Better late than never...building up to Patreon launch

I'm going to blame Easter for not publishing my blog on time...definitely not due to drinking too
much on Saturday night. :)
Hope everyone had a good Easter. I certainly picked the wrong time to quit chocolate. (Well...reduce eating it)

Building up to launch

The Patreon.com logo. It belongs to them.

This past week I've been putting together my Patreon creator page in more detail. 

I'm going to be creating 3D printable models which will be featured on my Shapeways shop and on my MyMiniFactory profile (Depending on what part of the week I created them).

For those of you that don't know what Patreon.com is; It's a crowd-funding website that allows people to support their favourite designers, artists, bloggers or any type of creator; By way of a monthly or 'per thing' basis.

Similar to Kickstarter, except you can 'pledge' a re-occurring amount rather than an one-off, with different reward tiers based on how much has been pledged.

In most cases you can start at $1 and go up from there. The rewards being things like; Access to behind-the-scenes materials, digital wallpapers all the way to fully finished items posted to you.

My plan...

What I'm planning on doing is setting up on a per-month basis, as I like to create lots of different things depending on what ideas I've gotten during the day. These can vary between mechanical & sci-fi to arty & fantasy. I'm also thinking of picking a theme for the month.

But I imagine due to the length of time it takes to design something, it may be more items one month than the next.

Overall, I just like to create :)

Ahem...continuing with my plan...At the start of each new month I will post all the designs I've created for all those who have pledged $3 or above, so that they can do with them what they want. E.g. Print them themselves or get them printed by a professional print service.

Those who pledged at the $1 tier will have access to posts where I announce up-and-coming designs, concept sketches, cool renders of the models and anything else really.

For those who haven't pledged, I will still be making posts with snapshots and photos of designs created during the previous month. Just so people know that I am doing something.

I think I've gotten the right idea on how to do this, but as always, any advice would be most welcome. I imagine some people might object to the Shapeways side of things, but that's why I'm making the designs available to the $3 tier pledges.

The long term plan is that I evolve how I do this depending on everybody's response.

What I've done so far...

The 'Thank you' reward for pledging. I coloured in bits of
it with metallic pens afterwards.

So far I've fleshed out my creator page, with details of why I'm doing this, the reward tiers and the different goals (See the Patreon website for details of what goals are).

I've also created a 'Thank you' reward for when people pledge. It took two days to design from initial concept sketches and an extra day to re-model once I found a few flaws after printing.

I loath support structure :/

I guess it's okay to post a picture of it, as it is meant to be an incentive to pledge. Hope everyone likes it. :)

There's only two concept sketches for it, but those can form the first of my creator posts once I launch my page.

Launch date...

Since this is going to be a per month thing, I'm aiming to launch on the 2nd of April. The 2nd you say! Yes, the 2nd. No one in their right mind launches anything on April Fools. Do they!?

Now all I have to do is complete my intro video. I knew recording a video was challenging, but I never realised just how difficult it can be without proper planning. I'm even having to write a short script in order to try and reduce word-stumbling and saying "Um" every five seconds.

I also need proper lighting too :p

Noodles for now...(or noodles if you're autocorrect)