#even though comic con is now nearly 3 months ago lol

[cerysing]

uncharted fun fact!

that guy from uncharted 3 who almost shot nate and was killed by sully is played by nolan north!

and in one of the takes, richard mcgonagle tossed his gun to the side (they don't physically put them in holsters for mocap), finished the scene, and looked up to horrified crew rushing over ...to nolan on the floor who had been hit right on the noggin with the heavy prop gun!

[alissamarietart]

Okay this is a long post but please bear with me. I just want to give an update about upcoming life/job changes that will also affect my shop, convention schedule, and Patreon.

OKAY SO! I do have some exciting, important life changes coming up. I have finally secured a full-time art job in Michigan! Yay! I will be an art assistant to start out with and probably not actually doing much drawing. And when I do start doing more artwork, it will be vector art in Adobe Illustrator, so very different from what I normally do and post on this blog, Insta, etc. Idk if I will even be able to post the stuff at all I do for this job though but hey! It’s full time! So I’ll be getting paid well for it. And it being very well from my usual work means I won’t get burnt out on my own art.

However, because of the attendance policy for newcomers, I don’t think I’ll be able to do Youmacon if I get in off the wait list this year. Which sucks. But it’s a necessary sacrifice I’ll have to make. The one day off I’ll get in my first 90 days will have to be used for Grand Rapids Comic Con, since I was already accepted to that con and paid for it long ago. There is a TINY change I could do Youmacon if I got in, but most likely I won’t be able to. So my next and last cons for sure for a while will be Capital City Comic Con this Saturday September 8th, 2018 in Lansing, MI, and Grand Rapids Comic Con on November 9th-11th, 2018 in Grand Rapids, MI.

Also, my current seasonal part-time job is now down to just Saturday-Sunday weekends, then in October, Friday nights for our Halloween event, with the last day of our season being October 21st. So I start my full time Monday-Friday job on September 10th, and will be working at my other job on the weekends till October 21st. So I’ll have a very jam-packed schedule and probably only be able to do sketches until then, which is why I’ve actually been posting my sketches on social media rather than just keeping them Patreon exclusives lately. I don’t want to just not post art because of this. Also, I do still plan on doing Drawtober this year. It’ll be a much bigger schedule this time around because I’ll likely be working 7 days a week but....I’ll make it work lol.

Also, my new job will be 7 AM - 3 PM, Monday-Friday, which means plenty of time in the afternoon and on weekends (after the season for my other job ends) to draw! But also until @garcondesfleurs and I can save up enough to move into a new place, I will be driving an hour and 20 minutes to work, and an hour and 20 minutes back home. So there will definitely be a big adjustment period with the long and tiring commute lol. I will have to get up early than ever before on a regular basis. But it will be worth it. This job has health, vision, and dental insurance, is closed with PTO on major holidays, and also starts off with 5 other paid days off after your first 90 days with acquiring more days off the more years you work there. And they have reviews every 6 months with the opportunity for a raise if you meet the qualifications for how much you’ve improved. So I just couldn’t pass this opportunity up.

However, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Because of limited days off, I probably won’t be able to do NEARLY as many conventions for the next couple of years. Which means there won’t be a need for me to make as much merch like stickers, charms, acrylic pins, buttons, etc. Not to mention I won’t want to use as much of my free time to make them. While I love making smaller merch, I often put other personal projects I am more passionate about aside to pump out the smaller merch like charms and stickers because they are my big money makers. But now I will have money from this job, so I won’t have to worry about this, and can focus solely on what I want to draw the absolute MOST in my free time.

It also means I will likely have to simplify my Patreon. I likely won’t be able to keep up with the amount of tiers I have right now while having a full time job as well, especially during the time when I'm also working the part-time job on top of it, and I may not be able to keep up with the physical rewards of stickers, charms, etc because I may not be producing enough new designs for small merch to send Patrons non-repeats. So after this month’s physical rewards, I will likely have to do another Patreon overhaul for the sake of my own sanity, with less tiers and likely no physical rewards other than digital coupons for my Etsy. I don't want to overwork myself into the ground with too many tasks and little to no breaks and wind up with bad physical and mental health because of it.

I will still be doing my own art though! I’m actually very excited because I think the financial stability from this art job will allow me to have a greater sense of freedom in what I can do on my own. And I’m actually really looking forward to it. :3 

The other issue I was having was the money from cons and my shop was just enough to supplement my day job to pay bills, groceries, etc, but not pushing it over the edge to where I’d have a good cushion to make more new merch and pay for more con tables. So even if I was profiting well off cons, minimum wage money from a part-time seasonal day job meant that those con profits just went right into my living expenses basically, not leaving me much room to do more, not only in the way of making new merch and signing up for new cons which created its own conundrum, but also to just do other fun life things...not to mention move out.

So yeah. It will be a lot of big changes at first, and I hope I don’t disappoint anyone with the changes to my convention schedule, my Patreon, and the amount of stickers, charms, etc I produce and sell in my shop but...I think it will be worth it for me in the end. Especially if I can go back to doing more art that isn’t just stickers and charms again soon. I miss doing other illustrations more frequently lol.

So yeah. Thank you for reading through this long post, and for sticking around this blog and liking my art and stuff. :3 I hope you all have a lovely week~