Are you a fan of the Comics here? Read This! (Patreon)
Content
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Check out the NEW COMIC FAQ HERE: https://www.patreon.com/posts/10540827
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This is directed mostly at the friends and fans of the comics tier and the comics themselves. I don't want you to feel left out! For the most part I have been letting the comic tier rumble along without a lot of worry. Occasionally I get feedback from the crew who enjoy the art and stories.
I want to drop a line to YOU specifically if you are one of the comic lovers!
Right off the bat, something you should know...
Just to be clear, there is no "comic section" on the Patreon, all comics are on the main site. You access all the art galleries and download sections there with your Patreon account. No comic art is stored here.
Comic Gallery: https://www.readyartzone.com/patreon/
User Feedback
From qwerpyblah (a longtime friend and fan). I wouldn't normally call out someone specifically but since this was publicly posted here it's not like you won't be able to suss it out anyway.
“not bad, but it's already feeling rather repetitive(I think releasing your stories piecemeal exacerbates the problem, well that and if we're being honest most of your comics have maybe 10 to 20 pages of actual story and stretching them out to 50-100 pages with a bunch of padding and repetitive growth scenes doesn't help, personally I'd suggest just dumping them all at once if they're done and move on to the next one), hopefully we start seeing some swerves by the next update”
Let's walk through some of this.
Release schedule Part 1 - this comes up A LOT. I think people might be hearing things like "hey, I've got X thousand pages ready to go" and assume those are a button press away from a gallery upload. They are not. 99.99% of those pages are not lettered and that is a ton of work. I do that work week to week in between my other work on the Patreon and my other work in… LIFE. Haha So yah, there is no backlog that's a moment away upload.
Release Schedule Part 2 - Ok, let's assume I did have all those comics actually ready to go. What if I dumped 100-200 pages all at once or every month? Well, I would burn through most of the comics in short order even if I had 1000’s of pages. I don’t draw THAT fast and the most likely scenario is I would be out of content before this year was up. Now we can argue about that one way or another but the point is ‘then what?’ I don’t draw hundreds of pages a month to keep that pace so we would probably revert to a much slower and less consistent release schedule than we have now. In fact, if you want a sense of the pacing then look at the main site. I dump ONLY entire comics there and its months between releases.
The story pacing in general – I cannot disagree about this one. I have been working recently to add a lot more ‘sense’ to the story but some of those updates are a way off at the current pace. Still, I do care and I do listen!
“So Ready, yah, that’s all great but what the fug are you doing to address all this?!?”
Well, I already did it. I asked for help and started looking for paid collaboration partners. This was for people to help address things like the coloring, lettering and the story. Many awesome people responded and unfortunately many people fell off for one reason or another (life, other commitments, the workload, etc.). At this point I am likely to put out the call again for help but believe me I am always on the look out for assistance.
As you might already know, the Patreon itself has other tiers which require time and when I asked the patrons and public, most people said they wanted animation, so we have that! It’s a huge success. We ran the Patreon here for years under comics and it barely grew at all. I added animation and it jumped in size. That’s not a problem or an excuse, it’s just a fact.
I get that people who like the comics are passionate and I will do what I can to make things on the comics awesome. I just need reasonable and doable solutions. My time and efforts can only go so far and switching to full time 2D comics work isn’t an option at the moment. Still, maybe there is an idea I haven’t considered.
Some quick answers
Releasing all the comics or comics at a faster pace – not likely without some things changing (see above)
Full Color Comics – I would love this but I would need a colorist. Suggestions welcome as the ones I spoke with already have petered out
Better Dialog and Story – looking into this one always. I have spoken with a lot of people and the deal is this magical person must be willing to work within the GLab universe. A few writers wanted to collab but they wanted to do new stuff with me versus going through my old comics to ‘fix’ them (and who can blame them?). I need people who want to dive through my CURRENT work and help with that.
Are all the comics available for download anywhere? - Comics for download are only available as month to month patron rewards and only in sections of 40 or so pages. There is currently no plan or way to grab all the old comics and new comics as a complete download. That might change one day but at the moment they are only in the galleries on my main site.
So yep, I am right there with you when I hear “Let’s do what we can to make this awesome!”
Thanks, and as always suggestions welcome.
-Ready