IMPORTANT CHANGES

Cycle 5 will end with April's update in a few days.  That means May will be the new format and this post covers in detail what that means for you as a Patron.

SHORT VERSION:

• Patron exclusive commission slots to be made available
• 1 fancy shaded piece per month
• 1 Welcome To The Park comic page per month
• Loyalty Bonus scheme to be closed
• Staff Tier to be closed

LONG VERSION:

Patron exclusive commission slots to be made available

I'll be making a limited number of commission slots available to ALL Patrons.  This won't be a tier, so there will be no obligation to subscribe monthly.  All commissions will take place within the OW universe and all OC staff, flora, and fauna will be available for use.  My work load varies so the number of slots each month will depend on that.

1 fancy shaded piece per month

As per the monthly updates currently, there will continue to be one fancy shaded colour piece every month.  Content will be set within the OW universe and feature random characters and OC staff, flora, and fauna.  Patron votes will dictate the content, as we've been doing before.

1 Welcome To The Park page per month

Again as presently, the WTTP comic will continue at one page per month.  I'm finding it very difficult to keep up with the comic page workload, as those of you waiting on Loyalty Bonuses will be keenly aware.  For that reason, I'm cutting all comic page content back to just WTTP for the forseeable.  I may do more comic pages in the future, but I'm not going to set it as a regular thing at the moment.

Loyalty Bonus scheme to be closed

This one was a difficult decision to make.  Honestly, I've been struggling to keep on top of it. The amount of organisation and communication required on top of creating the work and translating the ideas is huge.  When I first started the scheme and there were only a handful of Patrons it was very manageable but now there's so many Patrons (which I'm very grateful for) it simply hasn't scaled up and some people are waiting far too long for their art as a result.

This will be a phase out rather than a dead stop, like I did for the old sketch bonuses.  Any consecutive monthly pledge you as a patron make will still count towards your 12 months until that point is reached.  That way everyone unlocks their final bonus in a fair way and all the rules of who you can use etc. will still apply.  As with the sketches, I will send out reminders for one year after the scheme has fully closed to give everyone the best chance to claim their slots.

Staff Tier to be closed

As with the Loyalty Bonus scheme, I'm finding the Staff tier to be unweildy as it has scaled up.  This was probably the hardest decision of all to make because it's been a key part of the Patreon for a long time.  The more people that signed up as Staff, the harder it was for me to keep track of everything and the harder it got to pair people up in a way that worked.

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I'm letting you know these changes now before the May payments begin to be processed so you can decide whether or not to continue supporting this Patreon.  I do appreciate every pledge I've received since this kicked off in 2018 and I've learned a LOT about how to organise and manage this sort of thing.

So last and perhaps most importantly of all, a big THANK YOU for supporting my work.  If you made it to the end, hit that like button so I know how many of you are up to date with this info.