Are you ever genuinely satisfied with your work?

[ueonts]

I always feel like my work runs up against a deadline. In any creative project I can list a million and one things that I did wrong or should have changed but didn't because of a lack of time. Is this just the way it is? Should I give myself more time or is there a certain point where your work just needs to be "finished"?

And furthermore, if I do end up just 'finishing' my work, how do I make sure to apply the lessons of mistakes from my last work into my next project?

[VividRunning]

I usually am! But that only lasts for a few days and then I reread it and realize how awful it really was lol.

[Shanny8]

Not often...but weirdly I find stuff that I hated how it looked 3 years ago I like how it looks now and find flaws in stuff that I liked 3 years ago. I think my brain hates me...

[Zhengo]

Not really, at least not on the current comic I'm working on. I've kind of just accepted that though. To be honest, this comic is half self indulgent and half me learning the ropes of writing a very long overarching story with tons of worldbuilding. I've accepted that it's not going to be perfect or maybe even good but I'll try my best anyway. I feel I've learned a lot and I hope I keep pushing myself

[Mallory]

I actually am pretty often! Not in the sense of "this is the greatest thing that has ever graced human eyes", but in the sense of like "I had a vision of how I wanted this to look, and you know what - I got it pretty dang close". But, for me, I have a limited time to draw because of some disability things, so I know I have to be realistic about what I want.

I think you just have to decide what's more important to you. Like if making things the way you want them to be means taking more time, but taking longer makes you happier in the end, then do it. If you're making a webcomic, it should always be about what makes you happiest first and foremost.

[harlan]

Yes, sometimes. When I go back and read something and think, I created that and it's good. But that doesn't mean I'm done tinkering and noticing that stupid typo or less than stellar dialogue or missing plot point that eluded me the first 142 times I read it.

[DokiDokiTsuna]

Yes, the vast majority of the time. ^^; And tbh it's always been weird to me that the opposite is more normalized...

Like...the fact that you feel could have done something better doesn't mean you can't be satisfied. You're a human being with subjective tastes; there's probably ALWAYS going to be something you feel you could do better. So why stress about it? Why behave as if it's an inherent negative...?
You're basically conditioning yourself to be eternally disappointed in everything you do...and believe it or not, an automatic shame response may not be the best way to motivate yourself to keep growing and learning. =/

Is this just the way it is? Should I give myself more time or is there a certain point where your work just needs to be "finished"?

It's a little of both, I think? Like, it depends on the situation, or the specific strategy you're trying to encourage.
If you are constantly running out of time to do things the way you want; if a deadline feels more like a prison than a simple limit, then by all means, start giving yourself more time. Pace yourself better, leave yourself space to relax and reflect instead of working 24/7. Especially if your deadlines are self-imposed.
But on the other hand, if you tend to overthink and second-guess your decisions, working on things forever unless you have a specific stopping point...forcing yourself to meet a deadline might be the better course of action. And if you're having trouble meeting deadlines, you may want to adjust your expectations or lessen the scope of your projects, rather than moving your timeframe.

And furthermore, if I do end up just 'finishing' my work, how do I make sure to apply the lessons of mistakes from my last work into my next project?

By...applying them? ^^; I don't really understand the 'how' in this question...if you want to avoid a mistake in the future, (a) identify it, (b) devise a strategy for avoiding it, and (c) employ that strategy next time you're in a similar situation. It's really as simple as that...

If you're having issues with (a), you could try getting input from other artists. Explain your workflow, and ask for their opinions. If they see anything horribly wrong with your process, they'll tell you.
If you're having issues with (b), other artists can help with that too. But you can also figure it out by analyzing the issue at hand. Is it a skill issue? Maybe you need to start doing practice on the side; or reworking your goals so that particular skill is no longer needed. Is it a preparation issue? Then get prepared; gather the references and resources you need, and figure out a way to make them easy to access. Also, the right strategy to help you avoid a mistake will largely depend on your understanding of your own habits, needs, and mannerisms, so you'll need to develop some self-awareness if you haven't already.
Finally, if you're having issues with (c)...usually it's due to an external factor. Maybe a non-negotiable (and likely unhealthy) deadline is forcing you to rush through things whether you want to or not. Maybe some aspect of your environment (noise, interruptions, physical discomfort) is making it difficult for you to focus and think things through. (a) and (b) aren't going to mean much without (c), so you should focus your efforts on resolving the outside issue, at least as much as you can.

[morganicfoods]

No. And I never will be. I just gotta accept it at a certain point and deal with it. There's only so much time I have to make every detail "perfect" in my mind.

[TheLemmaLlama]

I am! I think what helps is to not seeing my work as being in a binary state of 'finished' or 'not finished'; I decide to stop working on something and post it with the reassurance that I can always go back and change it later. One of the perks of posting your work online, if you ask me. (Who knows how I'll feel if I for some reason decided to publish formally though :P)

[BoomerZ]

Usually no, But the perfect is not the enemy of good. For the schedule I'm doing, it works for me.

[darthmongoose]

When the client says "Yes, this is exactly what I wanted!" or a reader leaves a comment that makes me feel like yes, they totally got what I was going for, I feel satisfied. Even if there are things I could have done better, or fixes I can make to a later print version, the work did its job. It's "good enough" and being "good enough" is honestly a pretty great feeling.

I think you kind of have to learn to feel happy with that, or reach a level where you're consistently able to make work that gets that reaction, so you can feel happy with it, because if you don't, it's really hard to make work for other people or an audience. If you never feel good enough, and you can never get the dopamine hit of polishing off a piece of work and feeling like it's fit for purpose, it's hard to stay motivated.

[Lensing]

I know that feeling well.

I think it sounds like you are on the right path and continue what you are doing.
Finish the projects and learn from it. Get feedback, make a plan what to do different
next time.

You learn something from every project. It helps me to make lists. I got a pretty good
system now for panels and page composition. I only learned that from finishing work
and I was very unhappy with it. I´m satisfied with that part of my work.
I´m not satisfied with my character sheets / consistency of the characters and that´s
something that I put on my list for my next comic. I learn from project to project and
get better.

It´s very rare that I´m 100% satisfied with my work and I learned to live with that and try
to get better. I´m doing a lot of creative things and it´s hard to perfect one thing when
you are doing a lot. I´m sometimes genuinely satisfied with something I did.

One example is a logo and t-shirt design that I did for a band. I liked how it turned
out. I´m genuinely satisfied whenever I see someone wearing that shirt or when
I see a poster of that band. Or some of the songs I recorded, mixed, played on or
wrote. 99% is crap, 1% is good

[faisalhussein394]

I know that feeling, I have done a few comics before Mukhtar and lost the satisfaction of continuing the story.

Some of my own ideas while the other is just fan service to get more readers, comments, likes, and subs.

It was all downhill from there until 2017 I found my passion project and I have so much on my mind to fill in the pages. Now it's 2023 and I suffered no loss of content on my comic.

I am also planning a second comic that is still related to my fantasy comic but based on Sci-Fi and it will be published in early 2025.

As long as I have plans for my comics, I will always be satisfied.

[Kuma]

No. But I have learned to live with it, because I wouldn't do anything if I wanted to polish everything to a mirror sheen. But I constantly wish to do better and I think that is a good motivation to keep writing. The moment I say "This is perfect, I don't need to improve anymore" I should retire from writing altogether.

[ThunderChicken]

Every time I re-read my own work I find something I'm not satisfied with. A sentence that could be reworded. A paragraph that could be moved. A word that could be replaced with a better word. A grammar or spelling error. I think this is why professional writers use professional editors, because if I ever physically publish my own work I'd drive myself crazy trying to edit it.... and still wouldn't be happy once it was too late and already in print!

[cherrystark]

Yes, but satisfaction isn't my goal anymore. I realized that the earlier stories in my series stink. They are "good" but I could have developed it a LOT more. I decided that even though I'm not truly satisfied with my early work, it's driving me to be better for my current work.