What next ... ?

As most of you will know my next step planned is to make the Pirate Fleet Builder series available to the public as a Kickstarter campaign. I have already started to setup up my account there and while working on the campaign data I consulted with my fellow crafters who already have experience there. In this process I started to understand better how Kickstarter works in detail and a few questions have come up which I have to answer first before I can continue.

What this means for you is that for this month I will probably not make a set and kind of take this month off for R&D. This will not have an effect for you, as my Patreon setup is "per creation", meaning you will not be charged. But of course you are free to reduce or deactivate pledging until I show what is up next.

The only thing I do plan this month - creation-wise - will be the free basic bit mid month. But also not sure what I am going to do. I have some things prepared but it will depend on how my Kickstarter decision evolves which one I select. This is one step I really need to get right and not mess up.

Finally I want to think about how I will handle the Patreon in the future, because with the feedback I am getting I also see some things that might need to be optimized or changed here.

One of the big issues, is me jumping around between themes (Asian, nautical and other which I want to do). I see some of you staying loyal supporting me no matter what I do but also others who opt in and out with me changing. This isn't a problem for me but I think it also doesn't help to attract a strong support base.

Another even bigger issue is, that because I want to make larger projects too, when they take longer than a month I end up with newcomers who join at later stage and are frustrated because they didn't recognize they would only be rewarded with part of a project they see in pics. It's something I can try to describe better on the title page and in FAQ but I think it still has a lot of potential to confuse and frustrate newcomers and works against the monthly support idea.

So in addition to figuring out how I want to go live with the ships I will try to optimize the Patreon setup. If I find free time between these topics I will try to follow up on other unfinished business, like the infamous "orc hut" building!

I would love to hear your feedback esp in regards to how you would like the Patreon to be organized? Are longer projects OK for you? Is hopping between themes or civilzations OK? If not what would you like as the focus? For me it could also be an option to focus on making smaller creations as rewards here. but also show larger project to get feedback and then think about a clever way to give you loyalty reductions (sale coupon?) when they are released to the public for example.

I am looking forward to hear from you. It's a very exciting time for me. I feel like my reputation is starting to grow more and more in the world outside and I get a lot of great feedback. I also feel that now is a good time to make sure my train is on the right tracks so to speak and readjust where required.

That's all for today. Please let me know what you think and as always have fun and keep building :-)

Chis