I went back and re-read the updates, and there's a whole lot more than lights mentioned. Throughout the whole process we mention animation frequently, lights frequently, renders frequently, all things that we have to work on throughout the entire lifecycle of a project. Not just here and there for a couple days and suddenly it's done and behind us. In those updates you pointed out we also mentioned some scenes we needed to work on still, fluid sims, etc. I could just copy/paste our patreon posts here I suppose but that would be a lengthy mess of a message that I don't suspect you will bother reading the second time.
But regardless you specifically said we were "re-doing" lights over and over. Not just working on lights (which is a pretty lengthy process in itself). I would like to see a receipt for your assertion there of "re-doing" it all several times that you just now said you have. Some scenes were redone sure, but it's just part of the usual polishing or to make the visual styles match better. Because what actually happens is we do core animation, then do core lighting, then polish the animation, then go back and polish the lights. We don't perfect every scene one scene at a time then onto the next. We lay the groundwork for big portions of the project, or a whole project, then polish and improve it after while trying to maintain visual consistency. The lights aren't all redone from beginning to end 4, 5, 6, 7, or 10,000 times. We set core lights, then we polish the lights later. Pretty straightforward.
The exception to the rule is for WIPs. We specifically polish them a bit extra to share, while all of the scenes around them may not have any lights or polished animation for a while after still.
I would also like to see the receipt for your "$10,000 imaginary mic" claim. You ignored that part.
And your claims of "stretching for the next sub cycle" make no sense. Not only did we actually show most of the work we did in live streams, that's not how our membership works. Our members generally just stay subbed consistently for the whole process, so it's completely irrelevant whether some specific part of lights or animation or whatever are done one week or the other. It doesn't affect the numbers and isn't something we care about. Members don't follow what week some specific piece is done, they look to the WIPs to see the progress and the text updates for context. That's it. It takes as long as it takes, and a whole lot of people actually saw with their own eyes what it took. Not to mention, as I just stated in the last message, things like "stretching" or "stalling" are silly. They don't make us money, they lose money. Even just the sheer length of time everything took had a blatant negative effect on us for months in our analytics.
To repeat what I said before, we could have cut some corners and just rushed things out faster and it would have made us more money. Less people upset, and faster to jump onto the next hype train for a new animation. But instead of slopping it together for easier money and better analytics, we stuck to our vision and tried to make the best we could. It cost us a bit, but we feel everyone deserved better than a rush job just to hang onto subscribers.
