20160501--State of Affairs

Hello, everyone.

I cannot believe one third of the year is already behind us!  And while I've been posting art pretty regularly, I haven't really updated this journal, and there's a good bit to report.  Part of the reason I'm updating now is that I'm starting to get inquiries about commissions.  I really did think I'd be opening again by now, but life has been kind of getting in the way.  So here's what's been going on, and what I'm looking at for the future.

The big development relates to my day job.  I haven't had a full time job since 2014.  From June to December I was completely unemployed, which is why I started being so productive art-wise.  At the start of December 2014 I picked up part time work that was very seasonal, so some months I would be working full time plus, and others only 3 days a week.  To supplement my income (and with my girlfriend's encouragement) in 2015 I started taking commissions, and I have to say I can have no complaints with the response.  For being a first time artist for hire--and a part time one at that--the response was tremendous, and I did some very rewarding projects.  Amazingly, I was able to complete all of them too, without too much delay in most cases.

January &  February I was picking at the last few commissions while running a full time schedule at work, which is to be expected as that's a busy time.  I fully meant to re-open for commissions after that was done, but then our boss retired fairly suddenly, and I was moved to a temporary full-time position to help cover things until a replacement was found.  I also started working on my own stuff again, and really enjoyed it.  With some extra money around, I figured I would take the time to continue working on projects for fun.

Now, the open position has been filled, but that has resulted in more shuffling and now it looks like there is a real chance I could have a permanent full time job by the time the dust finally settles.  In the meantime, my temporary assignment has been extended.  

What does that mean for commissions?  Well, first let's address issue 2--my computer.  As some of you may remember about two weekends ago I was having serious issues with my machine, as it would lock up with no warning.  It has been doing this from time to time for years, and usually after a reboot or a disc check, the issue goes away.  Well, this time for a whole weekend I wasn't able to get more than a half hour of use out of the machine before it would lock up again, and none of the usual tricks seemed to help.  Now the good news is, it seems to have finally fixed itself for no discernible reason, and the last two weeks have been fine.  But the writing is on the wall that I need to take action before this happens again.  And really, it's time.  The machine is going on 5 years old, the power cord doesn't stay plugged in, and the case is cracked right at the hinge from a drop, making it difficult to use it as a laptop.

Ultimately, commissions will be returning, first to pay off the computer I'm planning to buy, and secondly to allow me some extra spending money while I try to pay off some debt and rebuild some savings while taking much of the burden of living expenses off my girlfriend, who has been essentially supporting me the last two years.  You folks owe her a big thank you, by the way.  Her encouragement and support--both emotional and financial-- made this little commission experiment possible.

So in the next week or two I will be refining my offerings and pricing list and reopening.  I think the offerings for regular commissions will be more or less the same.  Transformation themed commissions I will be revising significantly, however--they're time consuming and really leave me no time to work on my own material.  I will try to have some kind of options for my many fans of that sub-genre, but I can say it may be a long while until comic style commissions are available again.  More on the future of my TF art in a future post, as this one had already gone on waaaaay too long.

Thanks as always for your support--more to come soon.

Regards,
DF