Discussing: "Model Previews made by patrons, why yes or why not" (Patreon)

Hey guys! I hope you are doing good!

First of all, Zafina is now on the building queue.

Also, I'm very surprised by the response for Aerith, something tells me you guys really wanted to work with her!

A Patron (and also Content Creator) offered help to make, let's be a little conservative and let's not read between lines, but offered to help with Aerith Model Previews.

I was writing a long ass response, but I thought it could be actually something good to discuss.

Background.

When I posted the first model here, I didn't post any screenshot, then one patron asked if there could be some sort of preview pic, so I decided to make a quick gif for it (inspired in LordAardvark's gifs)

Solution.

I came out with this pose, which is very easy to do. Some can say it's pretty dull, and yeah I understand, seeing this pose 3 or 4 times a month can get dull pretty quick, but interestingly enough, this dumb pose helps me a lot to see clipping and other issues. In my opinion, if a model can't handle such a simple pose, then it wouldn't be able to handle more complex poses.

Why not custom poses?

The reason why I don't want to do custom poses is because they can get really time consuming to do. That patron was not the first one that offers this, for I am blessed with wonderful patrons that have offered a change over my boring ass pose, for what I am very, very thankful! 

I cannot accept however, because in order for patrons to create model previews, they need to have the model. I am the one that have the model. If I were to give the model to a handful of patrons to create previews, they would need to have the model first, and hence, if they have the model first, that would create a situation where a handful of patrons have the model before anyone else, which is something I absolutely want to avoid.

In my eyes, all patrons are Content Creators, and I made this Patreon page for Content Creators. Because of that, I would give the model to all my patrons and I would love to keep it that way. And yet, there is still patrons who would love to make actual model previews over my garbage gifs.

So, what is the solution?

That is the question. 

I really don't have the answer for sure, and I don't know if I can think of a healthy solution for this, here's my reasoning:

• I would love to see model previews made by patrons.
• I would hate to let my patrons do my job.

In a way, the preview is mandatory so the user can know what to expect from the model he or she is downloading.

I know the pose I use doesn't truly give a full preview of the model, but I do need to have a preview though. I don't like the idea of releasing a model and inside the post you will see something like PREVIEW WANTED! PLEASE SUBMIT!

Making a preview is part of my job.

I understand that my pose is pretty dull, but if I were to accept Patron-made Model Previews, I honestly don't know how would I pay them back, because I don't want them to just have a Thank you and that's it. The thing is, the inherent issue with that, is that I would need to have a way to reward patrons for submissions, and I don't know how to reward them without turning this into yet another popularity contest.

What do you guys think of all of this? Do you guys even care about the preview? What else I might be missing? Am I too shortsighted on this matter?

I don't know, but anyway. I really don't know about this, maybe I'm overthinking too much these things.