Should I keep the thumbnail system?
Added 2018-04-30 07:32:33 +0000 UTCI've been thinking about this for a while to be honest. I originally put this system in place (ie. submitting a thumbnail as the main image in the post, while the actual image of a drawing, sketches, other variants, etc. are found in the attachments below the post itself) because I know I have fans who like muscle, but want nothing to do with fat and vice versa. Yet, the whole system came with a few issues. In the past, I had been asked a few times by different patrons whether the thumbnail itself was supposed to be the finished piece or not, seeing as it was incredibly small and not a hi-res copy of my drawings; some of them were unaware that post attachments were a thing.
In other cases, I've heard that having the main drawing as an attachment is a bit of a drawback since you're forced to download the final piece before being able to get a good look at it and deciding/knowing whether you actually like it or not. Thumbnails are supposed to entice the viewer into wanting to see the whole picture by giving them a juicy sneak peek, though it's hard to pull this off when I need to use most of the thumbnail's space to let people know what the content is all about via visible keywords and tags.
Plus, after making a total of 145 thumbnails it's gotten to the point where it feels like too much of a hassle to deal with. I've always had to make multiple thumbnails when WIPs, sketchbook, and sketch dump posts are involved, because they usually require me to group multiple things into a single shot in a small space or because of how often they used to be posted. It doesn't help that I always have to manually edit the text, make sure I turn on/off several layers (depending on the content) and making sure that the thumbnail is more or less in line with previous posts (ie. if the drawing involved has multiple wips or exclusive alt versions that need to be posted separately, to name a few obvious examples).
Before I jump the gun however, I would like to know what you guys think. If you have any thoughts you'd like to share, feel free to leave a comment below after casting your vote. Perhaps making this decision will help increase my Patreon audience somewhere down the line.