How do you guys interact with other creators and readers?

Zak 2023-07-02 05:40:40 UTC #17

Ive done that but it seems I'm usually late to the punch by 20 hours when I see it on any form of social media. Like art shares, challenges and so on that it doesn't get seen when I do interact.

I try and catch tweets early if I can but it screwed up my health so bad I needed surgery that I'm still waiting on so Ive been cutting back. Forums were easier back in the day for sure. Discord is easy too with getting notified and using a telephone to use it but man, Most ones I'm in 100% are just dead until they all wake up when I'm awake and then during the night my telephone just blows up. lol

Id LOVE to organize small drawing sessions and such just to talk and chat and what not but I can't ever seem to catch anyone on or anything. I do comment on artworks and stuff but I think it doesn't get seen at all too. Its really frustrating.

Thank you so much for your comment!

Zak 2023-07-02 05:44:32 UTC #18

Values, not interests?

Ill keep trying but it seems very very difficult. lol, Just seems like reaching out doesn't amount to anything because most folks will see your work, cringe at it and then not bother to interact with you as if you're of "not higher status" or follower count is another factor or something. Its so... what's the word? Class defined?

Lensing 2023-07-02 05:55:23 UTC #19

I made some online friends on facebook in comic groups.
Some because I loved their art, some because they gave me advice and some because
I gave them advice. Facebook is better for that than i.e. Twitter, Instagram etc.

I started jam comics on the tapas forum, that was a great way to interact with
people and I upload sketches every day in the sketch a day topic. I love sketching
and look at other people´s sketches and to interact with them. There are some people
who regularly upload sketches. You are welcome to join

darthmongoose 2023-07-02 07:07:05 UTC #20

Are you in a place where going to in-person events is viable? Whether it's comic conventions, or smaller things like zine fairs, or even local "Drink and Draw" meetups, print workshops and similar?

I've found it much easier to connect with people and really make or deepen friendships that mostly persist online by meeting people in-person. Online communication can be very.... lacking in nuance, and if you're a quiet person, you can't benefit so much from just being there in somebody's company or listening. There are a lot of people out there who'd probably like to hang out with somebody who's just chill and easy to be around, but who would kind of be invisible on a discord server, and a lot of people who are stars of the discord server or similar would be exhausting to be around in real life.

Making friends online, I tend to find that directly reaching out to people, like if they made a really good post or piece of art, or comic that you liked, with a sincere compliment about what you liked about it, can be a good start. Most people are looking to connect with others, and to feel like somebody "gets them", and this can be a good way to initiate the initial chatting and getting to know each other part of a friendship.

Lensing 2023-07-02 07:28:19 UTC #21

good advice, I always did that and made a lot of friends and I think you can find people everywhere
who are interested in drawing, art, illustration. I used to live in Berlin and it was easy there to go
to comic jams, 24 hours comic days, comic artist meetings etc but I also had no problem finding
people in the small town where I´m living now. I live in a village near a small town now and I
have an illustrator / drawing group I meet regularly for drink & draws and stuff like that

cherrystark 2023-07-02 12:55:38 UTC #22

Making friends will always be hard. I still struggle with it myself. Be your own best friend first. If you are nice and polite, eventually you will find your people.

thepenmonster 2023-07-02 12:58:00 UTC #23

How do you guys interact with other creators and readers?

With as much patience as possible.

Nugtown 2023-07-02 16:59:46 UTC #24

Yeah, values. Interests are things you enjoy, but your values are your philosophies and beliefs. A person who believes in the value of hard work gets along well with other people of a similar nature, similar vibes, even if they're totally interested in different things, or even live different lifestyles.
Interests are a good avenue for paving the way to more relationships, but they can't be the end all be all.

Zak 2023-07-02 22:48:35 UTC #25

Unfortunately no. Australian bushland isn't a good place for getting to and from places specially with no job I can't pay to maintain a vehicle let alone pay for a P's learners test.

That and events are all 4 hours away specially comic shops so those aren't doable either. When I DID try and do local stuff it was very long distance while doing publishing if you want to call it that. But that experience blacklisted me from a specific group because of them not liking what I was creating.

Im pretty chill and have been trying to reach out to those who I think ill get along with. It's just people I suppose are too preoccupied?

Figured making genuine connections will be easier than trying to find readers since I don't tend to shove that in peoples faces as often as I should but man its doing the exact same thing as my readers being the most quietest group in the world lol

Zak 2023-07-02 22:50:54 UTC #26

Very lucky! Wish I had that lol

Zak 2023-07-02 22:52:04 UTC #27

I might try that out actually lol

vapidink 2023-07-02 23:47:18 UTC #28

This is probably my biggest struggle because I'm an awkward potato and discord scares me. Readers are easier to interact with because they usually begin the interaction so I just go along with it. Creators are trickier to me for some reason. I'm in a discord with other writers and have found it's hard to communicate with them since we write very different things and have very different ideas on the process. They're very focused on the technical things like structure and I'm not. Mostly, I've sorta accepted writing is a lonely thing, haha.

Emalie 2023-07-03 00:50:18 UTC #29

I write a BL novel, not many people in the community read them, but the following happened to me, I began to read many series of topics that I liked: action, science fiction, horror, romance. Similar genres and not so much to a BL story and from there I met people.

I joined a discord group and little by little we became friends, that was over a year ago, I left the group for personal reasons and other guys too. I tried to keep in touch with most of them, and to my surprise, many of them currently read my novel and comment even though they don't like BL.

I have always admired the work of these people, and never sought their approval, much less their "pity". I have a hard time talking to them because of my time zone, but when we can, they are interested in listening to me and obviously I do the same.

RedLenai 2023-07-03 02:16:37 UTC #30

Personally, I don't engage much with the art community in general (Besides replying to these threads, or answering art / commission questions when someone asks) but I can tell I made friends when

I see someone who seems to be talkative, I like their stuff genuinely, I don't expect anything in return, and somehow we end up engaging more by just exchanging doubts, commentary, ideas, etc.
I went to Anime Conventions, Artists Alley or just Artists gatherings around the area where I lived. Most of the time, I just were curious about what people were making on their stands, buy something, get their cards to follow them, and back in the day I also tagged them when I posted my hauls or similar, also ended up following them and continuing checking their stuff and we just... vibed?

I'm not a person that seeks validation, to fit-in, or have a bunch of friends. I don't feel solitude or that I miss someone if I don't see them or chat with them either. Most of the time I ended up noticing I made friends after a while of me engaging with others.

I wonder if the reason is that the more someone searches for something like love or friendship, the less likely it is to find it. That's at least what I've seen and felt the most.
People who desperately want friends they don't realize they don't look chill or genuine, or well, most of the time they come off as pushy, other times as people with low self-steem that tries to validate them by the number of people they think they surround themselves with, or that by having those that would dedicate time and attention to them. I don't know but, a lot of people would kind of have that feeling when someone has an ulterior motive, regardless if it's actually harmless or not.

XiuLyn_12 2023-07-03 02:48:25 UTC #31

No, I understand! It isn't easy to make connections with fellow creators, especially befriending them!

Like, I understand my work isn't well known. But for them to blatantly ignore me because I'm not a "fellow famous" artist hurts sometimes. I only assume they're too busy to talk to me, or perhaps I can provide 0 benefits to them if we become friends.

(I'm not talking about anyone in this forum. Everyone here is very kind!)

SereinChoo 2023-07-03 04:01:21 UTC #32

I truly relate with this. Reaching out in a big platform is hard,, it's better to create a small group, add some friends who has the same interest so that you connect better

Lensing 2023-07-03 06:04:59 UTC #33

95% of the things that I had in my life were started by me.
There are artists everywhere in the world, you can be the one who
starts a new movement

darthmongoose 2023-07-03 06:41:47 UTC #34

Ah geez, yeah, that's a long way from anywhere (and I thought growing up in the Lake District was bad for being a long way from anything, that's still only a couple of hours from Manchester).

Being from a small town that's fairly out of the way... well, by English standards, I can relate. I think I agree with Lensing on this one; you have to be the one to get out there. It can be pretty hard work if you're a shy person, so I sympathise! When I was a teenager, I taught myself how to be a D&D Dungeon Master specifically because I didn't know how to find other people who were into that stuff and figured I'd just grab people who kinda like boardgames, RPG videogames etc. and invite them to play. It worked and I ended up with a great group of players, but I was the one who had to do all the work. Every Sunday I'd tidy up the living room, set up the table, get out snacks and run an adventure I'd painstakingly planned, all so I could have social interaction around something that interests me in a setting I find comfortable.

With my comic, I kind of do the same thing of making my comic a sort of meeting space. The episode descriptions are generally a bit silly so people know it's okay to say silly things about my comic in the comments or to poke fun at it a bit, the extras tend to address the readers conversationally and I reply to nearly all the comments. Though I think it helps that the comic itself features a lot of the sort of marginalised identities that really crave a sense of belonging, and is about this group of people trying to understand each other and work together. A lot of the really dedicated commenters for Errant are some flavour of neurodiverse and LGBTQ+. As tiring as it can be to always be the one who holds up a flag for people to gather around, some of us just have to be that person when other people's spaces aren't quite what we need.

Zak 2023-07-03 06:55:32 UTC #35

Oof. Yeah. Very much the same with all those things about D&D and so on. (For my partner mostly haha.)

Ive taken advice from folks and started a discord server. Thats the only idea I have left with trying to reach out to people honestly, creators and readers to be honest. Because I can't get anyone to reciprocate or meet me half way to be honest.

So Ill be showing that around in a bit. Made a nice little image for promo and everything with the link that HOPEFULLY can work if typed out in a task bar. ^^;

Tada~

TheLemmaLlama 2023-07-04 05:50:53 UTC #36

Yeah, I've felt that I've been far more content with my social life ever since I stopped viewing socializing as 'making friends' but rather as 'Doing Thing X with other people'

I have a different take for why that's the case though. A social interaction is like a story; it has to have a point*, a 'why are we having this conversation', a purpose beyond 'trying to make friends'.

You can have nothing but small talk with someone, but it's not going to want to make you come back for more. Unless you're forced into proximity with each other for other reasons (e.g. being coworkers or smth), that relationship isn't going to last, and trying to make it last (e.g. by reaching out and having conversations just to 'build/maintain the friendship', even when you have nothing to talk about) is going to feel like a chore. That friendship is a spook.

That's why I ignore people when they say 'hi' to me or ask me how my day was. It does not mean you're unlikeable as a human being; I don't know you! But you are invisible; right now, you're a 'background character' to me, a 'stock human'.

I'm sure there are very interesting things going on in your head and very likeable things about you, but I don't have the energy to take a shovel to your brain and dig it out; if you want to interact, you're gonna have to be the one to show me. And I know it's not easy; communicating those things is a skill, and I know what it's like to have a hard time because you haven't mastered those skills yet. (I hope that didn't come across as too harsh; again, I've been there myself and it doesn't make you a bad person at all :])

Personally, I would just continue talking about things you're interested in, and thinking up specific things you'd like to do because they're fun in their own right (even if you don't end up making friends with the people you do them with), and being like 'hey, I'm starting this (RP/forum game/whatever); here's how it works, have fun'. Prioritize creating activities over institutions (e.g. Discord servers).

* To elaborate, 'let's talk about comics because we're both comic creators' isn't really much of a conversational 'point' any more than 'it's cool/silly/fun/cute/etc' is a story's 'point'. I think it needs to be more specific, like 'what do you think of X trope? I have Y feelings about it'. This very thread is a good example

I'd also argue that engaging with other people's work isn't actually a good way to make friends. This is because the natural 'point' of the conversation is 'their comic' (not 'let's discuss each other's comics, which is too general to be a good 'point'), but a lot of people are too wary of being arrogant/talking too much about themselves to shamelessly dive head first into this topic, but the most fun and energizing conversations come from all participants being shamelessly passionate about the topic.

(It's not a bad way to make friends, but it doesn't work the way people thinks it works, where they check out your work as well and have as much to say about it as you had to say about theirs and you have a symmetrical relationship where you're both interested in the other's work. But again, I'd argue that 'making friends' shouldn't be the goal here, but rather to just 'have an enjoyable interaction'.)