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A Golden Mean
Oct. 24th, 2022 08:02 amLast night I posted a narrative illustration on social media. As I was working on it, I knew it was going to get very little positive feedback and cause me to lose followers, and this in fact did happen. Still, I really enjoyed creating the piece, which is very polished (for me, at least) and expresses something I care about deeply.
There are a lot of similarly “difficult” illustrations I want to make, by which I mean I have a collection of nested folders full of scripts, notes, and visual references. I’ve refrained from actually working on these pieces because I don’t want to alienate people, but it was incredibly liberating to stop caring about that for a few days.
I know myself, and I know that consistently getting negative feedback on social media isn’t going to feel “liberating” in the long term. Also, I genuinely enjoy working on “easy” projects. So I need to figure out a good ratio... and also maybe what people like to see on social media? I don’t see this as selling out so much as an interesting challenge, and it’s good to be honest about the importance of external validation and community support.
There are a lot of similarly “difficult” illustrations I want to make, by which I mean I have a collection of nested folders full of scripts, notes, and visual references. I’ve refrained from actually working on these pieces because I don’t want to alienate people, but it was incredibly liberating to stop caring about that for a few days.
I know myself, and I know that consistently getting negative feedback on social media isn’t going to feel “liberating” in the long term. Also, I genuinely enjoy working on “easy” projects. So I need to figure out a good ratio... and also maybe what people like to see on social media? I don’t see this as selling out so much as an interesting challenge, and it’s good to be honest about the importance of external validation and community support.
