How do you deal with your perfectionism?

[DokiDokiTsuna]

Making placeholders has been the best exercise for me. If you're not sure how to do something, or even if you just haven't started seriously thinking about it yet, throw in some rough doodle and move on.

It'll feel gross at first (it still feels gross, tbh) but it helps a lot to actually see a bunch of rough stuff right alongside the pretty stuff you can do perfectly right away...it helps familiarize your mind with the concept of progress, of gradually working on something until the whole thing is good, and not just creating good stuff only and immediately.

If you can get used to that, the urge to sit paralyzed until you know exactly what to do will disappear, or at least lessen. After all, you've seen it. You've seen the rough drafts, the stupid sketches, the poorly written lines; you made them on purpose and it didn't kill you. And eventually you turned them into great things...if you did it once, you can do it again.

[Darth_Biomech]

I set up deadlines. The cold merciless grip of needing to release x amount of pages to y date is a good deterrent for wasting time trying to make that blade of grass to look just right, or wasting time doing something that isn't your comic for that matter...

[ble]

I realize nothing i'll do will look perfect in my eyes. Once i reach the point where i can't really do anything else (or doing more stuff will just look worse, instead of fix) i move to the next thing.

[Alexandritea]

For me this is difficult on another level. I don't believe anything can be perfect, however when I'm drawing my comic I want to make sure it is as perfect as possible.... This makes me incredibly frustrated when I'm close to finishing a piece, and I can honestly get a little irritated . Eventually I decide that it's worth just stopping at that point, and either:

a) Continue another day, and take a proper break from it. Then come back and see the flaws I couldn't work out before.
b) Declare it as finished and possibly tweak it a bit as I'm merging it into the vertical styled format

or

c) Kill your darlings, if something feels irreparably wrong with what you're drawing, it most likely is. At that point it might be worth reworking the piece and take what you learned and apply it to the next piece.

This is at least how I think about it, and it has worked for me. Not saying it is the way to go, just that it is a way to go .

[cherrystark]

I constantly have to remind myself that my series is ultimately for me. Yes, it might go through another revision in a year or so, but the series is mine. If I work a page to the way I'm happy with it, then that's enough. I don't have to work myself into a frenzy because one person didn't like how I worded a sentence or colored a page.

[LCT_m_a_d]

I consider perfectionism as the quality of choices and not the quantity of results.

Instead of aiming for "this came out perfectly"
I aim for "this decision fits perfectly"

[Shanny8]

I'm at that point where I know things can't be perfect and I'm fine with it...that being said, I'm still meticulous as I can be with my work in trying to get to look as how I envisioned.

[MeltingCORE]

Honestly, legit yes. Perfectionism can be a heck of a thing to kill. I used to be really bad at it with my art and writing. To the point where I'd be like "my sketches can't ever show too many lines/erase marks" and "my writing can't use certain words too many times" lmao. I killed it when I got older because the way I began to see things is like this: Yes, I want my work to look presentable and professional. But I also want to have fun with my work. If my fundamentals are strong and keep strengthening, who cares if one little thing may be off in a painting or chapter? Most people won't even notice or care!

I actually finally got the courage up to start doing speedpaints/speedsketches even! And yes, you see me correct errors! I'm not ashamed of it anymore.

[BrambleberrySquirrel]

Sometimes you make mistakes. Ok let's be honest, I make mistakes all day every day. When it comes to my comic I inevitably find something I don't like right before its time to publish. Unless its something really egregious I just have to let it go and move on to the next panel in line. Art and writing are a process of continual improvement no matter what medium you're working in. Mistakes are part of the learning process. You just have to dust yourself off and say "well this wasn't perfect, but next time I'll do better."

One strategy is to look at the last thing you made with a gently critical eye and make a list of 3 things you did well and 3 things you want to execute better next time. Take both lists with you into the next thing you do creatively and work to appreciate your ability to do the things on the positive side of the list. Odds are you have gotten even better at them. Then work on doing a better job on the 3 things that needed improvement. This doesn't mean doing them perfectly. The aim here is to do a better job on at least one of them. For me having a particular goal to focus improvement on keeps me from getting lost in the weeds of getting overly critical on every aspect of my abilities.

Here's my current list as an example

Things I did well on

1. Backgrounds
2. Lighting
3. Showing emotion through dialog

Things I want to Improve

1. More varied facial expressions
2. Drawing arms in dynamic poses
3. Drawing shading in a way that shows a consistent light source.

I'm about to start a new episode of my comic soon. This is the list I'm going to refer back to as I make it. Once again the goal is not to master these in a single update. Or even to master one of them. I just want to be able to compare this episode to the last one and say "Yeah I was able to get a better understanding and execution of 1 of the things on my list compared to last time!"

Teaching myself to make art is a giant exercise in learning to be patient with myself. I've learned that this kind of patience is the opposite of perfectionism.

[aqua03]

Yeah, that's been what I've been debating might be the cause, too. Thankfully, I do have a professional to talk to about this and have been talking to them about perfectionism and Drachenseele on and off recently, though I might now dive whole hog into the subject the next time I see them. I think I do tie too much self worth to my ability to be talented and "useful" in general and I've been wrestling a lot with that in general over the past year or so also. Maybe something like focusing on it more seriously might be a good idea going forward in that regard.

[darthmongoose]

Yeah, talk it through, I think it'll really help.
As I've said to you before in DMs, I think your project is developed enough to start working on, so I feel like the block you're experiencing is psychological. You're putting a lot of pressure on yourself because you want your project to be just right, but I'll tell you, it's better to have an imperfect comic that's still pretty good and actually exists and you can share it with people and build up your skills and following, than to have a perfect dream comic that never exists outside your head.

[HGohwell]

You're headaches could be from stress (and associated side effect that could come from perfectionism induced stress), or (idk how you're working) from being too long at a computer screen or even just glaring at some thing too intensely for a while, it can effect your eyesight and that in turn can cause headaches.

While it can be stressful short term, deadlines are your friend. Set a deadline and say "I will publish on this date" and stick to it No matter what shape you're in, you publish on that date. It doesn't have to be close, but it stops you giving yourself excuses. Like an essay at school. You have a deadline, you will hand it in on that date and that is that. Everything I've heard so far says you're at a fine point to start doing this. Set a publishing date and force yourself to publish on that date.

[pilot-obvious]

I think I saw a tweet somewhere that said the actual art in your comic is maybe 70% of your true potential and that's stuck with me since. I no longer feel like I have to make every single detail look perfect... because there's a fine balance of quality and quantity! I know that my comic panels alone don't represent me as an artist, but rather, they're just supplemental to the art that does! Huge weight off my shoulders.

[aqua03]

Thanks for the reassurance on that end of things.

Yeah, even though I've still made so many leaps and bounds regarding Drachenseele and perfectionism this year, I still can't quite pull the trigger on drachenseele proper despite everything going in my favor at the moment, so there probably is a far more deeper issue than I know that I should probably talk about it more with an expert more seriously. Because I've noticed that type of perfectionism barrier peeping in into other parts of my life as well it seems. I think I need to just find out the root of the problem and kick it down to work on it so I can actually move forward in general.

Just gotta fully accept that nothing is perfect and failure is inevitable, but not the end of the world in that regard.

[migxmeg]

Perfection and success are not the same thing! Watch how you define success for yourself and failure does not have to be inevitable. Though yes... It is ok to fail!! It means you went for it which is pretty much the coolest.

[honeyandcreambutter]

Yes absolutely! But I think perfectionism is subjective. Make sure to draw a line between perfectionism and satisfaction! If you're reworking your comic/novel because you're unsatisfied with it, then it doesn't hurt to keep going until you're happy with the end product. I find that reworking and redoing something has helped improve my art/novel by a lot! It's important to be happy with your work and be proud of it. Never compare yourself to another person's work unless it's for reference. That's how you draw the line between perfectionism and satisfaction.

I find that I compare my work to professional work often and that somewhat sparks my obsession with perfection because I want it to reach THEIR level. But, then I have to remind myself that the only person I need to one up is myself. As long as I improve on my own pace, that helps bring me down from my self-depreciating phase ;w;

[Rhonder]

I'm solidly part of the "good enough" crowd. It's something that I think I've always thought to myself, but I've noticed it more since I've started streaming my comic work the last few months. While I'm talking and narrating my process during a stream I've found myself verbally saying "meh, good enough!" an alarming amount of times while working on every phase of the comic-making process... the thumbnails, the sketches, the line art, the coloring, all of it.

But the thing is, it's not actually alarming, or even a bad thing. It's just the truth and an integral part of the comic making process for the average creator. It can be easy to see the phrase "good enough" and think "joy, just good enough? That means I'm settling on something lesser and not doing as well as I should". But realistically "good enough" is a wonderful tool for balancing time spent vs. content output and realizing that for the majority of readers... good enough is perfectly acceptable. And as creators, enough "good enough"s in a row eventually leads to better "good enough"s as we improve. Someday those "good enough"s you're doing in the present will make your older "good enough"s look like garbage, and that's awesome~

I have a similar recent example to Kelheor where I've been struggling with my current project on... wanting/needing to draw lots of backgrounds, but like if I go all out on them they take way too long. So I've "settled" on kind of a loose/sloppy method of quickly sketching them out and coloring them in kind of a loose manner. When looking at them in detail as I sketch, line, and color them I definitely feel like "meh if I had a lot more time I could render these out way more nicely..." and think they're not that great. But then showing my beta readers the completed strips they all say they look great, and when I take a step back and look at the final product wholistically, I find myself agreeing. In this case "good enough" really is good enough, for now.

My current struggle is this comic which has a lot of forest scenery. I feel like if I don't draw enough trees it doesn't feel foresty enough, but I also don't have time to nicely render 500 trees per panel lol. So I end up doing the closer trees nicer and relegate the ones in the background to super fast and loose lines and coloring. Do they look great? Nah. But they're good enough and get the job done. The same logic can be applied to a lot of things... slightly wonky but good enough body proportions, good enough props, good enough designs, (good enough consistency... ok no I should actually work on consistency better ) etc.

[PapaDom]

I have to accept that the results I want to achieve are sometimes beyond my limits.
And that's totally fine because I know the skill set I want to acquire is a matter of practice and experience. So even if the drawings I do are not what I was aiming for, I still keep them as they are. (Well, of course with some alterations, of course, because let's be honest, you can still fix things if it's not finished.) And I enjoy it if I can see the progress in my work over the years.
Accept what you have and always aspire to do better. ^^

[Linski]

"Perfect is the enemy of good." -Voltaire

Really though, I know exactly how you feel! Perfectionism is this vicious cycle for me, where the longer I fuss over something the greater my expectations for the finished product become, which further increases my self-doubt, making me want to scrap the work entirely and go back to the conceptual stage... rinse and repeat.

It's tough, breaking out of that mindset. Quite a few people here have given some pretty great advice on the subject, though; this is a good thread.

[Maps]

Cry a lot and learn to take criticism without taking it too personally.

But really, even in some of the most well made comics I’ve read I’ve caught discrepancies. Nothing that ruins the story and I don’t usually think twice after noticing it. Sort of humbling to know we all make little errors.