April at KosoruCG

That's right, weekly reports are back, but now they’re monthly reports because I don’t always have time to write every week. So, from now on, there’ll be a post at the end of the month letting you know what’s new this month and what’s coming next month.

Before we dive into this content, I’ll drop the cover image here in case any of you want it.

Let’s start with what everyone’s probably curious about. By now, most of you have seen my “Critical Notice” post where I announced I’m changing my operational strategy. Originally, the plan was to produce one video a month, about 60 to 90 seconds long. But for various reasons, I’ve decided against that. I’ve detailed the reasons for this decision in that post, and I suggest you check it out first.

Critical Notice

Thanks for coming guys. You know, I've been running FANBOX for over two years and never once used the word "critical." I don’t throw that word around lightly. But now, I think it’s time to slap that word on as a title. In short, I’ve decided to change my business strategy. I’ll start spending a l...

You’ve all seen it? Alright, let’s talk about what I’ve been up to this month. I’ll go over some of the data I’ve gathered and research results. Then I’ll answer some of your questions, and finally, we’ll discuss what’s planned for this month.

First things first, and the most important: "Why did [New Management] go public?"

Let me start with the conclusion: [New Management] isn’t actually a necro video—it’s a military exercise. Why do I say that? Let me explain.

Honestly, I’ve always believed my videos are for everyone’s benefit, whether you’re a subscriber or a necro fan. I’m personally super into this kind of content, so I’ve always believed in it. A while back, in my “Critical Notice” post, I mentioned that “the production costs were too high, I wasn’t making much money, and you guys didn’t seem to love it, so I switched to making short films.” That was the conclusion at the time.

Also, I spent pretty much all of April working on AI workflow stuff or other animation-related things. My observation is that the market actually prefers my short films. In fact, the two short videos I released in April brought in revenue close to what [New Management] made. This directly proves that people are more willing to pay for creators who put out content every month rather than someone who spends months crafting a masterpiece. It’s just not necessary—the market has proven that. But what I’m about to talk about next is even more crucial.

Actually, I already consulted Grok, gave it a ton of info, and had it use its DeepSearch feature to figure out what I should do next. It analyzed a bunch of data and references and concluded that I could work just six hours a week and maintain my current subscription rate, as long as I follow its methods. Well, that sounds way too tame, obviously. If I were 75, I might just go along with it and call it a day.

My friend has heard me rave about how awesome [New Management] is a bunch of times, but he’d never seen it. So I sent him the video so he wouldn’t have to pay me 500 yen. After watching it, he just said he’s not sure if my community is really into this stuff. He admitted it’s impressive animation, but it’s too straightforward and loses some of the fun—it doesn’t seem that entertaining.

That feedback got me thinking: “Are these scenes I designed really what everyone wants to see?”

I realized I fell into the mindset of a modern game company. Once I gained enough technical skill to do everything, I wanted to cram every technique I’d learned into my work. But not every scene is something people actually want to see. I might’ve made certain scenes just because they were really tough to pull off, not because they were particularly fun. Do you see the problem here?

“I’m making what I want to make, not what people want to see.” I’m showing off how impressive my skills are instead of creating what you want to watch. If you’re in my line of work, you’d probably be blown away by how amazing this stuff is and totally admire it. But if you’re not, you’d think some of it doesn’t even need to be there. It’s not that fun, and I’m just driving up my own costs.

So, I wasn’t actually making a super fun animation—it was a military exercise. I was showing everyone how many missiles and tanks I have. [New Management] was never a particularly entertaining video from start to finish. I got trapped in my own technical skills, and that directly led to me not being able to produce the Yamada Ryo video I planned for April, because I was overcomplicating things.

Once I realized this, I made a decision to fix the first mistake: I made [New Management] public. My friend told me the video is so polished and such a technical showcase that it’d be a shame if not everyone got to see it. So, yeah, I made [New Management] public.

If you have any friends who are into R18G or necro stuff, you can show them this video. That way, they’ll know who to turn to when they’re craving some necro content. That’s the real value of [New Management].

Alright, now you know [New Management] is a video that’s not particularly fun but looks impressive. So, what’s next? Let me tell you what’s coming up.

As you can see, it’s only been about twenty days since I posted “Critical Notice.” In that time, I even made two videos. In the post, I said I’d stop making long videos and explained the reasons. But now I’ve realized the issue isn’t that the cost of long videos is too high for me to handle—it’s that the costs I’m putting into the videos are for stuff people don’t want to see (technical showcases). This directly causes production costs to skyrocket while people aren’t getting more enjoyment. So, I think we should find a middle ground.

So, how exactly do we balance the costs? My current thinking is to pack more content into the visuals. Honestly, I should just let people guess what’s happening instead of animating every single event and playing it out for you. Because I still really want to follow through on the videos planned in the annual schedule—just in a different way. So, maybe next month or in a few weeks, I’ll share my new conclusions and how I’m going to execute things moving forward.

I haven’t come up with anything else new for now. If you have any questions, feel free to join my server or drop a comment below to ask. I’d be happy to answer your questions.

https://discord.gg/AVm3TGhdYC