Rethinking what to tackle when the growth drive ends. If you want to vote anonymously on it, I've set up a strawpoll

https://strawpoll.com/NMnQNaw3Wg6

edit: To be clear, this is for what to do for the rest of this "no commission" year

Obviously, my plan for this year is exploding spectacularly. Not only am I trying to finish Macro March in June, I haven't even been able to do what were supposed to be quick little side things like a "Hey, people still on Twitter, GOOD BYE!" piece.

So it's time to rehash the plan. For starters, I'm not going to do 20 pages in the Macro March drive. After the next growth spurt, if there's no more donations, I'm going to draw a couple closing pages and then move on, hopefully getting ready for Art Fight.

During Art Fight itself next month, I'm going to be revenging only (for those that don't know, revenge is when you get "hit" with an art piece and you respond with another art piece) with a couple of exceptions because I promised to attack them last year.

The Micro May comic, which is another story-based one, will now take place in August, and instead of two TF comics, there will only be one.

There's been rallying cry lately in the furry community: "stop posting on Twitter! just f'ing stop!"

To be honest, it is unclear whether the motivation is the morally and legally questionable actions he's doing as part of the Trump government (the day I saw it, he'd put some rando to block the entrance to the department of education, which is very much not allowed) or the morally and legally questionable actions he's taking as proprietor of Twitter (on the same day, Twitter's "Grok" LLM chatbot was augmented with image generation capabilities trained on every image ever uploaded to twitter), or both, but let's just say the arguments are ...persuasive.

I'd been planning to wind down my activity on twitter ever since the twitterpocalypse (my name for the sudden literal decimation of tweet impressions in October 2023) but wasn't sure how to go about it. the first big step was using Fedica, which lets you publish the same post to several social media sites with one click; I just haven't had to look at twitter as much anymore! But what I'm going to do next is a bit more radical.

The Macro March growth drive will not have its art uploaded to Twitter. Instead, I'll be tweeting out a link to where the people still on twitter can view that day's page. I expect to reevaluate at the end of the year.

Now I can already hear the boos and jeers, so let me answer the implied questions:

Why wait until March? Well, it seems kind of insensitive to leave the people still on Twitter hanging as to the resolution of the current TF drive story, so I at least want to finish that first and then do a "goodbye" post or two.

Why did I wait this long? To be honest, I wasn't sure where to jump to until last fall. I'd been trying Bluesky, Mastodon and Instagram for my new "main", and none of them seemed to "feel" quite right. The latest exodus changes that: hitting the repost button on Bluesky every 3 hours is no longer "too often" with all the new activity!

Why tweet anything at all? Mainly for archival purposes. I mainly use Twitter now through the search function when need an old post of mine, and if I misremember if it was pre-wind-down or post-wind-down, I don't want to come up empty. And if Twitter ever does return to its former glory (a mouse can dream!) I want the full sequence to be there for people to click through.

Why care about the people still on Twitter? I still have a couple commissioners on there, mainly Ms. Pam who was prominently featured in a recent page. Maybe it's the teacher in me, but if only one student shows up in the classroom, that student should get to have the class.

Why am I making such a big deal about it? For one, no longer uploading to Twitter means the comic panel aspect ratio will no longer be 16×9 and that is a pretty big deal. I'm not even sure if I can comfortably fit them on the screen which means I may need to rethink my entire drawing process!

Posted using PostyBirb

“Meg, my little flower, my little bird, my little nut, Meg. What exactly happened here? I thought you were gonna [draw the comic] for the [TF drive], and here I am, kind of [TF]-less.”
--Hades, Hercules (1997)

Things were going relatively well this year and then my art output fell off a cliff. I’m writing this to try to explain why.

Firstly, by now you should know I’m a teacher for my dayjob and I just changed schools. You’ve probably noticed that teachers need to be in some time before classes start to get everything set up. At my old job, this “sometime before” was “any time during the previous 2 weeks”. New job demands 3 weeks in full (meaning they check that you’re doing it in-person, work-from-home is not acceptable any of of those days).

I misread as 4.

So I show up on the day I’m supposed to start showing up, believing I have a full month and pace myself accordingly. Then, halfway through my “month” I hear “classes start next week, right?”

I’ve never felt such panic before.

This singular mistake meant I spent the entire semester playing catchup because, in case you don’t know, the fall semester is always the one with the most “things you have to do”. I didn’t sleep, didn’t do my usual self-care, all in the name of meeting my obligations.

Now, I fully accept responsibility for my mistake, but I did need some moral support to keep me going. I tried leaning on my online friends… it backfired. They were too busy with their own problems. They made me feel worse. And when I tried to talk to them about that, take interested in their problems, they kind of disappeared.

I even tried talking to people at work…but of course I was rewarded with “more work” (not to mention there’s a few fundamental differences of opinion I don’t think I can get past). This is why I couldn’t tell you if I ever did catch up or just barely met the deadlines, because of these unforeseen obligations.

And, of course, this wouldn’t be complete without the car breaking down a couple times and a few firing threats, because when is it ever just one thing?

Posted using PostyBirb

“After reading a lot of overheated puffery about your new [rules], you know what I’m craving? A little perspective.”
--Anton Ego, Ratatouille

(Context for those who may be reading this in the future: 4 years ago, 1½ years ago, Earlier this month)

The journal I wanted to write today was not about this, but I feel the need to, once again, provide a statement. I understand things are scary and confusing, and I chalk this up to two reasons: the “feedback” section of the announcement which seemed to imply “well we don’t know what’s ok and what’s not so we’re going to ban everything to be safe”, and the policy itself, so let me begin by saying what I think the new rules mean

The new rules as I understand them

• Minors being not allowed in mature content: Renaissance-style paintings like riffs on Raphael’s Galatea are no longer OK.
• Minors being not allowed in adult content: A married couple getting frisky is not OK if there’s a cradle in the room; no exceptions will be made for “but the scene takes place in the 1300s, houses had only one room!”
• Minors not being allowed in the presence of “prohibited” stuff: If you were planning to tell the story of how, accidentally walking in on your parents “doing it” when you were little, changed you for life; you will now no longer be able to (this is from the previous rule change but it’s been bothering the back of my mind for a while).
• The definition of “presence”: If that story is about what you heard through the door, and the story makes it very clear that it was NSFW stuff, that is no longer allowed either.
• The definition of “minors”: If your story is about an elf or a fairy, even if the fairy is a hundred years old, if they are still a minor in elf/fairy terms, they count as a minor (however, I think an unintended casualty here may be chibis, and an artist I admired whose whole thing was chibis already deleted their account!)
• The definitions of fetish and kink: The rule no longer reads “minors may not be fetishized,” so these definitions have no effect on the rule (I guess they’re from an earlier draft).
• The “no minors with bulges” rule: Although this was in the previous rule, this, I think, is directly targeted at “baby Pokémon” art (i.e. “he looks like a newly-hatched pichu, but he’s canonically an adult”), since in my 20+ years in the fandom I can’t recall ever seeing a minor with a bulge (and I have explored the AR community quite a bit even though it “does nothing” for me – yes, it is possible to read those stories for the plot!)
• The “no pregnant minors” rule: Chibis may not be pregnant; no exceptions will be made for teen pregnancy stories (again, this was part of the old rule).
• The “no messy diapers” rule: Similar to how there’s no bleeding in Disney movies, baby diapers must appear clean even when being changed / needing change (definitely a ‘kill a fly with an artillery canon’ rule, at least as far as storytelling purposes go IMHO, but almost all diaper art that features messy diapers also has a “clean” version uploaded alongside it so, sadly, this one will have the least measurable impact)
• The “no restroom activity” rule: Riffs on the illegal Calvin peeing on logo stickers are no longer OK.
• The “Body Part Emphasis (except coincidental)” rule: This appears to be another targeted one, this time at the Bluey fans who will have Bluey do a “paw tease” for giggles but it’s okay because she doesn’t know what she’s doing. I have also seen this with The Lion King community with young Simba accidentally stepping on smaller OCs (no doubt inspired by his interactions with Timon in the third movie) and I’m sure there’s more I just can’t remember off the top of my head. The “except coincidental” seems like a way to ensure it doesn’t hit the size community (where “we need to sneak past the kitten” pretty much requires filling the frame with said kitten – assuming what they’re sneaking past doesn’t fall under the “presence” rule)
• The “Regression restrictions” rule: This one seems designed at fixing the “non-sexual depictions of birth and breastfeeding” “loophole” in the same way the “no teen pregnancy” rule attempted to fix the previous loophole: by overcorrecting. Again, I see this as detrimental to the stories that may be told: lucid dream sequences where you revisit your earliest memories, social commentary on “why do kids find this funny”, and Freudian-style analyses on how we long to be cradled to mommy’s chest, are all in the crosshairs here. And these are not hypothetical, these are all staples of age-regression stories, some of which are hundreds of pages long. While I get that the intent is to not fetishize the lack of consent (which seems to be why they added the “mentally” clause since “magically reduced to babbling fool” stories are a thing), similarly to when they said “just age up your baby Pokémon”, it creates this weird alternate reality where adults breastfeeding is the norm.

How it affects me

The most direct effect on me is with the story of Camila the fairy. I’ve mentioned before, her canon story features her and Susan bonding as children by performing magic. I will now need to make sure none of the magic they perform results in anything that is fetishized (which, when the spells are supposed to be random, is actually a tall order!)

In fact, anything where Susan appears now carries a risk since, as I noted in my last journal on the topic, although I have her entire life charted out, I’m not too good with making her “look” the right age.

Then there’s the stories I wrote when I was 10 like Back Home. Although I was prepared from the beginning to not appear in them at the age of 10, I’d been hoping I’d be able to in at least one of them. The risks associated with doing that have basically just gone up for no reason.

Lastly, there’s gift art and fan art I’d planned for certain babyfurs which I will now have to tread very carefully on.

As before, I have no intention to cancel my plans, I don’t consider my art explicit, and I let the author decide if a character counts as a minor. But I am legitimately fearful of losing all I’ve built here if I unwittingly step over this invisible line like I haven’t been in a long, long time.

Posted using PostyBirb

Every so often, I would post a thread on twitter called "Movie Therapy"—Example (warning: 21 tweets long). I haven't posted them in a year because I didn't want people yelling at me that I was spending my donation drive money on streaming services.

However, I never spent money to watch them; I got them all through KimCartoon. You may have heard that KimCartoon was closed down for good yesterday, which means I no longer have access to any of them.

Was it piracy?
I've been living with my parents for a while (I had to move "back in" years ago). My parents' internet provider is a local cable TV company and our package includes Disney Channel, XD, WB TV, and Cartoon Network. However, whenever there was a show or movie I knew about and wanted to watch, I could never figure out what time it was on. If I caught an ad, it never gave the time (and I would sometimes spend hours hunting them down!) The times on the websites were unreliable (it turns out it's not exactly the same signal for all carriers); and the "TV guide" channel scrolled too slowly, only showed a limited time window, and was often wrong, too. Many networks have the ability to watch shows on their website "just" by picking out your cable provider... mine's never on it.

So I turned to KimCartoon. Because I couldn't get the service... through the way I was paying for it. Now, you may object that means my views didn't get counted and because of "people like me" those shows got cancelled "early", but I counter: the big guys weren't playing by the rules!

KimCartoon became a necessary part of my routine, often playing in split-screen while I drew my art, helping me continue while depressed or combating heat stroke. Now, I have some problem in my brain that prevents me from binge-watching (even in the pre-streaming era, when networks would air "marathons" of a show, I would never be able to watch no matter how hard I tried!) so if a show has 10 episodes, it could take me 3 months to watch it, so every show I was accessing through KimCartoon when they took it down ...I was only halfway through. Even if I could magically get the money for all the respective streaming services, it would be really hard to find again what episode I stopped at, and the magic money would need to keep coming for God knows how long just so I could finish watching them!

And that's not to mention that the physical TV burned out during the pandemic (so we've been kinda paying for a service we can't use solely out of fear that the price will rise).

It really does feel like, at every turn, the universe says "I'm here to take something from you."
and I say "I have nothing else left for your to take."
And the universe says "how about that thing? Yoink!"
"...that...wasn't even mine..."
"Well it's gone now!"

Perhaps what upsets me more is this isn't even what I wanted to journal about today. I wanted to do a "where do you see yourself in 5 years? 10? 20?" with my art, but instead, some rich guy in a rich office decided I had to have depression today.

Having written a journal titled Is the TF drive a failure, it's only fair to title this one the opposite.

The drive raised $115 from 5 donors (and yes that money did let me order a new computer and get groceries that week.)

The most popular pages were:

• On Twitter, page 3 with 357 views and 2 likes
• On Bluesky, page 5 with 3 reposts and 5 likes
• On Mastodon, page 7 with 2 reboosts and 2 likes
• On DeviantArt, page 6 with 706 views and 5 faves
• On FurAffinity, page 2 with 377 views and 6 faves
• On Instagram, page 3 with 4 views and 2 likes
• The page with the most likes across all platforms was page 2 with 16 likes total

This is interesting because they're all counterintuitive to what should work on that platform (for instance, page 6 is the page with the least keywords so DA's algorithm shouldn't've picked it up while page 2 is the page with largest percent of each panel dedicated to the human character!)

This was my first time in a while working with any sort of buffer (Twitter / Bluesky / Mastodon followers may remember my posting about how you could read the next page on Patreon with the TF part subject to change if/when donations came in; In actuality, I had some two pages down the line drawn at most points) and I can't tell you how strange it felt to finish a page and know that no one would see it for nearly two weeks!

This was also a new chapter in the "working with a colorist" experiment. A lot of the things I thought it was obvious how to color... weren't, though that's mostly because of the very nature of a TF sequence (luckily everything's in vector art so it's easy to "fix", by design).

Thank you all!

These are the fun facts posted to Twitter, Bluesky, and Mastodon for Page 6:


• The only reason Rei uses Quick Attack is because she knows it's the only way to pre-empt Pidgeotto's attack. I struggled with the exact pose: "no that's headbutt... no that's tackle..." eventually "pushing him out of the way" felt...natural.

• The fact that this wild Pidgeotto knows Fly means he's a released "HM slave" pokémon. No wonder he hates humans so much!

• The sparks arc-ing around Rei's cheeks are based on a plasma ball.

• I'd actually never noticed that pokémon in the anime make this face when they get electrocuted until I had to draw it!

I didn't post any fun facts about page 4 on Twitter, Bluesky or Mastodon, so here's the ones for Page 5!

• Although I'm only 16% smaller at the start of this page, my bag is 30% heavier to me due to the square-cube law, and I always packed it to the brim back then!

• Shrinking occurs in the panel where Pidgeotto's talons appear, not due to donations but because the plot demands it!

• This Pidgeotto both hates humans and loves pichus so he sees me as the perfect prey!

• Hearty's resemblance to Ash's pikachu is no accident. Rei's design was always meant to be distinct and part of the reason Hearty appears here is to show it!

• Finding exactly the right nickname was one of the reasons I didn't post this 25 years ago. The 1998 script just has a placeholder that says "[Annoying human]"!
(Whenever scenes with Rei played out in my head, the sound would mute when the nickname was mentioned -- I was THAT unsure of what to use! I originally wanted "twerp but nicer"; I later revised that to "twerp in another language". As I picked up more japanese, eventually "Otoko-chan" just...clicked!)

These are the fun facts posted on Twitter, Bluesky, and Mastodon for Page 3:

• There's obviously no such cliffs on the in-game Route 2, but I traversed it as if there were, fearing that, like when you exit Mt. Moon, I could jump one and get trapped!
(Now, you may be asking why this matters. Well, I really wanted a Parrasect, and they could only be caught in the final stretch before the exit in Mt. Moon. I had potions, but seeing the exit made me think "Pokémon Center! I can come back later!" ...and I never could.)

• The "ground suddenly disappeared aaah" panel was the first time I've drawn the pokéballs on my belt (they are normally always hidden by my jacket). I also was one of those kids who never tucked their shirt in which is why the shirt is billowing.

• I don't get any new bruises from tumbling down the cliff because this was the panel in which the transformation was supposed to happen!

• In my head, Jumpable Ledges have always been about 1 meter (3'3") tall, because I think that's the height a 10-year-old can jump down but not back up (yes, even 3 feet (91 cm) is too short, I think, to be a ledge you can jump down but not back up!
This, of course, means Adults can totally climb up jumpable ledges—they're there solely for the kiddies and probably intentionally built by "get off my lawn"-type people!)

These are the fun facts I posted on Twitter, Bluesky and Mastodon for page 2:

• The appearance for the Pewter City Museum is based on its depiction in Pokémon Pinball (1999), which in turn is based on the Tokyo National Museum

• My Pikachu is not quadrupedal (doesn't normally walk on all fours) I just didn't give her time to stand up after shaking off all the dirt and mud!

• Pikachu wears two bows in 1998 but only one in 2006 because, when her daughter was born, she gave one to her!

• Pikachu is not panicking because she's being left behind or noticed the transformation. She's panicking because she knows this area and I don't!

• The row of trees separating East Route 2 from the main road is all identical "cut" trees because I always thought having just 1 was ridiculous.

We are one week from the end of the Pokémon TF Drive: Back Home. A story 26 years in the making. And even though I lowered the goal, we are still only 16% there.

This means donations now total $40—and that's including patreon which is kind of double-counting since they still get their rewards. This makes it the lowest that an opening I've done (and continuously promoted) of any sort (commissions, daily pokémon, etc. included) has gathered.

I currently have enough money either for a replacement computer or groceries. Don't get me wrong, we are nowhere close to starving like we were a year and a half ago, but it has caused analysis paralysis.

Now, I'm aware this month was exceptional. The news from Venezuela, Bangladesh, Elon Musk, and the US election, sucked up a lot of oxygen. Then the death of Dragoneer happened. Then the hijacking of FurAffinity. Drives usually pick up at about the halfway point but that is exactly when all these things were affecting!

However, I thought that if I had an engaging, heartwarming story, I might be able to reach enough people. Especially enough people who could spare a dollar or two. Especially a story which I have polished this much.

This is very hard for me to write, since there's clearly a lot of you following along (I see you, people who fave all the pages! 😊) I am, of course, very happy about that! I have also noticed that this comic has more views on all platforms than any previous comic I've done had by this point!

But I feel like I also need to stop and take stock. Put this in the "pensieve" ...so I can actually finish.

And I am heavily reminded of the situation earlier this year with the macro march drive where I had to ask myself: what did I do wrong? Did I not promote it enough? Did I pick the wrong story? Is color hurting it? Am I that bad at drawing humans?

Or is this "the new normal"?

I am painfully aware that all my "equivalent" points of comparison (August 2021, August 2022, August 2023, the last Pokémon TF drive which ran in December...) were all, not only heavily reliant on Twitter, but also influenced by the pandemic. But I guess I thought I was "good enough" for that not to matter ...I was wrong.

The really sad thing is that I'd planned to open commissions next month, but commission openings have, thus far, always attracted less people (and therefore less money) than the drives. I will probably become very busy with the start of the school year soon (and I kind of have some unfinished commissions I need to get back to) so I'm seriously asking myself: would opening for commissions be worth it?

If you follow me on Twitter, Bluesky, or Mastodon, you'll doubtless have seen that I've been posting fun facts about the first page of the TF drive. I've decided to compile them here so they're easier to find!


• The rock pile surrounding Diglett's Cave is lifted almost exactly from the anime's depiction of the wall of Granite Cave in Hoenn.

• Wearing your highest-ranking badge on your hat comes straight from the concept art of Pokémon Red and Green. (Also, no Indigo Plateau swoosh because 1. I haven't been there yet, and 2. ain't no way I'm sending in a million postcards just to get one early!)

• What's on my wrist is not a pokégear, it's a Casio illuminator I received for my birthday earlier that year: the first watch I ever owned. (Link goes to the closest picture on the internet to the model I had!)

• The bruises are because, as Professor Oak states, "you need pokémon for your protection" …my pokémon were NOT able to protect me down there! (Even if I'd kept Pikachu out of battle, the wild Dugtrio were 7 or 8 levels higher than my highest-level pokémon, and they seemed to appear every time I took a step after the first bend! I couldn't go back, I couldn't go forward, I had no escape ropes, no repels and no potions!)

For those of you that don't follow me on Twitter, Mastodon or Bluesky, this is a copy of what I just posted there:

I only knew Dragoneer as a person through Bluesky (I think I followed him on Twitter but, you know, algorithm) and I can definitely say, he was one of the good ones. People made a lot of fun of him when he bought back FA ...for having the guts to do what we all knew needed to be done.

He never shied away from responsibility, even in his missteps. He was always looking out for people ...and he rarely had a moment's peace. He didn't deserve the hand he got dealt, but he damn well did more than the best he could with it. We should all aspire to be more like him.

I'll try to continue posting my art as planned. I hope it can be a light in the darkness for you all.

I feel the need to start off by saying that I feel incredibly blessed for receiving an amazing 9 artfight attacks this year at a time when things were not well for me (which ended up becoming a time when things are not well for my family for unrelated reasons). Last year, I received 6 attacks, 3 of which were preemptive and the other 3 revenges. This year, 8 of them were preemptive and only 1 was a revenge! Objectively, that means a 50% increase in total attacks and a 167% increase in preemptive attacks, or in layman's terms, "aww, y'all do care!"

I sent a total of 14 attacks, drawing a total of 25½ characters (you're supposed to count comics' second panel as ½), and 4½ backgrounds (the boulder is merely a "background element" so it counts as half a background); up from last year's 8 attacks, 11½ characters (remember the one with just the hands? Yeah that counts as half too), and 3 backgrounds (I probably could've claimed Fenny's shield as half a background but didn't do it back then so I can't count it). Objectively, I nearly doubled my output this year in spite of greater work pressures, hardware failures and literal threats to my life! Subjectively, I kinda wanted to reach that magical number 30 which would mean there was one character for every day of the month, so... almost there!

Some people may argue that revenges being down is a bad thing but, one, that means my "trade balance" is positive; and two, the point of artfight is not to get revenges, it's seeing that 🥹 reaction and meeting new people. So how did that go? Well, for one, every attack got a very positive response (the only ones that haven't are the ones I literally sent last night; they haven't seen them yet!) For another, I got:

• 31 new followers on Twitter (half of which are bots)
• 12 new followers on Bluesky
• 7 new watchers on Fur Affinity
• 3 new watchers on Deviant Art
• 2 new followers on Mastodon
• 2 new followers on Tumblr

That's a total of 51 people (and 16 bots)! That's a lot of people, boss, we need to reserve a second classroom! (For comparison, I got, no joke, 1 follow and 1 watch last year, though if I remember right, that follower was the first one who attacked me this year so, joy!)

But, of course, I know I can do better. So what did I learn?

• I need to pick my targets for pre-emptive attacks before-hand! I lost a lot of time going through the artfight site trying to pick who to attack.
• I need to check the rules before-hand! Referring to this one tweet here but it did occupy my mind for days!
• Bookmarks don't work for me. Every time I followed someone on artfight (or was followed), I would bookmark one of their characters to tell myself "that's the one you're going to draw if you end up attacking this person" (a "lesson" I learned from last year). This very rarely ended up being the one I drew because: a. it didn't match the idea I had in my head and b. when going to get the ref, often another one would "jump out" at me more ....so not much of a timesaver for me.
• I need to reel myself in. Artfight works best when you hit as many people as possible, so if the concept does require a background, it should be less like this and more like this (though, again, since I was trying to capture my very first artfight idea, maybe it should count as an exception). The concepts themselves, though, are good; that's what makes people happy, which leads nicely into the last point:
• If you're not enjoying yourself, you need to take a break! I had this notion that if I didn't reach a certain amount of progress by a certain time, the day would essentially be wasted so I needed to push myself. This was based on last year when we a. had an abnormal heat wave and b. didn't have much to combat it. But this time, even on hot days, I was able to retake the drawing later in the day (which is why I would sometimes be posting at night, which is rare for me now)

Since my computer died at the start of the month, I've been thinking a lot (not that I normally don't).

Let's get one thing out of the way: the answer is no. Getting 5 artfight attacks in the first 3 days, and the fact that I can now feed my family even when I don't sell commissions, are clear indications otherwise, but I still want to get these thoughts out there.

My computer died because I left the laptop lid open under a leak in the ceiling. Granted, that leak wasn't there the day before, but I know from experience that, if it had been closed, it would've survived.
This happened because I was way too tired, which in turn happened because I never really met my contractual obligations at my old job and was forced to spend a month without sleep to make it up to my new boss (it's the same job at a new company). Am I a failure, or is it the old job's fault for not providing me with the resources I asked when they were literally teetering on the verge of bankruptcy?

I might've been able to afford those resources myself if only I was a bigger artist. If I'd started posting when I started doodling in earnest in 9th grade (right when I found out the furry community existed) instead of in my senior year of college, I'd surely have sold a lot more commissions over the course of my life before the "Twitterpocalypse" (maybe we wouldn't've gone hungry when we did). Am I a failure for that, or did "society" fail me in some way?

The loss of my computer is a big deal because the files aren't backed up (here's to hoping I can get them extracted soon!) I never backed them up because I do that using OneDrive and Google Drive and Dropbox, which would download all my old files on that computer and that would kill my internet for a month since the connection is metered and capped (and yes it's the best plan my ISP offers and no there isn't a better ISP). This would prevent the rest of my family from getting any work done for a month. Am I a failure for not doing it anyway or not finding an alternative way of doing it?

And lastly, the reason the computer was in that exact spot is because it's the only place in my room I can phyiscally place it. Am I a failure for not "cleaning up" my room, which requires rearranging / buying new furniture? Or is it the fault of "capitalism" that requires me to use my every waking moment in it in a monetizable way?

In short: is it my fault I'm poor?

I have just posted on reddit that this was the plan all along with the pride month comic, and I feel the need to clarify.

The Pride Month Comics originated from an interaction I had on IRC a little over a decade ago. An online friend asked me that, were I to visit him, would I go to a pride event with him. There was a caveat: if I were to go, I would have to bring a flag.

This started me down a rabbit hole of whether flags for straightness even existed. At the time, the only real, mediumly-accepted one was the grayscale flag, hence last year's "joke".

Things have changed a lot since then.

For one, there's some half a dozen proposals for straightness flags now, which is where the idea for this year's comic came from. As I watched them appear, I conceived a short series where Susan (or a YCH volunteer) would bring me a flag and ask me about it.
The problem is all the straight flags are downright terrible, and they all appear to have been used in some unethical way, so I felt no qualms about making each one the subject of a punchline.

Finding that the Straight Ally flag was the most-accepted least-conflictive version, the comic series was going to end with it as "not bad".

As I hinted in the explainer comic, the proportion of negative comments to last year's joke, combined with the fact that a lot of times it seems no one even sees what I post anymore (thanks elon) made me nix the idea.

I remembered recently that this nixed idea was my planned father's day comic for this year, so I ended up having to un-nix it.

I have a new idea of what direction to take it next time, but I'm not sure if I'll decide to nix this one as well.

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The Great Pokémon Shrink-off raised $205 from 4 donors!

• Typhlosion raised $75 in 7 donations and ended up 123 picometers tall, which is less than a 100 billionth his initial height, and kept a level head.
• Raichu raised $65 in 5 donations and ended up 300 feet (90 meters) tall, which is 375× her initial height and jumped all over the emotional spectrum!
• Missingno raised $45 in 3 donations and ended up 0.6 millimeters tall, which is less than one thousandth his initial height. He did a good job translating for me but picked me up despite telling him not to!
• and I raised the remaining $20 in 2 donations and ended up 1 millimeter tall, one hundredth my initial height and I... lost track of Typhlosion for most of the drive.

Typhlosion is the undisputable winner in every respect and will go on to star in next year's shrink off! Thank you all!

This drive also gives me pause about something I hadn't much considered: the value of new followers. Most donations came from people who had never participated in these drives before. And while I am infinitely grateful, it does make me wonder about the constant push for people to "like and subscribe" outside of what "the algorithm" may or may not do with those numbers.

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I've been meaning to write about this for a while, but it never felt like the right time (it may now be past the right time, but I feel like I need to say this before writing about anything else)

Firstly, for Macro March this year, I ran what effectively was a Growth Drive while I gave a tour of my world. I'm pretty happy with the tour part (I managed to hit all the stops I had planned and draw 16% more panels, total!) ...But as far as the Drive goes, I only raised $63.

The same drive last year raised a modest $229, nearly four times as much (granted, "same" is up for discussion since the script was a lot looser). I spent a lot of time wondering what I did wrong. Did people not like the story? Was my art that bad? Was it because of my new job?

When I looked at it closer, I believe I got donations from the same people as last year (and even people who weren't able to donate again left a like or a comment so I know they at least saw it) but they donated less, so a factor definitely is that people simply have less money now!

Of course, last year I was able to bring in a lot of new followers with it, which didn't seem to happen this year, so I concluded the main factor was that my reach was down. And Twitter confirmed this theory: I was getting about a tenth of the views on all my art posts, even on the tweets I religiously retweeted 4 times a day like I did last year.

I know, from past experiences, that coloring gets more views and more interaction, which is why for the Micro May drive, I planned to post everything in color. This is why I put out the ad for a colorist.

But here's where the interesting part comes in: it's only making a real difference on Twitter!

My art now gets between 2 and 5 times the Twitter views as March (though I don't know how much of that is helped by the recent algorithm changes or me being more consistent with my retweeting). But here and on DA? It's about the same as March!

Now, the problem is that "about the same as March" was still pretty low. When Twitter "died" in October of last year, views here and on DA were instantly halved. If any of you are doing the math, that means coloring (and consistent retweeting) makes Twitter be on par with DA and FA now (1⁄10×5 = 1⁄2), but not on par with last year! (Unfortunately, I can't speak for other websites, since none of them track views, so I don't know if, say, Tumblr's algorithm is helping or hindering me.)

I'm trying to post links to my other socials again, since that helped back then, but, again, new job changes just how much time I have for that. But ultimately, I think I need to do one of three things:

1. Get on more sites (finally posting my Instagram backlog, for example, might be good since I know some people fled there)
2. Post timelapses again (Although I've recorded everything, posting video is a lot more work for me, and my current followers weren't too receptive of it, which I guess makes sense since time-lapses are sort of for a different audience ...which may be exactly what I need right now)
3. Buy the stupid blue checkmark (need I even begin on why this the very last resort?)

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It has come to my attention that what I feel like I'm getting the most practice on with this year's size drive is drawing hands!

The obvious (shall we say) "academic" purpose of the size drive was to practice bodies in perspective, but I really feel like what I'm actually learning with it is how to draw hands in a number of positions and angles I don't usually do. This is probably because the size drive does have a bit of a story behind it so I "have" to keep moving.

But this isn't the first time this happens:

The stated purpose of the Pokémon TF drive was to practice drawing backgrounds (and I guess it helped, they don't bother me that much now) but I feel like what I actually practiced were expressions!

The purpose of the original TF drive was to practice humans, but instead I practiced movement!

The purpose of the original size drive was to practice size ratios, but instead I practiced drawing my characters (turns out I wasn't as good at it as I thought!)

The purpose of the 150+ pokémon was (obviously) to learn how to draw pokémon, but instead I got a lot of practice on clothes!

None of this is bad "per se", it's just surprising!

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Someone asked me about my last TF drive and I looked back and I realized: there's a bunch of links I'd never created!

Specifically,
• I hadn't linked the pages to their color versions and back (which is particularly important since some of them are in "scraps")
• I hadn't linked the pages to the "non-updates" that had come out with them in case anyone wanted to read them (again, some non-updates are in scraps so this is necessary)

So now, it is possible to navigate from everything to everything within that story. I hope it was worth it

New journal / movie therapy / thoughts keeping me from concentrating
...but I'm keeping this one on tumblr because it turned out longer than expected

https://tumblr.com/frankhightower/7.....6/disneys-wish

Today's journal came out a bit longer than expected, so I made it it's own "story" submission. You can read it here:
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/55161961/

I've been meaning to write about this for a while now, but PayPal charitably reminded me of the $600 reporting threshold this morning (which will no longer require you to pay taxes, but still, wasn't originally planning on assigning neurons to that today) so it's as good a time as any.

I started seriously pursuing commissions in the summer of 2021 (you may remember I'd been talking before the pandemic about automating most of my badly-paying dayjob away to free up time for other pursuits, this was the point where I finally said "I've done it!"). The failure of the 2017 opening still weighed heavily on my mind, though, so I was pretty sure simply posting "hey, I'm open" and uploading 5 "samples" a week wasn't going to work. I tried to get an art stream set up since I remembered getting followers that way in 2014, but I could never get it to work.

So instead, I took to Discord. I've always been bad at keeping up with multiple forums, but I made an effort to participate in all of them. I was very casual about my commissions (since, you know, pandemic: I kinda needed the social interaction more ...and pandemic stimuluses were keeping me afloat) and sold a grand total of 2 commissions that way in the whole year.

Here came the first hard lesson: Do not give free samples of your work. People will always say "do you have a sample?" and since I was being asked for combinations I'd never done (such as, let's say, "cell-shaded and macro"), I'd always say "no, but I can make one", and then would go off to do just that. Several things can happen in that process:
• You take so long to produce the sample, the would-be commissioner loses interest
• They judge your sample as not good enough
• The free sample satisfies their "need" and they no longer want "the paid version"
(also, commissioners, don't ask "do you have a sample", look at the artist's gallery and talk to them about that; artists love gushing about their art!)

From here, I decided to be systematic about it: I was going to create a sample of every possible combination and put them on a price sheet (I don't recommend this, by the way). I'd long planned to get "volunteers" to appear on my price sheet, but by this point, the pandemic stimuli had stopped so I decided to sell the slots in a huge YCH.
To promote it, I started using Twitter ...I mean really use it. I'd never "gotten" Twitter much, but again, I made the effort and soon went from replying to 1 or 2 tweets every few days, to replying to 20 tweets a day.

And here I learned the second lesson: The online art space is an interconnected ecosystem. I only sold 2 slots on Twitter itself (people I knew saw my retweets), but by posting the slots sold on FA, DA and Tumblr, I was able to get more attention there. Then, by making reminders for FA and DA since they don't have a retweet option (and posting those reminders on Twitter), I was able to get more attention back on Twitter ...and the feedback loop continued until I had people asking for slots when I'd run out!
I kind of already knew this, to be honest. I'd always praised EA's pre-2007 strategy of "cross pollination" (releasing the "same" game on multiple platforms to motivate people from one platform to get the other) but seeing it firsthand was just next level.

I considered myself too busy during the Winter Quarter of 2022 (we work in quarters at my school) so, though I was still brimming with ideas, I wasn't posting anything.
...Then I noticed my friends on Twitter were depressed.
I mean, a lot of them were.
They needed me.
I'd been to therapy during the pandemic (and it bankrupted me so I knew not everyone could afford it) but it had given me the tools necessary to deal with it. I could tell they didn't have them. And one of those tools (which I was underusing) was "draw something every day".
So I started the "Free Hugs" series.
From a commercial standpoint, this was a great way to get "out there", since gift art is far more visible than the average twitter reply, but that was not the main reason to do it.

So let's call this the third lesson: Gifts are good. A gift is not a free sample, it is a labor of love. You wouldn't buy a gift for someone you don't know at all, and giving the gift doesn't weigh on your conscience as a waste of time in the same way as "the prospective commissioner never got back to me" does. Sometimes the receiver only responds with a like, and that's more than enough. Sometimes they'll comment show their followers in turn. But because you're not doing it for the attention, it's always a bonus.

What really changed things was something unexpected: I reached 150 followers on Twitter! I'd always planned that, if I reached 150, I would draw the 150 pokémon. I'd kind of resigned on the idea years ago because I'd "stopped growing"... and then it happened. I now had to put that plan into action! (and no, "celebrate milestones" isn't a lesson learned, I'll come back to this later)

Turning my daily drawing into "the next pokémon on the list" was a huge boost to my productivity (so long as I kept the list handy) and it contributed to the "ecosystem" positive feedback loop.
Let's call this the fourth lesson: Always have something to do. If you're ever "out of ideas", have something you can turn to that will allow you to keep posting. Something that doesn't stress you out (drawing Pokémon is a huge comfort for me, it's literally therapeutic). Something that doesn't require a lot of effort to decide what to do next. Something that (for all practical purposes) you could do forever.

And now, having a huge roster of pokémon under my belt, came the next turning point. I'd always considered black and white sketches to be "unfinished" art, but people were quite happy with them as they were. And with Pandemic payments stopping, I offered to "finish" them... as a commission.
Approximately one out of every ten people who received a pokémon sketch were willing to pay to see it "finished", which is the exact ratio taught in marketing classes.
This brings me to the fifth lesson: Direct marketing works (ha,ha, just kidding, please don't spam your followers). The fifth lesson is: Keep in touch with your follower base.
They already made the decision to follow you, they are clearly interested in what you have to offer. Make sure you talk to them, listen to them, study them individually, and yes, give them fan service (and I mean this literally: give them what they came for, not what a stereotype says they want).

After about a year of toil, my price sheet was ready (remember I said I don't advise making them like I did?) and I sold 2. and here I learned another hard lesson: Commissioners are creative people (they just lack the time, tools, or skill to do the art themselves)
This should be a good thing; what better person to work with as a creative, than a creative? The problem is that not many people are creative, so a broad "throw anything you want at me, the only limit is your imagination", only works with people who have unlimited imaginations. Not even lowering prices helps in this situation.
If you want to reach a larger audience, you need to do what most artists do and offer donation drives, YCHs and adopts. If you need ideas for these, celebrate holidays or milestones (told you I'd come back to it) but do it with intent, not out of obligation. Try to stay away from newsbites or trending topics as these will become dated very quickly (and you want the stuff people paid for to act as an ad).

So I launched a donation drive. I'd always been planning one for Macro March. This taught me the next lesson: People want to give you money!
This may come as a shock to many of you, but it's true. Your followers do like you that much. Give them opportunities to show it on their terms. And never fail to acknowledge it!

I soon after launched another huge YCH, got only 1 response, and learned the 8th hard lesson: Some months are just dead.
If you've ever wondered why no artist ever does X in the month of Y, this is why. People just disconnect from the internet at certain times of the year (and with the pandemic ending, doubly so!). Trying to get anyone to even see what you're doing at these times is literally shouting into the void.

By this time, my mother had lost her job, and her severance pay had run out. My family was financially in trouble. I went back to my list of pokémon, and people who said they'd be interested in paying to get it finished "later". Only 2 of them still did, which taught me two new hard lessons:
9: Buying art is an emotional endeavor. Once emotions subside, the push to put money on that particular piece is gone. This also means that art should always have emotion (and probably why so many people hate AI art for non-"it was made by AI" reasons)
10: People wait for their paycheck. Even if your followers may recognize your situation on the 23rd of the month, even if they want to give you money, they won't have any money to give until the 30th. But by that point, they may have forgotten (after all, what is the internet but a myriad of things trying to get your attention?) so you need to time your announcements considering this. Use that week for a personal project or try to cut back.

Things went very well for a while... but then there came the Death of Twitter. What do I mean by that? I track "views per followers" on my art tweets. I normally get 1 view for every follower, thanks to my carefully scheduled retweets. However, I've noticed a steady decline in that number since July (when the "rate limited" debacle happened). Starting at about the last week of September, it's been stuck at about 0.2 views for every follower. I doubt this is a matter of algorithm suppression, though, since I'm also seeing people I follow, post less. I conclude people really are spending less time on Twitter, which brings me to the final hard lesson: Don't put all your eggs in one basket, don't even put the majority of your eggs in one basket!
From the beginning, having many more followers on Twitter than on any other platform set off alarm bells in my head (and if it's been your situation, it should do so, for you, too!) The fear was not that Twitter, as a whole, would fail, it was that I could lose my account! I am happy with the fact that I currently only have about 50% more followers on Twitter than I do on FA (ideally the numbers would be equal, but since FA relies on people using "browse" and "search", that number is really hard to raise!)
To bring it full circle, cross-pollinate! Link your other accounts constantly. Anyone who's finding you for the first time in one platform should quickly be able to know if you're in any of the other platforms they use. This is how I've managed to survive the Twitter-pocalypse.

So those are my 12 hard lessons:
1. Do not give free samples of your work
2. The online art space is an interconnected ecosystem
3. Gifts are good
4. Always have something to do
5. Keep in touch with your follower base
6. Commissioners are creative people
7. People want to give you money!
8. Some months are just dead
9. Buying art is an emotional endeavor
10. People wait for their paycheck
11. Don't put all your eggs in one basket
12. Cross-pollinate!
They're all "easier said than done", but don't let anyone tell you that artists hate sharing their secrets!

And Merry Christmas.

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I'm too broke to celebrate Thanksgiving, but I am thankful for this year, and what a trip it's been!

• 27 people have commissioned
• a total of 55 art pieces, of which
• 20 were donation drives,
• 7 were YCHs, and
• 5 were adopts.

You've literally kept me fed!
(For comparison, last year I got 20 commissions total)

Interestingly, doing this analysis, I found my top commissioners are   Jespe and NezMog on Twitter who are practically tied in number of commissions and total dollar amount given!

Thank you all and Happy Thanksgiving

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