Current State of Things

Hey everyone, so I feel like I've been falling behind more than usual this month and I wanted to make a post just to keep things open and transparent with all of you. tl;dr at the bottom if you don't want the full breakdown

So this year we have been putting out more content than either out first or second year. We went from 2 comics a month with bonuses here or there in year 1, to 2 comics and 2 sequences a month our second, and now this year 2 comics, 4 sequences and at least one other post per month.

Its a lot and I felt I could handle it, and for the most part I think I have done an okay job. However there were two pretty big oversights on my part. In previous years shading was done mostly on an 'as-needed' basis. We changed the final rendering artist a couple times and there were definitely months where shading was delayed but for the most part it worked out.

However this year the near doubling in content thanks to the sequences and the more frequent long-comics; combined with one of my main shading partners AND one of my backups moving on to other things the entire pipeline for the final versions has been threatening to collapse. This became clear to me a few months ago and I knew I had to take this part of the Patreon more seriously and set up a more permanent partner with a schedule.

Unfortunately that process has been slow. I want the Shaded versions to be worth it, I want them to be a noticeable improvement over the flat colors. And so I've been doing trial runs with almost a dozen artists the past few months and unlucky for me its been a slow, slow process. Between shaders who just don't meet my standards to ones who do but who are way too slow to actually work within the 63rd Rule's schedule its just been a grind, and unfortunately this takes time and energy away from the rest of the process like planning, coloring, writing, etc.

And this stress combined with real life stuff just makes it difficult to be creative and to deliver quality work on time, especially when I know no matter how hard I work the final version is still up in the air.

The good news is I think I finally nailed down at least one partner, ideally I'd have two so the entire thing isn't dependent on one person but for now one is better than 6 with completely random schedules. I will pour the rest of my energy this month into getting out the last pieces of content promised on the schedule and hopefully we'll see a turn around in things next month

I thank everyone for their patience, I hope you will continue to support us in this turbulent period

tl;dr: We haven't had a dedicated Shading Artist since March and the quest to find a new one has been eating up a ton of my time and energy but we have a new one finally.