I'll do my best to be more active on Patreon too, whenever I have anything to show.I really dislike making posts like this, because I don't wanna whine or manipulate anyone into anything x _x) But if nothing else manages to push me to do it, Fynni not being his happy old-man-self sure did π So, yea.
I've also finally finished my little side project from like 6 months ago:
128 pages full of sketches and doodles and some commentary featuring most of my main original projects, as well as some fanart from over the years. I just received my samples today and I am actually so so happy with how it turned out?? I've never been this happy with a first proof before. π I will show you more of this book in the near future, and I might open preorders for it when I next open my shop, but I can't say for sure yet when that will be. Running a shop is a daunting task, too, and I think I've mentioned enough at this point that my energy has been quite limited in recent months/years π
There are some more construction sites in my life that I need to catch up on before those too crumble into dust, but I'm doing my best, I promise ; _ ; ) Life as a 1 person clown show is rough, high five if you can relate!!! π
I will now send this post into the void before I make myself cringe while writing this even more, lol.
Thank you so much for reading my ramblings! Once again I failed at keeping it short(ish) π If I didn't talk about anything that you feel needs some explanation etc, please feel free to hit me up in the comments.
Have a wonderful rest of your timezone and thank you for your support! I'll be back with more comic pages soon πππ