The Cover, Updates and Patreon

What we have been up to:

• Profiles are active, now you can upload your portfolio and add your informations like website and bio
  
• Forum is active now. It will be used for monthly contest with prizes and is also there also to motivate and grow together
  
• In the Forum we will have every month professionals who review your sketches and will help you along your journey
  
• It will also be used to give Patrons a space to find the newest exclusive discounts for Firestarter readers and supporters
  
• We hope that the forum will make it easier for people who visit an event to connect and find others to travel together or share rooms
  
• You can write messages to other users
  
• Even though the forum section is divided visually from the community page, the profiles work everywhere on the Firestarter platform
  

The next edition of Firestarter is going to be published in August and we did the first step with revealing our new cover by Finnian MacManus on Facebook and your response to it was amazing. You can follow his approach and steps on his Artstation account and feast on the insight it gives to his process. An important part of the evolution Firestarter has been going through since we started a year ago, is that we finally responded to the requests of the option to support us so we can fund the people who contribute and create all the content that you love and made you sign up in the first place. Our Patreon place will of course be in constant development as the means to help you guys will evolve along with the entire platform. The choice to make the magazine available for the lowest tier is part of the idea to take Firestarter to the next level by using our collective abilities and still be able to compensate the pros for the time they put in their lectures and help to you.

If you wonder what we have been up to lately then just take a look at the summarised points here. We have been thinking about ways how the parts that seem important for us can be pointed out and enhanced through our platform and this is where our attention has been going to. The platform didn’t use its full potential and the help of our developers we came up with a plan to achieve these goals. It is important to us that the community knows that it is crucial to work on multiple platforms, use all the options you have and put emphasis on those that cover your goals the most, but with all the changes that happened lately on social media you might have realised (just like I did) that it can be fatal to concentrate your marketing only on one site.

When we asked our readers what they need or miss, the loudest demand was the one for a forum, and we listened. For forums the situation is the same: don’t stick to one. What we came up with is a bit different since we simply concentrate on the connection of the community and its motivation and growth that comes from that. We will not concentrate on jobs but we might be able to make it easier for you to get them. Firestarter will always point out how important it is to visit to the events, attend the workshops and go to the meet-ups and drink and draws. Since this is something we know about, it is what we will concentrate on and try to help you find the right places and people to connect with. But especially a network.

As always there will be more in the future and the news will be coming fast. We count on your support to make all this happen and if you have any questions about how you can support us, don’t hesitate to reach out. These are exciting times for us and it wouldn’t be possible to come so far after only one year, without all your help and contribution. Take a look at our Patreon account and if you think that any tiers that you see helps you, we will be glad to have your support.

What we are up to next:

• Right now we are developing a page that lets you display in your daily sketches. You will be able to gather them in folders and might find the motivation to pull through till the end
  
• Firestarter will have an open chat surface on which you can communicate with other members of the site
  
• We will also have a place to gather the wisdom the industry’s professionals are posting on social media, so it doesn’t get lost in the vortex of countless posts. There is a lot of knowledge that is worth saving and collecting.
  
• Notifications will inform you about the authors you follow, new events upcoming and additional email options will help you to stay on track