This year marks the ten year anniversary of Fox Saliant Studios (sometime in October) and I’ve been reflecting lately on just what I want and need to do.

I’ve been working at cleaning things up and getting serious about my work. I want to get paid what I’m worth, generally, work hard, and get done the projects I want to get done without getting behind or having to catch up on things.

One of my main goals (if not my main goal) is to make a proper living wage this year. This means being above the poverty line for my state and being able to afford rent and the bills easily.

Now, the poverty line right now in the US (and in Georgia) is $11,770 per year, which means that in order to meet that, I have to make $980 a month, or $245 a week.

A few things factor into this, of course.

I currently make about $2000 to $4500 a semester off of student loans. I have a Pell Grant that pays for about 80% of my tuition, and the loans that cover books, food at school and basically my rent for the period of time that I’m in school. Unfortunately these are loans, and I’m looking at about $35k of debt by the time I get out of school.
I currently have a tip-jar Patreon (which you can find below) that gives me about $68 a month. That’s about enough to pay my gas bill and it’s been a big help to everyone who’s pitched in. If you are interested, please stop by. The only cash amount required is $1 and as the year progresses I will try to post more on it. It’s mainly just a show of support.

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/foxsaliant?ty=h

There are lifetime rewards on it, which I have not been able to get to because of my work load currently. I will, but I’ve been having to address my commissions nearly constantly for several months and it’s gotten to a point where I have been pushing everything aside to get those done. I had hoped to complete them before the new year, but that didn’t happen.

The three things I have left to do are a three-page comic for @fernindt, the coloring of @askscarletrose and Shades’ beach picture, and a picture for @terdburgler, which will all be prioritized starting next week.
Once those are finished, I will open up slots for commissions again. There will be actual, definable slots that will be visible on my website. I will announce here (and on my galleries) when one is open so if you want it, please contact me. I will start with three, and add or reduce as necessary.

I am also introducing a two-week turn around for smaller pictures. It’s my goal to be able to knuckle down and get the smaller works done within two weeks of getting them. This working for months on a picture has got to stop and I think that this will encourage a more steady stream of income
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I will continue the Sketch on the Spot on Fridays, but I will be making some rule changes after the current set are finished, so there might be a week where I’m just cleaning things up soon, depending on how things are done. I might just enact the new rules one week, instead, but I have to decide for certain what the changes will be and if they’ll affect things largely or not. Either way, they will be posted on here and on my site when that time comes. That will happen this month.

Now I generally get on average $40 to $60 a week for each SotS stream. That means on a good week I have about $185 to make up. Knock $15 per week off of that for the patreon and that’s $160 a week that I need to make up via commissions.

Now you know where this is heading. I have plenty of people wanting to commission me. That’s never been the problem. It’s that I’m always working on something and not making enough. On average, for the amount I work, I tend to make between $4 to $6 per hour, per job. This is not ideal. It means I’m selling myself short, and even if I do TRY to estimate for $10 an hour, I still put far more into the picture than I should. But I don’t want to reduce my quality (outside of the Sketch on the Spot stuff, which are supposed to be silly Friday impulse buys anyway.)
So I’m raising prices (you all knew this were coming, and I’ve been talking about this for a couple months, so my regulars know anyway.) I haven’t finalized anything, but examples and amounts will be up on my site once I’ve completely finished.

(If you want to get an idea of what they will be like, however this is a tentative document that will be on my site. It still needs corrections, of course, but you will be able to fill out this form when you first want to commission me, and it has all the information you’ll need on it. It has both my e-mail addresses, a table of my prices, and a bunch of information on the various charges and agreements I have. It’s kind of heavy legalese-wise, but this will be on my site and you’re always free to ask me if you have any questions. Again, this is a work in progress.)

Doc: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4xgRn-EQRJma3E0S25lMmNYWGs/view?usp=sharing

Hopefully, the higher turn around due to me knuckling down, along with the higher prices edging the supply/demand curve in the right direction will result in more time and more money for me overall.

This also means I’ll get more time to work on my projects. I want to finish the first chapter of Various Happenings soon (which has been sidelined due to commissions, again) and I want to get to work on the Various Happenings visual novel/adventure game that’s been in the works for almost two years.

I’ve got some help, but artwise it’s all on me and I need more time, quite simply. So every bit of support (either via patreon, buying commissions, or just being understanding of what’s going on) helps me greatly.

So this year I want to establish Fox Saliant Studios, in all seriousness. I want to put my projects out front and actually show some of the stuff that I’ve been kicking around for ten years. So everything I’m doing is going to further that direction.

I know it was a long spiel, but I hope it was informative and I hope you’re having a happy New Year! Let’s make this a great 2016!