March 2023 News & Updates

I’ve been in physical therapy for around two months now, and I’ve been slowly working myself back into drawing. Bluntly, physical therapy kicks my butt and I tend to feel sore and awful for around a day afterwards, and doing this multiple times a week is a bit of a rollercoaster. We’ve moved on to working on my shoulders lately, which are a literal sore point, and that’s been rough going. But things are improving overall. 

I am still working on comic pages, and have been posting progress for the Chio Club as usual. It’s been a bit more of a mountain climb to get anything to completion than I expected, but I’m doing my best. I most recently posted a batch of rough sketches of ideas for the Chio Club sticker tier (discussed further down this post) including a bunch that weren’t shown during the stream where I started working on them!

Among some of the other less drawing-heavy projects I’ve been working on, I’ve also been dabbling with some fiction outside of the Messenger/Follower-verse. I’m not sure if anyone would be interested in checking out drafts of that story in process, but it might be a future Chio Club feature if there’s interest.

Join the Chio Club!

What’s new?

I posted my first ever storytime video on our Youtube channel this month, to pretty good reception! Not so coincidentally, it talks a bit about some of the problems I’ve been having with my hands, so if you want to watch me draw a little bit and listen to me talk, check out my video!

It would also be really helpful to us if you subscribe to our Youtube channel! Like every other webcomic artist out there, we’re always looking for another trickle of revenue to make this whole thing possible, and we can’t even get paid for ads until we reach 1,000 subscribers. We’re pretty close to approaching 100, and while that’s only a tenth of the way, once the snowball starts rolling it gets easier and easier to reach new viewers. It also helps us to have more watch hours, so if you’re interested in our comics, I highly recommend checking out one of the art stream playlists we have and letting it run!

After sleuthing for some opinions and data, I’m tentatively going ahead with the idea of a physical sticker tier for the Chio Club. Whether you join via Patreon or Ko-Fi, I’m planning to introduce a tier where you can get a monthly sticker. You can get all the details in this blog post: https://www.radiochio.com/sticker-club-update/

Our Teepublic store will be up to 35% off
March 8-11 and March 23-26.*

*Sale dates are not final and therefore subject to change.

Our Redbubble sticker shop will be up to 20% off
March 1-6*

*Sale dates are not final and therefore subject to change.

Community News

I’ve been attempting to get back into regular streaming, but I’ve been thwarted twice so far: once by weather, and once by health, so I’m shaking my fist at the universe and insisting I’m going to continue anyway. My next stream date will most likely be during the week of March 6th. Keep an eye on my Twitch schedule page for changes!

As usual, some caveats apply: I have to go by how my health and joints are doing that day, even if something is scheduled. I try to move things by a day or two, but sometimes I have to cancel outright. It is what it is, unfortunately. The best places to find out when I’m streaming are on my Twitch page and on the Discord.

I’m also planning on dual streaming to Twitch and Youtube whenever possible, since my YT audience has been growing a bit!

And, as usual, our Discord is always open and welcoming new folks! It’s a little slow and quiet, but that’s not always a bad thing. Pop on in for comic updates, general chat, and potentially some new community events in the coming year!

Thanks For Reading!

Once again, thank you so much for reading about our newest stuff, even if things are still a bit slow.

Sticker Club Update!

So I took an informal poll in various places around the internet where our community gathers, to see if there’s interest in a potential physical sticker tier for the Chio Club, and the answer seems to be a tentative-but-mostly-yes!

This will take a little bit of planning on my part to put together, but overall should be pretty easy since I’ve got a lot of the necessary artwork planned out and in various states of completion.

Here’s what you need to know:

  • Sticker Tier will be $10 for US folks and $12 for the international crew. The shipping is a little pricier for places outside the US, which I have no control over, sorry!
    • You’ll receive either one large sticker (approx. 3″) or two smaller stickers (approx. 1-2″) every month you’re a paid member. Stickers will be sent at the end of the month you’ve paid for, so everyone has a chance to pledge if they want to.
    • The stickers will be a heavy vinyl good for sticking on all kinds of things. I’m a fan of high-quality stickers and want to make a nice product. There might be other fancy types in the future if Sticker Tier is successful. (Maybe holographic, glow in the dark, etc.!)
  • Every month will have a different theme! It’s a surprise! The themes will feature characters from our comics, mostly Chios.
  • After a couple of months, I’ll open up a “secret shop” for members where you can buy past months’ stickers at a steeply discounted price.
  • If nobody pledges, it just won’t happen. I need 1-2 pledges at minimum to make it work!
  • Right now, I’m planning on opening up pledges for the Sticker Tier in April 2023.

…and that’s the bulk of the details. Things won’t open up until April since I need a little lead time to organize, in addition to regular comic work, but I hope this will be interesting to folks who maybe haven’t pledged to the Chio Club before!

As usual, if you’re interested, you can join the Chio Club via Patreon or Ko-Fi:

Chio Club – Sticker Tier – Interest Check?

So I’ve been playing around with the idea of a physical sticker tier for the Chio Club for a while. I’ve got over a dozen ideas for a monthly sticker that could be mailed to you, wherever you are, and getting stickers made nowadays is one of the easiest things ever.

I’ve been polling my audience on various social sites for a few days, and so far the results are more in favor of a new sticker tier than against, so I’m doing a bit more research and math to make this real.

I’m planning to do a variety of things with Follower and Messenger characters, and maybe some characters from additional works once I’m able to get those things off the ground. But I’m hoping to either do one big sticker a month, or two smaller ones. I still have to do some math and shop around for printers to find the best price.

Basically, I want an excuse to make cool stickers, and it would be super cool if other people wanted them, too.

Want to share your opinion? Feel free to drop in on the Radio Chio Discord and let me know what you think!

Storytime With Bug: At Hand

I premiered my first ever storytime-type video to YouTube today and I’d love for folks to check it out! It’s pretty short, only around 5 minutes or so, because it was an experiment. But I had a lot of fun making it and would really like to do more of these in the future if there’s interest, since it can kind of give my drawing hand a much-needed break from time to time. 

I hope you’ll give it a watch and let me know what you think in the comments! This is kind of a personal one that I meant to be more humorous at the start, but it got kind of serious and turned into a short essay, haha. I have that much more respect now for folks I watch who do make like hour-long video essays. That’s some commitment.

For more video stuff from us, subscribe to our Youtube channel, or hang out while I draw live on Twitch!

Anyway, let me know what you think! 💖

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