imightbemick
patreon
Musing About the Future (+Q&A)
🕑 Added 2024-04-01 20:01:14 +0000 UTCThis will be a public post, for everyone to take a read of, if they want.
I've been wanting to just kind of go over some of my thoughts, thanks to things that have been happening lately. I thought it would help to write it all down, and you all deserve a peek at my thought process. However, two things to begin with:
1 - Nothing is changing in the short term. I'm going to keep doing what I've been doing.
2 - I didn't realize until I started writing that it's April 1st, so I want to clarify this is serious. I also want to stress that I hate April Fools Day, and always will.
With that out of the way, I've been thinking...
It's no secret that things have been getting more precarious for those of us in the "adult" art world. As benign as most of my work no doubt appears to those into it all, to those on the outside there's little difference. I have to face the reality that, at some point, it could all be shut down on my behalf. I'm no longer going to be uploading to Gumroad, for instance, but that moment helped spark my thinking over how I should proceed with things.
The first option is, of course, ignore it all and keep doing what I'm doing. There might be a ticking clock, but out of sight, out of mind. I'm sure most would cheer me on to take this option, but it's just not all that reasonable in the long term.
The second option is similar to the first, but finding loopholes of sorts. Like, would I get the boot from this site if I never posted anything to it? Simply posting things to the public places instead? It feels workable, but would essentially mean that people would be paying for no extra benefits. There are merits to this on my end, such as having more time not doing variants, people less inclined to steal my art (though they still would because they're like that), and the aforementioned defense of not posting anything "lewd" to Patreon directly itself.
The downsides of this, aside from the fact that there's no real incentive to support, is the fact that it's a workaround at best that could easily still get me fired out of a cannon. This leads me to the next option, and the one I've been giving serious credence to.
The third option: go fully SFW.
I'm not going to lie, it would be kind of liberating to draw more general stuff. There's a myriad of upsides and downsides to it, most notably being the fact I'd essentially have to start from scratch again in terms of audience.
I could just use the accounts I already have, but having built an audience that expects a certain thing and mixing it with new folks that don't like that thing doesn't seem like a great idea.
This is all before I have to think about what to do if my old works get blasted away. I had given consideration to making a separate website and sticking everything there, but it'd have to be fully anonymous for me, and I have no idea where to even begin making one.
This rambling has gone on long enough, so I'll spare you all for now. Burying my head in the sand isn't going to help, and switching to other payment sites is just kicking the can down the road. The major competitor to Patreon that people talk about is something I would absolutely, 100% never use, so please don't bother suggesting it. Their time will come too, anyway.
The usual Q&A is still a thing, and you don't have to ask about any of this below, but I get the feeling it will be the dominant topic.
Thank you for reading this. Also for supporting me.
Comments
imightbemick
I want to repeat, and stress, that this is all just thinking out loud. Having said that? This means a lot to me.
GoldenGunman
You're an inspiration to me as an artist in general. Will I miss the bondage/damsel stuff if you go full sfw? Of course I will, that's how I found you and what I followed you for. Will I unfollow/hate you for not doing it anymore? No, that's stupid and immature. Your art style is very versatile, and lends itself really well to action and dynamic poses, your recent Sally pic is a good example of that. Even without bondage- tho I really hope it stays, of course- I'll still follow ya. You could always just limit bondage stuff to private commissions as well, though I know you're not big on coms in general. Just thought I'd keep that suggestion open :P
Sleepy Comics
I should be doing this as well. Been skating by for way too long!
coredumperror
I'd suggest that, starting today, you begin doing what Shio-Bari, WossaRem, PlusOut, and a few other artists I patronize do with their patreons: don't post pics to Patreon itself. Instead, make posts that merely link to an external file host, like Dropbox, Google Drive, or Mega, and have the variants in a folder on there, instead. The Patreon post can have a cropped version of the image as a teaser, but that's it. PlusOut's patreon is an especially good example of how to do this well, as he makes even more variants than you. This has a multi-fold benefit, as it'll both keep Patreon off your back *and* prevent automatic gallery-scrapers from stealing your art. Most thieves are too lazy to actually download the pics from your posts and then upload them to theft sites. By not having the actual images in the posts themselves, their theft-scripts have nothing to grab.
