What no longer serves you?

[LCT_m_a_d]

What is something that you gave up this year in your creative discipline, that no longer serves you?

This of course includes something you are planning to give up next year or in the process of giving up. It can include techniques, habits, processes etc...

[elyss]

I've given up on the idea that I will color my comic. I'm not bad at coloring, but I hate doing it. I'd rather post a monochromatic comic and love it rather than suffer through coloring it and grow to resent my work because of it.

[Prometheus]

I’m working on dropping only drawing heads. I’ve gotten good at facial structure and hairstyles. I can still improve. But it’s time to learn dynamic poses and how the body works together to make a good piece/panel.

[LCT_m_a_d]

Nice, there's so many creative boundaries in black and white artwork that can be pushed. Color isn't the only way to give art personality.

[elyss]

Yeah I've been messing around with muted colors and colored monochrome. I think I found something in playing with textures and pleasant hues. I've always liked playing around with simplified colors and lack thereof so I'm having a good time

[spadedigsbutts]

I have given up on trying to make something that looks good. I don’t want to spend 40 hours per comic page I wanna learn...and part of that is accepting your art will not look super great if you spend significantly less time on a page...

But also perfection doesn’t exist don’t have unreasonable personal standards yadda yadda yadda

[feardeer]

Perfectly clean line art. Goodbye. I've been gradually embracing looser, sketchier lines and plan to focus more on fluidity and expression than neatness.

I might change my mind someday, but I feel this is the right move for now.

[spadedigsbutts]

That’s a really big mood right there

[skicoak]

In homage of BOOK SMART...

Jamba Juice won't serve me. Not just one, the whole chain. That comes down from corporate.

[LCT_m_a_d]

Nice, when your pursuit isn't perfection it's definitely important to be aware of the amount of effort put towards our specific goals.

[LCT_m_a_d]

I like it, investing in the next step and not the status quo.

[nathanKmcwilliams]

Pixel-Art for my comic. It was holding me back, and taking way longer to get stuff done.

[Rhonder]

Traditional line work* (particularly for long comics).

When I first started my comic, I decided to do a mixed media approach with traditionally inked line work and digital coloring. At the time I hadn't done much digital art so I didn't feel at all confident in my digital inking, but I wanted to color digitally to save money in marker ink. At first I felt really good about the decision- I totally felt like my traditional lines blew my digital ones out of the water, but I still got experience with digital art through corrections and coloring. win-win!

Buuuut somewhere around the halfway point several months in, I began to realize how inefficient it was making my work flow. If I spent a long time on the sketching phase, that just left me with a bunch of pencil to erase after the fact which took time and often left residue on the scan, when I Swapped to blue pencil I removed that, but it was hard to see, when I swapped to digital sketches, it was almost perfect but a little hard to see through my light box. Then I only have a small scanner, and 11x17 paper, so each page would take 4 scans.

Further, through doing more digital art (and getting a tablet upgrade at one point) as well as playing around with some custom brushes, I felt my digital inking catching up to my traditional inking.

A few of my friends were like "why don't you just swap over to digital? no one will mind." But I was close enough at that point to the end (~2/3 through?) to commit to finishing it out with the same work process, for consistency and all that jazz. Then they called me a masochist I finally finished the 70 page comic last week:

On one hand, I'm glad to have stuck it out so that I have this complete pile of original linework that I can hold in my hands, show off to people, and use as a self defense weapon if need be (it's HEAVY). But at the same time, I'm soooooo going all digital next time LOL. Traditional will be reserved for short comics in the future (and probably only when I want to do traditional coloring too).

[LCT_m_a_d]

the only way I could do traditional pencils is if my sole responsibility is penciling.
It's cool that you were able to experience that though.

[antimekii]

This year I gave up on 90% of the games I've been playing to focus on creating comics. The good news is that I've improved on my craft and speed. While the bad news is, I simply downloaded new games to make up for the games I lost.

I really can't work on my comics without take a break every few minutes/hours to play. I may have ADHD and should get checked jfc.

[LCT_m_a_d]

Yknow, Taking a lot more breaks has helped me at work especially when planning and brainstorming projects is essential.
Counter-intuitive, but definitely effective for the better if you are an over-thinker like me.

[Iris-Grimoire]

I've given up on drawing traditional sketches for my comic's pages (little thumbnail sketches only if I've got a good panel idea) and moved them entirely to digital, making the process so much faster because the bad scanner meant I was basically doing 3 sketch phases. SO much faster.

I've also given up on making traditional animation for better or worse. The money that it cost me to get work glasses because the animating table screwed up my vision something fierce would only get worse if I kept pursuing that(and I don't have money to get a table that doesn't shine a spotlight in the corners without paper), while a comfy Photoshop with timeline mode for YEARS hasn't done a thing to them, even if it's slower.

[irene_addler]

Once I have everything posted that I've drawn from my hiatus, and have no more buffer (I burn through buffer too quickly), I think I'm going to give up on regularly scheduled updates. I hate doing it, but I can't draw fast enough to keep up with it, and it's not like my comic is ever going to be famous, so I think this'll help relieve some stress for me. We'll see how it goes.

[JRHoch]

Trying to color in the lines. Actually, figuratively and metaphorically. It's out the window. Time to just embrace my inner id and let the colors and marks fly. Time to channel my inner Impressionist.

[denaliah]

Not having things more planned out before getting pages done. I can now say i have all the major events in my series planned out and an ending! I still need to refine some details, but I'm so much clearer now, and I'll continue to keep adding to that skeleton. Also loading a lot of text into few pictures, no one likes info dump. Plus ditching my old bad font that wasn't suitable for comics. I had a tendency to not like going over tedious details but they contribute to the overall story.