AUGUST 2023 (with actual important information!)

Here we gooo

POLLS ARE UP || RECORDINGS ARE UP

All,

First off, sorry for being so extra AFK lately. You might have already seen me mention it on Twitter, but like, I had my water line die, then the gas line died, and then the excavation from fixing the gas line messed up a wall which caused a clog in my driveway drain and flooded the garage, so the past couple weeks have been a bit more action packed than desired, lmao.

My personal crap aside, I have 2 big things that I'd like any and all feedback on. If you have any thoughts on any of this, positive or negative, please leave a comment for me to form into a big analytic when I next return from under my rock on Jupiter in 50 years.

1. The new build of the Gallery is in live beta

It's not plugged into the main system yet, and a few of the spinning rims are still WIP, but it is functional and if you'd like to take a look and let me know what you think I would highly appreciate it. Ultimately the Gallery is a tool to facilitate you guys, so your feedback on whether or not it's filling that role is very important.

https://notboogie.com/gallery_v3 

Visually it's similar to the current (v2) Gallery, but the entire thing was rebuilt from the ground up to make it less painful to upkeep and allow me to eventually release the code so other people can make their own without needing to figure all this crap out. Here's the feature change list:

• New item and page loader is about twice as fast as the old one, and serves more data
• Filter and display settings are saved to your account, so if you change browsers or whatever they will be preserved. If you are not logged in, they will be saved to your browser like v2's.
• Added a stand-alone blacklist which will eventually be integrated into the rest of the site. This way if you don't want to see mawshots or whatever you can just filter the tag. You can also specify if you'd rather have blacklisted items be totally blocked, or just blurred.
• Added a toggle for the Patreon preview row so you don't need to be shilled at if you don't want to. You can also use the min/max tier dropdowns to control what tier items are displayed. The Patreon preview row now defaults to tier 2 (since it's the most active tier) or +1 above whatever your current tier is if you're already a supporter.
• Added resolution controls so you can pick what resolution Gallery items should be served to you by default when you look at an item (1k, 2k or full).
• Added folders. Folders are basically a replacement for the old Sets functionality and behave exactly like you'd expect, just click them to open/close. Folders filter based on the items within them, so if you're ordering by DATE UPDATED, a folder will be ordered among the regular items by the most recently updated item within the folder. If you don't want things compartmentalized, you can disable folders in the sidebar preference menu.  Folders will be applied to more things to organize the display list soonish, right now there's only like 3 in there while I sniff out any issues.
• Reworked the display modal (the thing that shows you an item when you click on it). Removed the navigation buttons because they struck me as superfluous and changed the revision/set(folder) dropdowns to be a display menu, so you can see the thumbnails of what each one is before loading it. Should make it easier for you guys to find textless/gray/etc versions of stuff if you want
• Removed the "open on click" functionality from the modal display. I figured it was too clicky, and people were downloading the wrong resolution without realizing it. Instead, you can find a list of all resolutions for an item at the top of the modal, and just ctrl+click one to download
• The new modal also scales properly to fit the browser window, no more having the image sides cut off if you're using a 1440p monitor, lmao.
• Added a community scoring system. You can now score items from 0-5 via the module under the like/dislike module on the modal. You can also order by community score in the filter options. I thought this would be an interesting way to see what type of content is most popular with the community.

2. Potential campaign changes

Remember 50 million years ago when I was like "hmm I should update .. everything" and then never did? The recent onslaught of maintenance fiascos has me full of DETERMINATION and part of that is fixing a lot of outdated/broken pieces of the campaign.

Note that this is still just a hypothetical. This wouldn't be going into effect any time soon since I would need to update the Gallery to facilitate the changes, and that's assuming it doesn't cause a massive negative reaction from you guys, lmao.  I have bounced it off of a few individual people already and the consensus thus far has been that it sounds fair, but I need more data to make sure I make an unbiased decision that will be both healthy for the """business"""" and healthy for the audience. It's not all about me after all, you guys make up the campaign, I just make the content.

Problems

• The campaign is outdated. Formatting is outdated, prices are outdated, and the descriptions don't really cover how the process currently works
• It's not really clear how to get your rewards out of the gallery, or even what they are, or what you can expect after pledging
• There's too many tiers, and the campaign is a mess because it was made 10 years ago when creator support wasn't really a thing
• Most exit surveys are "my financial situation changed" and "shit's too confusing m8"
• As we all know, prices for everything are up. Hosting costs are up, licenses are up, Patreon's cut is up, etc

Proposed changes

Replace the current tiers with new tiers which more accurately align with what you want out of the campaign, or what part of my portfolio you are interested in supporting. The tiering is incremental by multiples of the base (IE tier 3 is priced at tier1's price * 3), which is what the range is from; I haven't decided if the base would be better targeted at 7 or 8.

• $1 "tab" tier. This is just for people who want to bookmark the campaign, to come back later or bail out of their current pledge for a bit without losing tabs on the campaign. Short and simple, this is essentially tier 0.5, and is meant to accommodate people who only want to really support a few months of the year rather than continuously.
• $7-8 "art supporter" tier. This is for people who just want to support regular art or want a particular piece of art.
• $14-16 "development supporter" tier. This is for people who want to support the larger projects (animations, game mods, gallery development, Shadows/Engine, whatever's going to happen with me commissioning 3d models to play with).
• $21-24 "madman" tier. This is for the handful of lunatics who more or less have the exact same taste that I do and want greater control over special niche content.

Rewards

The general reward system would be the same; pledging to a tier gives you extra access to whatever you're supporting.  Short and simple.

All sketch/color/etc art would live in the "art supporter" tier. Animations and larger project WIPS would live in the "development supporter" tier, and then drop down to "art supporter" upon completion (possibly after a small delay (?)).  This way, art supporters still get all creations early, but development supporters still receive a little extra value for their pledge.

Item access would remain as it currently is (supporting gives you everything in that tier for the duration of your pledge).

I had considered splitting things into batches, where pledging for a batch gives you ownership of it - so that for example pledging in August would give you access to August's rewards permanently (regardless of if you're still pledged or not), but the general consensus seems to be that would be too confusing and be too much like how people use Gumroad.

Polls

Polls would generally be the same, but with 1 additional poll and less restriction.

• Current content type poll (color, animation, 3d)
• Current Color poll
• Tier 1 poll A
• Tier 1 poll B
• Tier 2 poll
• Tier 3 poll

All tiers would have access to the content and color polls, which remain the same as they currently are.

Each tier would have its own additional poll, they all would function like the current bonus poll (they'll probably be sketches, but can be anything; IE "color this" or "work on this"). Higher tiers would have access to lower tier polls. Poll results would be treated like whatever their content is (IE a sketch from the max tier is posted in the art tier, but an animation spawned from the art tier lives in the development tier until it's finished)

The core art tier would have 2 polls, a vanilla poll and a spicy poll. Something I'm always concerned about is that I have a lot of extreme variety as far as appeal goes. For example there are people who are here to see big meaty bewbs and people who are here to see big meaty tongues. I'm sure if you like my work enough to support, you probably see some appeal in both to some degree (75/25 rather than 100/0), but I don't want people who are strictly in one camp to feel left out or overshadowed by the other.

Hence, the base tier would get something for both sides. This prevents people who want to see Aria's insides and people who just want to scramble Aria's insides from stepping on each other's toes, and also gives a little extra value to the pledge.

Tier 2 and 3's polls would basically be free for alls, since at that point I think the general populations of both would have more or less similar tastes.

Other misc changes that aren't related to the above but I should probably look into next month

• Update gallery update frequency - usually I try to upload a few things at once so that every group can get something simultaneously (IE vanilla bois and degenerates both get a +1 piece at the same time), but this also makes new additions be every few weeks. Instead, I should just upload things as they're made. I don't think this is really an issue, I've just been under the impression that it is because I'm old and dumb.
• Create a Twitter account JUST for the Gallery bot, so that it can notify interested parties when I add things? Or an email list?
• Completely redesign the Patreon campaign page to not be from 2014 (and include a description of how the Gallery works and how to actually get all your stuff)
• Add more sites to the autoposter. If you know of any other Twitter clones that you would like to see me in your feed on, let me know.  If I can scrape it, I'll set it up.

Closing thoughts

If you've read this far I just want you to know that I do appreciate you guys, even though I live under a rock. If you have any thoughts on the new Gallery build or the campaign pitch please let me know so that I can make such decisions accordingly.

Side note: I'm going to be out of town for a week during the middle of next month, so if something catches on fire try to hold out till I get back!

Thanks everyone, love ya appreciate ya <3

<3!