Dropping the quality/changing art style

I'll be blunt and easy about this: People are not happy that I remove older artwork (Dropbox folders that are 2 months or older). So much that the latest works are now being published by them the moment I release it.

It's funny really, the reason I stopped handing out all older artwork was because of the same reason. We've come full circle!

1 : Person signs up for the highest tier subscription

2 : Person copies everything to their own computer

3 : Person signs out of their subsciption

4 : Person cancels credit card payment or demands money back

5 : Person posts everything on a public website without any credit to the artist

6 : Repeat a month later when there is new content

Because of this I did what other artists did that I followed: Adding an online folder that stays active for a limited time so people who sign up can't copy everything anymore (This seemed more fair to people who have been supporting me for years). In order to still give people a chance to get older artwork, I set up a gumroad store page: https://lerra.gumroad.com/. The shop is still active and updated with everything I have to offer - EXCEPT for the Lyana Frostburn: Golden pony staff comic. Reason? The comic is free to read online for everyone. It's completely uncencored on twitter: https://x.com/lerra_tweet. I made extra text variants for subscibers because it made sense giving them something extra for supporting me. Allowing me to pay rent, electricity bills and food. I don't know anymore where the right or wrong is anymore seeing how AI artists are even charging money now for uncensored artwork. What am I supposed to offer if I give everything away for free? What benefit is there for someone to sign up if they can just go to a different website and enjoy it all for free? I figured that something extra would create incentive to support me.

This is the line I've been walking for a long time now: Trying to create something worthy of support. Something that makes people think: I can get it for free but I will sign up instead because I know the artist is able to make more if he/she can pay the rent.

I've been doing this for more than 8 years now, studying almost each day and trying to make this work for both me and my own audience. I've deliberately taken a stance against posting a lot of teasers/censored stuff on deviantart or any other website since I've seen too many people jumping on that train as well. The ones where you just see a full censored gallery and everywhere you look is the word: SUBSCRIBE NOW. I deliberately decided against this because I want people to support me because they want to. Not because I force them to. Yet I've come to learn that there is no fighting it. It's the internet after all.

So today I've been thinking about this for a good while and I've come to a conclusion: I care to much about my own art and I'm dropping quality on all future works in order to speed up production.

... What? That doesn't make any sense?

Actually it does. Right now I care a lot about my art and I kept trying to improve because of that. The result is 2/3? sometimes 4 works in a month. In between images I studied anatomy, lighting, I try out different methods of how I can create something in photoshop, I work on my blender/3d skills in order to create backgrounds and while working on images I kept correcting them endlessly to erase the flaws/try to offer the best I could etc etc etc. I spent a fuck ton of time trying to improve the end result.

Not only that. I look around in the landscape of artists and I see people doing the exact same thing over and over again. No improvements. Nothing new. No ideas to explore. Just the same fetish/setups/characters/artstyle and no backgrounds or even some kind of story to it and they make 4? sometimes 5 times as much as I do. If I were to make that much, I wouldn't care about giving stuff away for free. But that's the thing: I do because I cannot offer any more than the 3/4 pieces that I can create with my current pacing. It's all I have to offer and so I try to protect it!

... This cannot go on any longer. It's best to drop quality, make more artwork instead of better artwork and stop caring so much. If you are asking what kind of quality drops I'm talking about:

1: I'm not creating backgrounds anymore. Not in photoshop or 3d. I'll paint something suggestive and the rest is up to the viewers imagination.

2: Lineart is out the door. With the Lyana Frostburn comic I would make a sketch > Do all the coloring and rendering > Finish it off by creating a fine black lineart tracing around the different elements. This usually takes about 1/1.5 hours. From now on I'll do the eye lashes/eye contours and that's it. Instead I will use the sketch that I made and clean that up a bit.

3: Messed up body proportions are here to stay since I will not go back and forward anymore between correcting stuff constantly.

4: I will do some volume indication but not as precise and good as I used to do it. I'm talking about muscle definition/ ambient occlussion in certain areas etc etc. I'll create the shape and add lighting to it and that will be the end of it.

5: Small details will be rougher/drawn in, instead of using shapes and extra layers for everything.

6: I'll use one light source from now on. Edge/ambient lighting is out the door.

7: Materials like latex and skin won't be rendered with much detail or lighting anymore since these also soaked up hours and even more when I did multiple characters.

8: Last but not least: I used to work with high contrast/saturated colors to make my characters pop. Getting this right is sometimes a hurdle however so instead I'm going to be using lighter color pallettes. (more forgiving/easier to paint colors)

If everything goes right I'm hoping to finish the next Lyana Frostburn image tomorrow. The sketch is already in the Dropbox folder for the tier 3. I've corrected the sketch several times already but I won't do that any longer. Tomorrow I'm moving on to the coloring immediately and after its done tomorrow (or the day after that) I'll be dropping the finished page. I'll see what the reactions are and if it doesn't work I guess I'll just move on to something different since the Lyana comics rely on both the image and story to work.

This isn't the kind of thing that I was hoping to write on a sunday... but looking at the current state of things and the future, it is for the best. I hope people enjoy upcoming works despite the artstyle changes.

The only question left now is: What to do with the older artwork? I'll be honest, I still make money off of it so its still a source of income. Giving it away wasn't what I was planning for since I need to pay rent somehow. Anyone got any tips? I've thought about adding them to higher tiers as an extra (like get 3 extra folders of your choice or something) but this would still allow people to sign up > get it > leave > cancel credit card payment > post it somewhere else > repeat next month or with a different account.

If you made it this far, thank you for your time and patience. I hope upcoming works still please you.