Howdy!
I don’t often talk about myself, so I thought I would for once!
I do have some projects, big and small, and would like to talk about them ^v^
The first and main one is an idea that has been going through my brain recently: living from my art.
It can seem stupid considering my current situation. My job is a fairly simple computer job I got thanks to my studies. It is a good one. It gives me enough time to draw a whole lot, is well paid and is very safe. Heck, I could keep it until my retirement if I wanted. But I don’t see myself living the same life forever. I need new projects, and living from my arts is a big one. It would allow me to have things I can’t have right now:
- Living close to my family (500km away from them right now)
- Living in the mountains (I’m all for hiking and biking, not something you can do much next to Paris)
- Deciding when I take my vacations (would allow me to go to conventions more)
- Having a pet (certainly a doggo)
The huge drawback would of course be to win a bunch less money. But I’m either way not someone that spends much in general, and that’s why I have a comfortable mattress right now. But I’m also someone that needs to be in a comfortable situation, and there’s no way I can handle the artist's life with having a loan over my head, and I need to make sure I can make enough money. So first, I will need to do these two things:
- Save enough money to buy a flat plus a few things
- Make sure I can make enough money to live from arts
I consider I would need at least 3 years for the first one, making the project only viable for 2028. That’s why I’m thinking of running a “test year” in 2027, where I would run some kind of “stress test” to see if my audience can provide me enough revenue to live.
Cause yes, as of now, I consider myself ready to work enough on arts. I love drawing, and I much more like to work for others than for myself. BUT I’m unsure about the demand. As of now, I’m not optimizing much, I have short openings and still refuse a bunch of comms every time. And there are other things that could be better. So here would be a few things I could do:
- Regular openings, right now thinking 5 or 6 a year, and longer
- Raising prices a bit… mostly to compensate taxes ^v^” (around 20% here, so that’s around how much I would raise), but not before 2027 as I said
- Advertising Patreon more. It has been at 250/month since forever, and I’m pretty sure I would get more just by advertising it better. Possibly new tiers/more projects… will see!
- Opening an online shop for all I could sell (books, original sketches, prints, etc…)
- Going to conventions and making some money there (the previous EF was promising on this). Would like to add prints and some goodies to what I sell, the main stuff still will be the books and on-location sketches
- Getting the books to make some money. As of now, it’s very much in the negatives x3
Overall, all the support I can get will be welcome! If I get enough, then I will for sure make the big move~
The book series is the other current big project!
It is a joy to work on something artistically different and that gets very good returns. I do have stories to tell and characters to develop, and I want it to be the “other big thing” I do in life. But I’m a lot less proficient at advertising books. I also want to up my game in what I offer, making my books more accessible and visible. This would include:
- Better visibility on the networks (mostly bsky)
- Better advertising (like on KDP and other websites)
- Gathering more reviews
- Getting audiobook versions
I’m happy with how the first book did but it was with my newbie effort. It is time to do better!
For the news, the second book is almost done, it is in the hands of my beta readers right now, and I can already say it should be even better than the first entry! I would like to release it around September, along with a new version of the first book. I didn’t know what I could do a year ago, and would like to add some goodsies, like character arts, descriptions and a map!
So yes, lotsa projects!
Other than that… been doing rather well x3 How about you, guys? =3
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| Added: | 4 days, 11 hrs ago 15 Jun 2025 22:16 CEST |
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