An important question! (+ remainder of 2023 plans)

Hi! Just a simple post today. I wanted to get your lads input on some things and talk about some plans I have for the rest of the 2023.

Firstly, the most important question here is:

What do YOU want out of the Patreon?

I don't get a whole lot of interaction on Patreon (mostly just the Discord supporter channels), so it can be difficult to gauge what people think of the stuff I try to provide every week.

The only metric I have is video analytics, which...

Yeah.

So that makes me wonder: what specifically do you guys want out of the Patreon? Is it simply to support me and my work? Or do you sign up for something specific?

Mental health wise, I maybe worry a little too much about putting stuff up here every week than I should, hence why it's difficult to gauge what people want without interaction. It probably doesn't make much sense at the end of the day since it pulls time away from actually making stuff for the channel.

This makes me wonder if I should just focus on doing what I do best and not worry as much about making stuff weekly here

For anyone who doesn't use Discord, I can still provide monthly updates of everything I'm planning for the month, and provide as much behind the scenes stuff as I can and details in my process if people are into that. Those are a good way of processing my thoughts and tracking my progress for me personally.

I'll also occasionally do the extra videos I wanna do, like commentary, when I wanna do them. Those are fun, just not always in the mood for them.

Otherwise, if most people are here just to support me and what I do, then I can focus on four things:

• Video credits
• Discord exclusive channels with behind the scenes
• After-hours supporter streams
• Monthly newsletters with updates and behind the scenes (for non-Discord users)

What do you think? Is there anything specific you'd like to see?

Let me know in comments, or the Discord supporter channels, wherever! It'll be really important to me.

Remainder of 2023 Plans

Anyways, I wanted to mention a few things I have planned soon:

Rigging Video

I have finished the script and recorded voice over for the rigging video. The voice over is currently being edited by Jellybox, freeing me up to do other things. I will likely be onto editing that video next week.

I'm still deciding on a title -- I think if it's too "tutorial" like, non-animators won't click on it...I want to appeal to non-animators with something unexpected.

Even though it's still more or less a tutorial/explainer on 3D rigging...I might call it "3D Rigging is Beautiful." I think that'd be intriguing to people alone, so non-animators would be less scared to click on it.

Let me know what you think!

One Year Anniversary Video

The channel anniversary is Oct 7th! This was the date of the Animating Arms upload.

I plan on doing a short main video for it (3 or so minutes) and hopefully release it on the day, if not maybe a couple days after. Except some updates on that in the next couple weeks, likely the biggest one in the October newsletter.

The video will mostly just be reflecting on the past year and talking about some planned things, but it's mainly to announce something:

The Doodley soundtrack release date + "Starfruit" single!

Jayfoo is currently at work mastering an album of most of the music that has appeared in videos so far. We will be releasing "Starfruit", the ending track to all my videos, as it's own single the same day, as well as the release date of the entire album.

Look forward to that!

Halloween Video

After the Anniversary video, I'd like to do another Halloween video if I can get it done on time. In particular, I'm interested in checking out the old "Scary Godmother" films that aired on Cartoon Network.

I figured it'd be fun to look back on these since they aired every year on Cartoon Network, so they end up sticking in people's minds, including me. They have some charmingly dated CG I wanna take a look at.

I probably won't make it a long or complicated one so I can get it done in a reasonable amount of time -- just something a bit shorter and fun!

Two Other Videos In The Works

The video on Children's Animation is done editing! I originally commissioned editor JandroAlem to handle that, and I'll be reviewing it and making changes soon. It'll probably be released sometime in November, as I'd like to release the rigging video first.

I also have the video on the National Film Board of Canada, but it's in the same boat. Might be closer to a December/January release on that one (especially as January tends to be a quieter time on Youtube, so a niche topic will probably work better then.)

Jellybox

This doesn't really affect most of you guys, but I am getting Jellybox on for more help! If you missed that update, it's a brand new indie animation studio started by my friend and former coworker, Gene Goldstein. They run a tight, simple indie ship and have been excellent at communication, so I'm excited to grow alongside them.

If you were wondering what they'll be helping me out with, here's some things I'm getting them onboard for soon:

• Production tracking: I've already had them keeping my projects on track, which has been a big help. They've been creating schedules or tracking milestones for me, which has been preventing me from losing track of time and being able to juggle a bunch of different things at once.
• Voice over editing: This is my least favorite step of making videos, and now I don't gotta worry about it!! Often I dreaded this part so much it delayed certain videos by weeks. This allows me to work on other videos in the mean time while the voice over is being edited, which is great.
• Merch fulfillment: I'm changing plans with the Doodley plush a little -- I'll be funding the plush myself using funds leftover from my last job (a stock option plan I was putting money into that I no longer want) and then moving my shop over to Jellybox to handle fulfillment, freeing Mel and I up from handling merch shipments. They handle Qbomb's merch (an excellent band that Gene does vocals for) and some of their merch is pretty snazzy, so hopefully I can expand the offerings soon. I wanna do red/blue Gimberly socks.
• Main video to Tiktok conversions: Yeah, Tiktok is what it is, but it has been generally good for growth on the channel and getting more people interested in animation. This is a blind spot right now where my actual videos aren't on Tiktok yet, but I don't want to just open palm slam them down horizontal videos into a vertical format onto Tiktok. I'm hoping Jellybox will eventually be able to handle this!

Gimberly v2

Because of the help I'm getting from Jellybox, it frees me up to do housekeeping -- in particular, Gimberly v2, which I'll be working on this week. Maybe I'll actually make some decent progress on it for once!

Regardless of how far I make it, I'll show my progress here and in Discord.

Thanks for reading if you did, and again, let me know what you think about the Patreon exclusive stuff!