Lost interest in making comics. I feel devastated

[kazukitakamura126]

I had a similar realization with my character design recently. Since my art style is Anime/Realism my style didn't cater to anyone's project's needs. Its too anime for people looking for realistic work and its too cartoon like and comic like for the anime projects. So my style is somewhat like a goose going to a duck party.

anyways, about your situations I think you may have over planned your work and now it feels there is nothing new your comic can offer. I had a similar situation happen to my last comic but, with my current comic I am being a little more flexible with the story. You have also ran into a creative block maybe reading comics that are similar to the comic you envision may give you some inspiration. Also as far as the anime/manga community, you don't need to worry too much about them. Write the story you want without others judging your work. Besides some people enjoy a more mature story.

[Rivana]

I am so sorry you are going through this. But I just want to add my 2 cents. It sounds like a block to me coupled with some depression.

I had a 6 year block actually. I started my comic in 2011, got frustrated and just stopped. I wanted to learn how to draw better in general and spent the last 6 years learning but never really working on my comic aside from drawing portraits of the characters. 2017, I still love the story and just bit the bullet and revisited it again. Tweaked some stuff and redesigned some characters.

Don't worry about the audience. Do your comic for yourself. Age doesn't matter (I am in my 30s now).

My story is 12 years old (based on role plays with friends over the years) and there's probably a lot of cliche that you've already seen in it. But I love it because I have seen the characters grew and change over the years and the 'roller coaster' ride they have been in.

I know it would be great to do the comic full time but that is not just realistic as of the moment. Maybe it being a hobby makes it more fun and less stressful anyhow.

Hope you feel better!

[ilustrariane]

try not to think about the audience!! do it for yourself! if you love it, just do it, do it in your own way. do not abandon something you love so much. use it as a therapy, as a escape from the real world.

[GlowingSky]

Never give up - try your best.
But always have a backup plan if your plans don't go your way.
Sometimes...your best is not enough - but hey it is better than you never trying especially if it's something you want so much.
Life's tough - real tough.
But never stop chasing after your dream because when you give up is when your dream is truly dead.

[MrSpuds]

Well I started writing when I was a kid, eventually realized that likely the only reason I was writing was because I wanted to do the thing I was writing about, planned to join the military but then got diagnosed with a genetic disorder called X-Linked Retinitus Pigmentosa that, in short, slowly causes you to go blind. So that destroyed any chance of being part of the military. I stupidly tried to get into a journalism program, figuring that if I can't actually do it I can sort of half do it by being there reporting it. Obviously that didn't work out.

Continued writing, figuring if I can't do it myself I can sort of imagine what it would be like or something. During this time I did genuinely enjoy writing. I took it very seriously and planned on making it my career, had done a lot of industry research and legal research. Found out that it’s a very bad idea to post work online because, depending what it is, you can get blacklisted from publishers for it. So I made sure never to do that. Made custom charts that I printed out to manually record my progress on various projects, something a creative writing teacher was amazed at. The same teacher tried very hard to get me to go professional, she ran her own magazine and said that she would’ve published my work if it had been the genre of her magazine.

Then a bunch of really crazy stuff happened in my life that I won't talk about which made me outright quit and become hostile to the idea of writing as a job.

But my girlfriend constantly urged me to get back into it, pointing out that there’s no way I didn’t enjoy it given how much time I’d spent on it. She got me to help her on a story she had come up with when she was 14 that she wanted to make into a comic, so I did. Helping turned into me more or less writing the entire story for her. I hated that for awhile because I'd given up on writing and hated that I was wasting time on something I figured would never be viable as a career in the current economic state of the world. She didn’t help things very much back then either with her attitude, focus, and work ethic. After awhile I had zero confidence that she was ever going to take it seriously enough to run a business on let alone live off of. So to me at the time it was all about the money, I hated writing and got nothing emotional out of it, so if I was going to spend my time and energy on this it had to make money. But since success was dependent on her as well... there was a lot of tension during that time... a lot.

But I did recognize that back in the day I genuinely enjoyed writing, so I tried forcing myself to get back into it anyways with small success. Got really, really positive feedback on a few things I wrote. But I didn’t have much momentum and still didn’t see writing as viable. Tried to get into a programming bootcamp hoping to finally be rid of writing and to have my own economic independence. During this time my girlfriend dramatically began changing her work for the better. Continuing the trend she’d already been setting for becoming probably the hardest working person I’d ever met, finally dealing with what I saw as her focus issues. Going from spending too much time drawing things not actually related to her comic while complaining about the lack of progress on her comic to drawing nothing but character sheets, environment concepts, architecture concepts, etc. She showed no signs of slowing down. I started having trouble in the bootcamp because of my eyes and interestingly started enjoying writing again. When I had to make the decision to either flunk out and regain some of the money spent on the course or try forcing myself through the end and just hope I pass it became obvious that I was never going to be a programmer. So I went back to working on the story and I haven’t looked back since.

Even though I hated the whole idea of it when she pretty much shanghaied me into it, I’d grown attached to the story that I’d designed and I wasn’t about to let all that time and effort get thrown away. I’d gotten more and more bits of writing passion back from my own efforts elsewhere, coming up with a few other long form projects that I might actually do sometime. And now I just... like writing again. I don’t even know why, I just do. Whether we will have any success with it I have no idea, but that’s not really the point anymore. I decided that, since I’m just going to die anyways, there’s no point doing anything I don’t want to do. So I’m all in on writing once again.

I have no idea if my story helps you in any way, but who knows, maybe it will.

[SamuelCharcot]

Many of the situations you mentioned are almost the same as mine, so I know how do you feel. Maybe you could start asking why do you draw, or what do you like drawing. Another thing you can do is get distracted with movies, reading books, manga, comics or whatever you like, that might help you to inspire you and feel that little fire inside you that makes you create. Hard situations like the ones related with close people or health can make you feel depressed, but if you really want to do something you have to continue and never give up. If you feel worried about your stories or style not fitting an industry standard, please don´t change things that are true to you, because in any artistical medium the people who broke certain rules were the ones that created new ways to express ideas. Don´t feel discouraged and keep creating not matter if only is one hour, twenty minutes or five minutes a day, the important thing is to keep going.

[ble]

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