ellenmillion

With the 25th anniversary of my business galloping down on me, it may be time for a round of projects on the chopping block: https://ellenmillion.dreamwidth.org/tag/chopping+block

Can you believe it's been 8 years since I last did one?!

In other related things, I'm looking at my #junicorn progress (25 done!) and it is REMARKABLE how much they have improved since the first year I did them. This, and a bit of a recent ego shakeup, is making me ask hard questions about what I want to improve on, skills wise, and how, exactly, I'm actively working to do that. I am not anywhere CLOSE to where I want to be in several areas, and there are a lot of places I feel like I'm completely stagnating.

If you know me at all, you know how satisfied I am with that state of affairs. (Spoilers: NOT VERY.)

I will probably finish the hunky shifter series as part of my self-education, because I've historically slacked off on drawing men, and I feel like it is really good practice to make myself finish 20 of these. I feel like I've already expanded my repertoire nicely with just seven of them, but I've got more to learn. (Also, use the discount code BEEFCAKE33 for 33% off at Etsy.)

And next month, instead of doing #Zooly (rhymes with July), I think I will do a 30 portraits/30 days challenge, and request photos and references from my audience. Anything I don't sell can go up on PA because I'm Not Happy with my current offerings. (I'm seeing a theme.)

Girl Nest Door has topped 17500 and I'm having a heap of 'this sucks and the plot doesn't work and I am so laaaaame' feelings but I am still plugging away at just over 1000 words/day and if I get that and a LITTLE extra writing time in the next few days, it is possible (POSSIBLE) that I will finish this sucker this month. (Which is not bad, considering I STARTED it this month.)


Here, have some new artwork behind this cut:
( Hunky shifters this way... )

Our last chopping block post (at least until I start another project... hahahahaha. Okay, that's not as funny as it sounded in my head...)!

I've built several of these now: for $500 you get a hosted site (unlimited space and bandwidth) built for you to manage artwork and writing. It's a little more focused for artist than your average wordpress build, and includes shopping cart tools that can all be safely and securely managed through the EMG backend. In some ways, this is a crowd-funded project, because with each site that I build, I not only supply the basic features (galleries, libraries, shopping tools and category management), I also add more features. For every new artist that signs up, each of the existing artists get the opportunity to have these upgrades added to their existing sites. Future upgrades will include: A centralized wholesale database, for those artists interested in selling wholesale. (A wholesale client signs up and is vetted with me, then has a directory of artists that they can shop with, with wholesale pricing and shopping access on their individual sites.) Detail images. Direct submission from their own site to EMG-Zine and Fantastic Portfolios, complete with an automatic link back to their page. Better search and browsing functions.

These take only the time that I'm getting paid for. The first several were not worth it to me in a strictly time for money sense, but I've gotten past that investment stage, and I've become comfortable with the flow of setting them up and interfacing with the clients. I will continue to do these as I am paid for them!

What does this require of me? Marketing. Too many people don't know about this service, and it's not well documented anywhere that I can send them when they have questions - the ones I've done have been directly word of mouth. I need to build a page, update the lilypad, and get the word out there, and also make it more intuitive for existing clients to get their upgrades, set up some karma rewards, and work out standardized payment plans for folks who find $500 too much to plunk down at once (which is understandable!).

I would love to have these keeping me busy over drafting and programming less interesting things - it feeds neatly into my desire to help artists and I really enjoy this kind of coding. The possibility of teaming with someone more interested in the design aspect of it is also intriguing to me, especially if I get busy with more of them.

And... with this entry, we come to the end of the chopping block series. I'll tackle the wrap-up of the process next, and go back and look at some of the issues I left outstanding. It's tremendously useful to have these all laid out and tagged like this! You can view all of them here: http://ellenmillion.livejournal.com/tag/chopping%20block and note that your comments have been very, VERY helpful in determining where outside interest lies. If you have any last minute input to add, make it soon - the executioner is sharpening the axe now! :)

I've been putting this chopping block post off - at first because I was looking forward to it so much, so I held it as my reward for finishing all the others. Then Val (one of our more active members!) died, and that turned the topic bittersweet: for a while there, I don't think I COULD have written it. It came together today as I got ready to do the Muse Fusion wrapup.



Torn World has been open for just shy of a year now, since January 1, 2010. In that time, we have posted 101 stories, 35 poems, and 87 pieces of artwork, plus dozens of world-building articles and characters. 25 contributors have provided this work. Our canon board consists of 7 people (with me), and we do careful editing on everything that is posted as canon, to ensure that it fits the world and continuity and is of sufficient quality. Several people have expressed so far that the process has really improved their writing, and we've had no real disasters of ego.

( cut for length... )

Most critical to me, personally, I want to make it easier to jump into the project. Three people in exactly as many days have independently told me that they really want to get involved, but find it daunting. Not that they didn't have time, which I can appreciate (oh, YEAH), but that they weren't sure how, or they were actually too intimidated to.

I... can totally get that: the sheer amount of detail to wade through is epic. And I'm not entirely sure how to fix it, other than to insist that OMG, you guys - it is so worth that first step! The editing board is incredibly good, and you have to know that I wouldn't let them be mean, even if they are picky, and it's so helpful a process that I would like to submit my non-Torn World stories to them. We're really happy to help correct world/canon problems, so you don't need to worry too much about knowing EVERYTHING perfectly before you get started. It's useful to read the contributor's starting article, which spawns off to the most critical information. The forums, though far quieter now than when we started, are still a great place to say hello and bounce ideas around!

I wish I could promise more comments than we get - and I really need to step up and do my share there, but if you like cross-weaving stories, and having control of your own characters, and dancing at the edges of big, huge, world-bending plots, it's so incredibly rewarding and exciting. Our pace is somewhat slow - we don't maintain a strict x for x timeline so that it's marching along without us, and that sometimes means plot lags, but the opportunity to go in and fill in delicious plot holes with side trips and gems of character exploration is worth it. It's seriously like writing fanfiction for your own work - all the world-building structure is already there to play with, and there are so many wonderful, already-developed figures to bounce your own characters off of, plus as much collaborative back and forth as you want. You are welcome to play with the primary figures, too, and so many of them have ready-to-build stories in the history sections of their character sheets. Just add words! Or art!

And if you have other ideas about what would make getting involved easier, I am all ears! I would love any thoughts you might have about making the project accessible and enjoyable, as a reader or contributor.


Chopping block conclusion

Torn World is here to stay. I am still so, so excited about this project. I've had a rather difficult year, and even when this project went directions I didn't anticipate, or activity was down, or I was second-guessing my decisions and being a grumpy grouch because things felt too chaotic or I wanted things I couldn't understand or express, Torn World was a terrific comfort to me. It is thrilling to find a new submission in the queue, and watch the world unfold a tiny bit more with each new poem or piece of art. It's like watching a flower bloom - slow and gorgeous and amazing.

For Christmas? I'd like it if more of my wildly talented friends got involved. :) I want to share this with you!

Once I had finally found a good system for high quality prints, I wanted to share this ability with artists everywhere. At that point, on-line printing options were non-existent. As I expanded the gift shop, I offered these products to artists directly, with their own artwork. I envisioned a Cafepress/Zazzle storefront option long before those sites were ideas in their creators brains.

First, I was going to build my own - I used that same greymatter blogging engine that powered Portrait Adoption and EMG for so long, and laboriously built a few beta-test sites. They... were extensive to build and maintain - far too involved to do for free, and it hadn't occurred to me then to charge for them. When Portrait Adoption and the giftshop were moved to php, I hired a programmer to build me a site that would let an artist upload their artwork, have me approve print files, and offer them little custom-made shopping pages that would order from me and let me pay the artists anything above the base pricing. The programmer worked fast and did a fine job (I hired a number of programmers about that time...), but... the flow of the site was clunky. I still had to do a lot, there were some bugs (normal in beta testing), and my profit margin was minuscule. I let it run for a while, with a handful of beta testers, and sold one print. "This," I said to myself, "is not a good plan."

I let those beta testers keep their sites until the domain expired, some three years later, but never took the project further, and of course, just last year, I pulled the plug on every product but prints.

I do still provide prints for a select dozen or so people. My prints are - and I'm not exaggerating - without compare. They are high quality, with a fast turnaround, and exceptionally carefully done. They are not nearly as cheap as other printing services, because I use only the highest quality papers and inks, and I've learned many (expensive) lessons about how to price so I don't screw myself. I do prints for a few locals, a few not-so locals, and a few big names - people who already know how to provide good quality print files, are good to work with and have, over the years, done good consistent business with me. Most of them don't order huge quantities at once, but they are, generally, steady.

I don't make a ton with these services, but they do keep my printers in action (which is important - you don't want printers of this type sitting around getting clogs!), and they pay for themselves.

Ironically, I've completely automated this service through the lilypad (the EMG backend) in terms of uploading, managing and ordering prints, but none of my regulars use it... preferring to keep using ftp and email. Go figure! At least they know what they're doing and asking for, so it doesn't waste too much of my time.

I see no real reason to stop providing existing clients my print services, but I'm not terribly interested in offering them generally. Possibly in the future, this service (and maybe a related Limited Edition service that uses certificates like PA does) will become publicly available. But for now? Nah. Not that I hate doing prints, but there isn't enough reward to go through the learning curve that comes with new clients. This is off my radar entirely right now.

I've been doing at least one calendar a year since 2006, and most years, I'd do three calendars: one for Ursula, one as a group project, and one for a featured fantasy artist.

( History... )

So, this is another easy, easy choice: no more calendars this way. I did enjoy making the calendars, and they're another item that's easy to ship with priority flat rate. But I'm not doing the invest-in-boxes thing anymore. If I do them again, it will be by pre-order, only, and I won't even bother laying out the files until I reach a certain minimum of paid commitment.

If this ever happens - and that's an IF - it won't be immediately. Consider this one shelved.

I built (okay, paid to have built!) Fantastic Portfolios because I really, really wanted a site like it. It's a place to get honest, thorough critique, from a panel of judges who are professional about the process, who don't know who you are (within reason), in a setting where critique is pretty much the sole purpose. It can be really hard to critique others in a public forum where you know each other, and you know that what you're saying is colored by who you both are. I've seen friendships lost over honest critiques, and sometimes it's hard to say 'this part needs work' to a friend.

More, I want goals. A benchmark to strive for, that will feel rewarding, and be honored, and to know it's not just arbitrary nor based on a single person, nor easy.

Fantastic Portfolios really offers that. The site is a wonder, and it's got some seriously awesome features that aren't really used.

Some of them, I'm glad aren't used: we have had, since we launched in 2007, ZERO complaints on comments and critiques. Zero. I went in and tested the system a few times to make sure it was working, and no one has ever complained about a critique.

They have cried, don't get me wrong. Our brand of tough love is not for the weak of spirit and unwilling to learn. I have seen and received wails of hurt and witnessed despondency and vows to never do art again. Some of them walked away, deleted their portfolios and never came back. But that's not the majority of the response - whether they fail or not (and to be fair, most do fail. See above about not being easy!), and what's more encouraging yet, those people who do react this way come back more than not. A few months down the road - even as much as a year - they go back to that advice and say, hey, there's some validity there, and they tackle the problems that were pointed out and improve. There is nothing as delightful as watching the fourth submission of a portfolio pass, and recognize that it deserves it.

We're hard, but we're fair, and I've made a big point with the critics that they find something nice to say, and point out strengths. We're here to help and inspire, not tear down, and the critics I've selected and trained are top notch at what they do, gifted not only at knowing what's wrong, but also how to say it kindly and how to give pats when appropriate. I cannot praise them highly enough in this aspect.

So, yes. I love this project, and feel like it's working well enough at what it's doing. What it's not doing... is much. We've got the ability to take and make tours at the site, which is a groovy feature... but no one will make them! I think the last one was made in 2008, and we've had nearly 300 pieces of gorgeous artwork added since then! Pictures languish without comments. It takes a month or three to get a piece through the queue. Maybe three people have subscribed as a paying member since our initial drive.

Again, I'm willing to accept my role in not pushing this as much as I should. I sometimes expect to set up projects and let them just drive themselves. Sometimes that works (Sketch Fest), but mostly, that leads to fizzle, and I should be grateful this project has remained as strong as it has: work still gets critiqued, and WELL, and people are still submitting (and sometimes re-submitting and re-submitting) their portfolios. Image quality remains high, but the goals seem attainable.

There's a lot of potential here... and I also feel like there's a better way to set up the financial end of it, but I'm not sure what that is. Right now, I'm several hundred out from paying for what I've laid out on the site, which doesn't particularly bother me. I would really, REALLY like to see critics get paid for their work, and think they truly deserve that. Perhaps a donation option - some folks might like to thank the critics after they've received their critiques (and had time to nurse their wounds and then come back... :P) I'm not sure what the answer is here, but I have a few vague ideas. I have some pie-in-the-sky ideas of being able to tie this all in with EMG credits and let people tip $1 at a time (or maybe even less!) for helpful critiques in a way that doesn't feed Paypal a lions share of the money. I also know that I need to improve the system for getting and keeping new critics, because burnout can be a problem. Being able to tangibly reward said critics would probably help.

I'm not entirely sure what to do with this monster yet, but it's not in line for immediate axing. It takes little of my time to maintain at status quo; a few nags usually get the critics to work, and I have help on the coding end of things here. I like being one of the critic team, usually, and have no objections to the nearly insignificant amounts of time the management currently takes. While I'd like to see it rise to the next level, I haven't decided if it's worth the time it would take to get it there. I am content to let it live for now, and consider it for more attention in the future.

I would also, honestly, be content to see someone else take up the reins of this project. Maybe what it needs is someone else with fresh vision to drive it further? I dunno - that's something I haven't really offered as an option with some of these projects, but I'm not completely adverse to the idea...

Sketch Fest is so brand spanking new that it's still got parts of the packaging on it.

It grew out of the Torn World Muse Fusions. Those events were so inspirational, so fun and full of creative energy, that I wanted to broaden them. I was also trying out the EMG livejournal account, to see if it was a viable option for replacing the flagging forums (verdict: no), and since the Muse Fusions were a big part of the Torn World livejournal, I decided to give a general EMG artist Muse Fusion a shot.

The rules... were fairly arbitrarily decided. One of the joys of Muse Fusion is that you aimed to accomplish a LOT in a short period of time, and I personally found that making myself set something aside after a certain amount of time kept me working forward, instead of just spinning my wheels. Okay, so let's cap the time: 1 hour seems like enough time to polish a simple sketch a bit, and still keep some of the looseness I'm aiming for. Besides which, it's a REALLY easy number. Other than that, and the concept of working from the prompts provided? Anything goes!

It was hosted at the livejournal in March. 19 artists participated, and 75 sketches were posted. It was quite chaotic in that platform, and very hard to follow and standardize what was posted. I encouraged people to use crowdfunding methods to support their own work, and several people did. Being me, I could see a lot of ways to improve the system, and asked for donations to build some tools to help us - I was trying to make an actual go of being a programmer, and was getting more comfortable asking for help on projects that were fun, and less guilty about trying to stay afloat financially while still trying to help artists (she CAN be taught!). And people stepped up! I got enough donations after the first run to build us a simple image uploading script that would allow people to show off their pieces for the second one.

The second Sketch Fest was in May, not April, because I ended up having organ removal surgery at the end of the April, and that sort of upended my life.

For each successive Sketch Fest, we gathered more artists, produced more sketches, and donations continued to come steadily enough that I was actually paid a decent rate (if not my usual full rate!) to build a site and feel like the time I spent setting the events up and hosting them was actually being rewarded. This is a first for me - usually I'm the one dumping money at a project and sort of wistfully hoping that it pays off at some point. This time, I thought a little ahead, and even built in some opportunities at the webpage for artists to help out by donating their sketches for people to buy to support the site.

I gotta say, I like this model better. I feel encouraged - even inspired! - to continue to make improvements, and keep things going. I feel like making time to participate pays off in both community interaction and personal skills, and my motivation is easy to justify - I can pay my bills* with it, it's not just a feel-good opportunity to fill my personal creative well and gather good karma. It's also a very clear and powerful way for artists to express to me where they find it important for me to spend my time, and I appreciate that clarity. Is it selfish and capitalistic of me to be so pleased by this? Possibly. Or possibly, it's just realistic.

Verdict?

Sketch Fest is made of win. I have gotten the site to the point of almost automatic (I actually hope to automate some of the last few features today and test them this fest), and will continue to make improvements and add features as long as people continue to support it. I'm aiming for about once a month, but January will get two.

Our next Sketch Fest is this Friday and Saturday! It runs noon to noon Alaska time, and you can participate as much or as little as you like!

Please note that I am going to time out the availability of old sketches for sale at the site, because I am concerned that they are going to get lost - or finished! - and artists will forget to update their status. In the future, work will only be available until the next sketch fest is started. Get these rare and amazing pieces while you can! See ALL the sketches available here (big download!) - the pieces with heavy borders are available for purchase... but won't be after Friday!


*Maybe not the mortgage or anything, but phone and Internet, and that's important!

Portrait Adoption is arguably the best idea I've ever had. Of all the aspects of EMG, it has been the most lively, the most profitable for all involved, and is the most unique. It also requires very little of my time to maintain - finally.

( History of PA )
Overall Feelings about the Project

I love this project. I am still quite proud of the concept, and feel like the site has (finally!) gotten close to the vision I had - even exceeded it in places! It hasn't been a runaway success, and there is some emotional abandonment baggage that has been sort of eating away at my brain. Most Internet-only businesses could not survive 18 months+ of crippled website - that's almost 1/3 of the time the project has been up! This one has survived, and that says a lot. It continues to give a handful of active artists good pocket money, and even pays some major bills for a few of them.


Cold Hard Cash and Time Evaluation

This project asks very little of me, anymore. I have to check once a day to approve any new work, which can be done with two clicks, and approve adoptions when payment is received (another two clicks) and print the portrait (for standard adoptions) and pay the artist (easily managed through the lilypad, now). I can program All By Myself, now, if I want to add improvements, but it doesn't **require** any, and I've been able to fix any problems that come up with relative ease.

I set up the payment structure thoughtfully from the very beginning, and it's fair - I don't make a ton on artwork that's not my own, but I DO make enough to make my time investment worthwhile, and I also have the opportunity to sell my own work as one of the artists - which is very worthwhile indeed.


Improvements

Oh, don't think that improvements couldn't be made - there are several that I'd love to pursue: the ability to share wishlists, and to show wishlist counts, more peer review interactivity, more forum activity for artists (which is more a personal activity push than a coding investment), and the avatar adoption option that is already half-built. I have been toying since the very, very beginning with the idea of approaching established gaming platforms for licensing rights to legitimately offer things like WOW portraits and Star Wars specific races and creatures (and enter partnerships with those platforms for more exposure), and the very basic framework for making that happen is actually in place, should I have the guts to actively try.

But none of these improvements are necessary for its current forward motion, which is very nice indeed.


Final Thoughts

Portrait Adoption is safe from the executioner today. It is worth ramping up again, even - it's time to let go of my frustration and baggage and actively pursue this in earnest. The momentum we had at the beginning was tremendous and encouraging, and the whole concept has serious merit. There is so much potential in this project it's somewhat staggering, and I've under-utilized it because I've been so afraid of further platform failure. It's time to let go of the negative here and let this project reach the heights that it can.

Today, we are starting with EMG-Zine

( It got long... )

Final thoughts:

EMG-Zine is definitely safe until the end of 2011. After that? Well, today is laying out the facts for this project. Every day this week, I'll do another. When I get to the end, I will decide what stays and what goes, and make an overall gameplan.

I am still enthused about EMG-Zine. I feel good about what we've accomplished. I think there's still a lot of material out there to share. But at its current reward to cost ratio, it's not sustainable. I can see where I need to make improvements. Are they worth making? Will they do the job?

I'm still thinking.





And, in other news, I've got a stack of orders to mail, and plan to catch up on emails this afternoon unless I get some paying work in the door. Which I really sort of need! *merp!*

I'm still writing... I have about ten more scenes all outlined ahead of me, which I think will get me to my wordcount goal and then, the book will be DONE. Well, not really, because there are a LOT of holes to go back and fill, but I think it counts as a first draft.

40351 / 50000 words. 81% done!