State of SaunterWing: May-June 2019 (Patreon)

So, That was MerMay!

That was nice. Also, this was... the first month of Patreon? That was... also nice?

Well, first, some backstory.

Welcome to the "State of Saunter," an End/Beginning of month post wrapping up the last month, taking stock, and looking to map out the next one. 

As for this month....

MerMay

May! This May was "MerMay 2019," wherein art social media takes on a decidedly aquatic-bent with art focusing on Mermaids. For me, that took the form of theming my art around mermaids. To this end, I also enlisted the aid of my friend Waggling Mermaid on Deviantart and the usage of their original character, Rae, a bondage-enthusiastic mermaid. Every post this past month was themed around mermaids, with the month kicking off with Abby being transformed into a mermaid. There was also a lot of rubber transformation this month as well, which wasn't my intention, but it did pan out. The entire month did, as we managed to hit every weekday with a mermaid themed post, barring Abby Birthdays, and the graphic design for this Patreon (more on that, in particular later). Yay! It turns out that having a publication schedule helps keep a lot of things on track! Who knew? Looking forward to other themed months as they come up.

That being said, something I did not anticipate was the appearance of favoritism towards Rae and a seemingly spontaneous pivot towards mermaids in general.  For starters, about half the reason I like to use Rae in my art as much as I do (with permission, obviously) is that Rae slots in very well with Abby and Gale as a middle ground. In terms of character role, Rae is a submissive but, unlike Abby, who is enthusiastic about the kinds of situations Abby finds herself in, and is enamored of the idea of becoming Gale's slave.  This allows me to do things with the character that I don't allow myself to do with Abby (i.e. bondage enthusiasm from a submissive perspective).  Also, as a mermaid, Rae is a perfect vehicle for bondage-themed art in May. 

My mistake was in not announcing my attentions for the month ahead of time, on both of my major platforms at the time, Twitter and Deviantart, or keeping people informed about my plans in general. This, despite almost every "mermay" post beginning with "Its #MerMay2019 and..." in its description. While I'm not sure what to do about the latter problem, I will try to make announcements and keep people better aware of what I plan to do, going forward.

Patreon

So, this month, I started my Patreon! Yay! this was not my intention, however. Having started an SFW patreon before I had the audience to justify one, I was likewise wary of starting an NSFW one before I was ready. However, my hand was forced by the new changes to Patreon. Patreon was changing the rules for new creators at the beginning of the May, by making the default option more of a tip jar (no patron tiers) and taking a larger cut of patron revenue for features Patreon creators used to enjoy for free.  This could be circumventing by signing up for and publishing a Patreon page before the end of the first week of May, as pre-existing Patreons would be grandfathered into retaining the old features for now.  Having had access to the various original features that were being changed with the new creator tiers, I was loathe to give them up, so I created a profile for SaunterWing a day before the deadline. While Patreon allowed you to build a profile before launching it, this was not an option to still get all the old features, and so I had to launch the SaunterWing Patreon.

While I could have simply let the profile lie until I was ready to publicize and capitalize on it, that's not how I roll. I'd rather people see this space as though it were fully operational, rather than as an obvious space filler, and so I reorganized my dropbox to function as a proper archive for my material, and created banners for social media. The banner was intended to solely be for Patreon, but it worked well enough that I also reworked it for my other platforms too.  I would have stopped there (along with posting art simultaneously with my other platforms), but I started to attract actual patrons, and thus the charade must continue. Thank you for that. It gave me the motivation to take this more seriously than I otherwise would have, and affirmed that this was the right choice to make. 

The Patreon's still not quite finished yet. I still need images/gifs for the patron tiers, for example. But its functional, and I know what I want to do and how I want to keep it going. So, thank you guys for that.

June

So, what's the plan for June? Honestly, I'm not really entirely sure, other than playing catch up on a few works that went on the backburner for MerMay, like my Pauline "Game-Over" animation. 

I'm not really good at planning unless I have a project in the works, and with Abby being self-contained, there isn't likely to be a special project that will force me to organize my production schedule like I have my publication schedule. That being said, I do plan to do "State of Saunter" on a weekly basis to keep better accounting of how this NSFW project is going, as well as announce streams on Patreon as well as on my other platforms. I'd also like to think of goals and future rewards to give you guys. Stuff that won't break my already bursting publication schedule. What do you guys think?

That's a question for the entire month and the Patreon as a whole, by the by. What do you think of my patreon and how I've been running it? Is there anything you'd like to see me do (other than give Abby a break and/or give Gale an L)? Let me know in the comments for this post!  I want to give you guys the best bang for your buck that I can (without breaking myself, obviously), and we can only do that together.

On that note, Saunter's gotta wander and I'll catcha over yonder!