Puppets? In *this* economy? That of course was the question going into 2024. As I’ve mentioned (a lot), thanks to wildly rising costs of living and stagnating income, times are tough for us small arts business runners. People do tend to favor putting food on the table over buying another puppet.
Because business was slow, a couple of months ago I started taking on a bit more private commission work. I normally try to focus on building general sale puppets for the shop as I’m able to keep the cost reasonable, but I will sometimes do a custom job. They always take more time than shop builds, but I really don’t like saying no so if I think I can accommodate clients, I do what I can. Plus as the shop general sales were slow I decided that some income was better than none. Even *I* like to put food on the table. Low carb, please.
I had just finished a couple of jobs for previous clients and O:P Discord members (join the Discord) and had decided to get back to restocking the shops when I got a message from the lovely folks at SciShow Kids to work on some character rebuilds for them, all of which I talk about in the most recent episode of Pixels and Puppets.
I’m about at the half way point on the SciShow commission, and then I have two (possibly three?) more commissions after that, which is grand. In the meantime though, the occasional puppet sold on the shop and now all the chickens have come home to roost. The shops are pretty bare for the first time since I started O:P over 5 years ago.
I’ve had a number of messages from folks asking if there will be more so this is a long-winded way of my saying YES! Absolutely! After the current batch of commissions are done (a few weeks maybe?) my top priority is both getting back to stocking the shop and firing up the build streams again.
I’m so grateful to have this interest. I do work hard at keeping the lights on here at The Puppet Mines and it’s very encouraging to be so busy.