1000% agree. Learning to trust your own instincts is important.
Also, failure is equally important. Falling on your face is painful, but it can be used to learn. Failing doesn't mean anything is over, unless you let it keep you down.
I've been doing conventions for 15 years. All my neighbours, except those two have been wonderful. I made some wonderful connections/friends at those shows. I love doing them. It's fun.
If for whatever reason you can't get an editor (maybe you can't pay them yet or you just can't find the right person), an alternative is to run it through with some friends who are writers (and/or artists if you're a comic creator who wants input on how your panels look) themselves!
I do this with my close friends and my discord server (owner gives out invites every month i think, so feel free to join lol), and honestly their advice has been super heeeelpful esp since I don't have an editor myself. Sometimes asking someone how a plot point or moment is gonna look to someone who isn't you is gonna make your story infinitely better.
Definitely get an editor if you can, though. Their literal job is to point out your mistakes.
I’ve exchange beta reads a couple of times, it was really helpful. Overall, I also try to keep refreshing on grammar and style. Editing on a printed copy is helpful after doing a digital run. Somehow I can just see more problems that way.
If you have hopes and intentions of turning in a profit from your art passion, it's better to give up.
In art the only three ways to earn a living are:
A) work in the commercial project as an contractor
B) be insanely creative and unique, raising to "everybody knows this awesome guy!" levels of international popularity that will bring in people willing to spend their money on you
C) draw porn on Patreon.
So option B most likely doesn't applies to you and options A and C require you to give up on things that you want to draw and start to draw the things that your Employer or fans want you to draw. The C option is fast and dirty way of quickly reaching the hundreds or thousands of dollars of income with relatively low effort, because the stream of horny teenagers is literally endless and their hunger is as high as their quality standards are low, but the downside is tainting your name and being unable to ever work on anything other than porn ever again - nobody in their right mind will hire a smut artist, and the "fanbase" you acquired will screech "hey, where's my lewds?!" if you start drawing something else than porn.
I'd have to disagree with you on this part. While I don't know many US creators who've done this, a lot of mangakas started out with eromangas before they made their main series and projects. Just to name a few:
Koshi Rikdo (Excel Saga)
Rei Hiroe (Black Lagoon)
Kohta Hirano (Hellsing)
Masamune Shirow (Ghost In The Shell)
Ken Akamatsu (Love Hina)
It's not that uncommon as people believe it to be. Whether or not they enjoyed making NSFW content is another matter, but to say they've never gone on to do other things (especially their own projects) isn't really true.
I feel better (harsh) advice would be : If you're trying to make profit from your art passion, you need to learn how to market like a merchant. You have to give people reason to be as hyped about your story as you are -- and that does mean understanding what you like about your work and how that can appeal to other people. Ask for feedback: understand why your story may or may not be niche. And if it IS niche, figure out how to get other niche people to read it. You can't sit there and go "why isn't anyone buying" if you're not trying to sell your product. Remember Why and How:
"Why should I read your work and how does this benefit my time?"
I will also have to disagree with this as Nesskain did a good amount of smut (unhidden and very attached to his name) before Blizzard contracted him for a lot of Overwatch work. He still does things for Blizz and he still draws smut.
I've not tried it (yet?) but I'd imagine being good at drawing smut means you're probably pretty good at anatomy and character chemistry 
In theory yes, but all you need to do is look at some artist drawing smut and you realise that some people have no idea what a human body actually looks like.
Gonna add something to that.....don't blame anyone else for your audience not liking your work.
There are already many movies like the 2016 version of Ghostbusters that tried to do that ......and it didn't work.
Blaming the audience is inmature and umprofesional, and that is a terrible public image to have.
Ghostbusters is not a good example because the haters were savage. I don’t blame them for blaming the audience, the haters were insane. The one black actress got a lot of harassment and racist stuff said about her from these people. Anyone who liked the film got harassed and people claimed they were being paid off by Sony (like WTF). It was just garbage on both sides.
Yeah, but japan has... Unique relationship with smut, to say the least. Many of their mainstream manga and anime are already borderline nsfw as is, so it's not hard to imagine actual porn artists finding work in "family friendly" areas.
Also, the Overwatch example another curiosity and probably an exception, as so far as I heard there's a rumor that prior to the release of the game they outright weaponised R34 for promotion by covertly commissioning a whole crowd of NSFW artists to draw pictures with the characters of the game, because one moment there's virtually no Overwatch fanart and the next second we're drowning in a particular kind of it.
Nesskain in particular specializes in bara. If Blizz commissioned him for any OW smut where is it and how can I see it? 
It’s actually super common for folks to have previously drawn porn to venture into more straight art gigs. You might be surprised by the amount of people working in mainstream American comics and animation, all ages or otherwise, who’ve previously drawn some very spicy stuff for a long time.
There’s also more ways to earn a living beyond grand international acclaim! The number of fans regularly consuming your work in exchange for enough money to earn a modest living is actually quite small compared to that.
Critique and opinions on your art is not a critique on you as a person.
I can't believe people need to be reminded of this, but if someone doesn't like your art, it's not an attack on you. If you have a problem with separating your work from yourself, then that's an issue you need to work on and other people can't do that for you. I know your art is your baby but sometimes you gotta let your baby grow up.
By my estimate you need a following in the range of 10000 to 1000000 readers to earn any meaningful amount of money off that (Based on estimates that only roughly one of 50 readers will engage with your work in a meaningful way (like, he'll leave a comment), out of those 50 only one will be generous enough to pledge to your patreon, and out of those, idk, maybe only every 30th will pledge more than a dollar? Here's my estimates waver since I never got past the 1 dollar in pledges). That's quite a roaring popularity success needed to amass those super-extra caring fans, in my book.
@joannekwan @Darth_Biomech also see Stjepan Sejic. Dude does a lot of DC comics stuff AND does his own comic Sunstone- with a lot of BDSM content.
5 months later
