Second Post of the New Year! (Patreon)

I wanted to say that this was the first post of the new year, but I make a paid one earlier, so this is the second post of the year 2018 for my Patreon! So, what's up for the new year? Well, after walking circles in my floor for hours at a time, I've managed to come up with a few ideas. Before all that though, I've updated the BEnchmark Stack List for the month of January 2018. As a late holiday gift, I've awarded all my current patrons who've been charged an extra five Stack points. For patrons whose card has been declined, as soon as you get that fixed, please let me know so that I can update the list. Also, for patrons who still haven't left character suggestions or would like to modify their current suggestions, please let me know. If you have any questions as to how many suggestions you can make, you can ask me whenever!

Suggestion Boosts and Method of Choosing

I've decided to make some small additions as well. The first is a new BEnchmark Column called "Suggestion Boosts." Since I use WheelDecide a lot when choosing characters patrons suggest for voting polls to draw (among other things), boosting a suggestion means giving it extra slots on the wheel. Unlike before where the number of points needed to boost a suggestion depended on the number of characters it had, now one point boosts a suggestion by one slot regardless of the number of characters. Also, those who don't use all of their character suggestions can use the remaining ones to boost suggestions as well. 

As for the second addition, along with voting polls, I'm now going to use other methods to choose characters from the suggestion list to draw. Sometimes, or rather mostly, it'll be chosen at random, other times I'll pick a character(s) that strikes my fancy. While the voting poll is a decent way of deciding characters, I've always felt that it's stacked a bit heavily against lesser known characters. Choosing them at random to me has always been the most fair out of the three methods. Problem was, I wasn't sure if it counted as a raffle or not, which is against Patreon's ToS. It kinda fits into a grey area, since while I do allow people a certain number of characters to be suggested, at the same time they're ideas rather than requests or commissions, so it's not exactly the same as winning a prize (especially since the picture usually ends up as a paid post anyway). As for making a suggestion that I'd potentially like, believe it or not, that's more of a shot in the dark than voting polls. ^^;

BEnchmark Content

I'll be producing some content that I'd like to send out once patrons have pledged for a certain amount of posts or would like to use stack points for. They are:

• Commentary image packs detailing my personal thoughts towards illustrations I've done for past image packs. 
• Big illustrations that can be used for desktop backgrounds
• Step-by-step packs with PSDs of certain illustrations.

Let's start with the commentary packs. These would be PDFs with low resolutions of illustrations from past image packs along with my (OxRock's) personal thoughts toward them. It'd contain images from all the image packs released that year. I'd release it as a big image pack for my store and break it up into smaller chunks for that I'd just send out every time a patron is charged for ten posts. Because I'd do so in a certain order, if a patron wanted a particular part ahead of time, they could use a Stack Point.

Next are the Desktop Images. I haven't made any yet, but these would be images featuring a lot of characters (for example all the guests taking part in the Rub-Rub Roulette or all the recent Snapbacks characters). Just the image alone is enough to warrant a new pack on my store, but I figured they'd be a good extra for patrons. Same with the commentary packs, I'd send them in a particular order, so you can use Stack points for them ahead of time.

Lastly, we have the step by images with PSDs of certain illustrations. I've seen other artists do this but it's actually something that I'm having difficulty wrapping my head around in terms of how to approach it. On top of interest, different people would prefer the PSDs of different pictures, so it's not something I could collect into one big pack. If anything, it's something that I'd have to distribute on a case-by-case basis via request with the use of stack points. That said, I'll make an example picture to send out at some point.

That's pretty much it for now. I'll also be making adjustments to some of my Patreon Guides as well as making another one with tips on how to make the most of being a part of my Patreon, so look forward to that!

That's all for now!