What makes artists quit?

As somebody who did really quit comics for nearly a decade and who has worked as an illustrator for a long time, I can probably weigh in here.

One of the biggest problems with working as an illustrator: No real career progression.

I was devastated when due to lagging behind my peers a bit due to a rural upbringing I missed my chance to pitch to or get taken on by publishers before the 08 financial crash made them all close down open submissions and stop taking risks on new talent, and so had to diversify my skills and become a games artist while they all worked on comics! But then several years later, my friends, doing my "dream job" of being full time comic artists started coming to me at events asking how to become games artists. Turned out, yeah, sure, they were drawing comics full time... mostly of other people's IP, and not particularly good IP, we're talking like.... BRATZ comics for French kids mags and vanity comics about terrible Youtubers, and their pay hadn't gone up or anything. Only one or two had managed to get bits of work from Marvel and the like (not on mainstream titles) and these people were basically only making a pretty basic income.

When you become an illustrator, there's this assumption of career progression, that you become more and more famous and respected, work on bigger and bigger things for more and more respected publishers, or at least get a bigger and bigger audience, but it's just not the case. My friend had worked with a really, really famous writer and then afterwards was asking around if anyone had commissions going. Hell, I had work published in a BBC Doctor Who book last year, and then had to get a full time job immediately after because I was struggling so badly to pay London rent. Sadly it's just not the case that you do one big gig and you break in, and for some it isn't even the case that you'll steadily accumulate die hard fans. I have a big social media following that can be super-helpful at times for promoting my art stuff, but it mostly didn't come from art, it came from er... making viral D&D jokes9.... and voicing a character in a dub of a really popular webcomic13...

What I'm saying is, being an illustrator or comic artist is a slog that doesn't pay well, and the only reason to do it is because you really, really love doing it and you're willing to sacrifice time and lifestyle. But after a long time, the slog weighs you down. You see your peers on exciting new projects, or hear that they've been promoted to a midweight person who works in a bank and now they earn like twice as much money as you and can afford like... clothes and stuff. I'm in a pretty great position right now because I've managed to work up to being a creative consultant working part time, while the other days of the week giving my comic a shot. It's a great place to be because I'm not financially reliant on a publisher and can draw my own original IP, and I got to it by putting aside comics for a while to build up my career rather than by trying to build up a career in comics that wasn't going anywhere.

If you've been drawing a comic for eight years, it's probably pretty much as popular as it's going to be. Comics sometimes explode in popularity after 1, 2, 3 years, but... not so much eight. No, generally after eight years, people have seen it, know what your comic's deal is and whether it's their jam or not. Unless suddenly it gets taken on by a publisher or gets adapted to a new medium like animation, it's likely to just remain steady. So if your comic is of decent popularity, but it's really only enough to scrape by on similar money to somebody who tends a shop till, and nobody ever writes reviews about your comic any more and you're just slogging along... well, yeah, you might really feel like you want something exciting and a shot at making something that's more than just "kinda popular", or to experience "having money".

Plus ... well, I just rebooted10 my old comic9. I can't even imagine, looking at the old comic made by me like ten years ago, working on that version of the comic now. The me who made that comic was like a different person, she didn't even know she was gay, yeesh! (Hilarious given that I'm now engaged to a woman, I don't think she'd even have forseen that, never mind living in London!). As you grow as a person, you may well improve in your storytelling as well as art, but also the themes that interest you, and your depth of understanding of those themes changes. John Allison's switch from Scary Go Round to Bad Machinery happened because he was in his thirties and felt like doing a comic about trendy young adults in their early twenties didn't fit him any more, he wasn't a trendy hip 20-something any more, he didn't know what that group were into now, but he knew it wasn't the kind of music and fashion that he'd been into at that age and he'd just feel like he was getting dated and embarrassing. I would similarly hate to be chained to the tastes and oblivious storytelling decisions of my past self.

So... yeah. I know it sucks when a comic you really liked ends, but it happens a lot and it's worth sparing a thought for just how much hard work and sacrifice goes into making a comic for such a long time, and saying some words of kindness and encouragement to the creators.

Well....i've been drawing for 3 years non-stop now, and seriously considering to give up for a while.
Why? Because as many people said here, people change, they might not be too attached to their works anymore, after all, art is deeply connected to psychology, like a reflection of ourselves, so it's only natural that people meet art-block, even heavy ones and decide to give up or maybe taking breaks.

I don't know if anyone here knows Angela Vianello or Loputyn, they've always made art and they are fantastic artists and comic artists, but Angela took a whole year break because she just couldn't take drawing anymore, and Loputyn kinda recovered from a deep art crisis as well. Happens to everyone, literally.

For me, i have some emotional instability due a predispositon to mood disorders and this makes change idea towards making art a lot. Sometimes i do think stuff like "ohh, doing a webcomic would be so fun!" then i try to draw and it feels totally off for some unknown reasons XD i guess it's because i'm changing in some aspects, maybe, who knows, but art doesn't make me feel good, so i even stopped working on my current short comic for this, Feels sad, because i do feel like i can't live without making some kind of art and being involved into a community, but i also have to respect myself ^^"

Back to the point, i can't grow tired of a story in just 3 years, so i'm not surprised that some artists becomes tired of their 8-years-lasted story, honestly, it's sad, i know, but everyone is different and have different needs.

Eight years! Sometimes I don't know if I'll make 8 months. Creating a comic, especially if you are trying to do it the best you can, is very time consuming. And, frankly, staying on a consistent deadline isn't easy if you have a very full-time job.

For many years, I created only for myself, and could do it at my leisure. Once you start posting, you have to be concerned with deadlines and page output. If you obtain a fair amount of success the sacrifices are easier, but if things don't grow, the process starts to weigh. It's just as easy to create a digital comic or print version and try to sell it online if you want to find an audience than going the webcomics route.

I think it’s ok for webcomic artist to quit, I see them mostly as volunteers. Because most don’t make a living off their work, if they need to take a break, or are late in updating, or just end the story all together, I am fine with that.
If we want that to change, then the webcomic industry as a whole has to change, which would be a big undertaking for the fan base alone to do. I think the best way is to like and comment, give some ink if you can, and spread the word for any comics you like.
Also buy comics, or check them out at your local library. Show publishers that these are material people are interested. When they see that, they will go out looking for talent, and motivate more people to continue on the long webcomic trek. Penguin Random house just added a graphic novel section to their publishing house a couple of years ago. Comics are slowly making a comeback, with more and more publishers wanting in on it. I have seen two webcomics published into book form by big publishers and fly off the shelf at the Library.
I am advocating getting an adult comic section at my new Library because I know that they will increase circulation.

Be a comic advocate and don’t be to harsh with creators that need a break. Maybe two years from now they will get the itch to start again. Eight years of work must not have been easy to walk away from.

i dont have plans to discontinue spire, but after 3-ish years there IS a sort of disconnect you start feeling from the story. its not necessarily a negative feeling? but it feels a lot less personal than it used to. my guess is that its from that?

Top reasons I encounter are:

1. Injury of hand/shoulder/arm due to repeated stress. Be sure to draw in a way your body can handle!

2. They're a pantster and they got to a point in the plot that they haven't figured out. The difficulty pushing through without retconning is overwhelming. Plan your story completely before you start.

3. They're not getting the recognition for their work that they want. So they drop it and try again. This isn't a bad idea, but be sure to take away some teachable moments from your experience so you don't wind up making the same mistakes the next time.

8 years is a long time and people can get bored with the world and characters they've created. And if they're not getting anything out it, they're just laboring over nothing basically.

You should ask them specifically why, or if they could go into more detail (find their contact info somehow)... Might be therapeutic and cathartic for them as well as you... I'm curious to know too.

Making comic is boring honestly, but i don't know what else i'll be doing besides that anyway

edit; just realized i've been doing this shit for 4 years now lmao, felt like wasting time after this long tbh

Honestly, I think it's burn-out.

From what I've experienced personally, it can stem from various things

• Not getting recognition: fans that leave comments besides hearts, single digit views and likes
• Obsessively thinking about it and working on it daily (I think this is number #1 problem)

And then it turns into a negative circle that you can't escape. You think about it every day, you work on it every day, you upload things on a weekly schedule or more frequently and get little to no return.
A good analogy is something I just told a friend of mine, it's like a restaurant. There's a long-time eatery closing in my home town and everyone's reacting with "aww that's so sad! I love that place!" and the owner literally is responding with "clearly you don't cause you don't come in and spend your money here". Be it comic or novel, or some other endeavour, if you constantly don't get any responses until you finally pull the plug - that's too late. Now, you can be a fan and go off and complain that your "favorite" thing ended, but if it's not supported, that's what happens.

iirc another example close to comic creator's home should be the mangaka for Yami no Matsuei, as the story goes so far as I've heard/recall: the mangaka suffered an injury of some sort, healed, came back to draw, and their drawing style went from a certain stylistic style many were familiar with (and could attribute to the late 90s and early 2000s, though I see it as gorgeous), and it transformed into something more realistic; THE FANS did not like this change, did not support this change, and stopped purchasing the new releases, so the manga was pulled and ended before the actual plot ending.

For my own personal experience, what makes me quit a novel (writing it) is that I'm just not creatively flowing with it any more. That's 1, or 2, I have ideas for other stories. And 3, I have multi-plot ideas that would segway the plot into different directions and I'm unsure which would be "best" to follow, and end up doing none, and just ending Cold. Turkey.
I have thought more than once to end Nearly There Nicely simply because of the lack of attention it seems to get from readers. Especially after my car accident in May 2017, I was deciding to adjust my mode into just editing what I already had and "just write to 90" so I could edit that, and end it at 90 cold turkey. It felt like no one was reading it, no one was enjoying it, no one was liking it, and no one was even seeing it: I was invisible. Now, don't get my negativity wrong, I still feel highly invisible on Tapas. The only change is a visual record of views and likes. I have at least two people hitting like on the updates. I do preach that "you should write for you" but if you (being me) aren't happy with what you have, either quit or do something to make it better. I happened to find Tapas around November or something last year, and thought "eh it'll probably be dead like everywhere else." My first month here hit 139 views, for just the first 10 chapters (and the 10 chapters I consider the weakest).

Writing, creating, comic drawing, drawing, cosplay sewing - anything like that - it's all a very isolating creation. If you live in an area like I do that's super rural and doesn't have much of anything going on, then you will be pressed finding ways to stay motivated. Every few days still I think about carting it all up and quitting. I can only explain that this urge comes from the daily illusion of "no one sees my stuff". I think about it daily, I work on it daily; How come daily it doesn't have a number of views that matches how many times I obsessively refresh the page? That obsession of focus, without taking any breaks from it, can lead to the depressive lows. That's why it's good to have focus, but just as important to allow your brain to focus on something else - some movie, tv shows, your pets, gardening, something that just isn't "omg my character is cooking so I need to cook what they're cooking omg I must make it perfect because they do!" and then you curl up on the floor of the kitchen because you burned your pan to a crisp. It'll be fine- just soak it and see if you can save it. There, there, hypothetical me, just don't leave the burners unattended.

I will say what kept me from quitting on my new comic was a change in my social environment. Both online and off. It wasn't just getting some encouragement, but getting specific support from sources that believed in what I was trying to do and could see the potential I didn't.

Real specific Hope just kinda outweighs all the things I've been struggling with.

Looking at the hobbyist vs. Professional aspect, I feel like rate of production probably plays a largish role as well (in regards to the concept of outgrowing a story over time).

With a serialized manga series you see the authors pumping out a chapter weekly in a lot of cases, or like monthly issues (which are roughly 1 chapter) of western comics. With this rapid rate of production it seems like there's a chance for the story and characters to grow more freely with the author over time. 2 years into a shonen manga's run you're several volumes in, a lot has happened to the characters, and they've grown as a result.

Compare this with the rate that most hobbyist comic artists can produce content: a lot of folks produce between 1-5 pages per week, max. 2 years in a couple of chapters may be finished and not a whole lot of story progression may have been made. The characters and story are largely the same as when you started, but now here's you: a few years older and wiser and wondering if it's still what you're interested in pursuing.

It's something I think about often in regards to my own work. I was literally the person that the article @punkarsenic linked describes up until about a year and a half ago lol. Since then I've started working on mostly one-shots that wouldn't take much longer than a year at most to finish, as well as writing/coming up with ideas for a longer series in the background. But I refuse to start the longer project until I've trained my speed to an acceptable level such that I might actually see it through in a reasonable time it'll already take a few years at best, but if it becomes one of those 8 year comics its probably not getting completed.

Dude, so that was!

Jumps in time help with that: like start presenting the characters some months in the past, next issue in the present, next some months in the future...

I'm writting my novel that way but I still had not realized that fact. For me it's natural since I'm more intuitive than planner when creating, but I get it must be difficult for those who plan all the story at the start

I mean, the characters don't stop being themselves, but that concept: they evolve with you, it's really important to keep in mind when doing long run projects.

My mind is blowed

I'm very scared of being "that author who goes on hiatus and never comes back".
The seasons why I would quit, are very simple:

-the story is a mess and I can't fix it: Basically if the whole thing turns out being incoherent garbage.

-It is making me sick or becoming unhealthy: This is supposed to be my happy place, not a project to get more depressed.

-Nobody cares anymore: In this case I can still make some art for myself and scenes I wanted to draw for so long, but I would quit the chapter by chapter comic format. What's the point of keeping a stressful schedule, work 16 hours per update if people are not into this anymore? I can totally start making random art that makes me happy without the burnout.

I don't want my comic to die without a conclusion

I feel you man. Making a comic is crazy hard and takes a lot of time. All those full time comic artists and mangaka either have secret superpowers or they neglect taking care of themselves. Because I saw a mangaka schedule once and it looks like this.

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Helps that they are guaranteed to be paid for the most part.

I think this is more about independent artists/comic creators.

They get paid yeah but it doesn't change the fact that their work hours is almost unethical. I'm just trying to show that comic artists/mangaka have it rough in many places.