$2000!

As always, Patreon income is variable and I feel the need to pre-empt the jinx when I hit a milestone like this but nonetheless we have hit a new milestone!

It was a pipe dream for me that we would even hit my initial target of $1000 and make my work sustainable. For me starting this Patreon was about trying to build the biggest space in my life possible to work on the kinds of things that matter to me. To slowly but surely carve out a supported chunk of my time on earth in which I could just make good stuff.

Now it's my full time job and that's sort of hard to fathom. Each day I'm as grateful as I am existentially terrified that it will all somehow collapse from under me but I am determined to make as much of this blessing as I can.

The $2000 milestone was associated with the promise of improving the art for tutorials. Now the ARPG art is... sort of already done. So this isn't something that will kick in right away (hell I'm still wrestling with getting sub-titles going as of $1500)  but for new work in a post GameMaker Studio 2.3 world I want to work with artists I know to make attractive assets for my videos and source code that everyone can use.

There's a bit of a double edge to this sword, as people have been known to take art from my tutorial videos and use it in their own attempts at commercial work, which is not something I want to encourage (for their own sake), but I think I just have to accept that I have no control over that kind of thing and let people make their own mistakes.

There are also some times where I think a tutorial is better without any fancy artwork. It can have a bit of a "Draw the rest of the owl" effect and leave people wondering how to accomplish the feel of something if they lack the art skills to replicate what's in the video. It's something I'll be approaching with care. 

It's also possible this can show itself in meta aspects of my work. Thumbnails, visual effects and diagrams in videos, etc. We'll see!

Thank you all for wanting to see my work continue to exist, improve and thrive. <3

I'm working on a new ARPG episode this week.

-S