Working as a colorist + patron requests (Patreon)

BASIC INFO:

Since early 2023, I have picked up a new hobby on the side - color-grading and visually improving animations of other people.

Many Blender users create awesome, smooth animations - but Blender often produces videos with very bland or bleached colors. This downgrades the quality of otherwise excellent content.

And so I thought to insert myself at the end of the video creation process, and do some visual polish on numerous popular, publicly available animation loops.

While I am not a master animator, I have different visual design skills, and the color-graded version can easily surpass original creation and be the best version available.

So far, I have only improved short (less than 30sec) videos. They are stored separately from my own works, see your messages/email from me for link!

DISCLAIMER / LEGAL:

1. my color-graded versions alter the look of source video considerably, thus can be argued to be transformative work
2. I only use free, publicly available clips that have been shared on the internet by their authors (mostly on twitter) - no private/paywall content is altered
3. original author isn't disputed in any way - videos have names of author/clip/characters in the title of the file for easy identification
4. watermarks aren't altered, if the original clip had any
5. some authors allow modification / repost of their clips to anyone, some I spoke with, any of them can contact me about content removal or permission
6. my work isn't obfuscated - I tend to tweet my recolors at original animators, post them below their own clip or speak with them in DMs

Basically, I am hoping my work is seen as considerable alteration of the source material for the better - and giving full credit everywhere possible can be seen as shout-out to the benefit of source creator. After all, I am mentioning them to you, my own patrons, for free with each new video colorized...

Part 2 - patron requests

My own videos - long, story-driven and with specific characters - do not lend themselves easily to patron requests. But coloring / boosting short animation loops can be done much faster. An opportunity?

In future, I could have a system where you request some public video to be improved by me. Resulting clips would be seen by all patrons, but top patrons would see their requests handled first / faster.

But since I don't know what problems will crop up yet, let us keep it in the realm of "suggestions" for a while, rather than outright requests.

Do you have some favorite video you'd like to see improved? You can send me a message (don't use comments, it gets messy).

Some common-sense rules for requests and suggestions:

1. Stick with 3D animations - no real people videos.
2. Only suggest public videos - reposting paywalled content alteration would be iffy.
3. Shorter loops only - under 30sec if possible. Long videos are tons of work.
4. Higher quality source means better alternate version - get the best source you can.
5. Some artists already make their videos very vivid and pretty - in that case, there is little I could do, and it wouldn't be worth the effort.
6. Theme does not matter, as long as it isn't illegal. Human, monster, straight, lesbo and much more, it is all fine.