ProjectNao

Why I ever even started with Patreon:

The thing is, the money from Patreon is the only money I am earning currently. 

Some of you may remember me talking about study or that I have some exams etc. and I am technically still a student. In 2017 I was supposed to write my bachelor thesis.

But I never could finish it, even until now. I had surgery in 2017, which really helped me to get rid of pain I had for years and was falsely diagnosed as a symptom of stress. While it cured the pain it also changed how my body took in the meds I need to take for my thyroid, and I fell into a depressive phase that made it impossible for me to focus on any of my work. 

I went to several different doctors who specialize in nuclear medicine and told them about my problems but none of them actually cared about that. They all just took blood samples and told me those are alright and my problems come from somewhere else. Of course they didn’t. 

During this time my cousin also committed suicide, which pulled me close to the point where I wanted to follow him. I really have to thank my mother and my best friend to always catch me when the really dark moments came. Even if they might not have realized it, because I tend to keep stuff like this to myself rather than come up and seek help, they found the right moments to push my thoughts into a different direction. 

Finally my mother found a general practitioner who actually listened to me. She offered to try something that helped a lot of her other patients who all had very similar situations: A different kind of thyroid med. And it worked. Already in the first week of taking the new meds I felt like a completely different human being. We also found out I have several food allergies which are all an aftereffect of several years under wrong meds and false diagnoses. I realized something then. That because of stupid doctors I hadn’t just lost 1 ½ year, but almost a lifetime. 

I had taken these wrong meds since elementary school and most mornings I felt sick, had circulatory collapses, couldn’t focus on what was taught and when I was finally home all I could think of was sit around and watch TV. I could never understand how people could actually have the energy to do anything else, like meet friends or attend club activities. 

The only thing I could do through all this time and that also kept me going, next to friends and family, was drawing. Drawing my silly comics, stories and artworks. No matter how tired I felt, I always found the time to finish the weekly page from the comic that was currently active. And it was fun, never a pain. A long time people told me to make more of my drawing. Ever since I was a little child. But I always said, this wouldn’t pay well and that I would need to get a ‘real’ work. I was a stupid child, who always thought it should make the grown-up decisions. 

Now after all this time in absolute darkness I realized that I do not want to spend my life doing something that isn’t fun. And I said to myself: “Try it. Try and make what you like your job. For once don’t act like the responsible grown-up, it never brought you anywhere anyway.” And this was when I started with Patreon. And seeing that people came to support me, to me, was the best moment of my life. Yes, what I’m earning so far is far from something that would sustain me in life, but it is a start. And I really, dearly hope I can convince more people with my work to join in over time. My dream is to earn enough through my comics so that I can pay my own expenses. 

Don’t get me wrong, this is not a fairy tale happy ending.

At this moment in time I am still getting better and have to undergo other treatments to make up for years of false meds and their consequences. There are a lot of ups and downs. The only good thing about this is that I have a lot of time to draw. But this also wouldn’t be possible without my parents who support me financially. And this can’t go on forever. At some point I will be forced to find paying work, which will take away time and energy to draw and uploads will get a lot sparser.

So I really, really hope for more people to come here to support my work. And I hope those of you who already support me understand how thankful I am to you. You are awesome!

The planned changes to my Patreon page.

I had already talked about this in the June update. Back then I said, nothing would change till the end of September. I can safely extend this to the end of the year. Nothing will change till then, because I will need November for all the prizes of the various contests and raffles of BloodyWartober and December and probably the months after I will use to finally get this bachelor thesis out of the way. 

I also swear to all the Gods in the world that I will inform you three months in advance, before any of those changes become effective.

But what kind of changes will come?

- Visual updates to make things clearer and nicer.

- 1$ tier discontinued for new Patrons. Patrons who were in the tier prior to the changes will keep all benefits for the same price. And Patrons will now see 2 pages earlier than Non-Patrons.

Those are the ones we covered before and people had the chance to give their opinion on them. I already worked on the SFW and NSFW tags, so I didn’t extra add them to the list.

There have been other things I have thought about too, those include:

- The Thank You drawing will be renamed into ‘Monthly Patreon Drawing’. 

Smart Foxes and above will be allowed to include one of their characters into the drawing once a topic has been picked by Economical Owls and up. Smart Foxes are also allowed to let their characters interact with characters from any comic that is part of the chosen topic.

- A new ‘Thank You Drawing’ will be added, which will show the names of Patrons of the tier Economical Owl and up and either a random comic character or one that was chosen by poll. 

I always struggle to add the names to the Thank You drawing without it looking too out of place and I realized that if more people join, it will just get more confusing and cluttered. So, let’s split it into two separate drawings. More drawings for you and a better way for me to add those names. Still, I want to hear your opinion on this idea.

There are other things I took into consideration:

- Adding new goals. 

Something I will definitely do, especially because I want to use this as an overview of which amount is needed to guarantee page uploads in the future. 

- Streams.

I thought about adding a monthly stream of the ‘Monthly Patreon Drawing’ as a new goal. 

- WIPs.

The problem about this is that I rarely have WIPs to show. When I start a drawing, I either finish it right away or never finish it and delete the sketch. So this would be too rare to actually add as a benefit.

- PSD-Files. 

This is something I really do not like to do. My drawings are very dear to me and I can’t bear to think about handing the psd files out just like that. To me it feels like I would have a child, strip it naked so everybody can see everything and throw it into a crowd. So please understand that I do not want to do this.

- Patreon- Only content.

Probably the best way to pull people in, but I’m not a fan. Maybe I’ll be forced to do this at some point, but I really want to postpone it as long as possible. I’ve seen so many artists go that route and so many people can’t see their work anymore, which, while it is totally understandable, is still a shame. So I hope we can find a different way to get more people to join. 

- Bigger resolution for Patrons. 

Will be added as a benefit, if people want it. 

I’ve also been thinking a lot about how much is too much in the last month. As in, how much I can handle to draw without overworking myself. BloodyWartober was a great opportunity to test my limits. I managed to upload two comic pages per week which I never thought was possible, plus all the other stuff. So I will also consider to add a goal for two comic page uploads per week. 

Of course I also need:

Your ideas and wishes

This site update can’t happen without consulting you, of course, because there might be things I haven’t thought about yet. I know many of you aren’t much into writing comments, but it would really help me to read your opinions. I promise, I won’t bite. I’m probably a lot more anxious than you are.

If it helps, I’ll draw Nao in underwear. That’s a known trick in this situation, right?

And don’t think your opinion wouldn’t matter. Even if somebody already suggested something you want, it is always good for me to see how many people prefer one idea over another. Also if something I pointed out is something you like/ dislike, please give me your opinion. It helps a lot, even if you might think it wouldn’t.

Thank you a lot for reading this very long update. You rock!