Progress Report, Commission Matters, 23/07 - 21

Hello everyone and welcome to another progress report, in which I also elaborate upon my commission issues.

First off, I realize that I forgot to address my correspondence with Affect3D in last week's report. For those of you who missed my initial announcement, and to make a long story short, I was approached in DMs about potentially being hired for a singular animation of theirs, and thought to myself that it'd be a good opportunity to expose my work to a larger audience. It quickly became apparent however their primary content focus is futa and I would not, under any circumstance, want people out there to come across work of mine that does not represents what I actually do here - mainly because I feel it would be deceptive to bend my rule around this just for the exposure, thus potentially reeling in patreon backers that think there's more of the same content to be found here, only to be faced with disappointment. As such, we've agreed to a potentially future cooperation in the event where they do m/f work and need my particular animation skills for the matter. I'm not sure how likely it is that they will approach me again, but it was exciting none the less to be contacted by such an established presence in the industry :)

In other news, work continues! I've added a few more scenes for the Convict project and have quickly come to the realization that I need to sit down and write a script before this becomes untenable. Scenarios are short enough to keep most of the matter in my brain, but when things bloat beyond their original size and length like this, I desperately need direction before I begin to create things that won't fit into the larger narrative - few things kill a project as quickly as sitting down and realizing you're going to have to cut large swathes of the work you've done to make it work. Thus, I endeavor to sit down one day and work out a plan, before I put myself into that position.

The Wonder Woman comic is coming along nicely, I believe. It's actually incredibly fun writing a narrative without the burden of having to consider animating every aspect of the script, giving the context clues to have people fill out the spaces in between using their imagination. It's truly an art of its own, in that respect, and I will very soon begin to subject the discord crowd to my nervous fits as I try to figure out what speech bubbles etc actually look presentable. If this is well received, I've considered making comics another potential form of content on this patreon, subject to polls etc, as it's honestly incredibly nice to get a break from animating while at the same time producing content when I'm just in a "scene posing" mood. Teaser, as you might imagine, in the header image of today's post.

Now to finally address the elephant in the room: Commissions.

I'm going to put the cards on the table here as to be as transparent about the matter as possible. The last round of commission slots were opened in September of 2019. Since then, I have delivered effectively half of those who were promised slots, with almost 10 people still, to this day, noted down as having been promised a slot on my list. To manage this paltry amount of work in almost 2 years time is, as you might agree with me, abysmally poor performance on my part, but for those unfamiliar with my commission process, I want to stress that being promised a slot does not mean having paid for anything, which is one of the few things positive about this ordeal.

The reasons for this are multifold, but if I were to try to pinpoint the most significant, it probably comes down to three.

First, my unwillingness to compromise on my update schedule and project work in order to work on commissions. I've always considered commissions to be an "extra" matter, which isn't technically part of my patreon promises, and which should not infringe on the content delivery promised to literally hundreds of others. This leaves, on the whole, very little time over for commission work.

Second, commissions themselves are, to me as a person, an immense energy drain. In particular the "administrative" matters, such as correspondence, general contact maintenance, concept drafting to ensure we're on the same page, and the back and forth required with (extremely) varying degrees of TOS reading having been done by those interested.

Third, lack of motivation, in that I am having trouble enough as it is maintaining interest in my own ideas to work on them to completion, I always inevitably finish commission work purely out of a sense of duty as opposed to them stimulating any creative spark of my own. This is not to knock on anyone's commission ideas or tastes, again, I have trouble keeping my own work and ideas interesting to myself, but rather to highlight that even after the administrative work is done, it's not smooth sailing.

I will be as frank as possible and simply state that I, in all honesty, do not want to do commissions. Opening slots have always been in response to overwhelming requests by the community for them, or in order to pay for VA work meant for larger projects when my patreon earnings have fallen short of being able to pay for that. It is not something I enjoy doing, and with the stress of my everyday life and maintaining my schedule here being strained as it is, I feel it's another stressor hanging over me whenever I have anything resembling spare time in my life.

I honestly do not even know where I stand on the current commission lineup as things are, where I feel like things are dragging out and the longer they do, the less inclined I become to tackle them, if that makes sense. The human brain is a mystery, most of all to ourselves, and I cannot truly know the nature of why I work or feel this way around these matters, but this is where the truth lies, and I thought it prudent that I be upfront and honest to you, my backers, about it.

In summary, if I decide to simply cancel the current slot setup, I will be sure to send each and every one of those promised one a personal message and apology. My main point with all this however was that if you, as a backer, are primarily maintaining your support for me in the hopes of getting a commission slot in the future, it is highly unlikely that I open for them again and I don't want to keep you here under false pretenses. Even in the event I do open in the future it would not be in the traditional sense, but work alongside a selection process I've seen other artists use, where I will take in commission requests, and then select those I feel I could actually do, instead or promising slots carte blanche.

My apologies for the long rant, but I felt I needed to clear the air around these matters.

To end on a positive note, work continues, and my job search does as well, in the hopes that I'll reach a better work/life balance. All in due time, as they say :)

Thank you, as always, for your continued support and for all of your kind words! The heat is ramping up quickly for the weekend, so I've taken the precautions of blocking out all my windows and dragging out The Big Fan just to make sure I don't expire when it comes around. Huddle down and stay hydrated out there, and we'll get through this :)

Take care of yourselves, and each other!
/DH