Howdy! Every 6 months I do an evaluation of my prices and commission options and see what needs to be changed. Along with that, I go through and update example artwork and website stuff. This time however it will be a significant change from my past evaluations. I wanted to make this journal to run through what is planned and why!

For those that follow me just to see the pretty artwork and pinups, this shouldn't change much of my personal artwork at all. I appreciate you following my work <3

SO BIGGEST CHANGE FIRST. I am abandoning the "always open" commission type in favor of opening up slots/rounds of commissions when I am good to work. This is not a light choice for me, since I have had the always open style since I first opened for commissions years ago. One reason for this is, I HATE advertising my work. I have absolutely no issue with seeing other artists casually reminding people that their commissions are open. But for me, and how I work, I always feel bad when I make posts about my commissions being open or try to remind people of specials. I have an ad running on Furaffinity, yet I have never been able to get over that hurdle fully. This swap is intended to just casually remind people that they can get artwork from me when I make journal/image posts about a new round of slots opening up. And to me it won't feel like I am hammering people with annoying reminders.

This change will actually allow me more freedom than I had before. With the always open style, its harder to totally renovate the commission options. Often I would have to redraw the whole set of images when I wanted to update anything (because I am picky like that). With slots I can update the images each round with examples of previous work. Along with that I can much much much more easily add new items and specials as I feel the desire to work on them, rather than going through a large amount of work to hard-bake it into my price sheet just to not want to work on it later. Notice how I never had super unique things in my price sheet? That's why! With the new system I plan on having YCH's, Animations, Icons, Telegram sets, Doodles, and much more unique flavor-of-the-week style things too. And for those that have been around a while may know, when I have an inkling to try a new thing I will basically do a super discounted example of a character I know well. So regulars might see some benefit to this too :P

The last major reason for this change is that I suspect I will be getting more "professional" artwork jobs this year. I am going to be working on a children's book starting in January which I will be dedicating a bit of time to. The last thing I want is for people to be waiting on their commissions because I am doing work they may never see around here. This will allow me to open up spots that I know I can get done in a timely fashion.

Okay, that was a lot. I promise we are almost done. This year I very very much want to improve myself as well. I sat down and did a piece that I was super proud of and I spent a ton of time on. But compared to my other "regular" artwork it wasn't significantly different. It was technically improved, and it looks much nicer, but I know I can do better. I want to make really nice stuff, and I can if I just have a bit more practice in some things. So this year will be a lot of practice sketching (which I am far behind on), anatomical studies (which I haven't done in years), and breaking my comfort zone (which I need to do more). Again, I don't know how much of those things will be actually posted. But you will be seeing the change in my work, I promise you!

And does anyone know where I can open an online store? I want to have a place I can have stickers, prints, and other merchendice for sale. Maybe even books or art collections if I choose to. But at the same time I want to sell originals that I have had around and want to go to good homes. So far the sites I've found are one or the either. I either cannot have singular-sales or I would have to manually print and ship everything myself through a company that will take a cut. With how it stands right now, I might be making a new section of my website to be a store and just make and ship everything. Which would be fun, but I would be much pickier about what I can sell since I will have an up-front cost of making a new item. I understand that every option no matter what will have its drawbacks. But I feel like I should look at online store options a bit more before I decide. If you have any suggestions I would be happy to hear them. Bonus points if you have worked with them in the past and would still recommend them :)

This was a lot to read, I know! But thanks for sticking through it. I have a lot of work before the 1st when this all goes live haha. I hope you have a wonderful day today!