a quick sidenote...!? (Patreon)

hey all!! hope you're havin a good sunday, probably still digesting in the aftermath of thanksgibbon... the Jessica Rabbit animation is going fine as well! if all goes smoothly i could actually finish it late this evening! but the reason i bring you all here is actually because... i wanted to ask your opinion on something that i forgot to bring up last news post!

Currently the system for selecting entrants to the Monthly Animation Polls is that the first 20 comments get locked into the poll automatically, while I myself personally pick the last the 5 comments! I was thinking next month instead I could try picking all 25 comments to go into the poll instead! I have a few reasons for this!

First, I do notice sometimes there's this effect where there's lots of choices people seem to like semi-equally, but there'll be ONE really Trendy Popular Character who everyone knows recently, and that character kind of sucks away all the votes from these other choices making it almost a non-contest. And in similar vein, some patrons have voiced their feeling that only Popular Characters can really win in the polls! Now obviously, to some degree this is just natural! A popular character that everyone knows is gonna gain more votes! And I'm fine with that, often I like the popular character as well myself! But what I'm getting at I think is I don't want the animation poll to just be the "What Trendy Character Wins This Month" poll, if you catch my drift? 

Also, in a similar vein, sometimes I myself have a particular type of animation that I may want to do, especially holiday-wise? And that can kind of get away from me if a really trendy character that has nothing to do with the holiday gets chosen, and sort of ruins my own plans lol. Again though, it's not like I /dislike/ when this happens, but in general the animations tend to come out a bit better and more smoothly when the choices align with my own goals at the time!

Furthermore because the first 20 comments get locked in automatically, I worry that when people check the suggestion box and there's already a bunch of comments, they may think "Oh well there's not much point in suggesting something now"? Essentially I don't want someone to not suggest a REALLY GOOD suggestion just because they think all the slots are gone anyway! I specifically make a point to post the suggestion box at the same time (9am EST) on the 1st of every month, but even so this still leaves certain timezones out! Or people can just be busy with work, etc etc. 

Thus, for all these reasons I would like to try next month selecting all of the animation poll choices myself from the comments! Similar to how I run the request streams basically. And to be clear, this is not me being like, "oh i dont ever want to draw a popular character", there are still definitely going to be times when a trendy character will get onto the poll and gain a huge lead! Popular characters are obviously great, I like them a lot too!! There are definitely times for that kind of thing. I don't dislike trends but I'd just like the ability to have polls without that sort of dynamic as well! Let me know what you folks think in the comments! If people seem open to this I'll be doing it next month!