Daki Post Mortem (Patreon)

This'll probably be a lot of me yapping, hopefully it makes sense and is coherent. Mainly I wanted to talk about what I learned working through this and what I can do going forward to make sure I don't get stun locked like I did.

In short, my impulsiveness makes it difficult to focus on long projects, and I certainly got complacent on my total stamina. However, the lessons I learned working on this are invaluable going forward and having something sold commercially is a big win for me.

--------------------------------------

So as a creator, I'm very impulsive when it comes to motivation/desire to work on projects. What I mean is, my interest in something is pretty damn fleeting. If I don't start something right away when I hear about it/think about it, my willingness to continue working on it evaporates pretty quickly. Even with these sketches I've been posting the last few days I've had diminishing returns on my enthusiasm for them after posting LMAO.

What this means is, the less time I can spend on a project the higher likelihood of me putting in more effort into it. The longer I leave something sit, the more it starts to occupy my mind and then I begin overthinking things. And unfortunately, I'm just as much of a thonker as I am a yapper. Ironically, the more real estate a project takes in my headspace the more difficult it can be to complete it. The more I have to "force" myself to finish something, the worse something will likely come out.

Is this just me complaining? Yeah, lmao. But the mental of working is just as important as the actually doing of it. That's also the main reason why I'm very picky about which coms I take and which characters I'll draw. If I'm not enjoying the process, the end product will suffer.

But, I did enjoy working on this. More in the beginning, it definitely became a grind and a long list of things I needed to check off. Which is just the nature of the beast of long projects. I wanted to be finished with this last week, but I couldn't get myself to work on it much. So my inability to focus on it plus the seemingly increasing list of things to complete on it really took a toll. Basically, I think every creative project has a stamina limit, right? This kind of felt like me completing a 1km dash and then going "Yeah, I'm good for a marathon."

Thus, I'm not good at long projects. I just simply don't have the stamina/focus for them. This may come from a lack of experience, or simply a lack of training. Likely the more of these big projects that I take on the faster and more efficient I'll become at them. However, it affected my ability to create smaller stuff too much. I haven't put out nearly as many illustrations for y'all as I would have liked. Plus, I feel like the Mel illustration (for the character poll) was just me trying to get it over with so I could go back and work on the daki. Which isn't fair on you guys.

That being said, I'm glad I did this daki. If it does end up on cuddly, that's a huge win for me. Having something sold commercially on a (pretty) popular site like that is a great stepping stone for my career. Even if I may have to explain to my family why I drew a woman spreading herself as a pillow cover. Boy I am not looking forward to that conversation (thanks lemon!)

This month may not have been the most productive in terms of total illustrations posted, but it's a big step forward for me regardless. The experience from working on this is invaluable and it really taught me my strengths as a creator. That may sound cheesy or a bit hyperbolic, but I think I've earned that right LMAO.

--------------------------------------

Anyways, thanks for sticking with me and listening to my yapping. Both in this post and on discord. Now that my mental is free, I'm looking forward to what I can create.
(Also sorry for any grammar errors in this I'm not rereading this to correct them LMAO)