I made a ‘Buy Me A Coffee’ Page. You may ask, what is ‘Buy Me A Coffee‘?
It is a support payment platform where artists and creatives can be funded for their creative endevours. The term Buy Me A Coffee refeers to the fact that you can support your favourite creatives for as little as the cost of a coffee.
About a week ago I actually released a Patreon account, which I think is the most popular payment site for creatives. However, I don’t really like their model. Patreon is a subscription based website, meaning that you get direct debited every month, and on the other end, the creative feels obliged to create new types of services on a monthly basis. While that business model works for some people, I don’t think it works very well for me.
I’ve been a freelance artist since I was 14 years old, and have been creating commissions, merchandise and original content for years. For the time being, I am working on creating online art tutorial videos on youtube, illustrations, and have several large scale projects in the background. (More about them below).
Honestly, I’ve thought about this since 2014 and am actually very anxious about putting myself forward. I have receved many comments from people saying that they liked by work, but receving verbal apprasial is still different to financial support. I have made many campaigns in the past, and never released them to the public, because I was embarrised that nobody would sign up. Though I have the same anxieties, I’ve decided to be brave and put myself out anyway instead of hiding myself away like I used to be.
The large scale art projects have been going on for years, yet it is very difficult to get government art funding within Australia. Therefore, I’m open to crowd based funding to assist with the production of these projects.
There are two projects I have been working on.
- 1) NOVEL – I have been writing the sequel to my first novel The Wish Bringer, called The Life and Death of the Great Wizard Phoenix. My first novel was an amazing achievement, especially since I published it at 21 years old. However, the publishing company I worked with was a really bad one. For this next novel, I really want to do a better job at finding legitimate support from the professional litterary world including editors, and alternate ways to publish and reach the right auidence. (The link above allows you to read snippets of the new book).
- 2) ANIMATED FILM – I’ve been working on an independent animated film since 2017 about my experience walking The Camino de Santiago. The pre-production is completely finished (scripting, storyboarding, designing, budget, time management, etc…), and it was in the application process for being funded by Screen Australia for the last 3 years. It had been approved and gone though many approval rounds, but was let go because of lack of arts funding especially due to COVID-19. The intention was to use the funds to hire staff to assist with the production of the film. One of my greatist ambitions of this time is to finish this film! It has a lot of passion, and without tooting my own horn, I believe that it has the potential to be an award winning film.
While I am extremely confident in my art making skills and experience, I’m still learning how to be better at being a business person. Managing different social media presences, advertisting, reaching the right people who support my work, all while trying to make an honnest living is quite a challenge, and definitly skills that were not included in art school. Though, I am growing and learning every day, there is still much for me to learn as a professional artist.
My intention in the future is to create more information pages about the above projects, so that you can understand in more dept about what I’m doing, and ways you can support and be a part of the process.
Anyway, for time being, if you enjoy seeing my artwork and creative endevours, I would appreciate it greatly if you could donate, even if it’s the cost of a coffee. I am forever creating more and more things, because it is my true self and passion, and it gives me so much joy to be able to share my creative tallents with all of you! By having financial support, I can step closer to creating art full time with focus, as opposed to diverting my attention to other types of jobs for monetary support.
