Should I Even Bother Anymore as an Artist? (Drawing Rant)

kyupol 2017-04-02 13:08:20 UTC #9

Keep on going and going and going like an Energizer bunny ^^

Who cares what others think. Don't let it affect you. I've got pretty mean comments in the past as well... and even threats to shoot me in the face then slit my throat and cast me into hellfire... and I can just laugh at it all.

Like water on a duck's back, friend... all I can say.

lunaartemisasama 2017-04-02 15:02:06 UTC #10

I don't know what art means to you, But I think you should do it as long as it makes you happy. You shouldn't feel bad about the comments that tell you that you should work more, because that means they have expectations from you, feel worried when nobody tells you anything.

Some people may learn faster than some others, everybody is different. For example I have been trying to improve my drawing skills since probably 10 years ago lol, and I started to get interested in it after I finished college... but I just don't have the patience to work on it everyday, but I still practice from time to time and it feels good to see that you are improving even if it's a little.

A lot of people work and do comics as a hobby so maybe you can just make a new schedule?
In the end, I think you should do what you feel like.

BTW congrats on having a job with good payment.

Devika 2017-04-02 17:04:48 UTC #11

My two cents:

You have worked valiantly on your comic for almost two years now, you're on your fifth chapter now. That's seriously impressive! (I haven't even drawn one page yet and I'm still posting here haha) But considering your earlier posts, it seems that you have gotten stuck in certain thought patterns which you probably won't get out of unless you take a solid break and focus on something else entirely for a while - your new job is a great chance! (Congrats on that too!)

I've been there before, stuck in negative thoughts, and what helped me get out of them was reevaluating my situation and pull through some huge changes. So yes, my suggestion is a hiatus, to see how it feels. Do you still feel the urge to draw at all? Do you feel the urge to tell this story, maybe even without drawing? Or do you feel relief? Once you get some distance, you can reevaluate this whole thing from a fresh perspective. If you do decide to come back, your fans will still be there, and you'll have the energy and motivation needed to do your best! And if you decide to ditch it all because that's what makes you happy, then that's just fine too, as would a (light) novel version be.

Oh and don't get into the sunk cost fallacy - that you have invested time in the story doesn't mean that you need to push on, especially not at the cost of your mental health.

Hope this helps!

spadesart 2017-04-02 17:51:52 UTC #12

on the topic of art improvement, it's not going to be a quick transition. it's something you have to work on and you have to want to work and improve on it. otherwise it's going to feel like it's killing you slowly. i've tried forcing myself to improve faster when i get into that Art Jealousy with other artists and it always falls flat. and everyone's going to improve at different speeds, some people do it faster and for others it's a slow journey.

mintycanoodles 2017-04-02 18:18:34 UTC #13

no one's gonna motivate you for you m'dude. you either keep drawing or you don't, it's up to you.

Tanisha 2017-04-02 19:17:56 UTC #14

If you're feeling this way I think it might be best for you to step back for a bit and reevaluate some things. It took me some time until I actually started posting comics properly and I envy you for getting that many chapters done already! I'd be finished with a whole volume if I were that fast! xD It's all up to you in the end though. You can't expect to show improvement to people after such a short time.

Michelle 2017-04-02 20:46:19 UTC #15

First off, congrats on a new job that you're happy about! I think a change of pace could prove to be a really great motivator, and might help you see your comic in a different light. Also, it's absolutely possible to do a comic and work a full-time job-- some people work TWO jobs and do comics, some people work two jobs+make a comic+have a family to take care of. It's absolutely do-able, if you want to.
If doing regular comic updates alongside your day job doesn't sound like fun, there's no shame in doing it only when you feel like it. People assign way too much inferiority to hobbies, but really some things are better left as fun side projects. I do lots of creative stuff on the side just for fun, doesn't mean I'm bad at them.

Regarding critique, there's never gonna be a point where you're not gonna have things to fix. I agree that it's iffy when people offer critique you didn't ask for, but think of it this way: if your subs are critiquing you, it's because they like your work and want to see it get better. So while it might be a little frustrating, it comes with good intentions. I've had readers point out errors before, and my first reaction is usually "Ugh, stupid Michelle", but I also think "Huh, someone cared enough to point out a mistake cause they want my comic to look good!"
If you're really bent on improving, I would suggest you welcome those critiques in your description. Something like "Hey, I'm trying to improve my art so any thoughtful critiques are appreciated!" might change how you perceive people giving their 2 cents.

As for people messaging you basically shouting "HEY STOP MAKING COMICS", they're not worth the time it takes to read the message. :u That's not to say you should ignore critiques that point out a lot of flaws, but knowing how to differentiate critiques from outright jackassery is important.

I don't know how long you've been doing comics specifically, but if you've been working on LoA from 2015-2017... that's still not a huge amount of time in the grand scheme of things. I started publishing Centralia around the same time, but I had done other comics for years before then. Aaand... they weren't very good. It may be that LoA is a stepping-stone to something more solid down the line, but demanding that this one project be perfect will only lead to frustration.

If doing artwork is more frustration than joy, and you can't see yourself wanting to buckle down and learn the craft, it's ok to hire out an artist. Drawing IS frustrating, it's TOTALLY an uphill battle, and you're gonna be making drawing mistakes until you die. At the end of the day, I'd still rather draw because I hate writing. :u If writing is an easier form of communication for you, embrace that! It might be that a comic like LoA will thrive much better when working as a team. Not to mention, if your job takes a lot of your time, divvying up the workload makes sense.

shazzbaa 2017-04-02 22:03:11 UTC #16

When I was making my comics alongside a dayjob, it often felt like I was leaving one job to begin another, like much of my "time off" was still spent working. Your comic will feel like a job sometimes; I think that's true for most folks. Is that worth it to you, or not?

As for the hiatus vs keep-drawing-for-now question -- I think I'd definitely advocate the hiatus, between the two. For one thing, in my experience, that process of getting settled enough to hire an artist and finding a good artist and working out the contract always takes longer than you think it will, and if you have the mindset of "I'm only drawing it until I get an artist to take over" then when that time inevitably stretches longer, it will feel like more and more of an unfair chore that you're STILL drawing this dang thing.

Secondly, having myself ended one comic and taken a long hiatus on another, I've found stepping away can help answer that question with much more certainty. When I ended TNH, I felt relieved. I had enjoyed it, but I really didn't have the time and mental energy to do it anymore, and stepping away felt like an obligation lifted. When I put Runewriters on indefinite hiatus, I missed it. I had all this free time and I was unhappy. I could tell that coming back to it as soon as I could was right for me.

And if you decide you'd rather reimagine the whole thing as a novel, that's cool too, but I think you really do have to go all the way. A story that starts as a comic but turns into a novel half-way through will make nobody happy!

Mari 2017-04-02 23:17:25 UTC #17

The most important thing is to ask yourself do you enjoy drawing/making art? A hobby you love is always worth pursuing, even during the times you feel like you hate it, but if you view art as more to something to get you to your end goal (a graphic novel), maybe it'd be better to pursue writing instead, and either scrap the art part or have someone else do that for you. If you don't enjoy doing your art it will show, and it's just an unnecessary stress on you. After all, it's not as if though your parents are yelling at you not to quit the piano, this is really just all about how you feel about this particular hobby. With the first draft of my main comic(that is, not a 10 page short story) I actually ended up writing a light novel and quitting the comic altogether for years. It was also beneficial, because it helped me see how dumb some of my storylines were without my then sub-par art. I honestly don't think anyone can help you decide on this, it's just up to how you feel. And it's not like saying "hey I'm quitting this now" is like you burning a bridge, it's more like you're closing a door. You can still open that door anytime you want. The important thing is to be happy with whatever you end up doing.

lunchtiiime12 2017-04-02 23:47:17 UTC #18

Advice on contracting:

Focus on your job, it's infinitely more important than this. Get good at it. If, after you are good at it and have some stability (which almost nobody has) you find yourself still with the urge to create comics, then save money for the eventual contracted artist you will want to find (if that's more important to you, than, say, a new car.)
Expect to pay between 80-150 per page if you want the artist to stick around. Get ready to get disappointed over and over and over again with excuses such as "I have other clients", "Sorry, exam this week", or whatever else. Being a boss to an artist is complicated. Contracts are complicated. Trust is complicated. I had 10 pages drawn and completed (at $100/page) before the artist got too busy with school, and I had to drop every one of them, find a new artist, and start over. I pay the new artist enough for it to be a full time job, we have spoken every single day via chat since I hired him, and we are still going strong together. Since you have the writing completed already, all you'll have to do is say "hey, expert artist that I pay and trust and love, redraw this page in your style," then do it every day/week or whatever you can afford until they are all redrawn.
Grind it until you want to die, you look at your $5000-$10000 loss report, and wonder if it will ever be worth it or noticed by anyone, or of you should have bought that car in the first place.
If you get lucky enough to build an audience of some worth, either through the slow grind of quality, or some other artist tapping you on the head and saying "I like you, and I will share my gigantic audience with you," or Tapastic saying "You're the best! Here's a spotlight. Enjoy your free subs," use that revenue to then contract more artists and create spin-offs or more comics that are totally different. I suggest popular tropes that people already like. Use multiple comics to create multiple tipping revenue streams to create your indie webcomic empire.

*Experiences may vary.

Oh, if you want to just draw to draw, then just do that. Stop caring about audience/comments, and start caring about improving quality.

Mharz 2017-04-03 06:42:50 UTC #19

That is not an excuse not to strive to improve your art cus let's be honest here, art DOES play a factor to get a reader hooked in your comic. Admittedly I do too cus I don't wanna go into a cringefest and contemplate whether or not I should tell the creator that you have to improve your drawing and really I know nobody wants to hear that and I don't want to accidentally offend them because of my perfectionist nature.

Ref materials helps it's true BUT if you don't know the basic principles of drawing (construction, perspective, proportion, volume, appeal) you're gonna struggle quite a lot trying to figure out how things work.

That's just me anyway but really the most important thing is that you have to ENJOY THE STRUGGLE. If you find yourself asking "is this worth my time?" or "should I even bother?" etc instead of "ooh this is really hard but this is really going to be a fun challenge!" then you might want to think really deep on which path you want to go. You won't be able to produce great stuffs if you're not enjoying doing them. It will totally reflect on the art.

If you find drawing really tedious and you're not enjoying it then I do agree to most people here that you should just write a light novel if that would be more fun to you. If you're doing it just to gain recognition/money then you might wanna change career path altogether.

What matters is that you have to enjoy what you're doing even if it's super hard or seemingly impossible. Even if nobody acknowledges you, if this is something you really want, you'll push through it.

And that is just my two cents.

crawls back into my diglett hole

shazzbaa 2017-04-03 13:11:17 UTC #20

This is actually a really good point to bring up: if you DO hire an artist, and your growth on your comic doesn't drastically improve, or remains about the same pace, even with the new art..... would you regret it?
Would that be money well spent to see your vision realised, or would it be horribly frustrating to bleed money into this project and find that there's still always someone else doing better, climbing faster, growing more quickly, even though their art is now worse than yours and they're not paying anyone?

Because that will definitely still happen!

lunchtiiime12 2017-04-03 14:09:25 UTC #21

lol so true. Especially when, in your perception, their comic is nowhere near the effort, time, and thought. You have to sit there and eat it every day. On Tapastic, my work is perpetually pushing the stone up the mountain.. that is, you get a few likes and subs only when you post new content, and never at any other point. Other places, it is rolling downhill no problem. I have no idea why this is. Different audiences, I suppose.

Anyway there's no guarantee you're going to get an audience, no matter how good your story is. Perfect art can carry it somewhat, but at the end of the day, if it's not entertaining, it's not entertaining.

Candel_and_Goji 2017-04-03 15:08:37 UTC #22

The basic thing is that if you don't enjoy drawing, you aren't going to enjoy making a comic. I went through something similar figuring out my process in the comic I do with my best friend , because I've always thought of myself as "more of a writer," or get hung up on getting immediate results instead of just concentrating on the process.

Long story short — you have to make your comic for yourself. It's definitely hard when it feels like your peers in a wider community aren't flocking to your work, but first and foremost it's got to be a passion project. "Maybe nothing will come of this, but I'm having fun, and I'm learning valuable things, and I'm talking about subjects that mean a lot to me."

No one becomes a master overnight, either. You're always, always going to be learning and improving. Just keep at it, and don't give up.

My old Taekwondo instructor used to take me by the shoulders and say "Never give up!" It always kind of stuck with me.
-C

randyboring 2017-04-03 16:11:46 UTC #23

On evaluating your art, only compare to your past art. Have you improved? Yay, keep going. If not at all, then perhaps re-evaluate what you're doing here. I think you've improved, I suspect you have seen it, too, so, keep going!

Do not compare to others. Do you get sadistic joy from looking at the bad art of other, newer, artists? No. That would be creepy, wouldn't it? So don't get yourself down looking at the better art of more experienced artists. It's not a valid comparison. Do look at better art to get inspiration and specific pointers on how to do better (hands, proportions, hair, etc).

How to handle art criticism. Listen to how other experienced artists do it. Be ruthless to your inbox (or comment-equivalent) and consign vitriol to the trash bin. Your time and energy and life are more valuable than listening to negativity! Maybe put thoughtful, specific criticism into a folder (or text document) for looking at later when you feel like you want to spend time improving some aspect of your art. If you're not sure what to work on, survey the gathered criticisms and work on what seems worst to your audience. But probably you already have something that bugs you, in which case just look for specific criticisms of that to get help.

I like your comic, both for itself and for helping me better understand a dear nephew of mine. And I can tell it is very meaningful to you. Please don't let others get you down.

Aspie_Gamer 2017-04-05 06:12:18 UTC #24

I've been drawing comics since I was a kid, but they were shit both art wise and even writing wise in some cases. With how much praise I've gotten writing wise for LoaA compared to how much I've gotten art wise, I believe having someone take over the art duties for my comic would help make my baby shine that much more overall. Plus as others have said, taking a break from anything LoaA related to focus on my new job for a while should help to put things into perspective for me which is always good for the brain.

This is a good point to bring up not just for me, but for anybody even thinking about hiring someone with far superior art skills and come to think of it, I do recall that your comic started out looking one way before it changed drastically several pages in. Anyway, yeah art is obviously something that won't net most people a livable wage much less financial freedom and even if you do find someone willing to be paid full time to illustrate your story, what if they have other arrangements be it other projects or even real life to attend to like school? Communication is definitely a key thing I would say in deciding if the artist you have hired is the right pick for your project.

That so? Glad to hear when a sub of mine can either relate to Susan or has LoaA as a whole hit close to home for them.

Thank you all for taking the time to respond to my rant. I agree that I shouldn't have gotten so worked up over some random nobody speaking ill of my comic, but there was a point to be made about my art nonetheless which plenty of people here have commented on in the past even with the addition of color in my latest chapter. I've said it before and I'll say it again. I feel that I'm a better writer than I am an artist. (though I've made an effort to try nonetheless in my art even if its still riddled plenty with mistakes that hold LoaA back from being the quality story that I want it to be.) That said, I am thinking about going ahead and drawing one more chapter to close out the initial story arc for Life of an Aspie that was started back in Chapter 1.

For people who are in the know of what's been happening in my comic, I well and truly believe I have something special; something emotional to share with the coming chapter. When I first started coming up with story ideas for LoaA, it was always my intention to start out fairly light hearted for the first three chapters while establishing Susan's unique character before flipping things upside down for the next three chapters and presenting a more serious "mini arc" which delves into the psyche of not only her, but her fellow roommate Mizuki showing the differences between the two characters despite both of them coming from a loner/friendless background.

However, with my new job to keep me busy over the coming weeks and especially months with the summer blockbuster season fast approaching, I probably won't start uploading Chapter 6 until its 100 percent done. That way, I can have it auto upload while I'm busy with real life and so that I don't feel rushed to make a cache of pages in order to keep a buffer going like I did in the latter half of Chapter 5 when real life starting getting in the way of things.

isabelleArne 2017-04-05 10:31:37 UTC #25

So I will react to this first :
I have my own comic Radiant but I also get paid to do comic pages, in a totally different style than Radiant, and I get paid 150$ per page just the line, no color, someone else takes care of the colors. And Sempai you should not count in terms of panels, but in terms of service or hours, and anyway the editors will not the numbers of panels you have in your page and calculate the price. They will just count it as 1 page. And the best way is usually to count the hours. For example for this comic I make between 2 and 8 hours to do a page ( sketch+line ) so I would say it's a pretty fair deal (=30$/hour) wich is my usual rate. ( price that I agreed on based on the style of the comic and my knowledge of my own capacities )

As for you @Aspie_Gamer but I am on @KoreanTacos if you don't have time focus on the writing maybe , art is time consuming, and I feel like you should keep your money, maybe for let's say, take a 3 month break in a year or so and focus on your comic. And in the meantime just draw everyday, after work, at lunch, always keep a sketchbook.
I know you won't have time anymore, but as I work I usually watch videos or listen podcasts made by professionals, and lately I have been listening to Will Terry and Jake Parker's youtube channels. They are both successful professionals that knows what they are talking about and are really great advice.
Drawing doesn't come easy for anyone, it's hours of drawing before it can get "pretty", it's textbook wasted, it's high-school grades dropped because drawing was everything, it's night skipped because art assignments were meaningful, it's hours spent observing a knee, feet, hands and butts. Art is 90% acquired by hard work so if you really want it you can get it !
Also in a comic is a big part on the story, a good story can make up for drawing flaws ( at the top of my head I think of Fruit basket that is honestly not so well drawn but the story stuck me to these books for hours on ! ). But I am not as experienced in the writing field, I can't give tips on that.

Comics are hard work and passion.

GesuGesu 2017-04-09 04:03:19 UTC #26

Hi,

I understand that some artists charge per hour too, but I went with the commission style that I was more familiar with. Charging by the hour is hard for clients to keep track of (say, an artist could claim they spent 6 hours on a page when they actually spent 3; then how would the client know?) For charging by the hour, most artists I know who do this would do livestreams of the commission, so that the client can watch and be assured of how much time was spent making the page in order to keep the trust.

As an artist myself, I worry about how to show my clients how much time I clocked on a commission if I charge by the hour, so I just charge per piece based on how much time on average I spend to make a lineart/full colour/etcetera.

Cheers.

isabelleArne 2017-04-10 14:33:27 UTC #27

by the hour i meant that you estimate yourself how many hours you take to do your commission and charge this, if you spend too much time on it sadly the overtime is for you, or you try to speculate a 20% margin of error that you put to your price. but charging the client for hour over the budget initially agreed on isn't very serious ...

for exemple I know I take around 5 hours to make a comic page ( line only ) and my medium hours rate is 30$/hour =
5*30=150$
that is the rate I ask to the client, in the best case scenario I will take only 3 hours to do one page so I made an added benefice since I saved 2 hours of my time.
But it might happen that this page is more complicated than expected/or I'm on a less productive day and spend 6 hours on it. I can't ask to the client the added 30$, It's an harsh rule, but goes both ways.
And here my calcul is flawed because you must also think about taxes... but that depends on your country laws on this.

monotone_ink 2017-04-11 07:17:56 UTC #28

If you want to continue creating comics, you must, must bother as an artist.

I can understand feeling down when you're constantly being bombarded with criticism, but I think the fact that you are getting criticism in the first place is an indicator of two things:

Your readerbase really likes your stuff, and they want to see you and your work improve. Be happy that you aren't being pampered with only shallow praises from people who know nothing - those criticisms are genuine, and that leads to the next one.
You now have a lot of opportunities to improve. Now that people have pointed out your flaws, you can clearly set goals on improving them. If someone is unclear in thier criticism, you can always ask them to elaborate.

In the end though, it all comes down to whether or not you have fun drawing comics. Though the manga One Piece isn't exactly my cup of tea, I highly admire its creator Eiichiro Oda for his continuous work and passion for it. The bastard's been going for god knows how long, and he doesn't seem to be stopping. Drawing manga is like lifeblood to him, and I think that creators that approach comic creation with that mindset will enjoy themselves whilst the fruits of their labours blossom without them knowing.