Business changes, rebranding, conventions, and personal art!

Hey everyone!

I have been putting off this journal for a while, I've been doing a lot of business related talking and thinking and I think I am ready to come out and talk about it with all of you. As some of you have noticed, and messaged me, I did a wipe earlier in the month of a lot of my art. Most of the art I deleted from my gallery was super explicit and fetish-y.

I have been in a lull with my art for a long time, majority of the year, actually. I don't feel like my art has been improving as much as it could have, and I feel like all of my stuff is starting to look the same. I don't want to call this particular feeling an art block, because it never prevented me from producing art in large quantities as you can see, it's just blocked me from improving and feeling truly proud of my work for more than a few days, if that. I'll feel OK and proud of it in the moment, but it's seeming to get rarer and rarer for me to look at a drawing I did and continuously hold that feeling. I feel like I'm drawing the same subject matter over and over, the same theme, the same poses, the same faces, the same themes, over and over and it's really preventing me from moving forward with my skills as an artist.

This is nothing against anyone, of course. None of this is your fault, I just fell off the horse for a while and just started doing whatever I could because as many of you know a lot has happened in the last year and a half. We lost our home, ended up living with family, I lost my dog, I lost a lot of my possessions in the foreclosure (we where renting, the landlords let it go into foreclosure so it was out of our control completely) and I just started working my little butt off to save up to get back on our feet. In March of this year, not even 8 months ago now, we ended up buying a mobile home / trailer to move into. And now, we've been re-building our life. As you can imagine, this is stressful stuff. Especially financially, I had $4,000 in my savings from that time and now it's all gone as we obviously needed to furnish our home, move, rent trucks, pay fees, taxes, ect, so I started getting less strict with business in order to get back what I lost for all of those months.

In that time, I felt like I was loosing hold of my business, which again is no one else's fault but my own and I am ever ever ever grateful for all of you who commission me and support my Patreon, without you guys I would still be homeless. You helped me buy a home, you helped me save up a little, hell, I'm even considering another dog in the next few years... But now that we're stable again, I feel like I can start rewarding myself by taking on new business practices, so starting in 2018 I will be doing the following things, to not only help you all enjoy my art more, but to take some of the lull and stress away from my job.

1. Conventions
I am unsure how many and which conventions I will be dealing at in 2018, because I am taking a family reunion "vacation" in the summer, but this is one of my main goals from now on. I will be keeping you all updated on which cons and where I am attending, this gives me a lot of wiggle room financially, as I can sell my work and merch while attending, and of course, creating face-to-face relationships which in my opinion is very important even in the small world of furry art. I do know however, that if this year goes well, I will be attending at least 3-4 conventions in 2019. If you'd like to see me at any particular one, feel free to let me know. I can't make promises, but I will consider and do some research on the con!

2. Prints and Merchandise
This kind of goes hand in hand with the previous point, but these things will not be exclusive to just conventions. I have plans to create prints and merch for online sales of my own art and designs & possibly even some commissions, too, if the client is interested. These things will be affordable, ordered in bulk and mailed from my own home. I will be opening a store envy once I have some merch to sell (I am looking for prints, pins, dakis, and wrist bands right now.)

3. Art Content and Style Changes
This is a big point, but I want to bite my tongue a little with this one as I am still unsure and, to be honest, terrified of talking about this. We all know sex sells, and we all know that I've made a pretty big name for myself selling porn. And that won't stop but I feel like I need to be more strict with what content I draw. As I stated above, I haven't improved much from the beginning of 2017 until now, my art from the beginning of the year looks pretty much the same as it does now, and while clients and followers may not mind, as an artist, that bothers me a lot. So I want to move away from repetitive themes, similar poses, and consistent smirk and O-face. I may take advantage of YCHs more often this year, as it gives me the opportunity to choose what I feel like working on at that time & help me pick things that I know I need improvement on. (For example, if I need practice drawing leather, I'd put up a leather themed pre-pose commission. Or if I want to practice expressions, I'll try offering telegram stickers or something similar.) I am also going to try and get my art to look less toony, everything looks pretty flat to me at the moment, and offering some realism options will not only help me expand my horizons as an artist but will teach me a lot of skills in areas where I am currently inexperienced. I have always enjoyed realistic styled art much more than the anime-styled art, though I can appreciate the effort and time that goes into it, I just find it a little odd that my art style is something that I wouldn't personally buy. And I think that needs a little tweaking...

4. Adult art VS Clean art
While I don't want to stop drawing adult art, it is very near and dear to my heart and business and I enjoy it way too much to stop, I do however want to start building a public and professional portfolio of SFW art that I can use to further my career as an artist, furry AND non-furry. Convention prints and commissions will help this cause a lot, but I am still looking to get this done online as well. I am considering offering a lot of discounts and promotional prices for SFW commissions or start charging a +% for NSFW. I am unsure yet, if you're having feelings about this please leave them in the comments below, while this "rebrand" is for me, I am still very involved and thankful for all of my supporters and have NO interest in pissing anyone off or making anyone feel targeted. That is NOT my intention here. I want everyone to enjoy this as I am building this fan-base. I really enjoy doing animal portraits as a whole, and my favorite themes to work with are fantasy related, but I never have the opportunity to work with them. This is one thing I want to change for the new year, is getting more content I enjoy into my galleries so you can start to enjoy it and the people who aren't following me yet, who might enjoy it, may stumble upon my gallery.

5. Finding self peace and confedence
As many of you know, I'm not a very confident person and I'm actually really anxious all the time about everything. This is no exception. This is something that I need to work on, and I think doing my own art, and finding that you all enjoy that art, will help me a lot. I've learned a lot in the last 5 years I have been building this business. I finally made a living wage this year. I'm still lower-class (being upper class in NJ is almost impossible to be honest) but I'm not poverty level anymore. That's a huge deal! And I couldn't have done it without you all. But now that I can work on art without worrying about starving or missing a bill, I am going to really enjoy just working on art that I want to work on & stuff I can be proud of and sell for years to come.

6. Patreon
I will be re-doing my patreon completely. I'm sorry to those who are currently pledged, but it just isn't going in the direction I want it to go in. I will let January roll over, do my owed Patreon commissions and then come the second week of January I will be revamping the entire thing. When this comes, I will post an image/journal as a reminder to re-pledge if you're currently pledged, but I am going to be lowering my pledge prices, and starting to do once a month patreon images. These images will not be exclusive to Patreon, however the 300dpi 4k ultra HD and PSD files will be. I will also no longer be accepting Patreon commissions, the $50 pledge will be deleted. It is very hard for me to balance with my regular work queue, and is currently at a lower-rate than what I usually charge. Which I honestly forgot about.

With that said, I've repeated this a few times but I really do mean it. I want you all to know that I am thankful for each and every one of you, not only my commissioners but those of you who fave and post my art on forums and telegram groups. Even doing such a silly thing such as that helps me so much, and I cannot express my gratitude enough. But for 2018, a lot of things need improvement, including myself! My business, my practices. Everything.

So I hope I can count on your support for yet another year!
I will still be the same old Corgi, let us enjoy this journey together.

Happy holidays everyone!
Enjoy your weekend, thanks for reading, and until next time. <3

- Corgi