Introducing Pokémonday (Patreon)

Hey everyone! Sorry for the delay. The "brief hiatus" took way longer than I thought because I vastly overestimated how much work it was to get this idea up and running. But I finally finished preparations! You can watch the very first Wooden Plank Direct (featuring my ugly mug and Dutch accent) above to get all the dirty details. Or, if you don't want to watch a video, here's the explanation in text:

Fake Monday is evolving into Pokémonday

First things first: I think Pokémonday makes way more sense than Fake Monday so I decided to change the name. Next to that, the format is going to change in a few ways. There were several parts of Fake Monday that didn't work well, for example:

- Lack of purpose. It felt weird to randomly create Pokémon and throw them online without ever looking back at them again. I really like big projects and building things that consist of smaller parts (like comic arcs), so Fake Monday felt a bit like a missed opportunity to me.
- A wonky poll function. There was no way for me to use the same poll multiple weeks, so the only thing I could do was to copy-paste all the poll options and put them in a new poll every week. I also felt bad for the (good) ideas that were stuck at the bottom of the poll because new ideas kept pushing them down.
- Patrons suggesting the same ideas every week. It was very hard for me to explain to them why their (niche) ideas wouldn't work or weren't relevant without sounding like I was shooting them down, so total freedom in suggesting Pokémon ideas didn't seem like the best way to gather ideas. I decided we needed some level of moderation.

Quitting Fake Monday was not an option because it's my favorite part of the week (I love the bite-sized creative challenges, so I decided to change things up a bit to make the format work better.

Introducing Pokémonday

So the biggest change by far is this: instead of randomly creating Pokémon every week, we will start building our very own region.

This is the yet unnamed Wooden Plank (fake) Pokémon region. If you know a good name for this island, please let me know, because I haven't decided yet. Maybe Plankeo or something?

I have commissioned my good friend Philip to paint this region for us and other than to make it Plank-shaped, I told him to go wild with weird places and locations, so I have no idea what the context behind many of these locations are... yet. It's up to us together to create said context.

We'll need to design everything a real Pokémon region has: starters, player characters, rivals, a professor, Gym Leaders, a villainous team, an Elite Four, regional forms, new (pre-)evolutions, (pseudo) legendaries, fossil Pokémon, et cetera.

How it will work 

On Mondays, I will put up two posts on Patreon:

1: Suggestions post, available to $5 and up Patrons
This post will contain a prompt for the week. Examples of prompts are:

This week, I need ideas for...
...the water starter
...the rival
...the early game bug line
...the roaming legendaries
....a Pokémon with distinct gender differences
....a new baby Pokémon
...a Pokémon with a type combination that doesn't exist yet
...Pokémon number 69
...a Pokémon based on a meme
...and so forth!

Sky's the limit.

On this post, $5 and up Patrons can comment with their most creative ideas based on the prompt I gave. After a week, I will pick up to four favorites from all the ideas that have been suggested. Which brings me to the second post:

2: Voting post, available to $3 and up Patrons
This post will contain a poll with the (up to four) favorite picks from last week's suggestions post. $3 and up Patrons will vote in this poll for their favorite idea. Whichever wins is the Pokémon I'll create. This post will also contain the actual Pokémon/NPC design that won the previous week's poll, so this is the post to check if you want to see the new mon/NPC.

And yes, that does mean that Pokémonday is not available to all Patrons anymore. I'm expecting that might frustrate some of you, but we were barely offering any perks to $3 and $5 Patrons which is something that has bothered me for a long time, so I think it's only fair that they get some extra rewards. So if you want to participate in building our region, you have to be in the $3 or $5 dollar tier.

New website
We created pokemonday.woodenplankstudios.com so we have a place to publish all the Pokémon and NPCs we create together. Right now it's just a bunch of placeholders, but soon it'll be filled with wacky creatures!

First post/prompt
Next Monday, so November 28th, at 9 AM CST, I will publish the first voting/poll post. Naturally this post won't have a Pokémon/NPC yet, because we have to gather suggestions and vote first, but to kick things off I will post the first prompt right here and now. Here it is:

Give me ideas for... a Pokémon based on an animal that hasn't been represented yet.

Leave your most creative ideas as a comment on this post! This post is available to all Patrons, but after this you'll have to be a $3 or $5 Patron, as mentioned.

And that's about it! I'm super excited for this, I love building a little world of our own. Interacting and collaborating with you all is what makes this job so much fun, and you guys keep impressing me with your creativity, so I'm really excited to act as your humble servant to design Pokémon based on your ideas!! I almost feel bad for the previously designed Fakemon that they won't be part of our fake region...

Thank you all SO much for your patience and apologies once again for taking so long! I hope this video/post explains the concept well. Otherwise, drop your questions below (along with your ideas for the region name and the yet-to-be-represented-animal Pokémon) and I'll try to answer them as well as I can.

Cheers!

- Abel