Some thoughts and a couple of decisions I took

Hey guys, this month have been very intense for me, too much work going on. It is good... actually it is great! I'm so happy for being able to live from pixel art. A year ago it was just a crazy dream of mine :) But as the amount of work and demand grows I'll need to make some changes and adjustments to make everything work.

This month I have been working almost every single day, including weekends, on Minifantasy or commissions. It is ok to do it for a while, or when work needs a push, but it is unsustainable for the long run.

I would like to share with you guys some thoughts and a couple of decisions I took related to Patreon and the upcoming asset pack. 

Since I implemented the new tiers in Patron the last January, it has grown around 150%. I'm super happy with it, but also because of how the reward system works it also requires more work from my side, and that's totally fine. Most of the tiers work as intended, but the Mimic tier is requiring way more working hours than I originally predicted. I'm loving all the new creatures you guys are proposing, and I really think they add so much value to Minifantasy. Also, it is being extremely fun to work on those designs and animations. The problem is that the scope of eligible creatures is too wide. In terms of character design and animation process, is not the same to make a human size creature, like the miner or the farmer, than a bigger creature like the ancient troll or a totally different creature shape like a spider. 

I can have a couple of human-size characters done in a day, or even in less time. But the design and full animation process of a single more complex/big creature can take me a full day of work or more. This, in terms of time management, is problematic, because it takes away a big portion of my weekly time for working on Minifantasy asset packs and other commissions. That's why I need to make some adjustments to Mimic Tier.

I really hate to make changes in a tier that some of you have been already enjoying for a while. But I feel I really need to do it for the good development of the Minifantasy collection and my health xD. I don't want to remove the tier or change drastically how it works, at least not yet. I prefer to try some fine-tuning and see how it goes for a couple of months.

My idea is to keep the option of 2 creatures if they are Humanoid models in shape and size, but reduce it to just one for non-humanoid models or bigger creatures.

I will totally understand if some of you guys don't feel like supporting this tier for longer and prefer to go back to a lower-tier, do not feel obligated at all. Making changes is always a hard decision.

I would like to test this approach for a while and see if it works. I have in mind other possible changes to allow Minifantasy to grow more, but I don't want to changes too many things at once. 

Also, I want to make clear that I don't have any intention of changing anything in the orc tier. For me, it's very important to have a very affordable entry point to ensure that anyone that likes Minifantasy can join us to enjoy all the new releases and basic Patreon perks.

The second point I would like to address is related to the Asset pack themes and their scope.

Working on the new asset pack during the last weeks I realized that the scope of this assets pack, Buildings and Structures, was too wide. Also, the tileset + premade structures thing increases the load of work by a lot. It might not look like that, for instance, I thought I could handle it better, but the reality is that making building tilesets take way more time than it looks. Working in the premade windmill took me a full day. To Make the tileset for it, so you guys can create more buildings based on that style, a couple more days of work. Also, each building has 2 completely different tilesets: outdoor tiles and indoor tiles, plus some props. Roofs are another thing and making sure that all tiles can be connected correctly requires test and thinking. 

Making a variety of new buildings, some premade, plus other structures and points of interest, is too much for a single asset pack. Also in terms of marketing is more difficult to make clear what the pack has to offer. 

I have decided to limit this asset pack to 3 new building types outdoor and indoor tilesets, plus the windmill premade and the bridge tileset. Also, I will rename this asset pack to Minifantasy - Towns II, because I think it represents better what the pack is about (a couple of weeks ago vaioui mentioned it)

One of the outdoor tilesets will be the stucco house. I will remove it from the Patreon exclusives to include in this pack because I think it really makes sense to be there. I'm adding a full indoor tileset for the stucco house and also T sections for all the roofs included in the pack.

To compensate for this I will add POIs and other structures as Patreon exclusives, like the crater, the giant sword, some dolmens and totems, etc.

I hope all these changes don't bother you or mess with your ongoing projects.

Thanks for reading until here. I know it was really long post, but I really felt I have to speak my mind and let you guys know about all of it. I always try to be as much transparent as possible with you guys, and I also love you to do the same. So do not hesitate to share any feedback or thoughts you may have related to this.