Hi! I just wanted to talk about something I tried recently that worked really well for me~
Since I graduated college half a year ago, I've been struggling with motivation to do art...like most people, I assumed I'd be able to draw more with all this free time, but that hasn't been the case. Most days I'd just lie around, thinking about things I could draw but not really wanting to. If I managed to work up the energy to start a sketch, it'd usually dissipate before I was half finished.
My comics have really suffered for this, obviously. I could spend a whole day just trying to draw one panel, and oftentimes I'd feel like just quitting altogether. Just a few days ago, I found myself wondering if I even still liked to draw anymore.
And then I wondered what I did during the times in my life when I was the most prolific...usually I was in school or working or both (when I'm too preoccupied to draw, I can build up inspiration like momentum, waiting for release). But also...I watched a TON of anime.
Probably the best years of my artistic life were the tail end of my teens, where I both found most of the anime I actually like and where I started most of the 10 million projects I'm saddled with today, two of which are current comics.
I'll admit, most of my ideas were cheap, gory knockoffs of existing franchises...but I had no shortage of motivation to design and draw them over and over again, without even posting them online for validation. So I thought, maybe that's the answer.
With that said, here is the strategy I came up with:
- Find an engaging anime to watch that more or less matches the aesthetic of the project you're working on. It probably doesn't have to match, but it'll help keep you from getting distracted and trying to work on other things that do match.
- Watch an episode first, to get that motivation flowing. Try to work on the comic while you watch (it's okay if you don't get much done...that's actually good, because it means the anime is holding your attention).
- When the episode ends, don't start the next episode right away. Wait until you've passed a checkpoint-- until you've gotten some specific amount of work done. For my comic, I decided that would be to finish the next panel, from sketch to ink. No finish, no new episode.
- Use an aid to help you stay focused in between episodes if you need it. Personally, I decided to listen to mood music-- a less-powerful motivational strategy that actually became stronger when used with this one.
This worked EXTREMELY well for me. It allowed me to switch tasks often-- something the attention-deficit brain always appreciates-- but it also set strict, explicit limits for each activity, much better than an arbitrary timer. I knew when an episode was over, and I knew when a panel was done and ready to scan; I didn't have to convince myself of anything.
And taking breaks to just watch some anime was probably the most effective part. I don't know if I truly regained passion for the comic I was working on at the time, but I could at least feel the passion that the animators, boarders, voice actors, and art directors put into their work, and that alone imparted some energy to me. I finally felt motivated to do something, and do it well.
Long story short, thanks to this strategy, I took an episode script that had been hanging over my head for two months and finished it in two days.
I haven't been able to work that fast in ages. ^^ And I'm excited to see if I can adapt this strategy to other tasks, like coloring (which I now need to do, for all those recently-scanned pages) or animating, or even just stand-alone art (I have some big group pictures I've been procrastinating on...).
So that's that. I hope this can help somebody else~
