More items
Added 2023-08-13 18:39:13 +0000 UTCThe second set of items is being released to Patrons today. Backers at the $5 and higher levels get the images with backgrounds for use in personal projects.
Backers at the $8 level also get the items without backgrounds for use in personal projects or games.
Comments
Thanks. I'm a token artist first. I like that people can get extra benefit from the community with the extra kitbashed tokens that get made.
Devin Night
2023-08-14 23:06:23 +0000 UTCYou have the best tokens! You have the best prices! You have the best discounts! You have the best Kitbash tokens! ...The best community support on discord! ...The best community custom tokens! ...not to mention all the cool content from discord.
Thomas Carpenter
2023-08-14 23:04:18 +0000 UTCWow, apparently item portraits are important to some people. Just to add.. I don't give one rats backside about WebP, and even less about D&D Beyond. Give me high quality PNG files with zero visual artifacts every time. That way, if I DO ever need to resize, up or down, I have an image of the quality that the creator intended it to be to start from. Speaking of which, @Ryan if you read this.. You're doing it wrong. You can use advanced algorithms to shrink your files down with very little distortion, but you should never shrink a file down (or expand it) multiple times if you don't have to. Use your current script to figure out how much to shrink an image by.. 30% for example.. then shrink the image by 30% one time, instead of 30 times at 1%. Finally, just to be crystal clear, I despise D&D Beyond and Roll20, as well as any other company promoting substandard graphics. Graphics are already dated, as our screen sizes and resolutions are always expanding to the next better thing. Asking Content Creators to create substandard graphics simply means that the shelf life of those graphics are only going to be that much shorter before they are useless. Creating quality graphics is a convoluted process, and doesn't need some corporate azz-clowns throwing a monkey-wrench in the process, making it that much harder.
James Long
2023-08-14 19:53:07 +0000 UTCThank you for taking the time to write that up. I will honestly read it again in the morning after some sleep. I will say that the bait and switch was not my tactic, the idea was to keep the $8 Patrons by offering something that was a bit more than the $5. It might be something that doesn't matter since it's all bonus content anyway.
Devin Night
2023-08-14 02:41:49 +0000 UTCWait, last month we got them without backgrounds for $5 support level. Why the change? Not that backgrounds are difficult to remove with modern tools. But why make people go through the effort this month, but not last month? I get the restrictions on personal projects vs. games. That I get. You pay more in support, you get more rights to use the works in certain works. EDIT: I see that last month with Set 1 it was noted that this was a special one-time thing. I didn't notice this at that time, or I would have called out this error at that time. My apologies for missing it. This is not competitive with other item creators. Virtually all provide 3 versions at all levels: - PNG of the item only (you offer this at $8+ only) - PNG of the item + gradient watercolor background (you don't offer this at all) - JPG of the item + gradient watercolor background + solid background (usually white, light blue in your case) First, I recommend not using the light blue background. Definitely stick with white. Many websites and tools such as D&D Beyond that show item images have white backgrounds only. So a light-blue JPG background is really not useful in any context, even for printing cards, as it wastes blue ink (and lots of it). I'd recommend sticking with white as the solid background color. 100% this is the way. Second, the PNG + watercolor is actually the best version to use in D&D Beyond and other sites. It can be directly uploaded, and you get the nice watercolor partial background, and it doesn't matter if you are using a Dark Reader plug in your browser, as the watercolor works with white or black rendered background. You currently do not offer this "in-between" option, and it's actually the most useful one for VTT and D&D Beyond usage contexts. I recommend adding this. Finally, now that D&D Beyond supports WEBP, this is a GREAT value add you could put in the $8 tier to encourage upgrade instead. D&D Beyond has a 500 KB upload limit, and it is VERY hard to get 2400x2400 PNG to fit 500kb. But it's not so hard with a WEBP if you just crank the compression a bit, but that takes TIME to render (up to a minute or more). This is a huge value add that you can automate; you want the MINIMUM compression that keeps it JUST under 500kb. If you insist on charging more for basic minimum functionality (despite the fact that your competitors do not), then I'd recommend this breakdown: $8 gets you those 3 files (JPG + both PNG's) outlined above for personal use $12 gets you 5 files, including WEBP versions of those PNG's, including commercial use. The WEBP's are JUST UNDER 500kb each. $15 gets you no added benefit other than the same as your tokens: you can provide input for future work, etc. This is the way. :-) I would upgrade to $8 for the WEBP support due to the strict size limitation of D&D Beyond. That would save me lots of time. Or, it would have before I wrote a plugin to automate this task for me and repeat the export decrementing quality 1% at a time until it was below the 500 KB threshold. :-) I will not upgrade to $8 for basic minimum functionality of transparent PNG's. It's wrong. I'll use AI background removal first out of principle. It takes 30 seconds. And, again, it's the principal. Not everybody knows how to do this, and this is not something that should be an upsell. It's not competitive. What's next...tokens are going to get JPG's backgrounds as well for $5, but for $8 you get PNG's lol? If that sounds ludicrous (it is), you are starting to see things from my perspective. Items with backgrounds baked in are about as useful to me as a rubber crutch. They're not useful. Especially wtih blue backgrounds that waste ink. They're not useful on D&D Beyond. They're not useful to print. They're not useful. Basic minimum functionality should not be an upsell dimension. WEBP's tuned to 500kb are a reasonable upsell. Commercial use is a reasonable upsell. Those are reasonable. But having PNG's of the item are not. Please reconsider, and please consider adding a third option which includes the water color version of the PNG, but still no background color. Especially if you insist on using light blue. That way people can get their White On. :-) Thanks for listening!
Ryan Rogers
2023-08-13 22:56:32 +0000 UTC
