Let’s talk about Patreon!

So, Patreon is this relatively new crowdfunding website. Think Kickstarter, but for content creators instead of projects.
A perpetual Kickstarter, if you will. Or a more direct form of donating.
It works like this: You support content creators by pledging a small amount of money (0.50$, 1$, 3$, etc.) per content update. In this case that would be every time I update AHS, whatever that’s worth to you.

Patrons can specify monthly spending limits, in case they’re worried someone suddenly uploads millions of pages all at once. It’s all based on goodwill!

Patrons would then receive exclusive rewards for pledging, depending on their pledge level, in a facebook-like timeline.
That’s one thing I’m still thinking about… What should those incentives / rewards be? Sketches? Wallpapers? Ebooks? What do you think?

Keep in mind that the main reason I want to do this is to be able to focus more on making the comic. Creating elaborate rewards will take time away from comic making…
Also, I don’t want to put anything important behind a paywall, and if I do, I still want to release it to everyone eventually.
Another big reason I want to do this: To be free of advertising.
Right now I got some PW ads running. I like them since they are pretty unobtrusive, but they don’t really bring in any money.
Eventually I would have to put Google ads on my site, or join a collective.
The problem with that is that they have pretty strict content guidelines.

Basically I would have to censor myself in order to join such a collective. There are places I want to take AHS (and possibly other comics I want to make) that advertisers will not agree with. Like nudity, violence, etc.

Now, I could tone it down…
But if this Patreon stuff works out I could just go: “I’m not beholden to advertisers! I can do whatever the fuck I want!”
Then I won’t have to compromise my ‘*+*~Artistic~Vision~*+*’
Lastly, what about the other comics I make?

Since Patreon is about funding the content creator, not a specific project, creating multiple Patreon pages wouldn’t make much sense.
Should I charge for each comic page I produce, whatever comic it may be? Or should I just keep it limited to AHS?

So, what do you guys think? Would you use Patreon? Would you only want to pay for AHS, or any comic I produce?
What would you like to see in terms of reward tiers?

This is what my preliminary Patreon page looks like right now:

patreon wip

I don’t know guys… It might need more work.

Oh and just to be perfectly clear: AHS will remain free forever.
This is just a neat way to support the creator and get some small rewards for it!

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Art Progression – Old and New

Old vs New
Same characters, then and now.

I found some old drawings of mine and I thought it might be a good Idea to put together a little comparison. Maybe it’ll be motivational to some, or good for a laugh.

Looks like not only my art-skills evolved a bit, but also my sensibilities. I no longer think it’s a good idea to have a dragon dude wield a fucking gun and a sword. Also, said dragon dude is now a woman, but that’s because of other reasons.

Mina has become a completely different character as well, the only similarity is the name really.

So, there you go. Suddenly I’m really glad I held off on making that webcomic back then…

This was my face when scanning these drawings.
 
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Before AHS there were… Swole dragon tits!

I might just be speaking for myself here, but I think pretty much every creative person around high school age believes to be working on their magnum opus. The truth, however, is that it’s probably not their magnum opus, because it sucks and is actually really embarrassing in hindsight!

I certainly believed I was working on my own ‘magnum opus’ back then. I wanted to make it a video game at first, but I spent most of the time “play-testing” it rather than actually working on it.
Then I decided to make it a comic instead, but I wasn’t confident in my art, so I decided to start a throwaway comic.
This throwaway comic was Alien Hand Syndrome, it was supposed to be something I didn’t care a whole lot about, so I could dive right in without worrying too much about the story and have fewer qualms about experimenting with it.

Now, years later, this ‘magnum opus’ is dead in the water, while AHS has become really important to me.

That’s how it goes I guess… I really do regret jumping into AHS without more careful planning though. Nowadays I know where I want the story to go, but at the beginning I wasn’t so sure and I feel that’s reflected in the quality of the earlier pages.

I won’t go back and change those pages, because then I’d never get anywhere. (Though, I sometimes did make a few small changes here and there, because I couldn’t help myself.)
But I am thinking about making a ‘Chapter 0’ one of these days, and if you’ve ever seen the first episode of Gurren Lagann, you know what I’m talking about.

As for that ‘magnum opus’, I completely scrapped it and started over, the only similarity between it and this new story is that there’s dragon people.

I drew one of these dragon people for fun and to try a new coloring style.

SamShe’s going to be one of the main characters of that story, if I ever get around to it…

Some people seemed to have trouble identifying her gender though, so I decided to give her the Mina treatment!

sam fixedUm… Don’t judge me!

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