New Animation Schedule Poll Results, 21/04 - 23

Hello everyone, it's time to discuss the new animation schedule and all it entails, the consequences for tiers in turn, my rationale behind it all, and so on. As English isn't my first language I'm bound to make some mistakes in my formating or otherwise, so if anything is confusing or ambiguous, feel free to ask questions in the comments or in direct messages to me.

First off, thanks to everyone who voted! The poll ran for 2 weeks, with roughly 41% turnout in terms of amount of votes compared to total patrons, which isn't too shabby for a poll as far as community engagement goes. It's quite common that creators have a hard time rallying 10% of their following to participate in these things, so while it somewhat hurts the statistician in me, I'll be considering the poll as approximately representative of the views of the backer population as a whole.

Looking at the results what becomes immediately clear is that change is highly desired, but that many simultaneously feel that either structure works, with option 2 managing a plurality. Many of you have suggested something of a compromise structure, which after some consideration is what I have, at least initially, also settled on.

New Schedule:

Thus, starting in May, I'll be adhering to a new schedule where the first 2 Mondays will feature regular Monday loops, and the remaining time of the month will be utilized to work on something more ambitious without a firm Monday release date. Taking the month of May as an example it could, for instance, be released on Tuesday the 30:th or whenever towards the end of the month, all depending on when I manage to finalize it.

That is, the new monthly schedule setup will be:
2 normal loops
1 more ambitious work

The most obviously impacted tier from this is the Alley Crew, who are promised 2 character polls per month. I'm here opting to give them voting control of one loop, and the more ambitious end-of-the-month work I'll be doing, with the caveat that I'll be doubling character and theme cooldowns for them - characters will be on cooldown for 4 polls, whereas themes will be on cooldown for 2 polls, whenever they win - this in order to create more variation in the characters featured. These cooldowns might also be subject to increasing, should I deem that necessary.

My rationale behind both the compromise approach in and of itself as well as giving the $10 tier Alley Crew this increased control is that I feel it necessary for myself, both in terms of my creativity and my ability to experiment with new character models, animation techniques or otherwise, to keep 1 loop a month within the purview of my own decision making. I would for instance feel terrible if I was to attempt a Cycles render that then turns out poorly and it having been an animation with characters decided from a backer poll, dictated by what I promise people of that tier.

I also feel it's important that I maintain some creative control over my own work, lest things potentially go out of hand, which is why the character nominee structure of the Alley Crew polls is a fundamentally filtered process where I have final say. I don't intend to paint myself into a creative corner where I'll be making content I'm apathetic to or even actively dislike, as that would mean the death of creativity real fast, and no doubt reflect upon the final product.

The more ambitious work - what is it?

I'm as of yet unsure how much exactly I'll be able to accomplish within a ~2 week span of time, but I know that the format will vary quite significantly depending on the length of the month and other factors. Sometimes it'll no doubt result in a more ambitious loop, running for longer with some more cinematography incorporated to give it more life, and sometimes it'll be more akin to a mini-project. The overarching goal is that the scenes end in creampies or equivalent, as that is the most highly requested matter when it comes to my usual loop structure. This means that the priority will be on the point of delivering an animation that stretches longer than a regular loop and that has a distinct finish, which means that matters such as extra angles will suffer.

This is one of the reasons I've been reluctant to consider this change in the past, as I'm as of yet unsure how to keep the Patreon backer perk structures intact whilst still pursuing this other schedule. Chances are I'll be supplying a watermark-free variant or similar here of these finished pieces, but it always feels bad to, in effect, reduce the amount of exclusive material that I provide to the people who are, by every measure, making sure I can do this stuff in the first place. Hopefully the work itself makes up for it and people feel they're contributing to the delivery of better products, but know that I'm wracking my brain about this stuff.

This is all new, so early on in particular will be rather experimental where I'll see what approach works best, but it is my hope that I'll end up with something that makes you all happy - I've got a lot of ideas for it, that much is certain :)

Apologies to those who use the Patreon app on phones - I have no idea what it does with formats (or doesn't) but every time I try to look at my posts on there they seem incredibly messed up and I am yet to figure out how to structure a post where that is not the case. Hopefully this wall of text wasn't too painful to read through, whatever device you happen to be on!

With that, I'd like to thank you, as always, for your continued support and for all of your kind words. Again, if you're unsure about something in the post above or have questions, feel free to ask them in the comments or in direct messages to me here, and I'll try to answer them as expediently and thoroughly as possible. I have no doubt forgotten to mention or elaborate on something above, so as my old teacher used to say: "there are no such thing as dumb questions".

And of course, take care of yourselves, and each other!
/DH