What’s Next? And A Question About Patreon Rewards. (Patreon)

Hey fellers. So, the release of my Cyberpunk models pretty much marks the end of my Cyberpunk 2077 journey. It’s fairly unlikely that I’ll ever start a new project in this IP. I mentioned a while ago that I was interested in going back and doing some Mass Effect and Resident Evil stuff. Specifically, alternating between those two IPs after each finished work. People seemed alright with this idea, so that’s what I’m gonna do. For Mass Effect, I’m thinking about making models for Femshep, Samara/Morinth, Jack (If I can figure out her textures), and EDI. And for Resident Evil, I’m thinking about doing Rebecca Chambers, Sheva, Exella, and RE4R Ada. I’m also thinking I’ll update some of my older models to my current character rig. And by the end of the project, the new and updated models will probably be put in separate model packs for Mass Effect and Resident Evil. And also, a lot of the original models for these characters are 10+ years old, and they’re not very photorealistic by today’s standards. So, for Mass Effect, and the older RE characters, I’m thinking about sorta “modernizing” the models with higher quality meshes and textures. Better looking faces, outfits, hair, etc. It’s kinda an experimental idea, but I think it can be done while maintaining the character’s likeness.

But before I start posting stuff for that project, I want to take a little detour and make something else. Just gonna make a little Ancient Egypt themed image set, kinda inspired by ‘The Legend of Queen Opala’ and things like that. In between main projects is usually a good time for side stuff like this. I’ll have more to say about this when I get the assets ready for the set.

And lastly, I got a question for you guys about Patreon rewards/tiers. So, when I first set up this Patreon page, I chose not to do any tiers because I didn’t like the idea of incentivizing people to give me money. And I thought that some of the common rewards other artists did (like higher res, no watermark, exclusive renders, etc) were basically fake, or too much of a bribe. At the time, this page was basically just a tip jar, but since then it’s become something much more and I’m beyond grateful to you guys. But despite that growth, I still don’t think I offer that much on Patreon. Occasionally, I get a DM from a new patron asking why they didn’t get some “rewards” by subscribing. Usually, I kinda awkwardly inform them that those “rewards” are free, and I give them a link to my archives. Instances like that kinda make me feel like a fraud, because it indicates that there’s a percentage of people who expect to get certain rewards by subscribing to my Patreon, only to realize that they wasted their money.

This is a problem I really want to resolve. I want to make patrons feel like they’re actually getting something, without making non-patrons think they’re missing out. I figure the simplest solution would just be to do an “early access” thing. Patrons could see pics and animations a week early. But I dunno, that still kinda seems predatory to me. You can probably tell I’m a terrible businessman. Anyway, I’d appreciate any feedback on this.