Caro's Corner

Too good to be true...

With a crew of 20 and a caffeine addicted captain, I imagine the Polar Tang has quite the collection of mugs from different islands. Bepo tried to find the least-crass one possible for Cora. (Stay tuned for more)

Part 3 of "Law is super high when Cora miraculously returns" :D

Waterworks Part Two: Sober Edition

This thought popped in my head on why Bepo let Cora on the ship to see Law

Hi everyone 👋🏻 Zk here >< or Cats, for older followers

So I've been getting back into doing SwapOut again, but I would like to appeal to everyone who reads and loves the comic. Much love to all of you who's still sticking around 🙏🏻💙 But something has also always been bothering me throughout this journey.

As many of us know, we artists do these comics for free (especially fan comics), starting them out of love and taking a LOT of time and energy out of our lives to continue making them.

And it's amazing how many of you come from translations or comic dubs on Youtube, which are also very well-done and take a lot of effort to make, much love to them too. There is a difference, however.

Monetization.

And I'm not asking for pity! I'm appealing for understanding.

Because some comic dubbers on Youtube are able to earn ad revenue from the videos they upload. From the beginning, we artists have given them the permission to dub our works. But we don't receive anything from it, nor do we usually charge them for using our art (against our better judgement).

We let them use our comic pages in their monetized videos for free. And occasionally these videos receive thousands and millions of views, which I imagine gives a decent amount of ad revenue, while the artists themselves don't usually earn anything from their own artwork, nor do we ever want to put it behind a paywall of any kind. (we like reading free comics too so don't worry x|)

... But doing full-colored comic pages for free eventually gets hard to sustain without any income from it, even more so when we need to give our time and energy to other jobs to earn money for a living instead. We legitimately keep going on our comics purely out of love. Truly, we would LOVE to do our own art for a living. There's things like Patreon but it's only feasible if we're also able to produce bonus content or show BTS, and only people willing to spend money for them can help us, and not readers who aren't able to.

And we understand that not everyone can afford to support us monetarily. And that's okay!

But if you love these comics and want to really help us to keep going, there ARE ways you can easily support us for free!

For example, affiliates on Twitch (like myself) are able to earn ad revenue very early on (they must have at least 50 followers, quite a requirement, but still easier to obtain than Youtube's 1000 subscribers).

(my Youtube, btw. not much rn but drop a subscribe?)

But simply put, if the vast majority of readers from the yt numbers visit and stay for ads on the artists' Twitch streams (remember to have adblocker disabled for the site, if any), they'll be making an actual, physical contribution to the artist themselves, at no cost whatsoever. We earn up to 55% from any ads that run on our stream, so the more viewers, the better!

(this is my twitch on average 8 viewers, with a 3 hour stream. again, the more the better!)

(ofc you can also buy subs to watch ad-free and supports me directly, but i'm typing all this to share the free ways people can support their fave creators ✨)

And even if that doesn't work out, I'd be happy enough to see most of you there 🙏🏻💙 I've been treating my streams as work, so I'm striving not to break the streak.

So drop a follow on my Twitch, and catch the streams when you can! They're great if you need company or background noise, and also great for co-working~

Currently streaming WEEKLY, Mondays, Wednesdays (SwapOut) and Saturdays, 10.30AM EST

(art by @cupcakepaints)

>> twitch.tv/zkcats <<

Anyway thanks for listening to my Ted talk, please share this around for others as well >< 🙏🏻 Artists, make this a reblog chain or something! Promo your stuff!

And apologies for the essay, I wasn't expecting to type this much sdghsgh this itself is not an ad for Twitch or whatev, I'm just a little frustrated with needing to juggle all this.

I was also considering hosting SwapOut somewhere that could get ad revenue, but I wasn't sure where until I realized I can probably earn that from my Tapas now (i think?? sdfhgh up to 70% ad revenue there but i haven't seen any yet) So maybe I'll post there a day earlier than here or something? We'll see. Go subscribe there! Check it out! Reread it! Help ME help YOU!

Hello everyone! This is not exactly a good reason to re-open commissions, but I’m doing this to help my husband, NyxTheShield. Here’s some context: Yesterday (September 25th), Nyx’s network (Routenote), demonetized his entire Youtube Channel without further explanation. Even if you can see some ads in  his music videos, he’s not getting any type of revenue, because there’s a problem with his channel configuration that he cannot revert manually. We immediately contacted Youtube and Routenote via Twitter to get an answer. This morning Youtube sent him an e-mail confirming this is an issue with Routenote, but they haven’t reached out to Nyx yet. We don’t know how long we have to wait until every single video can be monetized again. With each passing day, his income decreases, so recovering those losses could take a long time. Even if we count with my savings, it is not possible for me to use them all since I haven’t finished  my visa procedures in Chile, therefore, I cannot open a bank account to pay bills in this country at the moment. (Nyx’s paycheck is also way bigger than mine ;w;) 

This is why I have decided to put  Underverse 0.5 animation  on hold to open unlimited emergency commissions and cover Nyx’s daily income until Routenote decides to reply. All the money earned from the commissions will go directly to Nyx’s Paypal, so I’m just here as an alternative to help him out. Here’s Nyx’s thread on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NyxTheShield/status/1309617996386762753 https://twitter.com/NyxTheShield/status/1309917531554099203

Commission sheet:

And here’s the google form where you can select the type of commission you’re interested in. Once I’ve got your email, I will contact you to reach an agreement and start working on your commission! Slots will remain unlimited until Routenote fixes their crap. 

Australia needs our help. Australia is my home and I hate seeing how the current fires are worsening each day. So many people have lost their homes and everything they possess. So many have been evacuated. Our animals have no where to go and are afraid. 

Lets help however we can. If you can’t donate then lets just get the word out.We need to do our part to help. 

You can donate to:

www.givit.org.au

www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/volunteer/support-your-local-brigade

www.cfa.vic.gov.au/about/supporting-cfa

Dust Characters in chibi mode ^.^

hey guys.

so uh, a buncha things happened throughout my family vacation.

i won't go into all the details cos its seriously a LOT of stuff but basically, my mom had a jetski accident.

we went jetskiing last thursday and my parents were trying to switch jetskis cos one of them was more stable. ironically, when she was trying to cross over, they drifted apart and she fell with her full weight and fractured her femur on the edge.

not to mention we were in the middle of he ocean surrounded by islands, so we were forced to drive a long way back to the beach on bumpy waves.

thankfully me and my siblings caught the flight the next day and my parents managed to fly back on an emergency plane the same night.

she had a compound fracture on her femur, really close to her hip. she went through her surgery last sunday and began her physiotherapy just yesterday to start walking again.

it's been hard so i wanted to try give her a little something. i was thinking it'd be nice if i could get well wishes from many, many different people saying "get well soon!" and "stay strong!", then somehow putting them all together into a heart shape and giving it to her. probably just digitally send it to her cos its easier to keep and look at.

so i'm hoping, if anyone reading this can spare a few minutes, send me your messages so i can do this, and maybe give her some strength. and if you can't, it's ok. liking this post or sharing it around helps too.

also i'd rather not ask for money but i have to admit their flight back was uh, very expensive. they could afford it but if i could ease their mind even a little, i'd really appreciate it. i'll put some old patreon posts on ko-fi soon.

my ko-fi

my paypal.me

i'll update this post with the get-well-soon heart when i can.

thank you 💖

Four years ago a little game was released that profoundly changed my life. I wrote a comic about it for this zine:

I’m really lucky to be in this zine with so many other talented artists, and I’m glad I have a chance to say to Toby, to the characters, to fandom, and to my friends – hey, this really meant a lot to me. Thank you. 

You can get it here https://gumroad.com/l/DliCI (it’s free)

So, our Lung is on fire.

It is already threatened by huge deforestation, to the point it lost 20% of its wildth in less than 30 years.

It’s been burning for around two weeks and almost no word has been uttered about it. I, sincerely, have come to find out about it just now. I’m shooketh ™️ because we’re really burning away this planet.