Let's talk about my plans for this year!
It's hard to define what 'early days' are when I've been building on my work for almost two decades. From a birds-eye perspective, I feel I'm in the stage of formally establishing myself. I'm not concerned about numbers; I don't care so much for the analytics at this point.
See, I've been asked questions about the progress of the site which tend to wildly overestimate the rate at which websites gain traction. If I didn't know any better, I would naturally feel discouraged due to these well-meaning albeit inaccurate comments.
Artists deal with a lot of internalized shame due to the assumptions of non-artists regarding how this all works. From how success is measured, to the rate at which they're 'supposed' to produce, it is incredibly frustrating how much noise there is coming from both outside and inside the community.
I'd like to talk about this, not only as a more formal way of stating my intentions with this website, as well as my schedule, but also to share what I've picked up thus far over years of trial and error, to potentially help other artists answer their own questions about becoming professionals and/or taking their work more seriously.
Firstly, here are my goals & schedule for 2024:
My smaller-scale goals involve maintaining consistency with my weekly blog format (ideally released on Mondays), and implementing a fortnightly release schedule for ZtMMC.
My large-scale goals for 2024, organized chronologically, are as follows:
Complete my ~80,000 word manuscript for Beekeeper by the 8th of March
Do a final revision on Maximalism in April before seeking formal publication
Release an animated trailer for String Theory in May/June
Have Vol 1. of String Theory finished and available to read by late 2024, ideally September
Have the entirety of String Theory scripted no later than December
A wishlist of things I'd also love to do this year, if possible:
Paint a mural (I have done this before, though many years ago)
Create my first latex prosthetics and props (i.e. masks for costumes)
Host drawing livestreams, so I can talk to people about my process in real time, play good music, and just chat
Considering my current progress with the above projects, as well as the rate at which I've worked on them in the past, these are all very doable. It looks like a lot of work, because it is, but not to the extent that it is going to burn me out. I've actually found myself far less burnt out when I have structure, even if I'm doing objectively more work. That's why these weekly progress updates, though consuming time in of themselves, actually save me time in the long run!
I've been asked by friends what a typical day looks like for me. I can be really difficult to reach when I'm working, which makes it hard to maintain social availability. (I also want to improve on that this year.)
The first thing I did after waking up today was sit down to write this blog. Following this, I will write 1,000 - 2,000 words of Beekeeper as I have been doing daily. I have a 2-hour appointment in the afternoon, but I may do some animation when I get home. It's a decent amount of work, but not overwhelming. My philosophy is that the majority of things need to be chipped away at consistently to get finished, and this website is no exception. Setting it up isn't going to do much by itself; I have to fill it with interesting and cool stuff, which is going to take a long time and a lot of consistency.
Still — this is only my process, and it may not reap the results I'm hoping for. It's very much experimental and I'm trusting my future self to carry the torch. My artist friends tend to get stuck comparing themselves left and right, worrying that they haven't produced enough at their age, haven't done enough, haven't learned enough, aren't good enough, etc. Naturally, I struggle with the exact same thing, but there are a lot of things you can observe around you that can reduce this pressure.
Managing Motivation and Quantifying Success: Tips for Artists and Writers
Comparisons are arbitrary, and progress takes endless forms.
Depending on where the line is drawn, some may not qualify me as a writer at all. Perhaps to some I am a writer, but not a novelist, whereas to others I am a writer and a novelist, but not an author. Quantifying success is incredibly hard in of itself, but artists and creatives often get the short end of the stick. Is it only once you're traditionally published that your writing holds any merit? Is it only once you've earned a certain threshold of money that your artwork has any value? Can you ever be considered a "serious" artist if your work is all digital, rather than traditional? If you haven't made a full-time career out of it, have you failed?
As easy as it is to say that these thoughts are unhelpful and should be discarded, it's not so simple an equation. Though they are phrased intentionally poorly and with a highly self-defeating tone, the theme of these thoughts harbors a very natural sense of maturity and reason. Basing your worth and success solely off income or traditional expectations is not rational, and there are many cases of influential people only seeing success posthumously. However, there is still a very sane quality in all of us to wonder where we're going and how we're going to get there. The trouble isn't in asking the questions themselves, but rather, in refusing to broaden the parameters of the questions, and avoiding flexibility and originality in how progress is quantified.
It's not about having it figured out all at once.
If I still believed this, I would not have done a single thing. I would not have written the first word, drawn the first line, asked the first question, made the first post, or written down the first idea. I've heard my generation described as being more self-conscious than other generations because so much of what we do is surveilled online. For myself, I've always feared doing something imperfectly without realising, and the perceived inevitability of someone calling me on it. When I was younger, and posting my art to various websites, I both received and observed a lot of unhelpful criticism. It only seems to be getting worse for young artists now.
It's really hard to be learning something and feel comfortable while doing it. Don't get me wrong — that's the most important part of learning. But when it feels psychologically damaging to keep putting in effort because the internet can be so hostile to any perceived imperfection, that's when it becomes a problem.
The sort of digital artwork that used to absolutely blow people away in the late 2000s and early 2010s is now considered the bare minimum of quality that's 'worth' sharing online. Over time, artists have developed new methods and techniques, often via exchanging information with one-another, leading to an exceptional and rapid rise in online talent. Yet, while more and more artists become advanced and compete with one-another for online engagement, there are always going to be people who are just starting their journey. I already felt intimidated back then — I couldn't imagine how hard it is starting out now. I'm sure it's equally inspiring as it is intimidating, if not more so. It's rather that internet commenters can be particularly vicious, especially as they become used to a certain quality of content being algorithmically normalized to them. It's very similar to what algorithms have done to influence body image, as that which is near-unattainable without a dangerous lifestyle, photo editing, and/or use of PEDs, gradually comes to be considered the 'norm'.
With the current rise and influence of AI, it's only getting more difficult. Artists generally have a fantastic eye for telling AI apart from real artwork immediately, even from thumbnails alone, but a lot of people who spend money on art can't. It's created even more of a threat to the livelihood of artists, which was already fragile to begin with. These adversities, however, do not mean that throwing in the towel is the answer. When people ask me if I feel threatened by AI, I laugh, because it doesn't really make sense as a question. AI is a tool without any moral alignment. A construction worker and a murderer can both use a hammer, but I will feel very different things about the hammer depending on who is wielding it.
I really think AI is a positive thing, albeit unintentionally deceptive. People have a tendency to conflate real AI with science-fiction-dystopia-scenario depictions of AI. I have explained many times that ChatGPT is essentially a more convenient search engine which follows a pre-programmed paragraph structure that you can easily identify after a few minutes of talking to it. AI art has a very similar identifiable structure, which is what artists are able to pick up on. No matter what style is input, what prompt, what theme, I can always tell the difference between AI art and real art.
This isn't just obvious and/or bad AI art, like the sorts with bizarre pixelation or six fingers or bad proportions, nor is it survivorship bias (I think). I mean the stuff that people commission thinking it's been made by a real artist. So much of figuring out someone is selling AI and passing it off as hand-made is not only the way the work visually looks, which is already a dead giveaway, but the context surrounding the profile. No, a person cannot pump out a $200 digital painting commission in 36 hours on a regular basis. If you're unsure, ask to see the file layers, trust me.
Still, I do not think AI is going to manifest in the way we feel it's threatening to. It's true that we can't predict where it's going to head, but allowing a hypothetical future scenario to discourage you from what you want to do now is only going to make you miserable. It's also a universal truth that people have always stolen art, made knock-offs, made forgeries, and most significantly, splattered some paint on a canvas for the sake of laundering millions of dollars. I really think AI art being passed off as handmade art is going to fall into that boat. It will still be an issue, but not some sort of universal threat to original art as a whole. My ultimate advice is just keep going, because it's most likely a fad, and it will probably end with some fun copyright law updates.
It's a waiting game.
Algorithms are a known nightmare. Optimizing your site as much as possible for search engines, ensuring it's indexed properly, even purchasing advertisement space, is not going to attract one hundred billion visitors in the next four minutes. This principle applies broadly to a lot of things: sharing your art on social media, trying to get people to read your book, selling your crafts at a fair. I know not to be worried about numbers for at least the next two years. Much like a coin goes up in value by building a patina, this site needs a little history to it before it starts floating around on the first few pages of Google. That's fine by me, because it's not exactly ready for a ton of eyeballs.
This is what I mean about getting a head start: ironing out the issues early, figuring out what people want to hear about, seeing who is interested in what I do, and strengthening and developing all the skills that go into doing this. It means that come time what I'm working on is ready to share, I'm not starting from ground zero just trying to flag people's attention.
That's a major lesson I learned through writing Maximalism. All through my life I've had writer friends who thought that writing the book was the hard part and everything beyond that is relatively smooth sailing. I thought so too, and particularly believed that the better the writer, the easier time they have getting published. This is false for several reasons:
What makes a good writer is subjective.
If the greatest work of literature popped into existence tomorrow morning, plenty of people wouldn't read it because it's not to their taste.
Publishers choose books to sell by discerning what people want to buy. They're running a business, not a library, so a rejection does not inherently mean that your manuscript is badly written.
A completed manuscript isn't enough for the project to be a success. There's a lot of meeting people halfway that has to be done.
Once I stopped resisting the fear I'd come off like some kind of shill, and started sharing my art, I opened myself up to a world of other creatives who bring others up and add value to one-another's work.
There's nothing wrong with sharing your work!
It may feel like you're doing others a courtesy by keeping your work in a drawer rather than 'bothering' them with it, but the opposite is true. Think about all the things that you love, all the movies, books, shows, artworks — if even one of those creators decided that their work wasn't good or important enough to share, your whole life would be a little bit worse. If all of those creators decided not to share their work, things would be truly bleak indeed.
It's a little too tragic to think about for very long, but it's highly likely that what would've been the best song you'd ever heard is buried on a flash drive, the story that would've changed your life was forever lost in a housefire, and the person who would've inspired you the most thought they took up too much space. It's also highly likely that someone else would've thought that song was terrible, that story was boring, and that person wasn't worth the time of day. Both things can be held true about the work without tearing it apart at the seams. People often say 'art is subjective', and what that really means is that there's always going to be people who want to see your work, no matter how hard you find that to believe.
In summary:
It's of high importance, now more than ever, for artists to think about redefining success beyond traditional metrics. Artists at all levels should feel compelled to embrace imperfection and share their work freely. Oftentimes, completing a project is just the beginning of feeling fulfilled, requiring a supportive community for meaningful engagement. Building up that community takes not only time, but the overcoming of internalized shame instilled by internet comments and algorithms.
Setting goals and having something to stabilize them, such as a consistent structure of weekly updates, can really aid in focusing on doable levels of daily work while still maintaining a perception of the bigger picture. I have reaped a vast amount of benefits from this website already, and I'm highly excited with all I have in store for it!
I hope hearing my perspective offered something of value to you! As always, thank you so much for reading, and I'll see you next week!
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