There's a lot of vitriol over my comments, but I'm fine with looking past that aspect and review the content of the feedback (and providing my thoughts).
(Also, I like sharing the process a bit which is not something I usually do anyways. It's kind of nice to share to actually share with a select few as it is)
The 15 hours a week mixes in a multitude of things that I do (beyond just VaM visuals). Things that are included are:
- Story planning & brainstorming (as another mentioned)
- Asset hunting & verifications of compatibility (so many clothing assets that fit horribly in VaM...)
- Visual novel software "coding" (I say coding in quotes since TyranoBuilder has a lot of non-coding aspects, but some areas I do have to hardcode to actually function)
- Review of scripts, rewrites, additional scripts/scenes, etc. (polarisdreamer does awesome work, but it's not a 1-for-1 adaptation of what he produces)
- Unity asset conversions (unsurprisingly, I often have to find & purchase other assets and convert them from Unity to work with VaM)
- The imaging process (as mentioned, appearances, body poses, morphs, removing clipping, lighting and camera angles, removing backgrounds for sprite images, and so forth)
- Business aspects (i.e. - managing expenses, tracking tax deductions, paying taxes, etc.)
- Bug testing, compressions (Steelmaker came in clutch with that one), converting to other systems
- Scratched content (there's been plenty of times I've gotten several hours into different projects and realized it never should see the light of day lol)
- Additionally, I still put out content beyond just D.I.E.T. on a three day a week rotation
I remember speaking with themagamaman when I was first getting into this and he warned me about how much time this stuff can take. I thought he was exaggerating then, but now I see why he's not producing the same amount of content.
I'm glad that some people like it (more than I ever thought would) and that it's helped me get ahead of where I was financially in life. I continue to appreciate when I get comments about how much they enjoyed an update, or even when they ask for something else to be included in the future. For those that go "you're bad and you should feel bad" then I refer them back to post No. 79934 above.
As to the comment about how I "shouldn't be doing a product for the gooners", I would say I don't. I do it for me - because I enjoy it and it makes money. My comment about the gooners is an explanation as to why I rationalize not hyper fixating on trying to make it perfect and why I am comfortable balancing my free time with my creation time (while still sticking to schedules).
I think that porn can be art. I just don't agree with mine being art. My Patreon states I'm "creating Digital Weight Gain Content" and my DeviantArt states I'm a "3D WG Creator". I've never pretended to be an artist since I know I'm not an artist. But I'm definitely a creator of content. There are others who make art - and I like their stuff. But my goal is to provide consistent content that those who do like my content can enjoy while simultaneously enjoying it myself and generating an income.
If I wasn't making an income with this, I would still create content that I enjoy, just at a far slower rate than I do now.