And why you prefer one to another? What are drawback and positives of your choice you see?
As for myself I create original artworks with own characters, since I find it it more rewarding to myself and have commissions to give out to others. I’m also not sure about legal side of offering fan art as a reward and think in long run it’s more healthy to be artist with original artworks. 
What about you?
I’m a writer, but it’s the same for me - everything is original. I started out in fanfiction a million years ago but I think it’s important to focus on your own work at some point or another. I think patrons are there for you, as well, and your original stuff - not necessarily fan work?
Exactly. I think with fan fiction and fan art there is always uncertainty on whatever people become patrons for you, your style, your ideas or just there for their favorite character, which isn’t bad thing in itself, but once that character is no longer drawn/written about they are likely to drop out.
The entire proposition of my Patreon is “crowdsource a page rate for my comics”. So it’s definitely all about my stuff, not fan work.
Every now and then I think about trying to do fan art of stuff to try and acquire more viewers here and there and I always run into the same problem: the stuff I’m passionate about is way too obscure. Plus I really don’t want to give free promotion to the four entertainment megacorps that own everything.
in my case I do both, but because I don’t have an audience yet, but my idea is to do something unique and original, I believe that fanart has its place in the world and is an important part even for the original works, it helps to create a community of the work itself, but yes I would like to only make original works, but for not having an audience I am still making some fanarts of League of legends specifically. ^^
Nice! I love creators doing original stuff.
Never thought about fan art as free promotion, but now thinking about it - you’re quite right, hm.
Indeed, fan art can be nice starting point to gather audience, however, I always saw drawback of people dropping out when creator no longer does fan art. Still worthy way of doing things! I do only original artwork (not only for rewards, but in general) and can see how fan art does better overall in gathering the audience and grabbing many people’s attention and how original makes more loyal audience.
LoL is very popular, I wish you best and fast growth! 
Well, its my art that I use as rewards, I do enjoy seeing or receiving both as a patron. The thing to avoid, I think, is spending time making something that you have no interest in. It will get you patrons that are interested in supporting something you are not interested in doing. That would defeat the whole purpose of the thing, which is to build a base of people interested in supporting you and your efforts. This isn’t commission or commercial, it is good old fashioned patronage which has its own pitfalls and benefits.
I do both. Sadly what is most popular is ALWAYS the fanart. Even my most popular original pieces are beaten by Velma curled up in an easy chair.
(how I measure: FB, DA, ArtStation, Instagram and Cubebrush comments and likes, and how many new patreons I get from each)
I do both, because to me, being an artist has a great deal to do with emotional fulfillment. I enjoy creating both my own original works AND fan works that express my passion for other properties.
Generally speaking, I try to use Patreon as a means of supporting what I want to do rather than creating purely for the sake of providing rewards, which means that there’s naturally going to be a mix of original & fan content in the collection. There’s a lot of concern about whether people are following you for the fan work or for original work, so this approach makes for a nice compromise, I think.
I did both for a long time, but I’ve been focusing on my characters for some time now, all the more with a new project aside from my most famous comic.
I guess it’s a balance between the two. The key is to be HAPPY with what you create. You can push yourself a bit further to create more fanart, for example, but don’t push it to the edge and getting over it, or bored. Fans & patrons come & go, even if you always got, thankfully, very faithfull ones!
About the closest I will make is a bit of nostalgia mix of various characters, but I almost never make straight redraws of others content. I have enough cease and desist orders for my mashups, so I’ve become very cautious on any sort of IP of others.
I like to do both really-
I normally have my patreons at a higher tier request what they would like that month.
I tend to set up a theme that month in which they can opt into, OR simply get the standard drawing!
On top of that I do provide extra art through out the month a mix between original/fan art
I think its great to mix it up and keep things new!
Only original stuff, we have too many ideas to need copy someone’s else work…
Mix of both. My jewellery work is all original, as is my writing, however, my digital art is a mix. Most of it is my own artwork, but I do do a little fan art just for fun and will share that on Patreon along with my original pieces, but I won’t take commissions of fan art for legal reasons. So it’s not so much as a ‘reward’ as it is extra content for them to enjoy along with me.
I issue postcard sized art pieces to all my subscribers with the quantity dependent on the tiers (1 for $5, 2 for $10, 3 for $20). The good news is I’ve seen steady subscriber growth since I started about 6 months ago. The bad news is I’ve seen steady subscriber growth since I started about 6 months ago and fulfillment is getting to be an issue. I’ve been straight forward with my subscribers and they are understanding. I’m planning on setting a cap to my tiers based on my available output and will have to reevaluate if I get up to a 50+ subscriber count. I was intrigued by the recently rolled out merch option but looking at the details, I’m not interested.
I’m writing original content, always. But, I’m writing content for an RPG that is not mine. So, I’m writing my own original content that wouldn’t really have a platform without being fan-made content for the existing RPG.
It’s kinda messy that way.