magicofthepiper

I'm going to have go through a lot of self-healing before I can feel comfortable with making art for commissions.

I currently do a lot of work for my parents, but it's not a healthy experience for me. I've always struggled to find self-worth in my art away from their judgment. And working so closely with them and experiencing their unfiltered responses to other artisans that they commission has had a negative affect on me.

Plus, I really do think I have undiagnosed ADD, but I can't persue meds for it as long as there's a chance my mother can discover I'm on them. So it's really difficult to get started on what I want to do when I'm experiencing that finishing projects doesn't actually deliver the dopamine hit or sense of relief that I expected.

When I'm in a better state of mind, I'll be posting fan art. Fan art creates a unique sense of joy in me that allows me to overcome the self-doubt. But I also feel a lot of shame just at thought of my parents coming across it and despising it, so much of it stays tucked away in books and file cabinets.

That is... if I ever manage to put it down on paper at all.

 Whelp, looks like Deviantart completely took away a way to passively raise enough credits to gift core memberships to other members. That was the most valuable aspect of bothering with a membership. I'll try have something for next March, but I don't think it's worth buying a membership.

I also had to use up my fragments before the end of last month. Which I did, but I was hoping to use them to gift to traditional inkers that participate in inktober.

But it's just another reason to believe dA might as well be dead and I should probably look into other sites.

I really wish there was more opertunities for feedback on work that I'm still in the progress of.

It seems like the options are a discord community or real life sketch parties and paid classes/mentorships. Sketch parties give me performance anxiety, and I opt for more normie subjects to draw in public rather than what I want to draw. Plus, you're there to socialize more than to receive feedback. Paid classes can be fun, but often focus on new skills rather than improving. Mentorships sound like they would have a negative effect on me since I already have issues with my self-worth being dictated by someone who doesn't care for the type of content I want to draw and tries to get me to make art for them.

The post-Facebook internet is so rejecting about feedback that's not positive. It feels like it's only the extremes of praise and hate comments. Even then, much of that gets filtered down to likes and dislikes.

Discord is difficult because you have to build a community you can trust. And I don't want to be put in a position where my day is ruined because someone started behaving inappropriately while I was offline and now I have to manage to the situation. Plus, it's demoralizing to be ignored when you do actually try to ask for help in appropriate channels. Maybe I need to join a wider net of Discords because maybe the issue is that I'm not in the right ones.

Amino was nice because the polls feature was actually super useful in getting feedback from strangers. Polls were pushed to everyone in a server, and so plenty of people would interact for that dopamine hit of influencing the poll's results. But that app's reputation is in the gutter now because despite being strictly 13+ from the start, so many users used it to be creeps towards minors.

The online art community feels like it's tailored for AI bros. People just want to consume art that looks nice. Anti-AI activists can shout "pick up a pencil" all they want, but until we create communities that uplift fellow artists rather than compete for views, I think AI will continue to perform well.

 I'm starting to consider purposely drawing Oboe and Ocarina as jackdaws, rather than crows. I still will refer them as crows in my writing. Or rather, I'm considering the Doyalist portions dance around the word, "black bird", "corvid", ect. while the Watsonist portions just upfront refers to them as crows.

TBH, I'm still very uncertain how I want to approach Taxonomy in my VoH fanfics and art. So much of the world building implies that it was meant be Medival Europe, but without any research into historical accuracy. Like a Disney movie.

But also, it's clearly a different reality. Almost like an isekai universe. In some ways, the world building would make more sense if it was one those medival fantasies that are actually post-apocalyptic. Because setting aside some of the sillier references to media, a lot of the world building is dependent on 20th century music and composers have existed in some form.

I take a lot of influence from historical fiction in my fanwork. So I feel inclined to reference things such as apples, onions, tulips, ect. as if I was writing historical fiction.

But I've been playing a phone game called AFK Arena. For being a game made to generate tons of money through "whaling" and will one day go offine and no longer be accessible, I really enjoy the amount of world building put into it. In particular the unique flora and fauna and how recipes are incorporated into the game. Such dishes resemble what we're familiar with but made with ingredients that are fantastical.

For a simple example, basic dairy products come from cowlpie (cow/kelpy) milk. So rather than imagining a world of cattle in grazing pastures, domesticated cattle would live more like marshland varients such as Camargue cattle.

Sometimes it makes sense to apply a heavier fantastical element to the fantasy realm of VoH, but I seem more inclined to lean in favor of realism.

 As a traditional artist, I'm not really thrilled about Disney's upcoming film Wish being touted as a combination of 3D and "watercolor". It feels a lot like how Tangled was originally supposed to have an "oil paint" effect.

 It's bothering me so much that I've currently have been slapped with a down to the wire project by my mother. Outside my comfort area, but probably doable.

I make clear tangible progress on her project, and she still has the gall to call me lazy.

It hasn't even been a month since I finished her previous request.

It just sucks that it's difficult to find value in work I make for myself, because they'll see it as worthless if it doesn't appeal to my parent's sensibilities. Only to actually spend time on stuff at their request and still told it doesn't really matter until it's tangible.

It's made slightly worse that I expected yesterday to be one those rare "me days" where I have enough time alone to work on a personal project. I started on preparing, heard someone at the door, checked on it assuming it just the mailman, only for it be my mother. My "me day" was then stuck in a weird limbo where I didn't want to progress on her project and just tried to avoid her.

Not a big fan of human artists on Twitter right now dunking on someone who stopped making traditional art due to developing a tremor in their arm and is happy to use AI. I know they're mostly doing it as a response to Shadiversity's qrt about it and how it's a positive example of AI as a tool. But they are attacking the OP now rather than telling Shad to go back to swinging swords. So far, I've seen statements of: do paper collage; should of done hand stretching before starting to draw; tablets have a stability feature built in; use your mouth or feet; otherwise, are you really an artist?

Maybe I'm just internalizing it too much. Because on top of already having a lot of mental issues preventing me from working on art as frequently as I want, my last job caused me to develop eczema on my hands. Gloves have helped, but it can be painful to draw when my hands are inflamed. Some others statements often seen in the dog pile is the cliché, "Well, if you were really passionate, you'd find a way". I shouldn't have to force myself to draw despite my situation, and I really don't appreciate being told to go digital instead. I can't imagine how much tougher it would be if I developed Parkinson's or something. That can still happen of course, considering how far off it still seems to be until I can actually have a studio environment where I can turn off the "I'm warry of danger" part my brain.

AI is not satisfactory for me. I understand that "keywording" efficiently is in fact a skill, but it's difficult for me to recognize AI as more than a fancy form of Google Image search. I don't see it being much better than Googling, downloading an image, crop/edit, add a fancy filter, and then claim myself an artist. I'm definitely on the side of art requires "human processing" and AI art not being able to be copyrighted.

But if it brings happiness for that one person, let them have fun. Focus on the legal battle with the developers that are exploiting the "fair use" defense to unethically source training material.

I hope that if I can one day better synthesize my traditional art process with online content creation, I would really like to offer YCHs to my Patreons.

Patreon would allow for direct communication with my clients, both in promoting the rough concept and in private DMs. Plus, it would just be a fun bonus to already existing tiers. And since raffles aren't allowed, I hope that it would be considered fair play to use the method of creator preference by choosing the character from submitted offers.

However, the rules state that it must be open to "everyone" and not just Patreons. This may cause issues since I would have to use another form of social media to advertise and offer it. I suppose extending the offer on dA can work as well, but the process would still be shared publically on Patreon.

Because of this, I almost wonder if it would be better to take an additional step and allow a public poll decide whose character to choose. But that method can be gamed, so I would rather not.

I hope such a thing will prove to be fun.

It's interesting to notice mainstream US media start treating soccer as a profitable area of interest. It's also really interesting to see mainstream media encourage Anglos to watch media in a different language and to see Spanglish more normalized. But in reality, I only know that this push is only because NBC only secured the podcast rights for their radiodifusión en español platforms and don't want to encourage people to watch it on their competitor's services.

 
I'm very happy to have access to this now. I would rather have the support of patreons rather than trying to strike a deal with Google for ad sense. I will still use Youtube for sharing finalized versions of some stuff, but mostly because YouTube is actually a rather good mediator between content creators and music publishers. There are issues with false claims, but I would rather give ad revenue to use copyrighted music than to completely avoid it.

Here is a public post about how I intend to use the video feature:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/im-excited-about-59959034