Softhearted Wishes
Merch shop: Sugar Bunny Shop
Print shop: INPRNT Gallery
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Answer:
#inspiration #words of wisdom #self promotion #never stop tryingAlright, sit down, because I need to rip this myth open.
First, let’s talk about the advertising industry. Hundreds of millions of dollars spent by corporations and business of every size, in every market imaginable, to promote– you guessed it– themselves. They want you to buy their product, they don’t want you to buy their competitor’s products, they want you to believe they’re not a horrible souless entity that is callously destroying the environment, they want you to vote for their candidate of choice. They pay, and advertising companies– including their employed artists, craftspeople, and designers– get paid. It’s a legitimate, if showy and backbreaking, profession. No one bats an eye at this.
Now let’s talk about being one person with a new webcomic on the internet. You are posting that comic for free. You want people to read it and enjoy it, and maybe you want enough of a readership to be able to sell books when you print them. Maybe you want to run a kickstarter someday.
On your own. By yourself. You’re an artist, or, at least, you draw. Maybe you’ve had an arts education, but you probably haven’t. If you’re chiefly interested in webcomics, maybe you’re shut out of the mainstream comics industry– you’re a woman, you’re not white, you’re queer, you’re trans, you’re poor. Okay.
When you go to do the most sensible, logical thing– to proudly talk about your comic to your followers, to boost your own tumblr posts, to link to it on twitter, to post it on multiple platforms, to start a Patreon or a Kickstarter, to promote, advertise, and otherwise remind people that you and your comic exist– you get people who tell you to stop. That you’re an egotistical, overblown narcissist. That you’re annoying. That you’re a tacky self-promoting nuisance.
This is bullshit.
Never apologize for promoting yourself. Never shut up about your comic.
That is how you build an audience.
Some harsh but very very true words
When people let me review their portfolios (on career day or open days at my game design school) I explicitly ban them from commenting during the review… …because otherwise they will follow the impulse to downplay everything I see in an attempt at being humble.“this is an old image…”
“I’m not happy with that one…”
“this is just a sketch…”
“I did this really quickly…”
“there is better stuff on later pages…”
It’s totally understandable to have those impulses. The quality of art is not empirical data and therefore impossible to measure. Good art, bad art, it all comes down to standards. And you don’t want to come off as naive or self-absorbed.
But just don’t do it. Don’t talk yourself down in front of others. In the best case you have someone supportive who now thinks “damn, this person needs to be prepped up all the time. Do I really want to work with somebody like that” or in worst case “now that you say it, yeah, this is kinda lame/rushed/unfinished/lazy, go away.”
You can only submit what you have. If that is not enough, then it’s not enough. Your attitude will not change that. But if it is enough, you can do serious harm by not being confident of who you are now.
This means appreciating what you are able to do right now and have a clear vision of what you want to learn, be confident that you will learn it in time.
Be proud.
This is really important. Eliminate this urge. Eliminate it professionally, when having contact with people in a position to buy your work. Eliminate it socially, when you just share your work for fun. Destroy this urge as thoroughly as you possibly can.Because when you have done that, you’ll find that you feel at least 25% less shitty about your own work. You lose the urge to do it. You stop reinforcing those negative thoughts, and they retreat. They may never go away completely (although they might!) but this is good practice for ignoring those thoughts flat-out.
Don’t shit-talk yourself. Even if you can’t be SO PROUD, don’t ever try to influence anyone’s opinion toward your work in the negative.
Try to love your work. Try to see what you learned from each piece, even if it’s a failure. If you feel that you learned nothing, appreciate the fact that just spending time on it is honing your skills and giving you valuable practice.
i used to be super not-confident in my own work. When I stopped pointing out the flaws in my own stuff, I felt better about it almost immediately.
The piece of advice I got that helped me the most with this is; the people looking at your work be it your director or an HR person, trust them to know and see the good work there that you’ve become desensitized to. We all have rushed shots and stuff, they can see the polished diamond inside of a rock, it’s literally their job! So don’t fret too much!
My two cents on portfolio reviews
You know, I see quite a bit of portfolio on a regular basis, and even more so when I go to comic con and CTN.
This time around was the same thing, I saw quite a few portfolios. Some good ones and some that miss the mark.
There were a few in particular…