qualtroverse
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(POLL) Considering Release and Pricing Adjustments
🕑 Added 2023-10-16 14:25:02 +0000 UTCTLDR; Read the Bold Text Below to see proposed changes to my release strategy and pricing of tiers. I want to spend more time focusing on a single high quality version of an animation that will be exclusive to Patrons 2 weeks early.
Ever since I started creating these high quality, realistic depictions of Blueberry Inflation, I prided myself on the fact that I could release works entirely for free, with an alternate version for Patrons for those who wanted it.
This was my strategy for releasing content for a long time, and now I think it's time to make some much needed adjustments to improve the overall quality of each animation by only focusing on a single version.
These do NOT reflect upcoming changes, but an idea of what they may look like in the future.
I want to focus on single, high quality animations from now on, instead of producing two versions of a single animation, one being free and the other for Patrons.
Animations will be exclusive for Patrons and DeviantArt Subscribers for 2 Weeks, and is released for free for everyone after 2 weeks.
The $1 Work in Progress Tier will be raised from $1 to $3 with the advent of Blueberry Simulator and early access to see animations as they're being created, and now the Blueberry Simulator Discord Server.
The $5 NSFW Tier will become the Early Access Tier, and be raised to $7, and will be the tier that Final Animations will be released on for 2 week early access.
And the Archive Tier will be raised to $15, as all animations and work in progress works will be published there, and allow for permanent access to any and all animations early.
The Archive will also be moved to Google Drive for easier access and video playback. (I'm currently working on this right now and will happen regardless, it's just a lot of moving to do.)
And of course the benefits from tiers below the current tier you're subscribed to will be accessible to you as long as you're currently subscribed.
These changes will take effect before the next Full Length Animation releases.
I still want my animations to be accessible to everyone, but this kind of animation doesn't come cheap unfortunately, and now it's starting to reflect that now more than ever. Animations take from weeks and months to create depending on their length and complexity, and can take anywhere from a few days to 1-2 weeks to render out in their entirety. Code Blue for example took multiple months to create, and about 2-3 weeks straight of rendering, and still could have used more time as some of the parts can look a little blurry (especially the hair in some places), and the Juicing Room has nearly taken just as long being my longest animation to date featuring 3 different characters, and about 3 minutes of footage.
Patreon has enabled me to invest into more higher-end hardware and rendering equipment to achieve higher quality renders in shorter times, and I hope you can see that reflected in the render quality itself for those who have seen the Juicing Room previews, and Don't Eat the Berries in the Woods. But even with the upgrades I've made, it's still a bottleneck sometimes, especially in regards to rendering times. While new hardware enables higher quality rendering, it still takes the same amount of time to render as before as now that time is spent pushing the bar higher in the same amount of time.
I want to produce higher quality animations more frequently, but I can't when I'm rendering as it consumes a lot of my computer's resources, and it's getting to a point where I just don't think releasing animations entirely for free at the same time for everyone is the best solution anymore.
Now with the addition of Blueberry Simulator, my workload has increased fairly significantly. One of the bottlenecks of developing Blueberry Simulator is I have a single computer to render on, and rendering takes up a significant amount of time and resources on my computer, locking it up from being able to work on Blueberry Simulator in a meaningful capacity. I want to resume work on the Simulator again during these week long renders.
My work today would not be possible without all of your support today and in the past, everyone who pledged made what I can accomplish possible, and with these adjustments, I believe that the bar can be pushed even higher, further, and faster with the correct approach.
But I have you all to thank for that because without all of your support, whether it's through Patreon, DeviantArt, Twitter, Itaku, and even Instagram, I wouldn't be able to do nearly as much as I can today.
I don't want to make any sweeping changes without consulting you all first, so please vote on these changes. If you have any questions or other changes that should be made, please comment below or send me a DM!
If you neither agree or disagree on the changes, if you please elaborate in the comments, it'll help out a lot!
