Miamaska and Trial of the Sun @miamaska - Tumblr Blog

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Another month, another update: Things didn’t break the way I hoped they would. In some way it’s a relief because now I don’t have to pursue the very expensive thing I was doing before and can just focus on paying off what’s left of my debts.

In the meantime, I’ve been trying to shuffle my schedule around to find a way to fit comics back into my workload. The just-do-comics-on-weekends thing isn’t going to fly any longer, as my only resolution this year is to take more Sundays off. It’s a small goal but I’m determined to stick to it.

The next schedule I mapped out was a half comics, half commissions even split alternating every two weeks. But I quickly realized this wouldn’t bring in nearly enough money, even with very generous orders and tips.

So then I made a mock up of a six week schedule: two weeks comics, four weeks commissions. But this would have been fairly brutal with no dedicated time allotted for patreon commissions or writing, which would eat into my administrative time and occasional day off. Cancelling the patreon altogether was also not an option, as I would depend on that minimum amount of commission income for the comics’ week income.

Next I tried mapping out a lopsided schedule, front-loading all the comics work of a quarter into four weeks and let the buffer work its magic as I worked on commissions in the interim. Technically, I’d only be able to make 10-12 pages for each comic to last the 13 week period, but it was better than nothing. However, during that comic week I’d be stuck with my only income being patreon cash, which would be about 285 USD for the month. Unfortunately this is not enough money for me to survive off of. There was also the similar issue of not having dedicated time for scripting.

So I’m not sure what to do about it beside mention it publicly but I’ll keep trying to make it work. Right now, in the undoubtedly clear-mindedness of a 2:00 AM perspective, it seems my best option is to bull rush commissions for a couple months and get it over with. And then I’ll be somewhat OK around mid-summer. Provided I don’t run out of work.

#news

This is the short of it: I’m keeping ahead of bills right now. Comics don’t pay for much, and even the majority of my patreon income is for commissions so I can’t pull it either at the moment. 2017 was kinda the make or break year for making the comics profitable and uhhh I’m broke lol

This is the long of it: I got expenses, and my lack of a regular income has caught up to me. I still wanna make comics, but things have been particularly pressing in the past 6 months so I gotta buckle down and work a while. I tried to keep going as long as I could, I really did.

I’m a terribly stubborn and private person so I don’t want to go into details (and rewrote this a dozen times, putting it off a dozen weeks, even). I think I have a pretty negative personality flaw where I bristle at strangers offering me condolences/advice/the like. So I don’t post about ‘bad’ things much because it creates an avenue for me to become more embittered.

I’ve been suggested to set up a KoFi or something similar. I don’t want to sound to mean, but the time to support me was back in 2017 when I was trying to make the patreon work! A couple dollars from a few kind strangers isn’t going to help in this case, unfortunately. And to be honest, the times I have asked for help the lack of traction my posts get just really embarrass me to the point of feeling worse off than before. This is also not a “fund-raise X$ and the comics return” thing either, it’s ongoing and I myself don’t know how long it will go.

So there is no easy crowd-sourced solution. But I do think I can get out of/stay ahead of this myself. I have fairly regular work through commission drives now, though my time spent on ‘administrative’ work replying to emails and whatnot has skyrocketed from juggling more clients than before. My curse of trying to lessen my workload ends up with more, as is custom. But folks pay their invoices. Sometimes they even tip. Some of them say very kind things that make me cry. And most of them don’t ghost me when their spot comes up in the queue. Which is nice. I’m kept busy.

Sorry that this is pretty vague. Again, I’m a very stubborn, shy person. I wish I had a solid timeline where I could say “here’s when the comics will update” but again, I don’t know when this will be resolved. I’m hoping to find some happy balance between personal and commission work, but life demands more of me now.

If there’s one thing to take away from this: please I am begging you support young artists. If you like their work, give them money. Recommend their work to others. Support them. And maybe they’ll have the safety net they’ll need when they need it.

#news