
Hello patrons! Instead of starting the October animation survey today, I have a proposed change to the monthly polls here on Patreon and I'd like to know how you feel about it. I'll go over the details below, but here is a summary:
TL;DR: Instead of doing the animation poll every month, I would like to conduct the animation poll every other month (bimonthly). The poll itself will be the same, with the most popular patron submission being what I work on during the next month's time. During the other month with no poll, I will still produce at least one animation of my choosing based on what I find interesting at the time, what hasn't been seen in a while, etc.
When I first started this Patreon, my monthly animations were usually simple sex loops with only two characters. Since then, they've grown in scope to include things like many characters, multiple poses/variations, climax scenes, and even whole new models to animate with. This resulted in many of these recent months becoming very demanding and stressful, and the time crunch also affected the final product's quality at times. This doesn't feel sustainable or healthy in the long run.
There's also been more complaints about the poll winners and animation variety. I've heard quite a few suggestions for this, like adding character/race cooldowns or giving a specific theme to each survey and limiting submissions based on that. Ultimately, I feel like it's wrong to add these kind of limitations to something that is supposed to represent what my patrons (you) want. If you want X but can't ask for X, then that defeats the purpose of the survey in my mind. It's also important for the poll to be simple, keeping in mind new patrons that arrive and figure out how things work.
For last month, I had cancelled the animation poll since I had other stuff going on and didn't have as much time to work. This gave me a chance to work on whatever I wanted during the time I did have, and I have to admit, it felt great. With the animation polls essentially taking up 100%+ of my time now, I no longer have any time to explore my own ideas or innovate by putting together new models to work with. An example of this is the gnoll model I put together a while back, I have a few other ideas along these lines that I'd love to get done one day.
I specifically waited for September to pass before posting this poll because I wanted to use it as an example of what a non-poll month could look like. I was able to put out 2 simpler animations with more niche race pairings, but not every other month would be like this. I get what's popular, and I do really enjoy working with blood elves/night elves/orcs too. It also helps that the popular races tend to be my higher quality models to animate with. So if you're worried about getting less of the "good stuff" this way, I wouldn't worry too much.
By moving to bimonthly animation polls, this would give me time to work on more variety in my animations. I could also catch up on my backlog of VIP customization requests, and work on whole new models to animate with. It also gives me some buffer time in case the previous month's animation is running over schedule. Just a few extra days of polish can really improve an animation and make the final result be as good as possible.
So with that said, how do you feel about the animation poll being bimonthly going forward?
Thanks again for all of your wonderful support, I look forward to seeing what you think!
Redalia
2023-10-02 15:04:30 +0000 UTCZeltreus
2023-10-02 10:02:26 +0000 UTC