Erm uh HELLO. It's been a while.

Sorry for the prolonged silence. I burnt out pretty bad, and wasn't able to keep up with the amount of work I needed to do to pay bills and so on, so I got a part time job. Then that turned into a full time job! Then a lot of stuff happened. I was sick a lot, my dog passed away from cancer in April. The world is on fire. You know. Typical stuff. =_=;

Lately I have been thinking about returning to adopts. I miss making them, I had a lot of fun designing characters and making extra art + outfits for them and etc. I figured they would be a good way to make some extra spending money so I can treat myself now and then, or be able to pay things off faster. Other than the burnout, there were a lot of things that caused me to stop. A lot of that was the desire to make cheap, cute designs so that people with less money could still have cute OCs, but having to come up with enough at one time to try and make a bill payment was stressing me out. That's one of the reasons I had to start saying no to holds and payment plans because I was making so much for so little and not paying my bills on time (or at all) and I just got so tired. People did buy my more expensive adopts, and I gained a couple frequent customers who like my stuff and sometimes commission new designs, art and edits, but I also fell behind on that (TY for being so patient with me ilu ♥) because of the burnout and depression.

Another thing that contributed, and I feel silly complaining about it... was people deleting the art I'd made for the OC after the characters re-sold. It kinda ruined my confidence. I'm not saying I'm a top-tier artist. I don't want to be a popular artist and I don't know that I'll ever be as good as some of the more popular artists in the community. But I don't think my art is BAD. Sure, I could do better, get better, practice more and improve over time. And I understand, if you don't like the art that comes with the OC and it doesn't really vibe with the aesthetic or the story or THE vibe, I get it. But I dunno. There was just something about it that was really demoralizing. That and getting scammed, I did a HUGE reference commission for someone and made some really cute extra art that I, personally, was very proud of. But I made the mistake of sending them the files before asking for the second half of the payment and then they pretended they sent it even though I kept insisting they didn't, and I eventually just gave up. Another person completely recolored an adopt I sold for $25 and sold it to someone else for $150. I didn't say anything because in my TOS I say that it's fine to do whatever you want with them, so I didn't want to seem like a hypocrite. But idk it just really bothered me for some reason. And people refusing to credit me properly... Maybe all of this just comes with the territory, the adoptable community (at least on TH) can be a a little unpredictable and be a learning curve for inexperienced artists like myself. The last thing is all of my avenues for advertising my adopts fell apart. Servers I was in. The adopt tag bot account on X stopped working. DA fully supports AI which really killed my drive and passion because I was on DA when it first opened and its totally different now. There was just a LOT going on that contributed to me crashing and burning.

If I make adopts again, I might be a little stricter with my TOS or change the rules a little. I still want to make original art adopts but I feel so intimidated by the amount of energy it takes that I'd just much rather use bases like I'm playing with paper dolls until I make something I'm happy with and that maybe someone else connects with. I might ask for an extra fee if someone wants to use my designs commercially. I'd still make cheaper cute things, but I'd want to put in more effort and make big things that maybe cost more and help me out more, financially. But everyone is struggling right now too, so maybe it's not a good time overall. I've definitely pulled back on my collecting lol.

So yeah. I'm not saying I will or I won't make stuff again, but I felt a little guilty having abandoned this and I wanted to provide an update. If you read it, thank you ♥

I hope you all are doing well, thank you for buying the stuff I made even if you didn't connect with them for very long, you liked them enough and saw the potential and I'm happy with that! I'm super grateful!

Please take care of yourselves ♥ I'm not online as much as I used to be either (social media is a whole other animal I won't talk about right now, but if you know you know) but if I set up shop anywhere else, I'll be sure to post it here and let you guys know!

Thank you so much again!

Kira/Ajahli ♥