Advice You Might Not Want to Hear

[Darth_Biomech]

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.

[joannekwan]

Nesskain in particular specializes in bara. If Blizz commissioned him for any OW smut where is it and how can I see it?

[Caro]

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.

[indagold]

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.

[Darth_Biomech]

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.

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.

[Shanny8]

@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.