Artist attitude - pet peeves?

IdiotWithPencil 2017-11-03 21:48:57 UTC #110

puts the whole you are homophobic racist misogynistic callers on the internet in perspective eh XD

joe_galindez 2017-11-03 22:01:18 UTC #111

"I'm secretly a gay black woman?"

bear1 2017-11-04 11:24:13 UTC #112

Oh, that was one of the mistakes I did. Post too many Fanarts and then whine that my followers only like the fanarts and not my original work
I had to start over again, only concentrating on my original work in order to correct that circumstances...it worked out pretty well tho

But on a related note, I dislike it when artists put down other artist for only creating fanart. Claiming that fanart artists only draw to seek attention and 'fame' while only original artists are the ones making art out of love and dedication. Therefore only they are 'real' artists...
Honestly...nobody has the right to decide who is and who isn't a 'real' artist.
You pick up a pencil and draw, you're an artist. Doesn't matter what or why you draw. The rest is up to you

@topic
Also, I dislike how some artists rip openly on other's Patreon, Ko-Fi or other fundraising accounts/methods. Claiming they are 'selling out' or such...
Once again, it's up to everyone themselves if they draw as a hobby for free or if they seek to get a side income or even make a living from it.
Nobody has the right to judge over it. Besides it doesn't influence anyone's life if ArtistX is making money from his work or not (well, except ArtistX of course XD). So why do people even bother bitching about that? Use your time and energy creating art instead, for goodness sake!

Testaccount 2017-11-05 18:58:47 UTC #114

I know a writer that thinks like that. For a while, I wanted to make a Patreon page, but they view that as begging for money. It's one reason I haven't created it yet. Well, I also have a Ko-Fi account, but nothing has come from it.

LordVincent 2017-11-05 19:24:54 UTC #115

Screw that person.
If you provide good rewards, it's just a paid service like any other.
Is your local grocery store begging for money by putting price tags on their shit? No?
Then neither are you as a creator by providing paid services.

So tired of the "you're not a real artist if you're not starving and miserable for the sake of your craft" bullshit. We're worth more than this.

Testaccount 2017-11-05 19:43:17 UTC #116

I agree with you, and I never viewed it as begging for money. I'll probably make a page once I have time to produce more rewards - character profiles, side stories, and get some character art done.

joe_galindez 2017-11-05 21:12:38 UTC #117

I'm probably not that guy, but I agree with him. Patreon is a begging-bowl.

Full disclosure: I had a not-too-pleasant experience with the platform, but at least half of that is my fault. Also, I recently floated the idea of opening a new account, but that went nowhere.

Anyway, Patreon is bad for an artist's dignity. And our dignity is all we have left.

But the grocery store isn't payment-optional. There isn't a donation box or tip jar that people can ignore. If you want so much as a breath mint you've gotta cough up something.

It's another situation when an artist puts up their work for everyone to enjoy. "If something is free, it's worthless." Or at least most people feel that way. It makes it hard to get any money out of the situation. You're already bargaining from a position of weakness so saying that nobody needs to pay, that only makes it worse.

If you provide good rewards, it's just a paid service like any other.

Probably. But it feels too much like taking features out of a complete game only to put them into the DLC. I mean, this is worse than just selling cheap seats and expensive ones -- this is providing a significantly different experience to a fraction of your audience. Everybody else is gonna feel like they're missing out. You could go the "patrons get everything early" route, but this just fills me with meh.

That's exactly right. We are. We've worked so hard and invested so much. The problem is communicating this to potential supporters. Art and entertainment are no longer rare. Really, it's the opposite. We're drowning in the good stuff and that means all our work has gone the way of the porno.

I mean, who pays for porn? Only sad, sad people with really specific fetishes. (PM me for commissions.)

So here we are, fugitives from the laws of economics. What are we to do? We create artificial scarcity, that's what. We market ourselves. We cultivate our image and we never let people think they're above us. WE are the motherfucking bards up in here. WE are the poets of the age. Those broke-ass collywobblers best pay homage to us, or Hollywood pap is all they're getting.

There's better alternatives to Patreon, if only we had the will.

TheThoughtfulBoxful 2017-11-05 21:17:23 UTC #118

Can I just say how much I love your vocabulary?

joe_galindez 2017-11-05 21:22:12 UTC #120

The difference is that nobody who went through med school and passed the bar is gonna do it for free, not unless you're an actual charity case.

EDIT: "Do it for the experience," he said. "It'll be great exposure," he said. "I'm not ovulating today," she said.

joe_galindez 2017-11-05 21:42:34 UTC #122

They're probably thinking, "It's just talking in front of a group, how hard can it be?" Right. And writing is just talking, only there's a keyboard involved. And illustration is just fun with crayons.

Lay people are really bad at estimating how hard a specialized job can be. And they're just wretched at distinguishing good art from bad art. It's one thing I miss about the old gatekeepers. They knew what you were worth.

Shanny8 2017-11-05 22:04:48 UTC #123

I dont think Patreon is "begging". If you're providing a service- whether it be previewing webcomic pages ahead of schedule or letting fans of your art view a stream of you working on said artwork, or view other projects that you are creating aside from your webcomic art, then it's not begging for money.

It really kicks me when people view that webcomic creators are supposed to toil away, not getting paid for the time and effort that they put into their work. And it may feel like the art market is saturated, but from another standpoint, there is room for everyone. I dont feel creators are sacrificing their dignity if/when creating a Patreon- in fact I feel that it is that "dignity/pride" that prevents creators from realizing the potential of being able to market themselves & their work.

The one thing that I do caution- just as I do when beginning creators come into Tapas, thinking that they are going to score tons of readers/subs overnight- that this stuff isnt going to happen like that with Patreon as well. They are going to have to have patience and figure out how to find & communicate with their audience.

LordVincent 2017-11-05 22:09:57 UTC #124

It doesn't fill the comic creators who make $5k+ a month on patreon using that method with meh, soooo your point is?

I'm not one of those creators btw, sadly enough. Yet, at least.

joe_galindez 2017-11-05 22:54:53 UTC #125

Maybe if those were the only things you did. But if the bulk of your work is available at no cost, and no one is obligated to pay, then it's not a straightforward trade. It's not an exchange between equals. The power balance is all wrong.

If you're going to go through the trouble and expense of marketing yourself, why not actually sell something? It could be a $2.99 ebook or advertising space. But let it be something.

I never said that begging can't be lucrative. Still, it isn't the most dignified way to make money. It isn't the most scalable either.

We're experiencing a buggy-whip kind of paradigm shift. The line between amateur and professional is hopelessly muddied. And free content is the future of most forms of entertainment. It's not the best bargaining position but we have to find other ways to make it work. There may be room for everyone, but meals are not included.

We could use Kickstarter-style crowdfunding more often. Let the public pay us and then we deliver the work. We could even do it swarm-style, and form temporary studios to produce bigger projects.

Or we could take more control over the ads we host. The problem with automated ads is that they can be automatically blocked. Embedding the ad in the video or webcomic would involve doing our own market research and writing our own ad copy, but adblockers would be useless against it. We could even do it Thunderclap-style, and release the same ad across many different sites at once.

Navi.Hog 2017-11-06 11:41:35 UTC #126

I'd gladly operate on people's brains for free. But always include an interesting side effect for kicks. Like an occasional schizophrenia would really wake them up.

rd_inks 2017-11-06 17:48:20 UTC #127

Something I'm seeing crop up a lot is the 'wannabe overnight success' artist. Now, I give huge props to all creators who have the courage to share their art with the world, but some are less...objective about it than others.

I recently saw someone whose anatomy/general art skills left a lot to be desired. They were clearly having a lot of fun getting their comic out there, but then I saw a link to a store page they had. They were selling prints for like $80 and bags for $35 etc with very poorly drawn characters on them, expecting to turn a quick buck.

Putting the merchandising/business side before understanding even the most basic of art fundamentals is a really egregious error and it makes them seem desperate to succeed without putting in the graft.

Tanako 2017-11-06 18:47:47 UTC #128

My pet peeves are when people abuse the vertical way of making comics. when I first learned about the horizontal scrolling way of reading comics I thought it was cool. then when I actually tried it myself I realized that I didn't like it as much because the pages were longer and honestly it was too much for me to handle so I went back to my old manga style( whatever you call that style) anyway, over the time since that style have been out I've seen people abuse it. not trying to pick on anyone I promise this is just something I've noticed that bugs me, the images end up way too big, as in the image is too big you keep scrolling to see the whole thing like WTF? ok, I get if its a background with people in it but the one I saw was a face. the fact took up let's say, a full page and half of an 8.5 by 11 paper. I don't understand. I would want to put a sample but again like I said, I really done want to start anything. another issue is the font. the font is again, way too large to the point I can't even focus and read it because in my head I'm thinking, why TF is this so large? lol,

third is TOO MUCH SPACE as in, why is there that much space. people don't realize that space could indicate several things. as in, a "pause", "the next day", "a while" "several hours later" that sort of thing but they just abuse it. I can't even explain how they use it. its like there put too much gap between panels and it doesn't make sense.

rd_inks 2017-11-06 19:21:49 UTC #129

I get what you mean - maybe they think it creates more suspense or something, but it can get annoying very quickly when moments which shouldn't be at all tense/drawn out, become so.

ISNEKO 2017-11-06 19:29:50 UTC #130

I'm probably a creator that people don't like. I like to complain to no one in particular that the amount of work I've made for myself is more than I'd ever like.

shrug

Stuff like "why did I do this" and "fuck I have to write I guess" come out of my mouth a lot. If you knew me, you know that I'm generally happy and love writing but just am a natural Debbie Downer and moody asshole. Most of my subs get it and join in the dark edgey humor but one time someone called me out and expressed how self-pity people make them upset.

Too bad for them it makes me laugh when people are upset at me.

Tanako 2017-11-06 19:31:48 UTC #131

yea you are right. i've seen artist use it in moderation. especially the scary ones i get it. but there are some where it's so overdone. who wants to be staring at their phone and continue scrolling through white pages? like tf lol it makes me lose patience. i get impatient and cant even enjoy the comic because of all the "very long" white page. but its whatever, to each his own. i just think if a lot of people are going to get into it, just study it, learn how effectively use the spaces not just dropping ransom spaces. my fav webtoon that utilize space effectively is "winter woods". luv it.

ReroOnyx 2017-11-06 20:02:14 UTC #132

I have no idea why such a thing would be an issue. If someone is willing to pay you for your services, why should anyone else complain? There's this incredibly outlandish ideology that one should just post their material because they like it and they shouldn't expect anything out it.

But nobody posts their work just because they like it. If that was the case, nobody would post them. They'd keep it to themselves and enjoy it on their own. Kind of like a hobby. However, people post their work for others to see because they want to get some kind of interaction out of it. They want ratings, comments, subs. They want and hope that others will be able to enjoy their work as much as they do.

So if someone thinks they can earn some money with that interaction and people are willing to pay, I have no complaints. I've made around $300 with Patreon and while it may not be a lot compared to others, I have no reason nor desire to complain. I try to have a lot of humility but I don't have enough humility to act like I don't enjoy getting such a profit for my work.