Creating a comic is lowkey ruining comics for me

[bluejamtoast]

Hyperbole in the title, ruin is too harsh but I feel my enjoyment has been slightly dampened

Like everyone else on here creating comics, I absolutely utterly adore reading them, my fave stories are what lit the spark to write my own & after almost a decade of procrastination, I finally got serious end of last year on my own personal projects. But since then reading comics has lowkey stopped being an escape/pure entertainment and unconsciously turned into studying

A huge part of my enjoyment is through completely immersing myself in stories but now i'm stuck in META mode. Reading a story my mind is filled with thoughts analysing their panelling, how did the artist colour this, oo interesting perspective, which 3d software are these backgrounds are from?, I should really be working on mine right now, why is the space between panels this size, how can I utilise camera angles like this, this font is way better than mine, 12 panels today less than last week, what a unique colour combo for shading, urgh I should work on mine, zooms in, their line art is so clean, takes a billion screenshots, interesting onomatopoeia, that speech bubble stylisation would suit that oc of mine, I seriously should be working on mine, that transition was dope etc etc I struggle to fully get into a story, i'm distracted

Ultimately i'm just appreciating the work, but its the unconscious comparing to my work that is really the root of my issue. But I can't stoooop

Anyone else like this? Or in general what way has creating comics affected your consumption of/attitude to the medium

[milejdyvan]

It's not with comics with me, since I'm not an artist, but I oh so, relate to this when it comes to reading since I've started writing, reading had just never been the same. Everything I read just makes me want to get on my ass and get better at writing.

[darthmongoose]

Honestly it's really hard once you seriously start studying the craft of writing or making comics to disengage that critical reading brain. I find it takes really good storytelling to absorb me so much that I just read the thing normally.

[ninjashira]

I think this sort of thing happens to everyone in a creative industry. I was listening to a podcast by a bunch of professional writers who were talking about this same thing. At a certain point in their writing education, they found themselves unable to enjoy reading books because they couldn't help but be aware of certain storytelling devices and techniques and flaws. But then they got to another level in their writing education and careers where they could divorce their critique of writing from their enjoyment of writing and could read for pleasure again.

I think it just requires a certain shifting of your mental state in order to go back to reading comics as a reader rather than as a creator.

[nathanKmcwilliams]

I don't even try to disengage the critical part of my brain while reading comics. For me it's part of the enjoyment, understanding the technical parts is probably my favorite bit of reading comics.

What creating comics ruined for me was actually video games. I have almost no interest in them ever since dedicating my time to writing and drawing.

[DarkChibiShadow]

It may be fruitful for you to start working on trying to turn your brain off a little bit when reading comics, or putting boundaries between what comics are for analyzing and what comics are JUST for enjoying. (I've had to do this with many aspects of my life, but for me, it's what I do and don't want to monetize.)

Boundaries are important even when making art, so trying to put just a little bit of space between yourself and other's work could be a good idea?

Also, it may help to read some "how-to" books about comics so again, you know that space is for learning, and just reading comics is for enjoying.

Just my thoughts! Have a nice day!

[FightTheSun]

Okay, once you get used to it, your analysis will be faster and running in the background. And by then when u find an extremely well-made masterpiece, the high of reading a work and seeing the clever visual decisions is transcendental.

[Rhonder]

Yeppp I definitely experience this too Thankfully my brain doesn't hyper analyze like every part of every comic (or art piece) that I read, but I definitely hone in on certain parts, especially if it's something that I've been doing or struggling with recently myself. I don't mind it too much, perhaps because I only read a medium amount of comics before starting my own, and have less time to read now, so those that I do I still manage to enjoy despite being analytical.

For me I think the biggest thing has been reminding myself constantly while working that the average reader doesn't do that. Once you start reading comics (or consuming any sort of media) with a critical eye I find that it can be easy to spend too much time on certain things or over-scrutinize parts of my work that are flawed or half-ased or whatever, because I'm like "well if I see that stuff in other people's work, surely other people will see it in mine!"

But like, since the average reader only looks at panels for a few seconds unless maybe it's a huge splash page/panel or something, I have to remind myself that I can let a lot of that stuff go. It's fine if other authors pick apart my work because the majority of reader-readers won't notice things like that unless something is like really off. And even then the number that will care enough to comment is minuscule in the big picture. Not that that's an excuse to be lazy or negligent all the time, but it's helped me to let a lot of things go xD

[Kuma]

I consistently predict half the stuff I watch after writing for so long. Is annoying, but it comes with the territory.

[DiegoPalacios]

For me, this meta analysis is an aditional form of fun when reading comics.......

But it can be a personal preference.

[Iris-Grimoire]

From experience, when that started happening, it only got worse because I'd lowkey panic that I couldn't turn off the critical part. It does take learning more and getting used to absorbing information passively like mentioned above, but in general, try to distract from those thoughts until you can mostly separate studying from reading. It'll never go away, but you'll be able to tune it out.
What helped me was to do this: if you see a really cool or really bad page, don't stop to analyze right away - note the number or open in another tab and keep reading. Later on, it's much easier to think "why did I like this page/ what did they do wrong" without worrying you'll never catch up with the content itself.

[Kaydreamer]

This is precisely why I can't fall asleep with jazz music running in the background anymore. A degree in something will do that to you.

I'm finding something similar with comics as well, but you do reach a stage where that analytical voice will fade into the background and simply become another layer through which you appreciate the comics you're reading. It never goes away, but it becomes far less obnoxious. You just need to give it time to settle, because right now it's in very sharp focus.

[thetalentedmrwulf]

Ha ha. Oh god yeah. I've written a little bit of everything - audio dramas, comic scripts, RPG design, novels, serial fiction (my guilty pleasure and not the day job - that's why I'm back here!) and I have HUGE issues with not dissecting stories as they go. People watching movies with me get mad at characters making dumb decisions - I get mad at the writer. It's rare that I'm genuinely surprised by a story twist. I get irritable about bad continuity instead of coming up with cool headcanons explaining it away. On the positive, I find I get emotional over good writing instead of just specific scenes, so I can get teary over things I didn't used to?

[dewarcomics]

Don't compare yourself to others so much it destroys your spark. Don't forget that simply reading a comic helps creating your own. You can think of it as a guilt free way of spending time. A Movie director has to watch movies, and better yet find a movie they like. Someone who wants to make comics need to read comics, it's only natural. But don't forget that we all start differently and we all have our own "voice" when it comes to creating comics or storytelling. We can get inspired and emulate what we like but to do so we need to understand it.

For me personally the process of figuring out the geniuses behind comics is part of the fun. Opening up a comic and brushing up on what looks cool is always a good feeling.

[rajillustration]

It's been a while since I was studying this stuff in school, but I remember that when I took a film class, it was only like a month into it when I noticed that I couldn't watch any movies analyzing every scene. It really opened up a whole world of "how did they make this?" and I think at first that was distracting, but now I don't really remember too much what it was like before I did that with creative media that I've also studied.

I've also calmed down over time, in college and post-college I went through that hipster phase where everything I consumed had to be meticulously catered out of fear I'd be dumbing down my own skills by watching or reading something...less than perfect. But then as I started creating things to sell, I had to pay attention to what people want, what they actually read--and that brought me back into the fold of just reading things for enjoyment and escapism. I wanted to know more about what made people resonate with pieces than what made the pieces themselves.

so I guess I'm still analyzing stuff too much as I watch, but with a different attitude.

[Puck]

The more music I made the less I was listening to music at home.
I also didn´t go to (and enjoy) concerts so much anymore. When another band is playing I´m thinking
that I want to play.
It´s hard for me to listen to music while drawing, except instrumental music for some reason,
when I hear my favourite music I will listen to one song and then start playing upright bass or guitar
and stop drawing.
I enjoy looking at comics but I analyze everything and that´s the same like consuming and relaxing.
But I´m trying because it sucks and I feel like I lost something. I also don´t want to become one
of the overthinking artists who only thinks about technical things

[Oto_Kouda]

When I read books now, I've gotten to the point where I'll have little moments of, "Aha! I see what you did here! I should try that technique out..."

It's always 50/50. I'll either admire the writing or as someone said about their craft, get fired up and wanna write something myself after reading!

[iHateFridays]

Honestly yeah, it's hard not to compare yourself to others... sometimes I read a comic so good I feel dumb about my own comic lol

[Yulek]

haha big same!!

also with things like movies and the like.

I actually love it, because my viewing experience can go much deeper than aw, pretty scene.

.... my bigger problem is that my friends do not appreciate those formal and meta aspects quite as much, so I can only ramble about the genious of some scenes and movies in my head :')

[DNoble]

as someone who's been doing this for a while, that will ebb and flow over time. Additionally, as you become a more experienced artist and more confident in/comfortable with your style of making comics, you'll become better at separating 'art you like' and 'art you can learn from'.
Lots of art styles are simply going to be so disparate from yours that there's really not much point in trying to analyze how a creator did X Y or Z because honestly? You're never going to do it like that, and that's okay.

You have your own way of doing things, and you'll become more comfortable with it and learn which creators are in the same 'school of thought' as you are: ones who think similarly to you and you can glean new techniques from.
With comics, there's multiple categories of this: you may never handle your lineart like artist X, but the way X lays out their panels feels similar to yours. Meanwhile, artist Y draws and inks very similarly to you, but their page design is wildly different, etc.

The more comics you read (now that you are in that 'creator' mindset, it's almost like a soft reset on how much experience you have as a comics reader), the more you'll learn to understand those stylistic differences. You'll also develop the skill of doing both at once: reading a comic and enjoying as 'audience' while simultaneously analyzing it as 'fellow creator' is something that will develop steadily over time. As a new comics creator, you've had a whole new world of how to read comics opened up to you, so it's kind of all-encompassing and overwhelming at the moment.
Becoming more familiar with reading comics that way will help it balance out with the previous mindset of reading and getting lost in the world and story, allowing them to coexist.