Thursday, 27 April 2017

Patreon plans

Edit:  I'm still aiming at putting up my patreon page on the 19th of this month. But I'm not completely confident if I'll make it in time. There's a bunch of stuff that I still want to do before setting it up. A lot more time has gone into tweaking my characters, than I expected (technical and visual things), so I haven't been able to animate as much as I hoped. But I'd say the release will happen within June at the very least. Unless something goes horribly wrong, like my computer breaks. 

Edit2: Confirmed that the launch will be slightly delayed, as I just got an order from a client.  My next estimate is the 26th. But I'd say the site should have launched at least before the 1st of the next month.

Hey,

I've been planning on starting up a patreon in the coming months, assuming nothing changes during the next month or so. This will probably happen somewhere around the end of May or June, depends on when my current projects end. So, I'd like some feedback for my current plans, before I go forward with any of it.

The main idea is to keep finished content free. All real-time VR Content would also remain free, as I don't want to deal with unreal engines royalty costs at the moment. The main advantages a patron would receive is access to work in progress materials, voting rights and alternate versions of clips.

Main themes would be shrinking/giantess, oral vore, anal/vaginal insertion/vore, anything related to tits & ass. But those are only the main themes, there can be other content as well.

A list of things that won't happen:
-Giant males  (At least not in a main role or a solo scenario. I don't want to completely rule out some sort of "couple" situations, if people want it enough. But male vore or similar, won't happen. An occasional futa scenario is not completely out of the picture, but it wont be one of the main themes either.)
-Scat
-Graphic gore (tearing limbs, excessive blood, melting skin etc.)

Here are the planned rewards:

1$
-Still images

5$
-Still images
-WIP clips (no audio, no post processing etc.)

10$
-All WIP content (Essentially an early access)
-Voting rights (Voting influence 1)
-Maximum resolution of clips (anything that's over 1080p, when available, I'm still looking at the possibility for 4K)
-Alternate versions of finished videos
-Recorded 360 or 180 VR videos out of VR scenes (Still looking into this)

30$
-All Previous tier content
-Extra voting power (Voting influence 4)

WIP tiers:
First would include still images, like concepts and test renders. Basically anything that's a single picture.

Second would include most WIP content, but excludes animations that have gone through rendering/post processing. The animation part should be finished by the second tier. But small changes might still happen after this point.

Final tier includes all WIP content. This would essentially work as a sort of early access, as the clips are close to being finished at this point. Main differences to the previous tier are audio & prettier visuals. Although with longer scenarios, I might do more finalized versions of parts of the whole video, which won't be released before the full clip is done.

Voting:

There will be two polls, one for the 10$ tier, and two for 30$ tier. The additional poll for the 30$ tier is worth 3 points per vote. I'm slightly concerned with flooding the page with too many polls though. One option would be to only have voting rights for the 30$ tier. But I'm a bit worried about leaving a sizeable amount of patrons out of the voting process all together. Another option would be to make monthly posts that include links to all past content. I'm leaning towards the latter option at the moment.

Examples of things that could be put under vote:
-Work priority
-Likes/dislikes
-Character/Gender choices
-Scenario choices
-Design choices
-Alternate versions

The work priority part does not mean that I will only work on the thing that's been voted on. But it will take priority over the other choices. Some things that might be included in a priority poll:
-Making new characters/assets/clothes etc.
-Short animations
-Longer animations
-VR focus

Alternate versions:
There will be a alternate version poll for each animation, after it's finished. Examples of alterations are:
-Model/Character swap, when possible
-Disabling audio on some characters
-Different visual styles
-Different environment
-Different camera angles

The poll is to determine which alterations you would like to see, if any. I'll include an option, if you'd just prefer that I work on new content instead. But I might do some quick alterations anyway. Changing the shrunken persons gender, for example, is usually a pretty small task. Although there are exceptions.

I was also considering a quarterly dump of the alt versions for free. Basically I'd share all alt version from January-March on May, April-June on August, and so on.

Goals:

I'd have to reach at least 300$ to even keep the patreon up. As that would barely cover my software expenses. But I'm sure you're more interested in what you would get, so here's a list of estimated content by pledge amount:

300$: 1 short animation every few months
600$ 1 short animation per month
1200$: 2 short animations per month
2200$: It's harder to estimate at this point, but around 4 short animations worth of content.
3200$: This is the cap. I'd estimate around 6 short animations per month. After this point I'm already spending as much time animating size content, as I'm willing to allocate, without burning out.

As mentioned above, these are all estimates. The short animations are only used as an example here, I want to do longer clips as well.  A short animation in this case is anything around 10-20 seconds, depending on the complexity of the scene and animations. POV clips, for example, are usually faster to make, due to usually only having a part of 1 character to animate on the screen at the same time. Some situations might be more forgiving when it comes to reusing & looping animations, allowing for them to pad the length etc. There's also an option to do the "less important" parts of a clip with just a sort of still image montage, and then switch to animation for the more juicy parts.

I'd estimate around 1 minute of animation per month is doable after the final goal is reached, but it can be more or less depending on the content/requirements of the video. I don't want to give any more specific estimates, as it could vary anywhere between 1-5 minutes.

I'll also be making more than the first tiers suggest in the beginning, to get this thing started. I'll start changing the pace after a month or two, to match the pledge amount more. I'm also planning on making one short clip to be released when I set up the patreon. Well that's assuming nothing happens to interrupt the whole process in the first place.

Payment model:
The payment model will most likely be Patreons charge up front. Meaning you can't pledge, and take it back before the beginning of the next month to avoid payment, and repeat the same thing the next month.
This does mean that if you pledge at the end of the month, you will be charged again in a couple days, which sucks. But Patreon always charges on the first day of the month, instead of one month after you pledged. If someone knows better alternatives to this, I'm open to suggestions of course.

It'll be the normal monthly model in the beginning, as charge up front isn't available from the start.

That's all for now. Nothing is set in stone, so let me know what you think.

27 comments:

  1. Would gladly support you if it meant more stuff. Your animations are 10/10 the best :3.

    I wouldn't worry about flooding with polls honestly, it's easy to filter patreon posts.

    Also the possibility of 6! Animations a month!?!?? That's nuts, make sure not to overwork if you get that much ;)

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    1. Thanks :)

      It is an estimate, But I'd say at least 4 shorts per month should be doable without overworking my self. So 1 animation a week in average. I'll know what I can handle, once I start doing more stuff. The current estimates are based on my animation speed with my previous stuff.

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  2. Your Ada vore POV video is the still the best 3D VR animation on the internet, period. I'm aware you haven't had a lot going on lately, so I would literally throw money at your Patreon if it means more quality content like that!

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    1. Thanks! It's good to know there's people willing to throw support.

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  3. Hm, I thought you'd go for a charge per finished animation instead of a monthly charge. Either works.

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    1. I would, but that would incentivize me to do shorter videos over longer ones. Monthly charges allow me to make longer videos, that might take a couple months to finish. If people want them.

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  4. I would definitely like to support you on patreon so we can keep seeing your top notch animations :)

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  5. Solid plan, but its very important that you release a finished work while advertising your patreon at the same time (maybe you already planned this but it doesn't say anything above, so I will assume you didn't). I have no doubt your stuff will be amazing as always but you haven't put out anything for a very, very long time and that's going to hurt your patreon taking flight in the beginning: by starting with a new finished piece with a patreon advertisement in the video at the end (or however you want to do it, just needs to be in the video) you get the word out much better and will definitely have way more success since your stuff tends to get spread very quickly and very far since thievery and sharing without your consent is quite big, especially for this kind of content.

    Timing is everything.

    I hope it works out in the end when the time comes.

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    1. Thanks.

      You are correct, and I do mention it, but it's buried inside the "goals" part. A side mention on the last paragraph. There's going to be a new short animation that will be released with the patreon launch, and the plan is to continue releasing multiple short clips each month in the beginning to get the whole thing going. I'll then adjust the amount to match the goals after a few months. Once/if I get the patreon running properly, the plan is to start doing longer clips as well.

      The first clip will most likely be oral vore, as those seem to get more attention, and I'll be able to post that to DA as well, where I have most of my watchers.

      I did post a short insertion clip 4 months ago, if you missed it:
      https://www.pornhub.com/view_video.php?viewkey=ph58467a09e82da
      Although depending on your perspective, I guess you can call that a long time. I feel like it was just yesterday :D

      Also, a new version of the VR thing will be released with the patreon launch as well. It'll include an alternate character. Nothing huge, it's a reskin, and some slight changes to the mesh, and a new hair mesh if I have time. At the moment the hair is the same except for the color. But the new clip takes priority.

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  6. I know this goes against typical practices but, would you consider releasing your resources for these scenes so that people can make their own?

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    1. Unlikely. Not at this time at least.

      Maybe some day when/if I make a completely new character rig, I might consider releasing the old one. Although it's not very user friendly, and I really don't want to deal with troubleshooting. And to be honest I'm a bit ashamed of how badly optimized the rig is :P

      But I still might put it out "as is" some day.

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    2. Definitely something you should consider for patreon reward ;) (not same person as Anonymous 8 May 2017 at 05:30)

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  7. you might want to make an account over at aryion.com and start up a patreon announcement thread when you're ready, that'll generate a lot of new interest. judging by how well CakeInferno's patreon has been going, I'm sure this will be a rousing success for you as well. 3000+ bucks a month might even be enough to quit whatever wageslave job you have and make lewd animations full time! lol

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    1. I'll definitely be making a post on eka's once I've set the thing up. I'm trying not to get my hopes too high though, so I don't get too disappointed if this whole thing falls flat :)

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  8. Replies
    1. I just finished one of my other projects, so I should be able to start animating patreon material soon.

      The plan is to set up my patreon page before the 19th of this month.

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    2. nice.i hope you can have vr demo out before the 15th of this month

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  9. Sweet can't wait. Will definatly be supporting you. prob go 30 for a while to help get ya started :3

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    1. Good to know :)

      The 30$ tier won't be on release though, as there would be no point with the extra voting power, as it could easily be exploited, until I can activate the "pay up front" feature. It seems like it's still in Beta stage, so it isn't available for new patreons. Once it is, I'll add a 30$ tier with the extra voting power.

      So the highest tier with a reward will be 10$ for now. Unless I move some stuff like 4K to a 15$ tier, but I think 10$ should cover all forms of basic content. So I'd rather not. Although I might put the 360 videos in a separate 15$ tier, when/if I start making them. Of course there's nothing that prevents anyone from backing for more, there's just no additional rewards for now.

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    2. Interesting. Definitely an ongoing and ever-changing process I think. Shall find best way for you :3. $10 it is! Honestly didn't even think of voting just want to support XD. We need more eskoz!

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  10. Just dropping in to say that I appreciate your work and would certainly be happy to support. :)

    Also, please make content at your own pace. Many content creators seem to push themselves to fit Patreon monthly update, and it could become unhealthy commitment.

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    1. Thank you. I'll try not to overwork myself :)

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  11. not too be rude but are there any news? about the vr demo?

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    1. Later today, if I don't hit any more technical issues.

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