Both are fine I think, a mix of all is good.

I do like to mix them!
More recently my kinky and fetish art has become more popular and makes my more standard character art less interesting in comparison.

So maybe I rework my Annie & The Mirror Goat project to focus on kinks and fetishes people like the most.

Emphasize the kinks and fetishes these characters engage in~

would love to see some more feet/paw stuff, hehe
keep up the good work

I have a paw focused piece set up right now, actually. Annie shows her paws. Hope to find time for it soon~

And I have a foot/pawjob sketch going with Annie and Sedah, the blue trans fox~

Could alternate.....You could also get into safe vore, ya know where someone uses a potion to make someone the size of a dildo or something than annie or any other girl uses them like a butt dildo<.<...id would definiatly fave that instantly <.<'

Balance is the hard part.
I have so many characters I am designing that posting introductions seems boring and uninteresting now. Like it's too much work that's not butt stuff, haha

And anal vore is on the table.

I have two demon OCs in the works, Lunassra and Assteria, that can grow big and put people up their equine buttholes~
It's a anal kink I would like to explore.

anal vore is my absolute favorite kink, also maybe people who annoy your ocs end up as their buttplugs for the day or something is one idea<.<>.>

With the demon girls this is going to happen~

They used to be one character but I split them into two. One is a bat inspired by Chrysalis from MLP, and the other is a red goat demon.

Both can grow big and squat over people to push them up their butts~
Will sketch them doing that sometime!
I have sketches of this with the older design

heh would be even more fun if they made them rim their buttholes before they shoved em in, like they pretended they werent gonna push em in if they got a good rimjob...then did it anyway...or maybe someones enjoying the punishment a bit too much and they are licking inside their butt or something

They do like to toy with their partners~
I can see Lunassra the queen of lust and desire telling someone to lick rim her good, then she pushes, ggapes a little, and slides them halfway up her butt!

pfft maybe they end all the way up there at some point and you could see something like "hours later" or "Days later" with an internal shot of them being smushed by the slimey flesh and the bigger person going"I feel like i forgot something.."

I'd say whatever you're more comfortable with, a mix is always good, though I'd probably lean a little more towards the latter, since some of the fetish stuff isn't up my alley X3 But I'd say you do you :)

That's the tough part.

As I do more fetish and kink themes, people expect that more.
I gained a lot of support this year for it!
But when I post more about my character designs and introduce new ones, I lose some of that support and engagement goes down.

I like characters and world building, but the interest in it is lower and lower the more I do.

So a soft reboot may be a good idea to make the lore, characters, and the kinky stuff all click together better, even if the kinks alienate some people.

I started watching for the characters. Some of the kinks I just kinda tolerate because of the good art.

That's awesome to hear!
I kinda wish this was more common. I want to build a lot of lore around the characters, but not sure it's popular enough to do without the kinky hook that many love and follow for.

My popularity seems tied to the kinky art, so posting more character lore has me nervous. I don't want to slide into obscurity and lose support because the art is too boring, haha

I certainly understand. Though I've fallen off some artists over the years because of that exact problem. They get into kinky art. People follow for kinky fetish art, and so they keep pushing it further and further till all it is full Kink art that is far past what they originally started with on the extreme ends.

It's a tough one.

If people liked my original Annie project idea, they didn't support it enough for me to continue as I was.

Kink seems to be the only way I can make enough money to continue doing it.
I love making the kink art and want to! But it seems to mean all other art takes a hit.

Engagemnt on my Patreon dropped notably since last year.
But I now make more money.
So it just feels weird.

Posted the new Annie art today with her standing by her cauldron. I love arty art like that.
It was inspired by music posters.
But it's probably not popular enough to be worth making.
It did awful on Twitter. Fractions of my usual numbers and such.

All the excitement I had to build these characters is replaced with fear I will not gain an audience for it, and lose the audience here for kinks.
So some kind of soft reboot might help correct this split in audience.

I hope for the best for ya that's all I can do. I want it all end well for everyone

There must be a nice balance where characters are fun to follow and it's not too alienating to people not entirely into the kinks I am, haha
Most of my kinks will likely be related to butt stuff.

Same tbh

I get ya there, I've mainly been focusing a lot on some of the more normal stuff, I know a lot of people out there do like WS and some of the more extreme/dirtier kinks (Don't think I've even heard of the term 'cumfart' until you brought that up X'D), but I'm quite vanilla with what I like. Can be hard to cater to everyone whilst trying to keep certain audiences happy, so I really feel ya there.

I am careful to keep the watersports art only on my paid places at a higher tier as it did cause more people to leave in the past. Very divisive. But I love drawing it!

After talking with people I decided to not use the term "cumfart" since many assume it is a fart fetish and instantly turn on it. It's definitely not, so I may call it "cum pushing".
Might make it clearer it's anal sex stuff~

And yeah, balance is important. I nearly doubled my paid support doing the kinkier art, but it also made it clearer my character and lore art is less interesting to those audiences. Sometimes makes me afraid to introduce new characters or work on design art since people may leave over it not being the kinky art they pay for. So merging the two more may do the trick!

I'm a sucker for plot and character development, and I'm not really into those fetishes, so my vote is for plot, but ultimately they're your characters, so it's up to you!

I do hope to build the characters and lore up a good chunk!
But I also hope to make it engaging and not too boring for people expecting kinky work to follow.

it's a tightrope walk!
So I want to see how people feel about this~

tbh I'm a sucker for plot/personality stuffs, more reasons to simp for a character harder :V

a little of both can work too uWu butt noises..

I was considering a soft reboot of my characters and lore to present them and their personalities more focused on kinky stuff to keep interest up in them more.

Weave the lore and personality into a few kinks and fetishes I can become more known for. That people would love to follow and be interested in seeing more of!

Might be better than posting characters and then struggling to show them off with to dry of a start.

While they're not mutually exclusive, in the longest term if you're gonna develop a story, weight the focus on character, etc. If anything content should serve to the benefit of a character, not so much the other way around, if that makes sense.

My hopes are to mix the kinks I like into the characters more so it's part of them and their story. Hopefully helping keep the plot and lore parts intresting enough for those there for the kinks, which is likely the paying audience. So I hope to make it be like you said. Kinks and content that serve to benefit the character.

Sex positivity and sexual exploration are already the base themes of my project along with ghostly Wisps, demons, and paranormal cults~

If you get all of the plot out of the way upfront, then the door for smut is eternally open.

This is exactly what I was doing and it was costing me so much support on my Patreon I had to step back and consider if it was doable.
I wanted all my OCs fully finished and ready to go. They are done, mostly done, or about a week of art away from done.

I actually considered shutting my Patreon down for a month or two to go make all the characters and lore work first, then resume paid art.

But, you know, why should I spend months making art I can't get paid for?
And if people won't pay for me to make it, it does make me question if I am doing it right.

Patreon is for funding artists.
If I feel I have to make the art unpaid to avoid loving support for making art people don't feel is worth staying for, then it probably needs a soft reboot, haha

Sometimes sharing something personal is worth more than any amount of money.

Paying rent each month is nice, though.

I sure want to get into the kinkier stuff more too!

But I also want to build up these characters, show them in a story and what their personalities are.

The trick is to come up with a story that facilitates porn. It doesn't matter how contrived your world building pitch starts, as long as you keep fleshing it out you can make it more compelling or interesting or believable over time

That is the goal!
My story is heavily based around sexual content and sex positivity.
Everything in it allows for sexual exploration and kinky stuff. It's all sex demons and lewd cults along with some character journeys and personal growth.

But the design work to build it up so I can fully launch it is where my issues are.

I am losing people's interest in the design process enough to where it threatens my Patreon. Finishing and fleshing out design work for characters and some of the world building only loses me support now since it's not kinky work.

Kink art is what people are increasingly here for, and the design work is less popular in comparison. I get less comments, likes, and such than a year ago so I must have a different audience over time.

But I nearly doubled my paid support with the kink art, so it's a pickle.

Makes me feel I have to choose a lane, like kink art and character designs/lore don't mix together. Until all the designs are done I might just lose people's interest, which will take me a few months if I focus on it. Definitely a pickle!

I get the feeling, but I think you can have your cake and eat it too! As long as you're drawing the most fetishy bits from your world building, and keeping the less fetishy bits in your 'design bible', to be doled out in image descriptions where applicable. People who want the lore are more likely to read blocks of text anyway. It's not a perfect solution, and will probably lead to a lot of retconning since you'd basically be working through your lore on the fly, but it should give you space to work through your ideas until you can drag the lore back into the porn more effectively.

I love brainstorming this kind of thing, so if you ever want to shoot the shit about your world I'm available

My plan now may be to introduce characters with a serioes of fetishy sketches with them.

Save it up a bit and present a much kinkier ntro to each character. And write some of the lore into that kinky art. Make them both go together~

Luckily, most characters and lore do work with kinks and fetish content. So it might not be impossibly hard!

And it is fun to brainstorm. I do it a lot when coming up with lewd stuff for these characters.

characters store n lore imo. or at least for me i feel more accomplished when i start to form actual info for my characters, not that i don't mind the straight up eye candy :3

I love the deep satisfaction that comes from building a world, lore, and personality around my characters!
Most creators probably do!
But for the audience?
it might not be as exciting as the kinky art. That seems to heavily override the desire to see the process of characters forming.
At least from my experience in the last year or so.

I don't see why not. I don't mind seeing cool fetishes of yours.

I have some fetishes I do want explore in my art.

It feels so good to feel free to really get into them and explore why they make people tick~

I would love to see what you got related to that topic.

I love plot and lore, show me why your characters have souls ~

I hope I can convery that with the kinks people like~

Maybe I'll put a small prresentation page together to fully show all planned/WIP characters that have not been shown much publicly?

Oh you certainly can show off, especially since so much fits into what drives characters.
The hints of background, the way two characters interact, a few extra words in description.. building that empire to be slowly revealed between the data dumps when you feel like giving exposition

One idea i had a few days ago was to write a scene to go with art.

Draw a character doing something, probably lewd, then write a small description that fleshes out the full scene.

It's really hard to convey a more complex character or emotion in one image. Comics can do that, but I would be locked to the story in the order it needs to be shown in.

So some kind of middle ground between a painting and a comic would be nice.

And a picture with extra written context might be it!

Both would absolutely be great.

There is definitely a middleground I wish to find.

Make the fetish and kink art without it overtaking my work until that's all people want.

And make characters that are fun to follow with lore, personality, motivations and without being too boring people lose interest~

Kinky stuff without character isn't hot. The thing is about personal quirks, which is nonexistent without the personality. So, I believe that the plot is supreme

I definitely want character and persionality. I have so much of it built up and planned out. ^^

Right now my kink sketches can do way better than my fully painted character art.
So I assume my character art is not interesting or engaging enough.

I want to find a nice merging of the kink art people find hot and the personality and character art I want to build~

Looks like having character personality shine through kinky content is probably the answer from responses I have gotten here and on social media.

Helpful! And good to know people do want character and personality!
I was worried people found it boring and getting in the way of the kinks.

There's a bunch of artists which characters I really like, and which is hot due to their personalities and contrasts. Bonifasco, FunkyBun, Ultilix, the thing is they are working with comic format, which is much easier in terms of plot and characters expression, and to express characters psychological state during lewd act in single page format is not an easy task, really. I'd 100% read a comic about Annie, but I know drawing comics is much harder than just drawing. I've tried, but find out that I lack skill for such task yet.

I have been planning out, testing and writing up a full comic with Annie & The Mirror Goat!

So this is planned.
I definitely lacked the skills needed to do it when I tested it for the last few years, but I am closer to it now.
I didn't want to launch it until I was enough pages in to know I can draw it consistently.

And I wanted to build and design my characters up first so they have consistent designs and are popular enough to work.

Makes a lot of sense, I think it's going to be very cool

Why not both? Be creative!

I am working on it!
I think my issue was I focused on the character design part too much at first and it was boring to people so they lose interest quick.

Need to get creative!
Sexy creative~

for me it's always came for the porn stayed for the story. plus you can do both by incorporating the kinks in the characters.

I am working on the kinks and sexy stuff being directly in the characters but I think you nailed the order I should focus on here.

Come for the porn, stay for the characters and story~

I often show the designs and build up of character lore first and that seems to not hook anyone.
So maybe I show them in the sex stuff first, then roll out the lore parts?

it's all interconnected. if you think of it as making art and not just fun porn stuff it's a lot easier to make sure everything makes sense with one another. all the elements meshing together to make a nice blend of things feeding into one another. kinks are just content, and they're just as important as any other element of a story. anything you put in the story needs to be an integral part of its identity, yeah? which means that it affects its identity too.

That's what I want to do. Make this not just porn art, but art with character and designs that build up to a larger project.
Hope I can communicate that well to my audience!

I do have a lot of kinks and fetish content that is integral to the story.
It's built for it!

My only worry is people are not really there for it and only for the finished lewd paintings.
Definitely a downer to work on the art side with designs and world building and feel pressure to rush it to get another lewd painting out in a day or two or risk losing support.

That's been my main issue.
How to balance time spent on design and lore building and time on the bigger lewd paintings. And how to bridge them so people can look forward to both!

you have to balance your passion with what pays the bills, I get it. But I really do feel that you can make people more atatched tot he characters through story and get more investment from the audience.

both, both is goood

Going to give it a good push by showing and presenting more of my character ideas publicly~

I like the way  insomniacovrlrd does it. There's clear and understandable story progression and character growth, and it doesn't have to be linear, but the focus is always on kink.

This might be a nice path for me~
I have a lot of story and lore to show, and I have a lot fo kink and lewdness.
I want to balance it so the lore and story can progresss and come out through the kinky stuff.
They both go hand in hand here.

Tricky!
But all the feedback here is helping me see ways to do it!