A Custom Mood Theme in a Year

One of the only disappointing things about creating a custom mood theme is that you need to have a paid account to use it. This has probably left more than a few people looking wistfully at this community only to decide, maybe later. And to be honest, for a long time now, I've been daydreaming about the ability to gift paid time to any community members who complete part or all of a custom mood theme.

Well, I'm both gobsmacked and delighted to announced that my daydream has come true.

From this date forward, any member of this community who completes a set of 18 images for a custom mood theme will get one month's worth of paid time or equivalent in Dreamwidth points.

Wait, really?
Yes, really! I've been given a bunch of points to use for members of this community as I see fit, and instructions to ask for more after those points run out.

So... What are the requirements?

For every 18 images/animations of a custom mood theme you've made or significantly edited in the past year, find a way to show them to me, and I'll award your account with the paid time/points.

For every 36 images you make for a single mood theme, I'll throw in an extra month, for a total of three months worth of paid time/points.

If you complete 132 moods, you'll get a whole year's worth of paid time/points!

The first two options there line up pretty closely with the Minimum and Medium Tracks on the schedule; that said, the posted schedule is still just a suggestion! If you've got a mood theme you've been perfecting on and off for years and you only have twenty images to go, I'm not going to say that they have to include the eighteen moods from the Minimum Track. You still only get one month of paid time/points, since all of the other images were made at a previous time, but you've got the freedom to make whatever images you'd like.

Not all of the moods you make have to be for the same mood theme for you to get all of the paid time/points, either! As long as you make the right number of images, you can get up to one year's worth of paid time/points per calendar year (a total of 350 points). So you can make seven Minimum mood themes (with five extra moods sprinkled in there), or three Medium mood themes and one Minimum mood theme (again, need an extra five), or any combination, as long as it all adds up to 132, divided among usable mood themes.

Is there any way to earn more than a year's worth of paid time or points in a single year?
This is something I'm working on, and it's not ready yet! But, in the future, the current plan is maybe an extra three months a year or so? We'll see how the current arrangement works out first.

Okay, how do I show the completed moods to you?
That's up to you! Here's several options, though:

You can post them here to this community (and show of your work to everyone!)

You can post them to your own account and send me a link to that post

You can share them in the comments of one of this community's official posts; I feel like the Break posts are good for this, organizationally, but any post with the tag "Mod Post" is fine—including this one!

You can take a screencap of the images on your computer, upload that image somewhere, and DM me a link

I'm all set for paid time, can I give my points to someone else?
Absolutely! You can also ask me to send them to another person instead of you. If you happen to think that a custom mood theme and a month's paid time or more would be the perfect gift for someone in your circle, I'm here to help you make that happen! All you have to do is to organize the mood images.

I love this idea, but I have no idea how to set up a custom mood theme!
I promise you, writing a tutorial on that is almost at the very top of my Dreamwidth Task to-do list. The only thing with higher priority is a tutorial in uploading images, because one of the things you need for a custom mood theme is a place to host the images. Luckily, you can do that on Dreamwidth! But the interface isn't the most intuitive, especially if you're more used to sites where you can just drag-and-drop an image into a post. So I'm getting to that first, and then I'll write up that custom mood theme making tutorial.

Unfortunately, that'll probably be another few weeks out, because I decided to go back to school and am currently in Final Projects Hell. And then after that, it's cookie season for professional bakers like me. But once that's done, I should have free time to get those tutorials written up, and then hopefully get that "What about more paid time?" thing sorted out.

That said, there are a couple of tutorials already linked in the comm bio! You can also leave a comment with any questions in a post with the tag "mod post", and I'll do my best to answer them.

You said this community is also open to people who want to use the prompts for other art things, like character design. Would those also be eligible for paid time?
I'm afraid not; part of the reason I wanted to award paid time in the first place is because there's a financial barrier to uploading a custom mood theme. If you're making art for other reasons, you don't really have that same barrier. Also, the only real instructions I got with these points were to encourage people to experiment with the mood theme feature, and to encourage anyone who makes an original mood theme to submit it for consideration as an official site-supported theme. I love and support any other artistic endeavors anyone wants to tie in with this community, but the paid time is mood theme centric.

Will the paid time be regular paid time, or premium paid time?
For the time being, I'll be awarding you points based on regular paid time. So if you complete 18 moods, I'll award you points equal to a month's regular paid time, not premium paid time. Once the points are yours, you can spend them however you like!

I have a question you haven't answered here.
If you leave it in a reply to this post, I'll do my best to answer it ASAP!


Is that everything? I think that's everything. It's everything I can think of at the moment, at any rate. Well, except making edits to the community profile and sticky posts, but I'm flirting with bed time as it is. So I'll get to those tomorrow, hopefully. But other than that, it's everything I can think of.

(I'm so excited about this OMG 🤩)

Hello, everyone! With the end of Part 7 (and also the year, goodness gracious!) on the horizon, I wanted to take a moment to talk about some upcoming changes I'm planning to make.

First of all, I do want to say that the rest of the year (the whole five moods left on the to-do list 😂) will continue as planned, no changes there.

Second, I'll be slightly juggling the main schedule. As you may recall from when I introduced the Minimal Mood Theme schedule, there's three secondary moods that really help diversify the image set for anyone who wants to have maximum images for minimum effort. In the new year, I'll be moving them from Part 2 to Part 1. This will have the added benefit of making all Parts six weeks exactly, with Part 1 extending one week, and Part 2 no longer being seven weeks. I'll make sure to specify that the final week of Part 1 is optional for anyone who only wants to do the bare minimum, but I think that the change itself makes sense, both in terms of balance and in terms of scheduling.

Third, in the new year, I plan to change up the tracks a little bit! In addition to the main track (the full 132 moods, make only what you want) and the Minimal Mood Theme track, I'll be adding a Medium Mood Theme track. Like the Minimal Mood Theme track, it will be a re-run of (most of) the Part 2 moods that will run parallel to the main and minimal tracks, but only during Parts 4 and 6. So there will be three different main ways to follow along with the community:

The main track, with all 132 moods; runs through the year

The Minimal Mood Theme track, with 18 moods (the base 15 plus the 3 secondary moods that contribute to the most other moods); starts at the beginning of each Part

The Medium Mood Theme track, with 34 moods (all base moods and all branching moods); starts on Part 1, Part 3, and Part 5

This gives potential participants up to six different jumping-on points, in addition to anyone who wants to go for a mood theme in a month. Which I, hmm. Can't seem to find if I've shared here yet! Oops. In any case, I hope having more and shorter-term options for making a custom mood theme will encourage people to jump on at different parts of the year, rather than feeling pressured to start in January.


Please let me know if you have any thoughts on these upcoming changes; nothing is set in stone yet, but I'm feeling generally positive about them. I'd also welcome any suggestions that anyone has!

And thank you, everyone, for coming on this journey with me!