#magpie squawk

[magpies-gold]

Just got back from seeing Bohemian Rhapsody (which was wicked awesome in my humble opinion). I need to do a special shoutout here to @chaoskirin though, because while I grew up listening to Queen, it’s been following your blog that’s taught me way more about the band than I ever would have learned on my own. You took an awesome experience and made it downright magical. Rock on and keep sharing what you love! It sure made a difference to my life experience. :D

[magpies-gold]

Official Post from Meghan Taylor: All right. Weekend's here and I have enough time and energy to speak a little bit... In regards to Patreon's new fee structure that's coming into play soon, I'm with every other creator on here that I've seen so far: I'm not happy with it at all because of how it treats you guys. I'm sorry. I don't

I put up a little bit of talk about Patreon's decision to change its fee structure. If you haven't read about it and you're supporting anyone on the Patreon platform (especially if you're supporting multiple creators) it's worth reading their blog post over here, as well: https://blog.patreon.com/updating-patreons-fee-structure/

[magpies-gold]

I was trying not to let it, but this comment actually, genuinely ticked me off a whole bunch. Guys. Please, please don’t do this to artists, especially webcomic artists with a large public archive who just make a little pocket change on Patreon but give you the rest on the regular. I promise, 90% of us aren’t making a living at it, we’re not hiding things on Patreon to be greedy, and we really want people to see our finished art!  For reference, I spend twenty to thirty hours per week making comics. I put them up for 100% free absolutely everywhere that I can. The website is free access and has no ads. They go up on Tumblr, DeviantArt, Twitter, and they’re linked to from Facebook (because posting natively in Facebook just doesn’t work very well – it’s my least favorite social media platform by far). Yes, you can access them a little early on Patreon,  but it’s just early, not exclusive. Then they’re out in the world and free!  And they’re literally about all that I do, art-wise.

No, seriously. I’m struggling to eke out extra creativity besides the comic, but I’m not super successful. I was pretty sure I’d probably talked about that too much lately. See, I don’t have a hell of a lot of time, the same way most adults don’t. I work 40 hours a week like most people do. My commute to work is two hours on foot because first, we can’t justify the expense of a car in our lives right now and second, my day job is a sedentary office job and my passion is a sedentary sit-and-paint kind of deal, so if I don’t walk to and from my job, I get sick. Besides that, I still don’t have a car when it comes to errands, chores, and things like regularly getting groceries, so that too is all on foot and takes a solid chunk of time, usually out of my weekends. I also sleep like a regular biological robot, I make supper, I have to keep my home clean, and all of those things. I mostly fill the remaining scraps of time making Prophecy of the Circle. And I post it everywhere for freeeeeeeee.

So what’s actually on Patreon? What’s behind this fabled paywall?

Behind-the scenes sketches that I wouldn’t post normally anyway. It slows me down to stop, scan, and process every step of an art piece, but it’s what I can sacrifice time on to offer to the kind people who toss a few tips my way. The finished comics, art, all that? Public! Always ALWAYS public. I want people to see my art! It goes up on DeviantArt and Tumblr and Twitter and everywhere! I’ve started putting sketches on Instagram lately! Public! There’ve just only been like three things I’ve finished all year and one of them took me a solid weekend which I felt instant regret for because man I could have gotten further on the comics! (Examples from this year: Vagabond Girl, Dual Destinies, Kero-chan - there just aren’t many because I struggle to find hours)

 Development sketches that are potentially spoilerific. First, the people in those tiers know what they’ll potentially see, and once the spoilers are public via comic, those are 100% game for appearing ~~ publicly ~~, but it would be kind of both foolish and rude to fling those out in front of everyone because spoilers can ruin the fun for a lot of people. You just shouldn’t flash folks with spoilers without consent. I know I used to rage hard at my brother when he’d run past my room with even minor “guess-what’s-in-next-episode?!” Doctor Who spoilers circa 2008 or so and that was just what he’d picked up from the previews I’d skipped. Right now I’m working on Chapter Four and that’s probably over a year away from being actually created, so it’ll be a while before those are cool to release, but again when it’s time ~they can go puuuuubliiiiic~ I even started posting sketches outright on my Instagram just before I got this?!

(and if you think you’re missing hundreds of development sketches …. I’ve kind of only drawn, like, three in the last six months because I’m one of those chronically exhausted pigeons - I’m sorry, my patrons ;_; ) 3. Really rough drafts of stories that I typically get embarrassed part way through posting and stop posting. No, really. They’re bad. They’re really rough and they’re bad. They’re not gold and if I hadn’t promised I would post them they’d be buried in a drawer. For this one, Real Talk: the finished product is likely going to have a small price tag on it because would-be authors tend to sell their books. I don’t think that’s a radical idea? I mean, I’d like to make a living off of my art someday, and while it’s not likely, being an author is considered a viable career path of sorts if you’re really determined. All the same, I think most people would expect this one.

4. I guess I once or twice didn’t release a post-it note doodle but they were really, really dumb. 5. THE INKTOBER SKETCHES THIS YEAR. Maybe this is what spawned the comment of “everything” being behind a paywall?! I honestly don’t know, but honestly, I could see this one as making sense and admittedly, it was my bad because I didn’t explain: I want to color some of them first! That’s all! It’s still just early access. I just can’t guesstimate when I’ll have time to color them. But they’ll find their way to the public! I really want to show them off in all their glory! There’s fanart of from one of my favorite childhood books in there and I wanna show it to Bruce Coville!

Sorry, it was bugging me a bunch, and I needed to get this off my chest. Thanks for reading my spontaneous rant. 

[magpies-gold]

Downtown (Braeside Book 1) eBook: Danielle Klassen: Amazon.ca: Kindle Store

Hey everyone! After much effort, one of my best friends, Danielle, has taken the brave plunge that all of us writer folk strive for and she's got her very first book published on Amazon! She and I have been egging each other on for years, ever since year one of university, and I'm so proud of her for taking this step. :D If you can spare a few dollars, I heartily encourage you to pick up a copy, and if not, to spread the word so that others can find her terrific writing.

[magpies-gold]

Stop Breaking, Damnnit

Today's concern: My vital technology is not the healthiest these days. The laptop's been a dead-as-a-doornail paperweight since November, my phone's getting glitchy, and my desktop had a few errors this morning, adding to the increasing hiccups its been experiencing for the past few months, which is the event which sparked this whole train of thought today.  I can at least say that my iPad still works. It's old and laggy but it works and it's the only thing not displaying early warning signs of hardware or other major failure. Of course, it’s also *really old* and isn't compatible with a lot of new stuff.

So I'm gonna say with all seriousness: my birthday's in July and I think all I want, if I could ask (and we all know I hate to ask), is donations towards a new laptop. Having a reliable computer is the most important thing. No computer = no webcomic, no art, no writing and generally my life gets a lot harder without one.

To that end I've also made up my mind to get a bit more hardcore about not spending money on *anything* fun for the foreseeable future, even tiny stuff, unless it's already planned and saved up for and promised. I should also seriously consider putting a solid chunk of my free time towards doing actual commissions (I just need to get caught up on a few things first to make time), and maybe cleaning up some of my rough draft Prophecy of the Circle short stories to sell for a couple'a bucks (as long as my computer behaves long enough for me to clean those up).

Something like that.

More about this later when I have a better sort of plan, but for the moment, I’m just babbling because it’s on my mind today.

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Patreon || Buy Me A Ko-fi

[magpies-gold]

Prophecy of the Circle - Hiatus

There's a bit of a lengthy post on the homepage, but the short of it is that after a year of struggling and attempting to race uphill and falling on my face way too much, I've had friends and family stage a sort of intervention and convince me to stop working on Prophecy of the Circle temporarily so that I can get a buffer built, form a proper plan to manage my time better on both the comics and my other projects, and do this whole creative thing properly in the new year. 

The good news for Patreon followers and subscribers (there will still be public posts over there for the non-subscribers, btw) is that I can still show how it's going and post creative content while I build up the buffer. There just won't be any early access finished pages there until late January, and the comic officially starts up again on the homepage on February 5th. Ahhhh. D: 

But no, no, it's cool. Even though it took some convincing, I'm thinking everyone's right and this'll be good for me. Gotta stop, take a break, and then get up and try again. This time I'll hopefully get it right.

[magpies-gold]

A Bit of Home

I had a small adventure yesterday, and apparently while I was away, Aleksi's perpetual argument ("I want to eat you!" "NO!") with a local squirrel escalated a tad and now there's actual sparring and teasing involved.

The video was taken by Tim, and I didn't get to see it until yesterday night. I actually left him at home yesterday and did a brave thing! I travelled all the way from here in Victoria to the ferries and then to Vancouver, and then all the way back in the evening, all on my lonesome...

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[magpies-gold]

Chasing Happy

(In which I complain slightly, but then! Then! CLICK TO READ MORE IF YOU LIKE VIDEOS WITH SILLY STUFF IN THEM, BY THE WAY. :D)

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I’m tryin’. I’m tryin’. In a recent commiserating phone call to former roommate Danielle, she agreed that we’ve both hit that place where the novelty of having moved to a new province has kind of worn off and the frustrations are starting to build in regards to the parts of our lives that we haven’t reclaimed yet. We’re both looking for work still in order to get that sense of normal routine back…

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