Weekly Update! (2024-11-03) Knee Deep In The Doots

https://www.foxsaliant.com/

Not a lot to say this week! This year's Halloween streams have been doing really well! They've been restricted to Discord this time due to me wanting to keep the volume down and avoid having a huge tail on the orders, but so far everything has been pretty good! Next year I'll probably restrict it to one or two slots instead of three, just manage the amount, but I'm definitely going to reach my goal this year, so I'm very happy about that. There's just one more stream this week on Monday, and then I'll be happy to call Spoops and More '24 a success!

Unfortunately, however, the effort involved means I haven't really had much stamina for comic work this last week, so I'm only about half way through the current Various Happenings update. I'll do my best to get it taken care of by Friday this week though. Sorry about that, but special events require special considerations! In the meantime, you can also check out the schedule on the site.

So yeah, after Monday we'll be going back to normal operations. There won't be any SotS this week, but that's understandable. We'll just use the Friday stream to get caught up on everything and back to where we need to be. We did have a lot of trick-or-treaters this year (seemingly fifty or so, all told!) which was absolutely lovely, and the little bean got a chance to dress up, too, which was just adorable. You all should have seen the haul she managed!

With the end of the witches' year, and the beginning of the dark months, it's time to bundle up and settle in.

Those of us in the states have a vote to do (and you should do it, if you haven't already. I voted early.) but I'm going to try and not focus on that and just keep my nose to the grindstone for the moment. I've done what I can. Otherwise, it's just preparing for winter and seeing what progress I can make. I've got taxes to save up for, after all.

I'll see you all next week. Take care of yourselves.

~Spooky

Various Happenings: https://www.varioushappenings.com/

The Adventures of Clara Cosmos: https://www.claracosmos.space/

SubscribeStar: https://subscribestar.adult/foxsaliant

https://www.foxsaliant.com/

Hey, peeps, meeps, and beeps! Sorry for the lack of updates last week, I was somewhat ill over the last one and I didn't really have the energy for the weekly update or really anything much at all, which is why there was a lack of streams this week as well. My stomach was doing rather badly, and I think I had skipped one too many meals and gotten rather sick because of it. I'm back on track now, but I simply lacked the energy at the time to do anything but focus on Clara and maybe a couple of other things. I simply wasn't up to the task of doing the updates or streaming, and I apologize for that. 

I'm feeling better now, fortunately. And hey, there is an update for The Adventures of Clara Cosmos, so go check that out! In the meantime, you can also check out the schedule on the site.

Updates are slow but steady, and we're getting things checked off here and there. I've got a plan to update the site a little in the future, and the first part of that will be updating my commissions page, so I'll be poking at that over the week hopefully. Everything seems to be working according to plan right now, though, and as time goes on, I would really love to get all my work on-site just in case, so I'll be picking at that now and again as well. I just produce a lot of work every week, so catching up and trying to get all of it posted has always been very difficult, just from a time perspective. Still, a little bit here and there and I'll manage to do it all eventually. I hope.

So far I've been able to do one comic a week for this last month, and I'm very happy with myself on that. I have no doubt I'll miss a week now and again in the future, but my hope is that if I manage a few low-effort weeks here and there, the occasional faster pages will allow me to get ahead and finally achieve that buffer I so desire.  I really want to make my headway, so my ultimate goal is being able to make time for myself to get ahead as well, as be able to work on other things, too!

We'll see what happens, but things are going good! This next week is my Spoops and More '24 streams, so I'll be doing sketches for Halloween as I'm wont to do. It's currently only open to Discord members, but maybe next year things will be a little more public; I just don't want to get swamped again and be making these things up until February!

Still, everything's going alright! I'm on the mend and I hope you're all doing wonderfully as we head through the spooky season into the tail end of fall! 

Enjoy your scares, and I'll see you all next week! ^w^

~Spooky

Various Happenings: https://www.varioushappenings.com/

The Adventures of Clara Cosmos: https://www.claracosmos.space/

SubscribeStar: https://subscribestar.adult/foxsaliant

https://www.foxsaliant.com/

Hey, peeps! Not a lot to say this week! Things are moving according to plan and at a fairly good clip! I need a bit more dosh to make sure everything's covered, but the clean-ups and SotS are going well!

Everything should be where it needs to be in the next week or so if it all goes according to plan!

Check out the schedule on the site!

This week we have a new update for The Adventures of Clara Cosmos! Go check that out! I'm still going to be chipping away at things as I get more settled, trying to keep up with the once a week comics and poking at other projects here and there. If I miss a week now and again, I apologize, but I'm at least in a place where I don't have to put everything on hold to make sure things don't fall apart.

As long as I can keep on checking off stuff on the list, we'll keep moving forward! And that's what's important!

Last night was pretty blustery and I had a nice autumn walk! The weather is starting to get pretty agreeable (maybe a little too chilly in the mornings, even!) But such is the spookiest month!

Thanks again for reading, and I'll see y'all next week!

~Spooky

Various Happenings: https://www.varioushappenings.com/

The Adventures of Clara Cosmos: https://www.claracosmos.space/

SubscribeStar: https://subscribestar.adult/foxsaliant

Weekly Update! (2024-10-06) Putting on the Breaks

https://www.foxsaliant.com/

Hello, peeps! Everything is working out pretty well so far, I'm happy to say, but I'm definitely feeling the lag of my breakneck schedule catching up to me. I've currently got almost two weeks worth of overtime stacked up (for the unaware, I keep a tracker of when I'm working on something artistic or related to my job, so any work that I do that goes over 40 hours a week goes into the overtime bank so that if I do less than 40 hours a week, it offsets that. But I haven't worked less than 40 hours in a week on art, projects, uploads, or updates in a while,) so I'm going to try and chill out on things just a little bit, and only try to do the things that I need to do in order to meet my goal. That means not getting sidetracked by a bunch of other stuff.

Right now I'm kind of just waiting for the gears to lock into place. We're there, we just need to gain purchase and get to saving up money and stabilizing things. If I had managed to finish any earlier in the year, it would have been a lot easier, but leave it to me to exhaust a deadline absolutely and completely! Still! That's where we are, which is a better situation than it had been.

So what's going on, now? You can check the schedule on-site to find out!

We managed to put up our first Various Happenings update in a while! If you haven't yet, go check that out! As I said, I'm going to try and get ahead, but I just wasn't able to work on Clara Cosmos this week really at all because I was still trying to figure out how to manage my time, working on other things on a whim (yes, I know), and not to mention there were also periods where I just wasn't feeling very well during streams and it was hard to really throw my full force behind it. Still, we're going to keep at it and next week is going to focus more solidly on the comic, as well as uploading past pieces. With Sketch on the Spot, I should be able to cover what I need to by around the 20th of October, which I'm planning to take as a by-week. We'll see what happens, of course, plans are always libel to be shifted around, but things are looking steady, which is very good!

After a small hot spell, fall weather is starting to come back and hopefully it sticks around this time! It's nice having the windows open, though!

Thanks again for reading, and I'll see y'all next week!

~Spooky

Various Happenings: https://www.varioushappenings.com/

The Adventures of Clara Cosmos: https://www.claracosmos.space/

SubscribeStar: https://subscribestar.adult/foxsaliant

https://www.foxsaliant.com/

Alright! Well, now that things are clear, I've got a lot more control and it's smooth sailing from here we can hope. From now on, I'm going to do my best not to let things pile up again, and we're going to take everything in little chunks, one week at a time. From here on out, we're not rushing to catch up, after all, we're guiding where this goes!

So what's going on? You can check the schedule on-site to figure it out!

My vacation's done, more or less. To be fair, it wasn't much of one and I could have probably relaxed a bit more, but without all the weight on my shoulders I was very eager to just... do whatever. It was very fun at least and I did enjoy myself, though with the sixty-six hours of overtime I've accrued since my last bout of sickness, I should probably take it a little easy now and again.

Still, the plan is mostly the same as I remarked last week, with one or two changes.

Repeating last week a bit, during non-SotS streams, we'll open with a short draw for myself, and then we'll be doing Sketch on the Spot clean-ups. I'm going to be gathering up a list of items from between the streams for Scream Stream '23 (2023-10-31) and last week's stream (2023-09-20). I'll be running them just like Sketch on the Spot, with a rotating list and I'll be prorating each piece based on how much work it takes to wrap them up (the maximum charge being $40 USD for pure black and white sketch lines to a finished colored sketch.) I will try and do three a stream, if people are there to see it (or if I'm given the go ahead to do them in advance,) and then I'll move on to the next thing.

After that, during the streams, we'll be either working on the bookmarks, or working on either Various Happenings or The Adventures of Clara Cosmos. Usually a few hours on each if I can get away with it. We'll be posting whenever we have something, and the goal is one comic a week alternating between the two, until I build up enough of a buffer to run them each once a week.

Friday streams will be Sketch on the Spot as usual, but they will not add to the clean-up. A separate clean-up period for those will occur at a later date.

Once I've cleaned out the SotS Clean-Up list, I will begin working on my commission page again. I have decided to change my plans, and move the specials to the Discount Bin, instead running my standards as a list based thing much like Sketch on the Spot. Basically how that will work, is I will decide on a stream day if I want to take a commission or two and check the list based on who is ready. Then ask them what they want and we'll go from there with regular ala carte pricing. My hope is that taking them one at a time and working on them then and there will end up with me not building up a huge backlog of stuff, and will allow me to keep things fresh and gauge how I'm feeling so that I can pull back if I'm getting too burnt out or take on more if my energy is high or I need the cash.

I hope this, along with SotS and my Subscribestar (along with the future prospect of the bookmarks and other merchandise) will keep income going so that I can meet my obligations without stressing my ass out. I'm still going to be a bit pickier, but hopefully this will keep things from getting overwhelming.

Once the SotS Clean-Up is finished, I will begin working on side-projects, one at a time. The current one is finishing up the collaboration between myself and Azure, and then once that's completed, I'll be having a vote in my VIP channel on my Discord for what the next project should be. As I said last time, these will be, rather than large scale projects, more bite-sized chunks of projects in progress. So a chapter of story here, a short few pages of comic there, some vignettes or lore dumps for a variety of things, stuff like that so that I can step outside of the worlds of Various Happenings and Clara Cosmos when I need to, because I fully intend to immerse myself in them as much as I can from here on out.

And that is going to be, hopefully, how it is for the foreseeable future. Once the bookmarks are completed and printed, I'll see about opening up the shop and see what that entails, and once those are done, I'll see about making more cool stuff! Again, I'm mostly going to be trying to keep my commission load reasonable and keep my income balanced against overworking myself.

We'll see how it goes, but it can only get better from here.

Thanks again for reading, and I'll see y'all next week!

~Spooky

https://www.foxsaliant.com/

It is done! My final commission is out the door and the list is clear. Thank you to everyone for your patience and support over this last year. Without it, I would have been at a loss and probably collapsed under the weight of my own expectations. But we did it. It took the whole year, but we're finally here and I'm glad to be out from under it.

So where do we go from here?

Well. Let's check out the schedule. (You can click the link for the site above to have a look.)

First thing's first, I'm going to take a vacation. It's just going to be a small one for a week, but I need some time to do... nothing for a bit. I'll save the remainder of my vacation days for one in the middle of the fourth quarter so I can have a more planned out vacation later this year. 

Next, I'm going to be moving on to the more important projects, namely the comics. That will involve how I stream from here on out.

First, during non-SotS streams, we'll open with a short draw for myself, and then we'll be doing Sketch on the Spot clean-ups. I'm going to open up an order form, and take submissions for any SotS stuff done between Scream Stream '23 (2023-10-31) and this week's stream (2023-09-20). I'll be running them just like Sketch on the Spot, with a rotating list and while I was going to charge $40 each clean-up, some of them require less cleaning up than others, so I will have to prorate them individually (just go in knowing that $40 will be the maximum charge.) I will do three a stream, if people are there to see it (or if I'm given the go ahead to do them in advance) and then I'll move on to the next thing.

After that, during a stream, we'll be doing either working on the bookmarks, or working on either Various Happenings or The Adventures of Clara Cosmos. Usually a few hours on each if I can get away with it. I want to get my buffers up, as you can see in the table on the site, and I want to get back to posting regularly. I'll start posting comics again on the first week I pass the buffer for both comics.

Friday streams will be Sketch on the Spot as usual, but they will not add to the clean-up. A separate clean-up period for those will occur at a later date.

Once I've cleaned out the SotS Clean-Up list, I will begin working on my commission page again. I'm going to be removing the standardized options, and going with "specials" instead. What that means, is instead of offering the commissioner a bunch of options that they have to suss out, I'll just be offering a particular type of commission for a particular period at so many slots. This may be pin-ups, sketch pages, YCH style things, themed pictures, etc. Just whatever I'm interested in doing at that time. Other options, like the wobbles or character sheets, should remain and if I enjoy something enough then it might become a permanent fixture.

I am also going to clear out the Discount Bin and re-open it with a fresh list of things for people to peruse, again, with a limited number of slots.

I hope this, along with SotS and my Subscribestar (along with the future prospect of the bookmarks and other merchandise) will keep income going so that I can meet my obligations without stressing my ass out. I'm going to be a bit pickier, but hopefully this will keep things from getting overwhelming.

Meanwhile, once the buffer has been safely cleared by a decent margin (maybe two to four comics), I will begin working on side-projects, one at a time. The current one is finishing up the collaboration between myself and Azure, and then once that's completed, I'll be having a vote in my VIP channel on my Discord for what the next project should be. These will be, rather than large scale projects, more bite-sized chunks of projects in progress. So a chapter of story here, a short few pages of comic there, some vignettes or lore dumps for a variety of things, stuff like that so that I can step outside of the worlds of Various Happenings and Clara Cosmos when I need to, because I fully intend to immerse myself in them as much as I can.

And that is going to be, hopefully, how it is for the foreseeable future. Once the bookmarks are completed and printed, I'll see about opening up the shop and see what that entails, and once those are done, I'll see about making more cool stuff! I think stickers will be the next thing after that. So we'll see how it goes. But that's the plan, and I'll be doing my best to pace myself and not derail things. I'm going to be watching my commission load very carefully, and I'm going to be relaxing my quality on the comics (not too much) once I'm able to do so, in order to progress things along at a faster pace and give myself breathing room by building buffers more quickly.

Now, all we have to do is... enact it, and hope that the reduced stress and more downtime will give me time to focus on taking better care of myself, which will, in turn, allow me to do more things because I'll feel better. A positive feedback loop, we can hope.

Thanks once again for reading, and thank you for your support. I'll see you all next week, and I hope you have a good one.

~Spooky

P.S.:

Co-Host is sadly shutting down next week so I will no longer be updating that. If you're here from there, and want to follow me, there are a bunch of gallery links on the page. Or you can just bookmark www.foxsaliant.com 

I haven't been updating dA in a while because its new UI doesn't work with PostyBirb and my inbox is full of crypto and NFT scams, so if you've been trying to contact me on dA, I'm sorry, I just haven't gotten your PMs because they've been buried under garbage. Please PM me on Furaffinity or Inkbunny instead. I generally get to those... fairly quickly? I do try and update FurAffinity and Inkbunny as regularly as I can, and Newgrounds, Eka's, and Itaku are pretty easy for me to deal with, too. 

I also post to Mastodon (on Aethy) and Pillowfort, but I don't really get a lot of interaction on those (props to the people who like all my stuff on there, though, I see you. You're awesome.) I don't really do social media that much, though, and I gave up Twitter over two years ago and I'm just not interested in getting a BlueSky account.

And of course, there's the SubscribeStar, if you're interested in supporting our endeavors here.

So I'm going to be trying to get everything of mine on the site and kind of make it my home on the net for the foreseeable future. I'm getting old, and I just kind of want to settle down, internet-wise. If something new and shiny comes along that's appealing to me, I might make an account, but I'm not going to try and be complete for anything on other sites as far as uploads go. Fox Saliant will be where everything's at, at least unless something happens to mess with that, so, that's how things are going to be going forward. I just have a lot of catching up to do on my uploads and spiffying up this place, but we'll get it done.

That was a long PS, but I couldn't really fit it in the tone of the rest of the post. So, thanks again for reading!

~Spooky

Various Happenings: https://www.varioushappenings.com/

The Adventures of Clara Cosmos: https://www.claracosmos.space/

SubscribeStar: https://subscribestar.adult/foxsaliant 

https://www.foxsaliant.com/

It gets harder as you get towards the top, but we're almost there!

~Spooky

Various Happenings: https://www.varioushappenings.com/

The Adventures of Clara Cosmos: https://www.claracosmos.space/

SubscribeStar: https://subscribestar.adult/foxsaliant

https://www.foxsaliant.com/

Chipping away! Again and again, until it's done! One swing at a time! Let's go! ~Spooky

Various Happenings: https://www.varioushappenings.com/

The Adventures of Clara Cosmos: https://www.claracosmos.space/

SubscribeStar: https://subscribestar.adult/foxsaliant

Weekly Update! (2024-08-18) The Final Stretch

https://www.foxsaliant.com/

I'm giddy! I can't believe we're almost there! Not much to say this time around but update's on the site!

~Spooky

Various Happenings: https://www.varioushappenings.com/

The Adventures of Clara Cosmos: https://www.claracosmos.space/

SubscribeStar: https://subscribestar.adult/foxsaliant

https://www.foxsaliant.com/

I can't believe we're almost there! I thought I'd never get here, but we've done it again! Let's keep going! Update's on the site!

~Spooky

Various Happenings: https://www.varioushappenings.com/

The Adventures of Clara Cosmos: https://www.claracosmos.space/

SubscribeStar: https://subscribestar.adult/foxsaliant