Doodle Days Prompt Selection Process! (Patreon)

Hey everyone~ I wanted to do a quick writeup of how doodle days work; I've been feeling a little pressure to do more prompts than I used to, and I thought perhaps being more transparent about my selection process and the process of creating the art might help alleviate that pressure a little. I've gotten some feedback in the past that some folks feel upset that their prompts are never selected; I can see how it would be really frustrating to post prompt after prompt and never be picked. I hope this at least clarifies why that happens.

The sunday before I start doodles, I expand the view on every comment in the post, including replies; then I copy paste the whole list of prompts from the post (some of you might remember for a little while Patreon got rid of the option to select the like count as text and this is why I was so mad about it lol, I had to type them all one by one for awhile).

The first thing I do after pasting them in is eliminate the extra info, leaving only the prompt and the vote count; then I sort them by the number of votes/likes they got, putting the most popular on top.

I really do not pay attention to who the prompter is when selecting, or any of their info like payment tier or join date; later, while making the actual art post, I look up the original prompt comment in order to copy the person's name and give them credit for it, but that's it. I don't track any of this stuff, so I couldn't even tell you who has had the most prompts filled.

My next step is that I go through and mark the ones I want to draw. I mark the top two or three, usually (in this case four) and then everything else is fair game. My criteria are literally what I feel like I would want to draw at this point in time; just because I'm not feeling a prompt this time doesn't mean I won't feel it another time, and it doesn't make any suggestion "bad". I love reading all of them even if they don't give me an immediate urge to draw it.

I go down the entire list to pick; I still consider vote counts a bit when I'm narrowing it down further, but since I've been trying to get a mix of different fandoms/ideas, as well as sfw/nsfw artworks, sometimes I do end up picking from the bottom of the list.

Again, since there are so many prompts and I can only draw a few, I try to be super picky about the selections; it doesn't mean I couldn't happily draw just about any one of them.

Then I copy all of the prompts I picked over and count up the list; this time I had.... 18 lol

This is the point where I've been struggling because, I just kind of start sketching and see how many I can finish, starting with any that give me the strongest visual right away. I used to spend one day doing all of them start to finish, but lately I've been spending a few days on them. I still try very hard to stop myself once I have 8 rough sketches that I like, but lately I keep going because I'm always trying to fit in one or two more. 

This month I released 9 prompts and 11 artworks (because I really wanted to draw the two part weddie one and the cryptids thing lol). I had rough sketches for 12 prompts and could have happily drawn even more, if I had infinite time. I always hope the ones who make the top list but don't get drawn get re-requested, and sometimes they do, but sometimes I still end up passing it over more than once because things just don't shake out. It's kind of a brutal process, and unfortunate, and I know it makes some people feel bad, but I'm not sure how else to encourage folks to keep sending these diverse prompts while also feeling like they're not wasting their time.

I'd love to hear any thoughts and feedback you have! Maybe it would be better if I did the prompt collection privately without votes? Or maybe chose a batch first and then asked for votes? I still want to involve everyone with this process, and I want to make art that makes most of you happy. I do like doing it this way, but if a lot of folks have feelings about it, I'm happy to consider changes~

Thank you for reading! And thank you again for all the prompts every month!