It's cool! Love your art, and we'll keep supporting you across the board! Take all the time you need. Just a recommendation- don't do too many YCHes! There are a few artists in your position who get stuck doing 'em, and end up not getting to their commission queue. Just do 'em when you're feeling it but don't feel obligated to do a lot!

No problem bud, no need to burn yourself over it, and I look forward to you doing more in the future!

I am genuinely glad you're taking steps to make your work more manageable and worthwhile- it was necessary for your health and it's a good thing you aren't deferring it. I would like to share a client's perspective though: the "toss it all in the air and see how it pans out" way I'm interpreting how you plan to manage your workflow feels really bad. The ambiguity of possibly being sidelined or dismissed doesn't feel great as a customer experience: Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe I have no way of knowing if you'll get to my August form before you toss out what you can't get to, and assuming I get another opportunity to work with you after your patreon changes, I have no idea how long it will take because your patrons get to cut the line. I can only speak for myself but I'd rather you just throw out the entire August list and start over, so I have some certainty I don't need to hold out hope or reserve money. I'd also rather see you implement a fair system, like two separate queues for patrons and non-patrons that you flip between, or only taking commissions from patrons in the first place. Another thing is that bid-based YCH's (especially ones with ABs) tend to be dominated by a select few who have money to splash around, which is great for them and for the artist, but for everyone else it only contributes to the feeling of being second-class. People feeling that way is when they get bitchy in your comments and cause you undeserved headaches (like recently when someone tried to buy all 3 of an artist's YCHs at once and there was a whole shitfit about it). Personally I feel second-class enough in my real life already.

Ultimately though, commissioned artwork is purely a luxury and I believe you are fully entitled to do business however you want. Nobody should feel slighted because you can't or didn't get to them, especially because you don't take payment in advance. You're also not going to be able to make everyone happy no matter what you do, so I don't want to come off as belligerent- I just hope my point of view helps illustrate the ambiguity and inequity that I feel and see in how you plan to do business.

Glad you're raising your prices and improving your quality of life. Health first, always! But, in any case, I already had a gut feeling my commission request was never going to get met, I even pursued asking on twitter but..Well, I kinda got disappeared on/never finished talking at all, so I just kinda gave up hope. And yeah, it does feel like a kick in the gut that I got my hopes so high at the opportunity and it was crushed by it not being seen within over two months, and the word that it's likely going to be trashed like it never really had a place, so..I just don't think i'll try again. My situation in life is hard enough as is, my luck's went downhill numerous times since I held onto the little money i had in hopes of getting something, between my surgery and my brothers pretty major medical incident recently, so I just..Can't hold onto money for several months on a whim. I know some people can, there are some folks out there who have expendable money every day of the year, but i'm just not one of those people. I get by day by day with my family, and I really wish there would've been more transparency on everything that was going on way sooner than now.

But, like Kyzak said, you're entitled to do business however you want, I can't feel bad because you didn't take money and not complete something, and not everyone can be happy all the time. Regardless, i'm happy you're finally giving some sense of what's been going on to everyone else, because at the least, that's what we did deserve. I know i'll never have any luck getting involved in an YCHs because there's always going to be people out there who have more money than me and will just..Autobuy in, and I just can't do that supporting a family and keeping my house afloat, but the occasional 'one nice thing for myself' every year was nice.

My message will probably come across wrong, but that's probably due to my lack of positive mood lately with the constant hospital visits. But I wish you all the best and hopefully your plans pan out positively for you and everyone involved. But I most definitely can't afford to get anything from you now with the price-raise and the pretty clean-cut likelihood that the form I submitted is most definitely going to be trashed, and I just don't have the courage or confidence to try again.

Ah, I gotta send in my last patron reward now that the switch has taken over.

When you're getting more commission requests than you have time to work on, that is a sign that it's time to raise your prices, so I've read in a commission guide. So I think you're doing the right thing there.