Hey there! Majalis here - the cyclopean two-person author/illustrator team responsible for at least one (1) of your fetishes.
So you, being familiar with us, know our business model: we make content (pictures and stories and the occasional animation or comic) and we post it on the internet for free. Those of you who understand business will note that this is not actually a business model (!) as it generates zero revenue. D:
This is because it was never meant to be! we just like to create things for people, and art is our hobby. We'll continue to post free content for people as long as we can. Which is until we starve! Turns out, you can't eat fans. Well, not legally. You can't eat money either, but you can use... uh... you get the point.
With your patronage, we can afford to create more - more frequently, more consistently, and mo' better. Rather than the per-diem work we're currently doing, we can shift towards doing more of the good stuff.
For those of you who don't know how Patreon works, it's like this: you pledge to patron us at an amount you choose, much like kickstarter, but unlike kickstarter, patreon is indefinite - you patron us for as long and for as much as you want, and as long as you do you get access to patron rewards based on the tier of payment you qualify for. For us, you'd be financing each picture or story update we do, up to a maximum you can also set so you don't have to worry about going over-budget. We'd prefer you set the max for at least two updates worth, particularly on the limited-seat tiers, but it's up to you. Setting it at your rate is basically a monthly patronage.
And for that support, we're offering rewards: first off, pledging at any tier gets you a Patreon-only pin-up! We're also offering a plethora of rewards at various tiers: from our sketches and story snippets, of which there is a metric butt-ton (that's four imperial ass-loads), to the psd files that become the fuel for our pngs and jpgs, patron-first pictures and stories, our private email list, and a contribution towards the creation of Majalis comics, animations, and, potentially, games. As well, all patrons above a certain tier ($3 per update) get to vote on what we do for our goal animations and comics, as well as a semi-monthly vote on which image and/or story we'll work on next! See the pledge tiers below!
For a list of all the tiered reward, see this blog post.
A lot of this patreon comes from the wastefulness of our creative process - we produce WAY more art and writing than we actually post, because we only really post completed works. That's been our 'rule' since the beginning, to try and hide some of the sausage-making, but as we've grown as artists, we've become more and more willing to show our nascent ideas. Not only can you gain access to those sketches and comment on them, but you can also vote using our democracy-lite voting system on which picture we'll work on next from a selection we'll provide - it's always been difficult for us to figure out which pictures will capture the imaginations and boners (and lady-boners) of our audience, but this will provide us a way to get feedback on what to work on from our fans!
The first milestone is bi-weekly updates guaranteed, which means at least one picture or story chapter up every other Thursday. We won't charge for more than 4 updates in a month, so it's between weekly and monthly, and we're incentivized to update as often as possible.
With the first milestone comes the concept of the vote; basically, each bi-weekly update will either be something that we worked up on our own or the most recent 'winner' of the votes. Of the two bi-weeklies in a month, at least one will be from this voting pool; possibly both.
The votes will be on sketches or story snippets; we'll try to curate the sketches and snippets to a set level of 'finished'-ness, though particularly at first they may vary, with line-art pictures and rougher sketches thrown into the mix.
The voting system works as thus:
You let us know which of the sketches up on this blog post (which will change over time as new sketches are added/completed) OR which snippet up on this blog post (TBD) you'd like us to finish. To do so, you can email us, gchat us or leave a comment on that picture on HF/our blog/potentially tumblr if we figure out how to manage that
When we eventually do that picture/snippet, you can select a new one through the same channels.
The way that the vote tallying works is that dependent on your tier you'll get a number of votes-per-cycle. The cycles are two-week cycles. What this means is that as long as you remain a patron, those votes will accumulate towards your target picture/story. At the end of each cycle, if we finished the picture or story snippet with the most votes, we'll pop that one off the stack and and we'll start work on the one with the next most votes, if not, we'll finish the one with the most votes on the next cycle, and so on, and so on. So if you're persistent enough, your votes will eventually accumulate and the picture you like will be selected; it just might take a while.
We'll be tracking this through a spreadsheet with formulas so it'll essentially be automated.
We're not going to start the tallies until we hit that first goal, but you can select your horse in the race as soon as you pledge; we'll be putting up a bunch of sketches/snippets starting tonight. In the meantime, if you already know what your first selection is, you can 'nominate' any sketch we already have up on our primary blog, and put it in the running!
Thanks to everyone who asked for this and gave us advice and everyone who pledges and everyone who doesn't but tells us how much they appreciate and enjoy or work, and to those who silently enjoy it as well, upvoting and fav'ing, you make it all worth it.
Always yours,
- Majalis
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