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Changes coming: New techniques, price increase, streamin
2 years ago
General
Hello y’all!
I figured I will make a formal announcement on some things going on with me.
As I’ve hinted to, I intended on making a price increase to my rates sometime this year and I will give that an official date of November 1 going from $30/hr to $35/hr across all mediums/styles. This will only apply to new commissions started on or after this date.
One thing I want to be very clear about is that this isn’t some arbitrary increase out of need because of inflation or because of the substantial expenses I’ve had in my personal life (such as $7,200 for a new HVAC system and $10,000 for roof repair work).
This is because I think I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve developed myself as an artist to earn it. Down below I’ll explain the final piece I’m developing for myself to earn this.
I want to stress that I charge an hourly rates. Meaning if a commissioner needs me to stay at or under a certain amount, just let me know and I’ll try and meet that goal. Or they can give me a cutoff price for the picture. Many details and effects that take time can really be skipped or ignored; they are none essential.
With that in mind, you could technically see little to no change in price with commissions after this increase.
Patreon tier prices will remain as is.
I’ve started a new technique for myself, which I know will especially address one of the most sluggish parts of the art process: flat coloring.
Up until this point I use vectors for doing 95% of the flat colors. This is a slow process because Photoshop isn’t the most friendly for using vectors; it’s cumbersome. Vectors were my choice because my art is lineless and I need crisp, smooth edges to everything with pinpoint accuracy.
I want to move away from using predominantly vectors and manually drawing them freehand. This will involve training myself to use slower, steady strokes. Which in the art world, isn’t a big deal. Most artists already do this. I myself just never trained myself to do it.
One of the other benefits of free handing coloring will affect my ability to do impressionism: using strokes to imply objects or effects without needing to draw every little detail in its entirety. This is especially important for macro art to do in a timely manner. Impressionism is the cornerstone to Bob Ross’ style that makes it so powerfully effective in doing a lot in a very short amount of time.
The scheduling change is more behind the scenes and won’t be very visible, but I will be changing how I handle my scheduling. I have a very sophisticated Excel sheet that is designed to tell me what sort of work I work on for a particular day and for how long.
This is why you can show up to my stream and see me work on a picture for 30 minutes and then suddenly stop in the middle of doing something. That time segment is done.
Because I no longer have heavy investments of time in my real estate, I have a more predictable schedule. With my core work days namely Sunday, Monday, Thursday, Friday and sometimes Saturday (now that the bookstore has started furloughing me) they’ll be broken up into three parts:
1) Warmup & new/difficult projects (around 11 a.m.-3 p.m.)
2) Administrative & personal projects; includes social media engagement (around 3-6 p.m.)
3) Core work time; high likelihood of streaming (7 p.m.-midnight)
The biggest effect the schedule change is intended to be psychological. If you are curious about what is inspiring some of these scheduling changes, you can check out this video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4S7w0wDSiyw
It is part of my process for developing “systems” compared to “goals”. The part that showed how “goals” can be a form of discouragement is what I want to address.
Once I started streaming more often, I realized this is a very powerful process in helping me stay on task and get work done. You should be seeing this more often and could be on any day of the week except for Tuesday (because of Hellday 1st block).
I have a feeling that once I’ve started streaming a lot, I may look into including other things in my stream such as having videos playing on the side. Could be gaming Let’s Plays from the people I know and like or could include shows and movies.
Many people I know like holding Pokemon card opening streams and it’s something I want to do at some point. I basically have not opened Pokemon cards for about 10 years now. Which is kind of a big deal considering my extensive card collection from back in the day has a market value well into 5 figures.
I’d like to try and have little mini-games with this process and involve my cast members in it. When I am most serious about these streams, I’ll make announcements of when I’ll do them!
Thank you for reading through this if you did!
~Eclipsis
I figured I will make a formal announcement on some things going on with me.
Price increase
As I’ve hinted to, I intended on making a price increase to my rates sometime this year and I will give that an official date of November 1 going from $30/hr to $35/hr across all mediums/styles. This will only apply to new commissions started on or after this date.
One thing I want to be very clear about is that this isn’t some arbitrary increase out of need because of inflation or because of the substantial expenses I’ve had in my personal life (such as $7,200 for a new HVAC system and $10,000 for roof repair work).
This is because I think I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve developed myself as an artist to earn it. Down below I’ll explain the final piece I’m developing for myself to earn this.
I want to stress that I charge an hourly rates. Meaning if a commissioner needs me to stay at or under a certain amount, just let me know and I’ll try and meet that goal. Or they can give me a cutoff price for the picture. Many details and effects that take time can really be skipped or ignored; they are none essential.
With that in mind, you could technically see little to no change in price with commissions after this increase.
Patreon tier prices will remain as is.
New Technique
I’ve started a new technique for myself, which I know will especially address one of the most sluggish parts of the art process: flat coloring.
Up until this point I use vectors for doing 95% of the flat colors. This is a slow process because Photoshop isn’t the most friendly for using vectors; it’s cumbersome. Vectors were my choice because my art is lineless and I need crisp, smooth edges to everything with pinpoint accuracy.
I want to move away from using predominantly vectors and manually drawing them freehand. This will involve training myself to use slower, steady strokes. Which in the art world, isn’t a big deal. Most artists already do this. I myself just never trained myself to do it.
One of the other benefits of free handing coloring will affect my ability to do impressionism: using strokes to imply objects or effects without needing to draw every little detail in its entirety. This is especially important for macro art to do in a timely manner. Impressionism is the cornerstone to Bob Ross’ style that makes it so powerfully effective in doing a lot in a very short amount of time.
Scheduling
The scheduling change is more behind the scenes and won’t be very visible, but I will be changing how I handle my scheduling. I have a very sophisticated Excel sheet that is designed to tell me what sort of work I work on for a particular day and for how long.
This is why you can show up to my stream and see me work on a picture for 30 minutes and then suddenly stop in the middle of doing something. That time segment is done.
Because I no longer have heavy investments of time in my real estate, I have a more predictable schedule. With my core work days namely Sunday, Monday, Thursday, Friday and sometimes Saturday (now that the bookstore has started furloughing me) they’ll be broken up into three parts:
1) Warmup & new/difficult projects (around 11 a.m.-3 p.m.)
2) Administrative & personal projects; includes social media engagement (around 3-6 p.m.)
3) Core work time; high likelihood of streaming (7 p.m.-midnight)
The biggest effect the schedule change is intended to be psychological. If you are curious about what is inspiring some of these scheduling changes, you can check out this video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4S7w0wDSiyw
It is part of my process for developing “systems” compared to “goals”. The part that showed how “goals” can be a form of discouragement is what I want to address.
Streaming
Once I started streaming more often, I realized this is a very powerful process in helping me stay on task and get work done. You should be seeing this more often and could be on any day of the week except for Tuesday (because of Hellday 1st block).
I have a feeling that once I’ve started streaming a lot, I may look into including other things in my stream such as having videos playing on the side. Could be gaming Let’s Plays from the people I know and like or could include shows and movies.
Pokemon Card Opening Streams
Many people I know like holding Pokemon card opening streams and it’s something I want to do at some point. I basically have not opened Pokemon cards for about 10 years now. Which is kind of a big deal considering my extensive card collection from back in the day has a market value well into 5 figures.
I’d like to try and have little mini-games with this process and involve my cast members in it. When I am most serious about these streams, I’ll make announcements of when I’ll do them!
Thank you for reading through this if you did!
~Eclipsis
*Graystar silliness intensifies*