Upcoming Patreon Changes

Hello, all! I gave a heads up last month that there were changes coming to the Patreon page/tiers/goals and we're getting closer to the end of Manitou, so I'm ready to post these. They're not going into effect today, so it won't change just yet.

$1 tier- No changes. You still get access to this month's comics and the higher resolution bonus arts.

$4 tier- Comic stuff stays the same. You still get access to the comic archives and new comics will be archived in the same manner. You still have votes for art sequences and community stuff. 

The change here will be to the monthly bonus art. There will still be monthly bonus art but instead of them being a full colored picture, it's going to be lineart.

New $10 tier- There will be quarterly voting tied to the new comic series/art project. More details will be revealed when the project starts up and I can explain the theme voting in context. This tier still has access to the colored monthly bonus art pictures.

Commissions to outside artists are no longer going to be monthly. I'd like to still do them for special occasions, but I won't do one every month once the new project starts.

Those are the changes, so... why? Now that there are a few complete series in the archives and they're pretty beefy, I don't have to juice the tier as much worrying about justifying the price. $4 a month for access to all that content still seems like a good value even with the scaled back bonus art.

For to the monthly commissions, artist prices are going up. I'm usually paying a bit more for each commission compared to what I paid at the start. I don't begrudge the artists for raising prices at all, but some of them take a big chunk of what the site generates. 

It's harder to find commissioners that are available or work within defined dates (the trend of "just add your name to a Google Doc and it's done when it's done" doesn't work when I'm trying to post one a month). I'm seeing a lot more artists saying commissions are closed or only available through joining their Patreons or other sites. 

The commissions don't get many comments. It's not as fun to do them if the community isn't really into them too. Keeping it to special occasions seems like it will help make it more special rather than something that has to be done.

Commissioners aren't posting the images/links on their sites. This one is a big bummer. One of the ways I justified the cost of the commissions was that the artists would post them on their sites with links back to our comics and that could help bring in new people. In reality, a number of commissioners don't post the pictures and most of them don't link back to the site if it does get posted. 

Please feel free to leave comments/questions on the plans! I think the changes are justified, but let me know! The next project should start up right after Manitou ends, so more details on that one will be coming soon. Thanks!