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Patreon thoughts.
5 years ago
So for what it's worth I'm still looking for full-time work which has been difficult since so many studios are doing work-from-home and the casino business in general has been hit hard by the pandemic. I've been making lots of progress on commission work which I'm EXTREMELY grateful for, -thank you EVERYONE for that, and Tracy's been prompting me to consider doing a Patreon account as well to help make ends meet. To that end I really want to hear what people think about this because if I go down that path I want to know a little more about what people's expectations are for such a thing as well as what I can offer in that regard.
I imagine that everyone who reads this and will actually respond is fairly familiar with the work I do and the tonality of the content, so what I'm chiefly curious is if you were to actually put money up on a monthly basis what would you like to see? For as long as I've had a gallery here on FA the vast majority of the work I upload is commission material, so for Patreon work would you want to see more original character illustrations / sketches? Something entirely unusual like Adobe Illustrator renderings that I do on my professional job? As a Patreon supporter would you expect or be convinced to support if you received something personal every month like a personal sketch, sort of like a guaranteed mini-commission? If I were to subscribe to the Picarto premium service I could do private art streams, but would that make any difference?
I'm in a bit of a perplexed state because I pretty much do my art stuff in full-view all the time and the uploads consist of commissions that I just don't know what would compel people to support a Patreon account. I don't want to paywall the stuff I do, but at the same time what would make people think they were getting value for their dollar if they didn't have some extra content they couldn't see elsewhere? I remember reading a comment somewhere that if you approach Patreon as a means of selling premium content you're doing it wrong, -that Patreon is really about letting supporters help the people they appreciate do what they're good at, but how many of you folks out there actually go about the process from a charitable fashion?
I would LOVE to hear your feedback on all this, and if indeed you feel like you Patreon support requires a certain type of content to be consistently produced, be it lots of artwork, regular additions of certain quality artwork, or other things like tutorials, private streams, original source file documents, etc., then please share.
Thanks for the consideration!
I imagine that everyone who reads this and will actually respond is fairly familiar with the work I do and the tonality of the content, so what I'm chiefly curious is if you were to actually put money up on a monthly basis what would you like to see? For as long as I've had a gallery here on FA the vast majority of the work I upload is commission material, so for Patreon work would you want to see more original character illustrations / sketches? Something entirely unusual like Adobe Illustrator renderings that I do on my professional job? As a Patreon supporter would you expect or be convinced to support if you received something personal every month like a personal sketch, sort of like a guaranteed mini-commission? If I were to subscribe to the Picarto premium service I could do private art streams, but would that make any difference?
I'm in a bit of a perplexed state because I pretty much do my art stuff in full-view all the time and the uploads consist of commissions that I just don't know what would compel people to support a Patreon account. I don't want to paywall the stuff I do, but at the same time what would make people think they were getting value for their dollar if they didn't have some extra content they couldn't see elsewhere? I remember reading a comment somewhere that if you approach Patreon as a means of selling premium content you're doing it wrong, -that Patreon is really about letting supporters help the people they appreciate do what they're good at, but how many of you folks out there actually go about the process from a charitable fashion?
I would LOVE to hear your feedback on all this, and if indeed you feel like you Patreon support requires a certain type of content to be consistently produced, be it lots of artwork, regular additions of certain quality artwork, or other things like tutorials, private streams, original source file documents, etc., then please share.
Thanks for the consideration!
I do think that the creator needs to constantly update their Patreon with something though. Even if I'm not doing it to get any Patreon-only stuff, it's kinda discouraging to support someone when they haven't posted anything there in months.
I presume you've seen a lot of my gallery which contains loads of pencil sketch work already, which other people might not share because their output is more finished work. But since that's a large portion of my material would you expect or desire to see something more than that? I was pondering what sort of tutorials I could do, and then my mind started drifting about different random things I could talk about or share via video, and I started wondering if anyone would care to hear me geek out about original artwork I've collected, or even random stories I could tell about my experiences at conventions and professional activities. Videos (or audio recordings maybe) are the kind of thing I could offer which would certainly be unique from my regular gallery. I think to myself "Nah, don't get a swelled head, -nobody would care what you went on about... but then Patreon at its core is precisely about that, and maybe people WOULD be interested in the person behind the art.
Regarding the last bit, if I were to do a Patreon account I'd definitely be updating it regularly. Weekly? Bi-weekly? Daily? I'm in absolute agreement that there's an agreement to provide regular value in return for the patronage.
The kind of videos you mention sound interesting! Something I've seen youtubers do is record their drawing session and then talk about other topics over a speed up version of the process, not necessarily relating to the drawing. Although all videos I've seen like that have been public so I don't know if that's Patreon-related, but I find them interesting. You could share the full real-time version on your Patreon maybe! Although I'm not sure how popular is that, I'm just a fan of seeing the behind the scenes process.
Polls where Patreons vote or propose ideas for a drawing also seem popular!
The one time I used it ended well. More details, fine-tuning of the speedpaint setting and background.
Full-res pics are also good too, and with how much experience you have, I'm sure tutorials would be great!
I'm very interested in doing tutorials although I tend to ramble and meander about when talking so any subject I were to discuss would need to be fairly to the point... like a 60 second to 5 minute tutorial at max. If I did something like this it'd be really helpful to get some idea of what people might actually want to learn. It feels like anything you could ever want to learn already has dozens of well done tutorials on youtube, so what could I offer that's unique and worthwhile of someone paying into Patreon to see my thoughts?
You know, the usual.