sneakattack1221
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Mid-Summer Page Update: TL;DR at bottom
🕑 Added 2017-07-12 16:23:56 +0000 UTC Happy Wednesday, captors and captorettes!I imagine, for a few of you, the last few days this week have been fairly confusing...or perhaps not, given our track record with our ability to keep the Gag Busts going on-time, this might just be exactly what you expected then. Well, either way, I can promise this post will be nothing even remotely close to what you expected...
As you can see by the progress bar, we're dangerously close to our next milestone which – up until today – was originally intended to be a third monthly page of our BOUND comic. As I take the time to work through the progress of this week's schedule, I find myself compelled to alter the intended course for our reward system, for a number of reasons:
1. Two pages is a more appropriate approach:
As I've said before, I liked how the two pages you've already been receiving for several months now has affected the “flow” of the story. I even realized a few months ago that handing you both pages at once felt even more fluid than one page every half-month, as you then have two pages to read, and I now have the freedom to stretch mini-stories over two pages instead of constantly feeling like I need to confine an entire scene's worth of information into each individual page which – as I'm sure you all noticed in the first 10 pages of the comic – felt condensed. This even allows me the option to do two-page spreads, should I feel so inclined to have a wider action scene for whatever reason the story permits. But this gets jostled back to an awkward state if we bump it up to 3 pages per month, as we now have a third-wheel scenario where one page is always going to feel superfluous, or downright left-out.
2. Opportunity to explore new horizons:
Keeping BOUND confined to two pages per-month (pun intended) gives me the opportunity to consider new avenues of kink to pursue for your viewing pleasure, as I always intended to ensure that I had the potential time to invest on a third comic page per month, but now realize that doing so would cause more problems than it would solve. To that end, I've been working on a new IP that I will be revealing at such a time when the next milestone is reached. All that is available right now is that it will be a dark fantasy setting, in the spirit of Lord of the Rings, or Game of Thrones, with a heavy emphasis on the rule set of Dungeons and Dragons. It will star entirely new characters I've been working on during my free stream hours (some of you have already seen the preliminary turns for them), and I will likely be trying an entirely new format with this project. Again, more on that when we reach that state in the (hopefully) near future.
3. Moving the Patreon page into the future:
At the start of our tenure as Captor extraordinaire, we always knew the page was going to start as one thing, and evolve into something else as time went on. We've been providing you awesome folk with as much kinky and pervy art as we can shake out every month, but we always had a goal in mind, which was to tell stories and engage you guys not just visually, but through narrative as well. Some folk specialize in making flash animations, while others have the prowess of building full games. We're not that fancy, we like comic books and graphic novels. We want to tell stories! Kinky stories! Stories about adventure and misadventure alike! It's my hope that one day we can do exclusively stories for you guys, and maybe even get you involved in the creative process in some way, but we know how much you love the current rewards, and we want to honor that as well. That being said, we can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, so we do have one major change coming to this update, in addition to the re-structuring of the next milestone reward:
4. Altering the Entry ($1) Tier to something a bit more useful for everyone:
Ultimately, I've come to the conclusion that the Gag Busts – while fun, and a prime opportunity for you guys to voice your opinions on what you'd like to see on a weekly basis, hasn't been as helpful as we feel it could be in terms of showing the full range of our abilities, and is somewhat limiting in our goal to move this page into the future. Therefore, as of this post, we are re-structuring the Entry Tier reward from a single, weekly delivery of samey character art, and instead doing a weekly stream – using our Pictaro channel – where I'll be taking suggestions on what to sketch for that given session, ranging from progress on newer projects, tutorials for our budding artists in the community, and even just random doodles, where we take some designs or personal requests from you guys and see what it would look like if I just drew it from scratch! The goal of which is a series of sketches and doodles that I can then compile into a sort of “Sketch Book” posted for the $1 tier at the end of each month (or start of the next month, depending on how much time I have to sort and compile images). This will also allow me to return to form with a method of suggestions we've excluded for over half a year now: comment suggestions. Every suggestion that gets included in the comments on the stream-night post will be considered for that night's stream, with me having final say, of course. This gives everyone the opportunity to see some of the things they've always wanted me to draw but didn't feel like they had the voice to express it, as we limited our prior reward to the top-voted suggestion. This way, everyone who suggests gets an equal shot at seeing something they like get doodled!
Change always has the potential to be a bitter pill to swallow, but it's my hope that never happens here. I've promised you guys in the past – and I'll continue to do so now – that, for everything I seemingly take away, I always want to give something else back. I don't like the $1 tier rewards being a “Thanks for your support” bracket, and I promise it'll never come to that. However, I also want to ensure we aren't getting stagnant, and that folks can always feel like they're getting something out of our time together! We'll probably start our first sketch stream tonight, at around 8-9pm EST (Again, sorry US hours!) I hope to see many of you there, and we'll post another reminder tonight when we're much closer to getting started! Perhaps we can even use tonight as a feeler for what will be to come in the near future! Until then, thanks for sticking with us, and stay devious!
TL;DR: We're re-structuring the milestone rewards to allow space for a new comic IP, and keep the BOUND comic to 2 pages per-month, and the Gag Busts are being re-structured as a weekly live stream of sketches that will compile into a monthly sketch-book for the Entry Tier.
--SA
Comments
Sneak
I'll probably still make the equivalent of what I used to make when the GBs first started (rough-draft style black and white sketches) but yeah, the coloring and the weekly recommendations got a little out of hand. I mean, you and everyone who's patroned me for more than a few months knows how inconsistent we were with posting them on time. I feel the livestreams have been not only a reinforcement of my daily schedule, but also a way for me to get even closer with my audience, and get to know you all as people, rather than just names and numbers on a message board. It feels more personal to me, which I like.
Sneak
That's actually one of the reasons I'm planning to prioritize patron comments over comments made from the chat box on Pictaro. I'm going to do my best to include suggestions from as many people as possible, and folks I don't get to that week - should I feel inspired by the idea or they feel so inclined as to repeat the request the following week - will get to next time. Secondly, I plan to post these all up at the end of the month in a sketchbook format, so even if you miss the stream, you still get the end results...all you're really missing out on are the antics people get up to in the chat room.
Pip van Hees
While it's entirely up to you on how you want to run this thing, don't you think that doing the stream at US hours rather than the Gag-bust might de-incentivise people from different time zones? especially those in say, Asia or Europe. They have little chance to see the streams, and even less chance to contribute...
Second of Many
Sounds interesting. I understand teh criticism that the gag busts could end up very similar, but they also sometimes created really great pieces, so I'll miss them. But I'm looking forward to seeing what comes out of the stream, and giving my own suggestions. Already have a fun one in mind for next time
Aidenke
I like the sound of the new concept - hopefully keeping ti fresh, fun and a lot more variety involved in a process that was otherwise becoming a little repetitive. Here's looking forward to all the concepts you put together. Hard to argue with more involvement and more content! :)
It would be really cool to have almost like an interactive story/choose your own path where you put up various decisions for the character(s) to make and the community votes on them, possibly one decision a week. Then every "x" time frame (once a month?) where the character is at is then illustrated by you guys. It would give a chance to let the community have a say, share in a combined story, and really delve into specific characters. If the protagonist is captured by orcs at the end of the month then that's what we get to see. If they take a more evil turn and kidnap someone then we see that instead. This is just an idea to throw out there and I have no idea how realistic this would be to implement.
