Progress Report #3 - Sketching Curves and Annoying Patreon Fee

December 8, 2017

Hi everyone! Here is the video for this week:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23msS3Nf8p4

I finally started to add sketching functionality :) I was able to do this beautiful drawing within VGC Illustration:

Also, I am discussing in the video the new fee which is being added in Patreon. Just so you know, I disapprove, but there's nothing I can do.

Thank you all again!!

-Boris

Video transcript

Hi everyone, this is Boris, and welcome to VGC Weekly Updates!

First of all, thank you to all my sponsors! It's now been two months since I started this project, and even though it took a little bit of time to get started, I'm now making more progress.

Last week, I started to add, finally, sketching functionality into VGC Illustration. So now, I can use my mouse or my pen tablet, and start sketching a few curves.

It's still very basic, so unlike in VPaint, there is no undo, no connections between curves, you cannot save or open, there is no selection mechanism, and you cannot even pan or zoom the view. Also, VGC Illustration doesn't have yet the smart curve smoothing technique that VPaint uses, so if you draw too fast, you will start to see corners.

However, unlike in VPaint, I'm now using a modern OpenGL architecture, so you should see a much better performance than the old OpenGL I was using in VPaint.

Alright, that's all for the code. Regarding crowdfunding, you may notice that I changed the names of the rewards, and I deleted the last one, which was unlikely to be pledged anyway. The reason is that I've been asked what was the difference between sponsors and investors, and the answer is in fact that there is no difference apart from the name. So I decided to avoid confusion in the future and just rename everyone "Sponsors", and the same naming scheme as they use in the Blender Foundation.

And speaking of Patreon, I just received an email yesterday, saying that starting December 18, they are changing the way fees are processed. Before, you were paying exactly what you pledged (not counting Value-Added Tax for European residents). Patreon was getting 5% of that, and approximately 7% was paid in transaction fees.

But starting December 18, in order to "make the income of creators more predictable", Patreon will start to charge a service fee upfront to patrons. The amount of this fee is 2.9% of your pledge + 35 cents. In practice, this simply means that you will pay more than what you peldged, and I will get more too. On average, I get exactly the same percentage as what you give, but personally, I think that's a bad system. I'd rather prefer if Patreon would deduct these fees from what you give, instead of adding it on top of it. And I think that this is going to discourage people from donating.

Anyway, this is all for today, thank you for watching, and thank you all again for your donations, as a reminder, these videos are only available to sponsors for a 2-month period before they are made public, so if you're not a sponsor yet, and you want to know what happened in the last two months, then please make sure to support me on Tipeee or Patreon, I've put the link in the description of the video below.

Thank you all again, and see you next time!