WIP Pics & Mid-Month Update

Hi everyone,

Pushing the Limits

First I'd like to thank you all for your patience. At the beginning of the month, I started to feel a bit under the weather. I had a severe lack of energy and some signs of getting sick, so I needed to get some rest and take it easy for a few days. 

As you might know, currently maps are something I do in the evening and late at night. I still have my day job and family that needs my time and attention and sometimes it can get straining and stressful working long hours after the kids have gone to sleep. In my past, I've gone through a burn-out twice, and that's something I would really like to avoid. Hence, I try to be careful not to push my limits too far, and now I felt like I was over-extending. 

I feel much better again and I have been back in business for a few days already. Obviously, I haven't been quite as productive as I hoped, but there's still good two weeks time before the end of the month, and starting next week I'm having the rest of the month off from my day job, so I still have time to catch up on the rest of the planned maps :) 

Upcoming Maps

There are a few snapshots of more or less ready maps and on top of those, I have some modular spaceship sections (The first set is likely based on the Mjolnir as an experiment on how to use the sections in practice) and cyberpunk maps coming up. I will prioritize new maps, so I will drop the character tokens from this month, and let's see if I'll still get some new cyberpunk assets done with the upcoming maps. 

See the image captions for more details. 

Focus 2021

The new year is just around the corner and I've been thinking about my goals and plans for the next year. 

 I've been also thinking about the focus of this patreon – yes, I know, again, I'll get to the point in a bit – and I've realized that this patreon has been up for so long and there are so many fantasy and sci-fi maps circulating around the internet with my current Patreon URL that, I find it potentially harmful to focus now on one certain genre. 

For example, someone finds some of my fantasy maps online and follows the tag "PATREON | Miskasmaps" here and finds mostly sci-fi maps at first. They go, "Nah, this is not the place I was looking for", while I have over 160 fantasy maps in my map library, and it would not be wise to scrap those for consistency either. 

I know, going back and forth is not good either, but after realizing this I decided that I need to think this through once more. I don't have a solid solution right now and I'm going with the current momentum until I come up with a better solution.

Time Management & Reorganizing

Also, I've been thinking about where my time goes. I've learned a lot of new things over the past year and I think my technique has developed a lot. With these improvements, I have introduced new stuff to my patreon and I feel like my work process is bloating.  I'd like to release more maps per month, but making a single map release can take a whole evening even more if I count in the time spent on making all the variants and versions. 

I'll probably send soon a more detailed survey on this topic, so I can make things more efficient for myself and add value to you in the process. 

And finally, just to bring this topic up, Patreon's post organizations and search sort of sucks :D 

I hate to admit it, but there isn't any sort of media library or release list features, nor can you batch edit post tags or their permissions. This all makes things very cluttered and unorganized. Since I started back in 2015 Patreon has introduced new features and at one point I switched from per creation to monthly model and all this is very difficult to present in one concise manner. (This also relates to the genre focus issue). I'm aware of the situation and will take measures to fix things as soon as possible, but until I get to work full time on maps, I just don't have the time for an overhaul of this magnitude without seriously impacting my map-making. If I started my Patreon now, I'd do things very differently. But it's impossible to just start over.

I wanted to tell you this so you know that I know the situation, I take it seriously, and I'm looking for solutions, but it's not as easy as I'd like it to be.

To Summarize...

• I'm looking for options and solutions to offer sci-fi and/or fantasy focused content.
• I'm looking for ways to organize my content better.
• New goals and plans for 2021 coming up
• To increase monthly map output, I'm revising my workflow and will send you a more detailed survey later this week. 

 Thank you for your support! 

Stay safe and take care, 

- Miska