Christmas is in a few days and New Years follows in less than a week. There are some festive pieces that need to be done by those days, including some commission works so I will make sure all of them get done before then. However, this does mean I have to push some pieces back including those I already sent out WIP if they don't have deadline set by those holidays.

And during the holidays, I will also be doing some stuff with my family which means I won't be able to get as much work done as I want to.

I apologize for the inconvenience. After the holiday, I will be able to pick up the paces again and I will make sure to get all the updates sent out asap so there won't be anymore delay.

Can we push it and New Year back by a week? I have so many pieces on deadline for these 2 it's killllling me.

Remember that comic project that died ages ago where I was just experimenting with stuff here and there? I've been having plans for a while to revisit it at some point and see how far it can go this time with some of the new experiences I pick up to alter how I approach the project.

One of the biggest mistakes was really underestimating how much work it actually took to finish a chapter that it became too difficult to work on. If I reboot it though, it will probably be a light novel this time with pictures every few pages to accompany the writing instead. Still gotta decide what I want to do about it and how it will affect all the flow of everything else but I guess we'll see in a few months. Might have to try and dabble in some concept art first though to help me visualize the environment better.

As mentioned in the May's commission sheet and the current commission sheet, I have plan to increase the price. This journal is supposed to be posted earlier but the slots are filled quite fast so I decide to wait a bit to focus on working first.

8 months ago, I announced that the price would be going up because of a Paypal policy change in Thailand, taking more cuts and taking a hit to the income. Fortunately, the whole plan got knocked back and they're still deciding on what to do (likely in order to retain users) so I am able to ditch the plan for a price bump. This means I am still not a CEO of a furry art company though which is a tragedy and I already have a sign and a seal of approval and everything made.

Unfortunately, the global economy isn't really doing well and the price for everything is going up, especially food and bills. I actually plan on having a price bump a few months back to keep up with the inflation rate as the bills and food are slowly overtaking the portion I put aside for some monthly luxury spending (better meal/buying new games) and actually creeping into my saving. The other choices is to get even more pieces done per month but that's really difficult to do so considering the amount I already upload each month.

But if the price is going up, the only way to really justify it for me is to also have the quality if the piece go up so I hold back on that for the past two months to learn some new tricks and doing lineart again and a lot of people seem to take notice as I'm getting more favs and likes in general across the sites I use. The tips I have been getting from commissions are also really helpful to cover for the growing cost and I very thankful for those.

Now that I am more confident about the quality, the price will be going up starting with July when a new sheet is uploaded. The overall price will be expected to go up by about 20-25% in general especially for bust/waistdown piece with a background.

For those who missed their change to get a piece this month as the slots have now been filled. Depending on how fast I am able to get pieces done, I will be able to squeeze in a few extra slots (expected is 1 extra slot for every 2-3 finished piece from the queue slots) until the final date is reached so keep a look out for that when I upload a recently finished comm piece.

Paypal recently released emails all over to Thai non-business account users that they will push the planned relaunch back. March 7th is the date they plan on having all non-business account be restricted but that will no longer be carried out.

They still plan on going through with the changes later some time this year but a month or so extra can be massive for people still having issues starting their own LLC. I have my (new) company sign and seal of approval made though so when the time comes, I don't have to worry about those anymore. I will just carry the required amount of payment on me at all time so I can go be a CEO whenever and start flexing on people.

But until then, I can still continue using paypal no problemo. Also, because personal-account is still usable and I don't have to deal with VAT and other extra fees yet, I'm also happy to say the planned price bump to cover for the extra cost will also be put on hold until Paypal release a new official deadline.

Yeah that lasted for a day before I am notified of ANOTHER recent policy update with Paypal. Apparently just being a business owner is no longer good enough and it is the worst case scenario as described to me by the person I contact to set up my business in the first place.

According to the most recent Paypal policy update, which apparently happened right before I got my business recognized by the local government, I actually have to be a Corpo now to be accepted by Paypal. That really explains why Paypal gave everyone a 2 weeks extension on the deadline all of a sudden. I also contact Paypal directly to confirm this and they pretty much say that even old business account will be killed if it isn't owned by a Corpo. This comes with a rather annoying procedure, paper work and hefty fee so there's a chance I won't be able to pull it off before Paypal kills me but I have been in contact with my advisor to try and get through this asap.

On the bright side, if this does go smoothly, I will obtain my title as a CEO of Ellezard Co. or something (name's pending and being registered) and I can start flexing on people with that.

I'm still super salty about having to make a sign for a digital art store though.

https://i.imgur.com/1S5fnZp.png

Update: According to the advisor, LTD/Limited Partnership will also make do which makes it way more accessible as I just need to chain another person to my business so fortunately I have that covered. Now the hard part is figuring out what's the biggest flex title I can use.

Good news!

Regarding the paypal issue I posted about before, my art career as a commissioner is now recognized as an official business by the Thai government so I can actually sign up for an official business account and not have my account killed after March. Paypal will remain usable.

Bad news!

Because I am now recognized as an official business and with how digital banking on Paypal here is still going to come to an end (Automatic withdrawal), I can no longer work my way around the Thailand version of the IRS and they will now start charging me for existing as a business.

So unfortunately I will have to increase my price to cover for all the fees I will have to be paying as I last mentioned in the paypal journal. This journal is pretty much a 2 month notice that I will have to bump the price up by roughly 15-20% starting in APRIL. Feb and March Commy will still use the same price when I open em up.

So I was in kind of a slump the past few days, as some of you might figure from the last journal. Taking a break the last few days to experiment around, I finally understand why.

You know how they say, you can't really spot the cellphone tower hidden among the trees until it is pointed to you. When you do see it, you can no longer unsee it will start to spot it in plain sight. The same can be say about art. The more I learn, the more I pay attention to the tiny details and I always tackle them when I draw a new piece.

Recently though, I have been working on pieces I have left hanging around for weeks or even months. While I may not notice them right away, the actual sketch and the foundation of the piece is no longer as strong anymore. When I start refining the piece and clearing up the stuff, the blatant mistake start to stand out and the whole thing is like a spaghetti coding where I try to fix one obvious bugs and suddenly the next 10 appear out of nowhere. In the end, the piece comes out feeling like it takes way more effort than it should for less than stellar quality.

Working on stuff recently though, I try to redraw pieces from zero again instead and it helps me realize where I have been going wrong especially with how I have been working on commission where I sometime work on too many pieces at once in a set with a bunch of sketches handed out. I work best when I actually try to finish stuff right away instead of leaving them hanging around and that's how I should go back to approaching my art.

And that's how I will work now. I won't just send updates to 5-6 people at once anymore and instead try to finish people piece as they come and go like a more active artist I should have been and if it's clear than redrawing the whole thing from scratch is going to be the better for the piece, then I should do it.

I will have the date for my commission session extended to cover for the days I take to tackle this issue and if I reply back with a sketch a bit slowly, it's because I try to finish piece from person to person now. I will also try to have the queue order be more accurate when I update it.

As some of you might notice, my gallery and note reply speed isn't as high as the past few months. To keep it short, I'm in one of those spots artist get when they have no idea what to do and nothing feels right.

Not really an art block because I can still draw stuff but it's more like I notice that the quality of stuff I'm drawing fluctuate a bit too much for my liking. Pieces are taking way longer to finish because the look I'm going for suddenly change the next day on the sketch. I pretty much have to get lucky with me randomly adjusting stuff until it feels like "yeah that's perfect" before I can move on.

Honestly, it feels like I'm currently at the crossroad where stuff I clearly like that I have been trying to pick up is clashing with how I always work and my desire to move out of my comfort zone is hurting my perspective. I have to pick just how I will move forward when it comes to developing my art style. I have been looking at a lot of artbook recently (since I pretty much grab all of them on the games I really like) and there's a lot of stuff I wish to work on.

So yeh, it might take a bit of time before I can get back on track again. I will still try to get all the current commy order done though but I won't really be able to rush any of them out as I will need to take some sweet ass time on them for the sake of quality.

If you follow any Thai artists especially on Twitter, you probably hear this by now. To keep this short and avoid being too political, I will skip right into the meat of everything and the stuff that I need to bring up.

Because of the country policy and regulation, Thailand is pretty much borderline banned by Paypal starting February 2022.

Paypal will pretty much no longer allow any non-business account from Thailand to sign up and use it as a digital banking site. The only way to retain their access to paypal is to sign up with the government as an actual business group and start paying a crap ton of fees as part of the regulation.

This pretty much decimate the freelance market in Thailand especially artists that can barely break the minimum wage to even be qualified for it. For those that are qualified, all the payment will now be tracked and heavily taxed. Thai Paypal users will now have to pay (1) The paypal transaction fee, (2) the currency conversion fee when withdrawing the money, (3) The 7% VAT for receiving the money and now that the payment is being tracked, the artists will also have to include them into the tax form.

At the moment, only (1) is required and some artists already have the commissioners cover it, (2) can be ignored if the user just buy stuff online with currency like USD if they leave it on paypal and (3) doesn't exist. With (2) and (3) added on top, you will likely see Thai artists charging 25-30% more starting February 2022.

And I really don't want that so I'm trying to look for alternatives

I have been looking into alternatives so that I don't need to suddenly bump up all my prices like that in order to avoid taking a hit to my income and the amount of choice is rather limited. Etsy just kicked Thailand out of the accepted country list following this announcement so that's off the list and stuff like Stripe isn't available here. After looking around and reading the discussion happening here, I feel like the best options I can think of are the followings.

A) Follow the regulation to keep my Paypal alive

Paypal is still the most popular option. However, for payment done through Paypal, I will have to include all fees on top like everyone else and

B)Start accepting money through Wise direct transfer as well

Direct-to-bank wire transfer on Wise is an option that I use with some where Paypal isn't allowed. I hear it's not that popular as an option for some due to lack of consumer protection but with my record so far, I hope it will be enough to put me on your trusted list. If paid through Wise instead, I don't have to deal with the 7% VAT and the fee in general is lower than Paypal so the worst I have to cover for is the amount of tax on my income as they will now see how much I really earn from online commission as I can't just buy Steam game through Paypal money anymore.

I hear some bring up Payoneer as an option and I will make an account just in case but considering that it's an online banking like Paypal, I expect it to suffer the same fate.

If you know any other good alternatives, do bring it up and maybe share this to any other Thai artists you know so the art market here doesn't collapse just because it's February 18th.

Just a bit to mention about upcoming price changes that you see happening every year or two . This time, it's mainly around background and stuff.

For the past few months, I have been picking up some tricks and lessons and those that watch my stream might notice how much longer it takes to finish a piece now, easily a few hours added for a simpler one. Because of this, I'm slightly raising the base price.

The main changes will be around how I usually do background pricing though. At the moment, I don't really factor in the background price that much because I am awful at estimating it so I usually just slap 5-15 on it and call it a day even on the more detailed ones. There might be some more changes based on currency value (I usually price my stuff in THB already before converting it to USD for payment).

But with background being a lot more common, I'm getting more used to estimating how long they usually take now. To make it easier to estimate for both side, I will likely go with a tier system of 0 (gradient stuff) to prolly 30 but most of the time, the price will not be as high as it depends on what is being drawn. Say you go for a $30 tier but your characters are covering over half of it, it will be reduced to like $15-20 instead depending on what are shown and how hard it is to blend the characters into the setting.

So overall

Background will have a tier system instead for a base price with examples for references.

Base price changes are

Headshot will remain at 25 / 35

Bustshot will be going up to 30 / 45

Waistdown will be going up to 40 / 60

Reference sheet will be going up to 75

Sticker and chibi will have a more proper complexity fees

This will take effect next month (July) so there's no worry about it with this month stuff.

The Twink Demon made me play it for 2 whole days and to get his mod :v

Back to work again now. (Hopefully since some of my theory crafting doesn't work due to bugs so I have a reason to wait)

April is finally a thing for real so it's time to get to work. sob sob.

My team only cringed a few time working on this one. The sound team worked really hard for it so listen well :v

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpH6YVIK2Lw

Time to follow the tradition and avoid uploading anything big until the 2nd I guess.

Woo. Some of the stuff will be on Twitter only unless FA allow uploading video file or something which it probably doesn't.

It's a rather big one but the amount of progress has been really good. When it's done I will be able to post an update of it every day so here's hoping I don't mess it up then.

Until then I will upload the 2 comm pieces I haven't submitted yet.

Haven't been drawing personals for a long time already so I plan on taking a month to do them or at least relax a lot.

Hell yeah SSD. Assembling went almost perfectly with nothing exploding.

It's finally 12/12 (here) where stuff go on sale again (though not that much) where I finally get to order a budget upgrade to my budget PC.

So assuming nothing goes wrong, I will finally be able to stream again soon as my PC should stop stuttering constantly.

At first, I was gonna stop accepting orders on the 20th but since I'm getting really close to the much needed budget to upgrade my Budget PC V1 to Budget PC V2 (I'm not grabbing any fancy GPU), I figure I might as well keep going while I am still in my productive phase.

So while I am still able to keep making a piece every 1 or 2 days, I might as well keep the workflow going for as long as I can. Any excess I end up earning will just be reserved for spare parts and bills I have to pay in the next month or two.

So while the final date is not settled, I will probably go all the way to mid December and if there aren't more pending orders, maybe take that time to make a seasonal Christmas piece or even a YCH (which I highly doubt)

Gawd it's so exhausting. Legs are sore from walking around and I wish I can get me a good tub of hot water to soak my feet in.

Only recently I decided to check the Kofi page and just saw that it was actually used twice. I had completely forgotten about it and never turned on the notification.

So let me at least get this chance to thank  Extani and  Altairaeon for the coffees and for making my days.

Refer to this journal for the info.

https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/9440178/

Lots of order still in the queue with some still waiting for the prelim.

So I'm writing this journal to clarify first I'm just going with the simpler and easier stuff I can finish in 1 or 2 long drawing session. When those are all of the way, I will start sending out updates and work on each piece in rotation so I can get them done as soon as possible.

Apology for the waits.