Greetings minions of depravity, the Anax comes to you with a topic that gained my interest. I was talking to a friend on this site, and they really enjoyed my interactive novel, Slugs and Bugs, and we have chatted about it. Right now I have a succubus novel, vampire one, a robotization one, one where you can be changed into a horny bimbo clown, you get the idea, probably most of you have seen my hard work. Yet, I nary have any financial support on Patreon. This has perplexed me.

My first novel has won awards and contests, the one last October on Hypnopics-Collective.net for example, been featured on websites like Hall of Corruption,s, and the feedback has been enormous with virtually everything being positive. Thus, I had hoped I could make interactive erotic mind control into a business that I could do the rest of my life since it is my reason for being! However, I have but a handful of support on Patreon. My friend said "Well, idk why the pateron isn't paying off. All I can imagine is people who create things from nothing get more because the possibilities are more. When you just manip pics and stuff I don't think people flock easily due to the easiness of it."

I was taken aback a moment! I would argue that pictures manipulated like I do takes way more work. I am an artist that can draw and paint and even sculpt, for I went to college years for my art degree, and to draw a picture in good detail and color it takes me about half an hour.

With my interactive novels, a picture like say the one with Kate and Justine together in the slime room took about 3 hours to generate. You can see it here:

hallofcorruption.wordpres...ky-slimy-transformations/

First, it took me WEEKS to obtain photos of the women I wanted to use. Then I had to sort through those and find ones that would fit the scenes I wrote. Then to do that scene, I had to search thousands of pics of rooms online. The slime in that room I made myself and recolor ed the background. Then I had to slice Justine and the lady that plays Kate out of their own separate photos and bring them into that slime photo.

Then it takes another hour to turn them sickly green and make them look wet with bubbles and goo on them. So that one scene took about 3 hours (of course as you all know it also had music and writing as well which adds even more time to the total for that one scene). If I had drawn that scene it would have taken a fraction of the time, so I can't see that being the reason is so much more work goes into a manipulation than the majority of things I see posted here.

So, what are your thoughts? I know a "manip" could be as easy as just making eyes look white, or that a guy can draw a stick figure hypnotizing another stick figure and post it here, but that kind of nonsense aside, someone truly creating art, do you think manips are somehow easier? Do you think that is why I have not had much support yet my game has been played or downloaded over 100k times? I am curious to what the community thinks!

If you want to make a living off of your game, go with original art. Manips will put you into a tricky legal situation where you are perpetually one take down notice away from having to redo countless hours of work because a model you used happened to become aware of it and object.

It's probably not a good idea to debate the difficulty of manips vs drawings here though; as that topic has gotten rather heated a few times in the past.

You can't really set aside the extent of how much effort is put into a manip or drawing. It's basically the most important factor here, because either one could be harder depending on which actually has more effort put into it.

Well, thanks Changer, I guess I never saw those posts you speak of. That was the "nonsense" I mentioned. Obviously it's impossible to argue which is better since either is art, either is erotic, either is creative and so forth. I wasn't really debating the difficulty, as I said both can be simple or as the post above says either can be time consuming and detailed. I was wondering if I pulled out my pens and paper and created less realistic art instead of what one finds on Slugs and Bugs would people be more apt to support my hard work?

I can't speak for Vanndril here, but the way I see it, the rule is there because, on average, the quality of photographic manips is lower than that of drawn manips. Yes, there are exceptions, but making rules based on exceptions isn't a good way to do it.

It's akin to the reason one can own a rifle but can't own a rocket launcher. On average, the rifle is much less dangerous. Yes, a crazy person with a rifle might end up killing more people than a well-adjusted person with a rocket launcher, but you wouldn't want your neighbors owning rocket launchers, would you?

It's hard to say what will make people support a particular project. It seems to depend on how well known your project is, what your rewards are, and how likeable you are among other things.

My opinion on the matter is more focused on legal issues. Manips carry an inherent risk that someone in those pictures, or who owns the rights to the source pictures might decide to raise a stink about it. Best case scenario, you'd have to redo all images including that source with a new source. Worst case, they might sue for damages if you are earning much money off of it.

Rules? Oh, you mean posting my work here, no I do not, I respect the rules and do not argue with them. I know I do very high quality art, I am not offended I cannot post it here. I was asking if others agreed with my friend or not was all in regards to getting Patreon. Frankly, I don't want the Patreon for the art I want it for people that want to see more of my novels, including the Ebooks I am writing.

Yeah, it is hard to say, true...

Also, Changer, my old friend, I promise on all that is dark and evil that I understand. That's why, if you look at my Patreon, I specifically don't ask for money for the pic manips. Whatever happens to me, happens to me, and since I give my work for free and do not charge for it, I'm fine. But thank you again for mentioning your thoughts on the subject. I do appreciate your opinions.