Is making comics even worth it?

Hey dont worry friend, making comics its a great journey that take time, in my case I cant even do a chapter per week cause now Im working fully on my translations on an English version, what ypu need to do its promote your comic in everyplace that you can! Create a Twitter, Instagram or even a Tiktok account and start from that! You will see how people will come eventually! Trust the process and make contacts here, do some collabs when you want and, this will helps a lot!! Trust in yourself! and take breaks if you need too!

I also feel this a lot of the time. I basically gave up my gamedev hobby completely for comics, and although I still feel the urge to make a game every once and a while I recognize that I'm WAY worse at gamedev, and I like the real version of making comics, as opposed to the idealized version of gamedev. Anyways, this isn't about that.

I made my first comic a few months ago, and it took me about a year to finish the whole thing. My friends and one or two people enjoyed it, which I cherish, and then it completely dropped off the face of the earth. That's expected.

The moral of the story isn't that I should've just made something popular, divested most of my time into marketing, or that I shouldn't have made a comic if it was going to take that long. The moral of the story is, even knowing this, I would never want to have that time back. I had made something that was mine, something that I wanted to make for a very long time, and I finally got to going and made it, and now the story is out in the world and isn't just thoughts inside my head. My art improved, my writing improved, and I had fun making it.

So maybe making comics is a waste of time, and maybe people don't like your genre/story, but so what? You made something, and you're bringing your ideas to something physical. That's a lot better than a lot of people can say. I believe that comics are a really fast way to improve, because you're making tons of little drawings of unique situations and figures. When I started, I had no idea how to draw pigs and other animals. ..I still kind of don't, but I'm way better than when I started, and if it wasn't for this comic I would've never even attempted to draw anything other than humans. No matter how bad you think your story is, or how your art looks to your eyes, you're trying something, which means it's fruitful.

I have some advice for the feeling you're currently having, and I think your burnout hunch may be correct. Taking breaks is really good for dealing with that, and even big authors take breaks sometimes. I wish you all the best on your comic journey

I hope everyone who feels the symptoms I've listed can take time to rest and demystify the idea of productivity as a requirement to do... anything, really. You're still a fine human being even if you don't churn out stuff.

I also mentionned that they may be symptoms of a wider problem because a couple of them are also found in ADHD and depression. I was also listing the symptoms from memory from what I had while I was in burnout, but I was specifically in what's called autistic burnout, so some symptoms may not apply (or be less noticeable) to neurotypical people. It means that if you only have some of the symptoms on the list and other symptoms that are not, it might be a good idea to do some research or even contact a psychiatric healthcare provider to talk about it if that's an option for you. Everyone deserves peace of mind.

Basically my solution was to rest and get a bunny so that I can always remember that real life and my and my rabbit's wellbeing is way more important than any productivity quota.

You can't really judge what's healthy just by that but a good barometer is:
- Is this rythm sustainable (i.e. would you feel generally ok keeping this rythm up for a very long time, years for example)?
- Are you feeling any type of dread, worry, fear, or guilt about your comic/your worth as a comic creator when you are not working on it?
- Are you experiencing physical symptoms such as joint pain in your writing hand, wrist, or arm?

Basically if you answer "yes, no, no" likelyhood is you have a healthy relationship with your work. It's not guaranteed, there's only three questions, but basically with those 3 answers it's likely that you're not overworking yourself, you body can physically take the strain of the work at your current pace and mentally it's not affecting your mental well-being outside of when you're working on it, so if you ever do get overwhelmed, you can just take a break and be ok.

I haven’t necessarily found a solution to this problem. But I think I found a way to cope.

I’ll never forget, when I posted my first webcomic online back in 2017, I thought to myself, “my comic is gonna take the world of webcomics by storm”. Despite the fact that they were hand drawn and traditional, I was expecting quite a decent following. Well, my bubble got burst real fast. When I reached out to other artists, I was slammed with criticisms left and right. It led me to be discouraged, but it also gave me knowledge that I needed to be aware of: to actually try and make something worthwhile telling not only through writing, but by art as well. So I spent the next several years plotting and slowly developing better art skills and writing. So then, when the time came to release my first digital comic back in 2020, I thought, “this is going to be the one that really takes off”. That wasn’t the case either.

A part of me is so passionate about my work that even when I do better in my storytelling, I sometimes get upset that it’s not gaining enough traction. I also get tempted to ask the same people who give me criticisms that I fix why they don’t come back to the story for a second time. Or even when I post a new picture here on the forums or social media, why it doesn’t gain a lot of interest. At times it seems as if people are avoiding me at all costs which makes me feel like I’m being singled out by people who I thought wanted to at least help me and watch me succeed in anticipation for my next great project.

I really don’t know where I was going with this, but whenever I have these intrusive thoughts of not being worthy of pursuing my stories on this platform, I remind myself of this: if your creativity is driven by a desire to get attention, you are never going to be creatively fulfilled. Forget what others think, if you enjoy it, great! I’ve found that so many people create art for for the sole purpose of getting likes, algorithm and followers on Instagram, to be a people pleaser. It’s intoxicating!

If you're insecure about your comics, I might suggest not posting online for a while. Enjoy it because that’s what art is for. If you hate it too, find better inspirations and “borrow” them so no one catches you did. Find 10-20 good inspirations for your type of storytelling. Just keep going. That’s all any of us can do.

If you're thinking about it as a source of income, no, it's not worth it for the 90% of authors, who either don't get paid for making comics or get very little money out of it.
As a way to improve your art skills however, I'd say yes, you'll be "forced" to improve when drawing a comic:

Drawing the same character over and over consistently,
making backgrounds,
applying perspective, shadow and light,
creating character design's,
planning the writting and dialogue of your stories.

These are some of the many aspects you'll need to work on to get your comic done, if you just drew whatever you wanted, there's a chance to neglect some of these aspects, for example: "I'm not good at drawing backgrounds, so I'll avoid drawing them". When making a comic, you can't avoid certain aspects of art, that'll make your skills better and more well rounded than just drawing whatever.

Having a relaxed brain can do so many wonders. The brain is like a muscle in that sense. If you go to the gym and workout your whole body everyday it will eventually give out. There are times you need to take a whole week to fully recover. And it does wonders. The brain is the same in that sense it needs time to rest.

And yes your art is awesome. I will say it as many times as I need to.

This topic is so very relate-able.

I also am going through a very shitty phase, it makes me feel really bipolar lately, I cried myself to sleep last night lol I'm a very emotional person and I do suffer inferiority complex since childhood. It's like an endless circle when you fall and then you get up again in hope the things are going to work better for you if you keep on trying.

Before I decided to make my own comic I haven't had the burnout phases so often the way I do now. It's really hard to overcome the feel like you're an utter failure. I have never dedicated myself to a course so passionately the way I do about my comic, what burns me the most I also feel like no one cares about my comic and I seem to be the only one who cares about it.

How to cope? It's hard to say, it's like a rollercoaster you fall down and then you get up again. I love creating my time, it's like the time is used well and I feel proud of it but the lack of interaction of readers is literally burning me alive

I make my comic because it's years I want to tell this story. I practiced making sketches, studied the lore of the setting, I'm also learning some social marketing skills to better promote it! If I can't be published because editors in my country aren't good, I want at least to gain some cents and get readers on my own.

It's difficult to keep me motivated sometimes, especially when I have to prepare the pages in the free time from my job. I try to cheer up looking to the results I get, not focusing too much on the dashboard data

It took me a long time to learn and come to terms with this, but if you go in with the expectation that your story is going to take off or if you're too focused on numbers you're only going to get frustrated and feel dissatisfied. This is easier said than done of course, something you have to come to terms with yourself. It took me starting a project that I loved so much that I don't care nearly as much about numbers as I did with SPIRE. Of course I want people to read it, but at the same time working on it is also fulfilling in its own way. SPIRE wasn't, unfortunately.

I don't write for the tens of thousands of people not reading.
I write for the (currently) twenty-five people who are.
It's not even all on one series.
I just want to bring these stories to life.

To be honest...

I'm only going to draw my comics this summer/fall because I need to get it out of my system. I fully expect to get nothing for my efforts. It will be under-read and under-rewarded financially and by most measures society deems something as worthy I will have completely wasted my time.

However, after two decades of peddling EFL in East Asia a year off scratching up a tablet will serve as a much needed mental/ physical health reset as I put another phase of my life behind me and prepare myself for the back end. It's a pretty fucking privileged position to be in, and it's only temporary, so I better not waste it.