An Early look on what's to come

Letter from King Khiew

Greetings, My Fellow Dragons! After we took an expedition out into the wildlands near our kingdoms. We have met with mystical places and magical grimoires that would safekeep our thoughts, creativities and works all together for everyone in the army to not get lost in the treasure's discovery. All the details will be attached to this letter. Please don't lose them, Mr. Curator!

Best Regards, King Khiew

Today, I want to share with you all of what's coming to all of my Dragon's Army members. Because what I want to do, need time and resources to be succeed in a timely manner and not wasted all my energy and the supports I get from everyone.

TL;DR

A little rewind

At the start of this month, I've officially announce The Dragons' Army through my comic post on Social Media** (not on bsky apparently). It will be a multi-chapter that I've plan ahead with Patreon integrations in mind. After all, All the members in The Dragons' Army started from each tier name and class that I wanted to implemented for supporting members that may want to associated with their tier more and bring cohesive to the overall RPG theme I've wanted to see happen.

All the notes I've take (To be concluded)

From the notes, I wanted to introduce each character and everyone on the Tier list. Now I'm working on Loyalist (See more here)

Commander will be the next one I have to complete, which I think would be around the first-half of next month (From Design to Finish) So, I might want to get the information about the tier changes out first for the public to know that we have a new one.

At the end of last month, I've learn to strategist my works and what I wanted to move to next. Lots of ideas occurred and when I started working on it, the picture is getting clearer on what I should do next.

From Dragons' Army, to New Horizons

Earlier on my journey, I saw Patreon as a center point of all my works that I wanted to create. Arts, Plans, Ideas, and maybe something nobody wants to see. I put them all here and called it a day.

But now, after searching and learning new things. I found that this doesn't have to be true. I don't have to put all of my works and thoughts here to make it work. I just have to put them in the right places.

What do I mean by that? Well, from now on when I post something, I have to think before hitting the post button on whether this should be in that particular place or not. If I post everything willy nilly, it risks convoluting everything for everyone including me that I find it hard to remember what I've posted.

And could I do to prevent that? I would need some helps. Some places that can bring my works front and center and can take care of that for sometime ahead. And most importantly, it shouldn't be a high barrier to entry with fees and monthly payment (Remember I'm trying to clear my own debt while I'm working on this lol). Everything that can help me is the place that I will be.

Chosen Places

I don't think too much about it and when time comes, I didn't seem to go anywhere but a random artist on internet posting doodles. This habit of mine doesn't build towards my art path that I see myself going to in the last 10 years or so.

I don't want to lock myself into one platform or say that I will be there forever either. It's just my current decision to be there for a while, until I can grow and change things again (which should be a while). I think that if I do not choose where to start laying my foundations, I cannot grow sustainably.

And it will not be just another social network! After researching and soul searching, the way I posted and curated my own work has been somewhat lacking and I tend to rely on social networks alone which isn't very stable to begin with.

Each socials have their own quirks to follow and regulations that must be kept in check, which is normal for every place but the more important question is "Whether they suit my workflow or not?". That I didn't think about it. So, here we are!

For every place you want to grow, comes with a cost. You have limited time and resource to put in. If I tries to grow everywhere all at once (which I've tried for the past decade), it won't grow as much and might be easily wither away by just one simple changes from the platform. Now, I wanted all my power and resource to be concentrated to specific target I wanted to met. Not throwing them out randomly and hope it sticks the wall.

With all of that said, I've chose the places that I wanted to continuously post my works and that is ComicFury and ReadAWrite

ComicFury Landing Page

ComicFury is a Webcomic Publishing Site that's popular among the indie comics and weekly publishers. I've tested it and found that it's quite flexible on publishing chapters of comics even in batch. Most importantly, no limits on volumes and easy to find and start reading right away. This would be great for my series like Dear Diary, Greendragon and Bluecat, Shark Bros and The Dragons' Army which I've first experimented with. I would post in English on ComicFury cause most audiences would be English Speaker but fear not my Thai friends! I got someplace that you're familiar with.

ReadAWrite Landing Page

ReadAWrite is a novel, fanfic and manga publishing site which is in the same network with Meb, the e-book store in Thailand. The difference is ReadAWrite is a free platform to sign in and start publish right away with little restrictions (I used to publish on Ookbee when it was a thing). It has a Donations and Membership system in place as well which is quite enticing. But I won't go too deep into that for now, it would complicate stuffs on Patreon as well as on ReadAWrite and it'd hurt the comic publishing that I wanted to do the most. This site would be just that, a place to read my comics.

The reasons I chose this two platform is the compatibility of my work flow with the platforms nature. I wanted to do things backward, experimenting on stuffs and trying new things. Doing that on socials won't do you much good cause people want consistency with daily posting as a bonus. These are the reasons of which many artists are totally burnt out before even getting their first real life money from the platforms. I want to be able to manage how I post my work, what people should get to see first and not having to do it on the fly everyday with new moments to capture, new trends to follow. It's exhausting. This can alleviate that problem and I can post my old stuffs once again, breathing new life to them.

Another reason is Ownership. Both ComicFury and ReadAWrite still granted ownership to the owner that posted their works on their site and can be revoke if you decided to remove your works in the future.** Compare to Webtoon which after you publish your works on their site, it's Theirs forever*. Which would be a problem if you decided to sell/post them elsewhere. A dealbreaker for me. I want to own my work and do whatever with it. If I decided to transfer it to another, it'd be my own choice, not the platforms I chose to uploaded to.

khiew atlastseason's Youtube Channel*

And not forgetting my animation side of things too. The default choice would be Youtube on khiew atlastseason's Channel and maybe Vimeo for backups. Both will serve as video deposit and watch channel since I don't tend to compete with other channels. My Workflow doesn't support that kind of workload, just another way to enjoy my works.

All the places I've chose doesn't support me financially so where does the money coming from then?

Well... ‌From our lovely Dragons' Army, of course!

But in all seriousness, Patreon Subs doesn't cover all of my expense right now. I would need a couple of income channels like ad revenue from Facebook and Youtube or other ways like Art Commission which I'd need to do to make due on daily and monthly basis. So it'd be no surprised if ReadAWrite's Donation would be another option for me if it suits me.

I don't want too much channel of revenue cause Taxes but that's another topic for another day 🥶

All is coming to places. Now it's do time!

Just thinking and planning about it doesn't get the job done! It's been my life lesson for many times that made me think too much and not getting anything done. Now, I wanted to achieve these tasks I've set up for myself. At least, I wanted to post all of my old works for people to enjoy.

In a couple months ahead. Things would go like this:

These tasks would take me at least four months. Not to mention things like monthly request on Patreon and The making of any announcement of any kind that I'd have to make (ughhh pr stuffs) would eat up my time more.

You can see that there will be a lot to cover. If you want to help out, you can support me directly through my Patreon* as a part of Dragons' Army initiates to help your King's Journey came true!

Thank you so much for those who are supporting from encouragement to financial, in the past and the present. I hope that these would get to help you know more clearly on what I hope to achieve. The journey is long but if we have friends to go along with. It would be worth it!

Get Subscribe for more updates. And see you soon! 🐲👋