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On commissions, Patreon, and donations
10 years ago
These three words in the title were quite frequent in recent comments and notes, after putting a good bit of thought into them I'd like to address these in this journal.
The broken record titled "Commissions"
You might know that my stance on commissions has been repulsive, unfortunately this hasn't changed. The reason for that is that the commission requests usually look like this:
"I'd like to see my own character getting eaten by this other character. There should be a lot of teasing and a full digestion scene. Then Batman jumps through the window and beats the crap out of everyone."
Apart from Batman, this is pretty accurate and actually sounds fairly simple in itself. However, the bare work in this includes modelling and rigging two entire characters, eventually modelling an environment, animating, taking care of shading and lighting, rendering with post production and doing sound design to name the major steps. With these production standards, a commission request like this is barely a commission request, but a briefing for a small VFX company. A realistic price for a commission like this would lie somewhere inbetween $5.000 - $10.000. Of course you can do things a lot cheaper, but for that we'd have to drop the fancy visuals and move over to using pre-moddelled plastic dinosaurs. <:
Patreon, from montly donations to subscription model
Patreon is something that I've been looking at with a bit of a skeptical eye, mostly because it forces users to pay, and keep paying to see art. In its defense I have to say that many artists mainly use it as a tool to reward their patreons with extra content, early access to material they might release later on anyways, and personalized rewards for them. This is where patreons become supporters rather than subscribers, giving it a purpose that appears overall a bit more noble.
Sadly there have also been a few artists who downright run it like a subscription based online shop, where art communities like these have become a mere advertising outpost. There have even been a few cases where artists stopped posting altogether here, unless it was for the purpose of teasing something on Patreon. It's generally something I'd like to distance myself from, overall the model probably wouldn't work for my purposes, I simply don't have the output rate.
Donations, least complicated?
The concept of donations seems to make a lot more sense to me. Especially since this hobby of mine has been gotten fairly expensive. From software licenses, hardware, over to a resulting energy bill from a highend GPU rendering and running at full tilt for one week straight. Perhaps this way I could at least get some cash back that I've kept spending over the recent years and eventually use it for new soft and hardware in the future. As some sort of reward I could send donors old junk such as render tests and old/unfinished animations. Figured my friends liked this stuff as well! For now I'm gonna see how the reception is, from there I'll see if it's even worth opening a paypal for this!
tl;dr version
Commissions - Nope, sorry! D:
Patreon - Not suited for me
Donations - Perhaps, tell me what you think!
EDIT: People pointed out that Patreon can actually be used as a donation site to work towards a goal. Might actually consider that now, as this model seems to make a lot more sense!
The broken record titled "Commissions"
You might know that my stance on commissions has been repulsive, unfortunately this hasn't changed. The reason for that is that the commission requests usually look like this:
"I'd like to see my own character getting eaten by this other character. There should be a lot of teasing and a full digestion scene. Then Batman jumps through the window and beats the crap out of everyone."
Apart from Batman, this is pretty accurate and actually sounds fairly simple in itself. However, the bare work in this includes modelling and rigging two entire characters, eventually modelling an environment, animating, taking care of shading and lighting, rendering with post production and doing sound design to name the major steps. With these production standards, a commission request like this is barely a commission request, but a briefing for a small VFX company. A realistic price for a commission like this would lie somewhere inbetween $5.000 - $10.000. Of course you can do things a lot cheaper, but for that we'd have to drop the fancy visuals and move over to using pre-moddelled plastic dinosaurs. <:
Patreon, from montly donations to subscription model
Patreon is something that I've been looking at with a bit of a skeptical eye, mostly because it forces users to pay, and keep paying to see art. In its defense I have to say that many artists mainly use it as a tool to reward their patreons with extra content, early access to material they might release later on anyways, and personalized rewards for them. This is where patreons become supporters rather than subscribers, giving it a purpose that appears overall a bit more noble.
Sadly there have also been a few artists who downright run it like a subscription based online shop, where art communities like these have become a mere advertising outpost. There have even been a few cases where artists stopped posting altogether here, unless it was for the purpose of teasing something on Patreon. It's generally something I'd like to distance myself from, overall the model probably wouldn't work for my purposes, I simply don't have the output rate.
Donations, least complicated?
The concept of donations seems to make a lot more sense to me. Especially since this hobby of mine has been gotten fairly expensive. From software licenses, hardware, over to a resulting energy bill from a highend GPU rendering and running at full tilt for one week straight. Perhaps this way I could at least get some cash back that I've kept spending over the recent years and eventually use it for new soft and hardware in the future. As some sort of reward I could send donors old junk such as render tests and old/unfinished animations. Figured my friends liked this stuff as well! For now I'm gonna see how the reception is, from there I'll see if it's even worth opening a paypal for this!
tl;dr version
Commissions - Nope, sorry! D:
Patreon - Not suited for me
Donations - Perhaps, tell me what you think!
EDIT: People pointed out that Patreon can actually be used as a donation site to work towards a goal. Might actually consider that now, as this model seems to make a lot more sense!
As for patreon I do believe there is an option to change your payment model to a "per submission" type. So even if you have a low update rate, you would only charge patrons when you post content. I think that would be a more ideal choice if you were to use that site rather than go with a monthly model. I don't really see a stigma with people using Patreon in general. I only see people get pissed when artists tend to use the site irresponsibly, or they use it (like you said) as a paywall or subscription model for work they would have posted publicly in the past. So yeah, you'll be totally fine with a Patreon just so long as you don't abuse it =3
Donations... while it's the easiest choice, I think it will be your least rewarding. Especially if you don't offer any sort of incentive for people to donate other than just to ask for money. If you're going to go this route, I think it would be best to offer something in return. I usually compile an art pack of High-Res pictures and all my scrap sketches to give to people that donate to me just so that I can at least give something in return... otherwise I'd just be begging for money and that's not something I think people would look warmly on.
I suggest doing a donation stream of some kind. So lets say you did a stream showing how you work... how you animate, rig, light, render, etc. and you can have a link in the stream for paypal donations. This would add a bit more of a human touch as well as give a little something extra to your fans as way of thanks, rather than just posting a donation journal or something. I can't speak for everyone, but I'd certainly be interested in donating a few bucks if you did something like this =3
Doing streams might be tough, I'm highly secretive about my identity due to my career. Think I'd be too afraid something would pop up that could give away my identity, which can happen easily inside of a program in which you tend to browse through your computer a lot. There's a frequent error message I get whenever the program crashes that displays my full name right away. Streaming might be something to consider if I'd stand with both feet in the community. Having both my feet somewhere else, and a mere hand here from time to time proves as difficult. As I said, I can't say how much longer I can keep this up, and if the disadvantages become too much of a burden, well... then reason might win.
EIther way, if you want to setup a paypal ti hide your name, I can help
https://www.picarto.tv/live/index.php
It's got a bad rap because some people use it poorly, but you can use it pretty much in any way you desire. Just be clear about how you're using it and what the purpose is, and people should trickle in to donate.
https://www.patreon.com/HumbugtheRat
Not the most professional, but it should give you an idea of what it works like. A lot of the stuff won't be visible to you, though, because I make most updates "patrons only" given the nature of Pred Quest. Rather not make it super-visible to the public. Maybe that's silly; I dunno.
Like the people that has said before me, it's a flexible tool for both the creature and supporter. ^^