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

[lunchtiiime12]

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]

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]

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]

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 LoaA 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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]

Most reasonable rates for an amateur artist online is $20-75 for a single full colour piece from what I know so far (This price range doesn't apply to everyone. Some artists I follow charge beyond $200 for single coloured pieces). Technically, each panel in a comic is its own individual picture. Assuming your average comic page has 6 panels, you're likely going to pay the amount of $20 x six panels, which is $120 for a single page done in full colour

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]

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]

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?)

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]

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.

[AgizoWat]

It looks like I'm late to the party, but I wanted to get a word in nonetheless (even though I suck at explaining things).

Your post actually reminded me of how I use to feel about a certain art site. No matter how much I tried it didn't seem like I was making the progress others were making. Even more frustrating, others who were clearly TRYING LESS were getting a better reception.

The whole "comparing yourself" thing is what I went through because I had, AS CLEAR AS DAY, made progress that went unnoticed. However, me being the guy I am, I ended up keeping my feelings/thoughts to myself and looking at things even more OBJECTIVELY.

Eventually, I realized I was not dissatisfied with the reception I received. I was dissatisfied with the fact that my art didn't meet the standard I had subconsciously created for myself.

Objectively, I wanted to continue chasing a higher standard. This resulted in me creating a lot of higher quality stuff that I simply never show people (but those who catch a glimpse of seem very impressed by).

It sounds to me that you are creating a standard for yourself, but it's crushing you. With art you can only get better, so long as you keep moving forward. You don't have to be the most hard-working, but you have to keep creating (make your own pace, it sounds like you're busy).

What you'll find is that you have developed your own agenda, which you will adapt and continue to move forward. I can't predict how this would effect your "reception", BUT if your focus is on improvement then you will see an effect on your art. If you like your comic more as a result of it, then wouldn't that be worth giving it a try?

I know these are pretty long (I hope you can find time to fit these in) but here are some links that helped keep me moving in the right direction (you only really need to listen):

I am SO sorry this post is long. I really suck at explaining things.

[LordVincent]

You will always recieve critique and there will always be things you can improve. And that is a good thing! Because that means there's still an adventure to be had. ٩(ˊᗜˋ*)و

You're getting a new job, so stop having a specific schedule for your updates and start updating it the way you should when it's a hobby project: Whenever you damn please.
Stop viewing it as a chore or must-do. Instead, consider it a fun challenge!

And, if you still really don't see any fun in it, then you probably SHOULD ask yourself why you're even doing this.

I love working with comics and I make daily to almost daily updates on three comics, but I do this job because I love it. And you should only do your hobby if you really love it! (๑•з•)))⋆*