Our First Goal!

This has been a milestone month for this Patreon. We reached our first Patreon goal (15 patrons, yay!) and I've been thinking up something special to celebrate the milestone. I've got something cool in mind, and I hope you'll agree!

First, I want to talk about the goal...

For the milestone, I promised looking into Discord and patron-exclusive streams, and I've been researching into Discord servers and Picarto to figure out what I can do.

Going from what it says on Picarto, the cost of getting private stream support is roughly in the $12-$15 a month range. As a test run, I did an open public stream earlier in the month. Going from participation, I don't think anyone from the Patreon was able to make the time I set. Going from that little data I have, I think private streams might not be worth it; I'd rather set up something that you could enjoy.

Looking into Discord, I learned it's actually really easy to make a server. I also learned from how some artists are using Discord with Patreon, and it works well as a hub for announcements and art showcases. It's also a lot of maintenance and requires a lot of moderation dependent on size. As an example, a server for close friends of mine needed a 24/7 moderator because some bot broke into the server and bot-spammed all channels nonstop. I think I want to pursue it in the future, but I'm not quite ready yet. If you're interested in becoming a moderator for a Discord channel or know someone who is good at that sort of thing, please get in touch with me.

So, what's new?

Going from the last art stream, I learned that art streams are an extremely great way to get me to focus and finish things. The last poll image was done live on stream and it was a great way to get immediate feedback from viewers. I'm going to make streams into a regular occurrence and I'm going to try to build a more consistent schedule that people can attend. This is change #1. I encourage you all to join in and say hello when you can.

I'm also planning to set up a temporary Discord with the intent of testing it out. It'll only last for one week to a month, and my goal will just be to get in touch with patrons and chat about the next milestone and what we want to try out next. Mostly just chat, though. This is change #2.

Overall, my major goal to this Patreon is to strongly encourage audience participation. I hope that you as a patron are able to sway the creative process in a weird direction that you wanted to see.

Stay tuned. I still need to announce my cool thing!