Hey everyone, I thought I’d tell everyone about my life at the moment or do a little journal entry just to vent a bit. I’m not much of a social person to be honest, I hardly go out anymore and i’m getting increasingly reserved. I apologise if sometimes my responses seem abrupt and blunt but that’s just me, for me to talk in length about personal stuff is so unlike me it’s uncomfortable, haha.

So yeah, as I may have dropped the news earlier, I’ll be briefly working full time at my little day job for a month. They kind of told me out of the blue and there was no getting out of it. Not only that, but i’ll be working at a store that’s a bit longer to reach to on the drive. To alleviate the expense of travel, I will be staying with Sama who lives closer to the location, so i’ll be effectively away from my computer and any work I’ll do will be scarce.

This sort of thing couldn’t have happened at a worse time, I was so close to getting my backlog of commissions done that the end seemed to be in sight.

My plan was to get these all done in October and resume with SS4 in November and finally initiate a patreon campaign, so I can afford a concrete update schedule. It will have to wait.

It’s just a bit crushing to be honest, I really enjoy doing SS now. In fact it’s my dream come true to be with where I am with this right now. Ever since I was 15 (i’m 25 now) I decided I wanted to draw stories. My friends got me into 8-bit theater back in the day and I was hooked. We all read it and were captivated into it’s plot well into 800+ pages of it. I wanted to do the same thing, I wanted people to read my stories and care about what happened in them. I went on to read other stories like Go Girly, Megatokyo (up to a certain point) Dan Kim’s works and various others. I saw a sea of amateur artists and writers who all wanted to make a name for themselves, and i wanted that as well! Back then I didn’t have a pc and I would just have to read anything I liked in college computers and my friends ones. Embarrassingly enough, it wasn’t until I got my first job at 19 that I could afford a pc and internet with it. I then got a tablet and tried to work on my art skills.

I wasn’t that good at drawing, So I never really committed to the idea that much. I treated comics as a one off hobby I would sometimes do.

Then I read Homestuck, I mean say what you will about it now, but when I read it. It totally changed how I perceived comics as a medium. I mean Hussie might not be the best artist either, but what struck me (heh) was his work ethic. He updated like multiple days in a week and often with large chunks of content or even animations. He compelled his readers through his sheer tenacity of drive. He treated his story with utmost respect it deserved.

I wanted to be that.

I then started Ripchord, a comic about video games and time travel. I updated it fairly regularly and treated my update schedule as ironclad. I even went so far to do attempt animations to match Hussie. Whilst doing the comic I decided to branch out and reach other artists. Vicky bit was also doing a comic with me at the time and we both were very enthusiastic about what we were doing. I met with Brad and Leslie who were just starting Blaster nation at the time and found them to be amazing friends who i’ll always cherish.

We went about trying to get our comics popular on comic threads on /co/. That was a probably ‘meh’ reception. I understand that the majority of 4chan is comprised of trolls and such, but personally, I valued the opinions of them. The anonymity meant that they could be as brutally honest as they’d like about something, often times they were. My comic never really made an impression. The art was passable and the story might have come off as too presumptuous, it wasn’t anything memorable. I had to convince a lot of my friends to read it (even the guy who it was directly based on, didn’t really read it.). Eventually I gave up on it.

I think about this time I also got dismissed from a job and was looking for work, so I had to focus on that more. I got a job at a bar, I only worked there part time. It was boring but it put some money in my pocket…

So…it was about this time I started drawing porn…

I wandered into a /v/ thread based on the endermen reveal in minecraft. The thread quickly turned into a drawfag congregation for the purpose of drawing porn of these things. I harmlessly joined in. It was hilarious, I laughed as we drew box headed dark futa’s and such. Through that I met Yowesepth who was an artist on FA. I remembered being /co/ in a thread where they wondered how artists could make a living. One of the most feasible options was to porn, and the best place to do that was FA.

I joined FA on august 3rd, 2011. I began my work by simply doing was a drawfag would do, and ask for requests. I then drew some Furry stuff and was soon on my way. I didn’t really have much reservations for what I wouldn’t draw so the transition into this was alarmingly sudden. I then began doing adult sequences. These drew even more attention and I soon got my first commission. I didn’t charge that much but I was just overjoyed that

Someone,

wanted,

to pay for my art.

I eagerly obliged and then readily worked on it. Then the amount of commissions started to steadily pour through. I thought, ‘wow, someday I can live off this.’ It was a really exciting time. I was doing something I thought I was good at and I was getting payed for it. Not only that, When I did my own stories. People were eagerly reading those to. They wanted to see what happened next in my succubus series.

It was overwhelming.Then soon enough. I decided to work on a project that would be my career defining idea.

Shapeshifter started on FA on april 26th, 2012.

It was an interesting experiment into narrative, with TF themes. It proved to be rather popular and just exploded from there. Someone was uploading it to g.e hentai and everyone saw it there. tons of people sent me email saying that they were hooked on the story and it’s characters. I even saw it being posted and discussed on /d/, That’s when I was aware I had made something decent.

Shapeshifter just snowballed from there.

Unfortunately while working on SS, I had also become unemployed once again. Though this barely stopped me from working on it. Through support from fans, and commission rates being amazing. I was doing pretty ok.

The problem was that I was becoming distant and too involved in my work. My commission rates are usually pretty cheap because I didn’t feel comfortable with charging more. This meant I would do a lot of work for essentially little pay.

When doing comics I charged around 20-30 dollars per page. Fully colored and no limitations on what would be happening in the panels. This drove me into a bit of despair with the work load I had gotten myself into.

The one alternative I was looking into was trying to get signed on with Slipshine and maybe going up to a more feasible income. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out so well for various reasons.

I decided to get back into a day job and have a bit more stability in my life.

I just realised I have to go to work soon. I’ll wrap this up quickly.

So essentially I want to use Patreon, or some similiair method to support this dream of mine. If I can make a feasible off of Shapeshifter, I can do it full time and essentially live that dream.

That’s what I want to do before the year is through.

After this month, I’ll be able to resume this path.

Thank you for reading all of this and as always, thank you for following me.

-Connor Hall

Refer to the commission picture on my profile for details.
I've got 4-5 slots open.

Thanks for you time :)

http://www.livestream.com/lemonystream