Siete@がんばリーリエ · @SieteSeventh
17th Dec 2017 from TwitLonger
The FULLY SOURCED silly yet TRUE story of Trigger's Patreon
Please, do read this before trying to go with a silly and misguided take regarding Trigger's upcoming Patreon account. It all started with two innocent comments on 4chan. One person said that he wanted Megami-style art for Little Witch Academia, another talked about wanting Trigger to do an art book.
https://imgur.com/a/h2KZc
Tattun replied that he had proposed something that combined both to his superiors. He wanted to publish a book with illustrations by the animators working at Trigger, it was going to contain pin-up-ish art of the LWA characters. Similar to the books that were released for Gurren-Lagann with Yoko, Nia, Simon and Kamina. He already had a few animators, such as Shiori Miyazaki or Kengo Saito, looking forward to working on it. In the end, his idea was both approved and rejected. Tattun talked about it in an interview he had with the AniGamers podcast, which you can listen to here: https://vocaroo.com/i/s153QRv2tbhQ
It was approved because the usually strict producer (Naoko Tsutsumi) actually agreed with Tattun's proposal; "in exchange not doing a beach episode", she was going to let him do a book with the girls wearing swimsuits or similar outfits. However, he needed to secure payment for the participating animators. He said that they wanted him to "give them a bit more guarantee than usual"; so, in the end, he decided to do it through crowdfunding. Due to 4chan suggestions, he decided to try Patreon. He had been trying to convince the higher ups to try it out repeatedly; judging by his AniGamers interview, he seemed a bit down about it a few months ago. It seems that it finally went through, however.
So, to summarize:
a) No, Trigger isn't planning to fund anime through Patreon. Anyone thinking that such a thing is feasible, or even their objective, is delusional.
b) Tattun is the one that has been in charge of the whole thing and he has a clear endgame: funding books with (sexy) illustrations by Trigger's animators.
b) Ideally, if everything goes according to plan, the money is actually going to reach the animators. That's the whole point. The Patreon exists to pay the animators that will draw the pin-up-ish art of Trigger's characters, starting with Little Witch Academia. The main reason the Patreon became a thing is because Tattun was told that his art book to only going to happen if he could guarantee good payment to the animators participating.