So this finally happened ...

Welcome everyone!

After debating with myself for an eternity (almost seven years since I first proposed the idea), I finally caved and decided to make a patreon.

Truth be told, it's not an entirely voluntary choice. This being my third year of business, the tax collector came around and, looking at my books, asked for a bigger cut of what I earn. Now, that's an oversimplification of what actually happened, but I'm not going to bore you to death with that. I still need you to be supporting me, after all :b~

Since I didn't want to plaster the intro page with a war and peace -length text about what's going to be happening here, I suppose I'll seize the opportunity to explain in a little more detail what I had envisioned for this little project, what to expect when and what I would like to be doing presently and in the future.

Firstly, I'll restate I'm not planning on doing a paywall. I despise the idea of "hiding" my art behind paid access systems. Having said that, there is content that will be patreon exclusive, at least from my side - I obviously can't stop you from uploading the stuff to whatever share-sites are being used today - I'd just appreciate if you didn't. However, just like Beyoncé, I have no power on the internet, beyond what content I put out myself :b

A lot of the sketch and doodle material I'll share will likely never see a public upload, partly because a lot of it is truly just unfinished things that never went anywhere, but also because many upload sites don't support multiple images per publication and assembling all of them into some kind of collage is time consuming and I'd much rather spend that time creating more art than fiddling with the old*.

Finished artwork will be public and here simultaneously, but I already said that. You get the big versions and the .psd files. However, I can't host all the .psd files for all the images I've produced at the same time, because neither Gdrive, nor dropbox, allow for that kind of upload space, even in .rar archives.

Instead, I'll keep a catalogue of artwork on the dropbox, which relates to what uploads are currently happening. Since I have a backlog of material to work with, I decided to start with artwork from two years back (correlating with when I got my new tablet), because quality has been relatively consistent since then. As I approach currently produced artwork, I'll cycle out the old .rar files for the new ones - if you join the 10$ at a later date and want a specific .psd file that was shared here at an earlier time, dm me and I'll see to get it to you.

This goes for other artwork aswell though. If there is an interest, I can reach further back into the archives and pull sketches and doodles (and larger images) from before 2020. I just wont have to go through a special upload routine for it, since images can be hosted on patreon, whereas file archives cannot. We'll see about that going forward.

Speaking of going forward - what about future content?

Well, here's what I was thinking. Once I've thrown up all the backlog, I'll just upload what I produce during a given time. The hi-res versions and .psd files I figured I'd upload whenever there is a public upload (much like how the Forest Tails patreon works), whereas my doodles, sketches, studies and WIPs would trickle on here as they get produced, so there will likely be a consistent stream of content.

Future content will also not be exclusively anthropomorphic in nature. Mind you that's never been the case anyway, but given some of the the projects I'm hoping to pick up, I figured I'd warn you in advance that there will be naked apes in the mix too :b

The intro text mentioned personal projects concerned with story telling. There's a few ideas up my sleeve, but the one I would mostly hope to get to is my sci-fi universe - you know, the one with big ears? I know there's been plenty of interest in lore and general content with the si'itians and other races of that setting, which I have been neglecting these last couple of years - something I hope to rectify soon.

Forest Tails will obviously continue, though I know my wider following doesn't have as much of an interest in that particular story, so I'll keep it as a separate thing for now. If this patreon does become self-sufficient, maybe I'll look into folding the two into one to simplify, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

There's plenty of other potential project ideas to draw from too though and I figure those can be taken into consideration with time. Once I've settled in and there's a steady stream of new artwork being uploaded, polls for some content choices could be a thing. After all, this is the era of audience-to-artist interaction and we might aswell take advantage of that.

*as you'll be seeing doodles and ideas that never went anywhere, there might be an image or concept that raises an interest. I wouldn't know how to gauge that yet, but if there is enough demand, I may revisit some older things that I dropped. Before you get too excited though, if you're hoping for the Resurgence story to return to life, I'll have to go seek consent for that first ;3

I think that covers about everything.

Backlog artwork will be uploaded in batches until we've arrived at a current date. Future content will be uploaded as it becomes available and may include community involvement and revived projects.

I'm on the fence about patreon exclusive streams, but I know there's a high demand for streaming, so I'll look into facilitating the option in the future - we'll see about the exclusive part.

So with this, I hope I've made all my intentions clear, and that we'll have a mutually beneficial future, whereby you receive pretty artwork, and I can pay the aforementioned tax collector his extra dues, without having to skip a meal as a result :3

Thank you for reading, hope you enjoy what's in store for all those of you who join me on this journey and please stay safe and healthy, everyone.

~LYA