New preview renders from Peak Performance 2 + new announcements and musings!

There's a lot of stuff I worked on this week, but actually not that much to show outside of the shots included in this post. That's because I wanted to take a different approach to making Peak Performance 2 and I'll explain why in this post.

But first, aren't those renders just the fucking best? Haha. The way the sunlight falls, the way everything looks, I'm so happy with those results. They also have a really cinematic feel which is exactly the vibe I'm trying to capture this time.

As for the announcements:

1) Next Saturday I'm releasing a cumshot special on A3D. This was a bit of an ad-hoc decision and I'll explain why in the text below. It'll mostly be shots from previously released sets as a sort of compilation set, but I do wanna render a few new ones as well and they'll go up on here on Patreon ahead of the official A3D release. They'll involve either Mari or Kayla, and I'm rendering these over the coming few days.

2) Peak Performance 2 will be a more intensive creative process than Peak 1, and the reason why is that I want it to take place across multiple locations. This is not just for story purposes, it's also to differentiate myself from other types of content creation. I will also go more into that below.

So, to business. Lengthy post incoming, if you read the whole thing I'd be super grateful!

I've been thinking a lot about creative direction lately. The reason for that is fundamentally the fact that throughout 2023, I've been taking a hit in Patreon numbers. Don't worry, it hasn't made me worry about the future, because it's not been exclusive to me. Content creators all over the internet have reported decreasing earnings, and while I generally make it a rule not to talk about money on my Patreon, the reality is that we share this global economy together, and there's more going on, and we all know it.

It began with me wondering whether I had made a grave mistake talking about the introduction of men into the LU world. Certainly there was fallout from that decision, and I decided to not go that route as a consequence. But as the months went on, I began to realise that there are two things that are impacting me in the adult content field in particular. First, yes, money is getting tighter. This is true for everyone. Luxury expenses are cut back on first. Totally understandle.

Secondly, there is of course the rise of AI. As you can imagine, any 3D artist right is wondering what that means to their job. And I've not been immune to that. The last year I've mostly spent trying to get my bearings in a changing world. Change is chaos, it's noise. It becomes hard to separate things from each other, but for me it felt super important to determine whether I was in a losing competitive build with a new type of art generation, or if it was just the global economy impact me the same way it impacts everyone else.

Sometimes you hit a creative block, and an AI art generator does not, and that's just a practical reality that I have to accept. But at the same time, another practical reality is that in terms of consistency and diversity of content, AI art generators cannot compare to what I do. I can create the same characters over and over again in different settings, and tell a consistent story. An AI art generator can guess at what you want and hope it approximates your prompt closely enough. There's a big difference between these two ways of making imagery.

It appears to me now that there's a steady audience for either path, and that both types of people already know what they want and where they'll find it. So in that sense I think a lot of you supporting me here on Patreon do so because you want to, and in that sense I feel secure.

So I've held steady. I've observed. I didn't wanna have any knee-jerk responses to a changing world. However, last year I was putting out a lot of purely explicit shots. Lots of elaborate climax sequences, lots of dickgirl action, and it was actually hugely succesful. I felt great about it. This year, I've focused more on story. Less explicit action. As a result, content delivery has slowed, and if people both feel that money is tight AND there's quick and easy AI alternatives out there, I can totally understand how people might make the choice to move on.

So I need to strike a balance. I want to strike a balance.

Let's loop back to the two announcements up above. First, I'm setting higher standards for myself in terms of visual quality of comics and story sets because I think that's how I set myself apart against mass-content churning.

But secondly, I totally get that people sometimes just want that a quick explicit hit. And those smaller sets are lots of fun to create too. And let's be honest, I haven't been doing enough of that. What I did release were two massive sets with Kayla/Sayako/Breanna last year that content lots of explicit action, but I need to make it more bitesize. More accessible. The way I used to.

So I'll alternate a little bit more. I think that's the way forward. Hence the upcoming A3D release and the new renders I wanna produce for that. I wanted to have that release in place before talking about this because I want an announcement like this to come with something tangible. No point talking about what I intend to do eventually. I want to show, not tell.

Does that take time away from Peak 2? Yeah, a little bit. That's just gonna be what it is. Because I still need to take care of the bridal scene too and that's the setting for these new climax renders. So, two birds with one stone!

If you guys have anything to add to what I wrote above, I'd love to read it! I know this was a whale of a post, so thank you for making it all this way :)