Got my Rick and Morty piece done (for my Patreon backers, week wait before it’s public) so now I gotta work on a huge piece on Deponia, PLUS articles on that same series for HG101.
As for something I did that just released recently, this Halloween special of my bad anime podcast. Quite proud of how this came out.
(TW: Sexual assault comes up because we talked about a light novel show)
I’m working on composing my first real instrumental guitar piece, track, thingy. I’ve been playing steel string guitar for a pretty long time now and I have only put up some covers but I wanna start making my own music.
I’m slowly working on editing Iwata Asks into some books to keep on my shelf. It’s something that I can’t believe Nintendo never offered in a physical form, and I’m scared of the day when they are no longer available online. The Iwata Asks section of nintendo.com actually went down recently, so having all the great interviews in a handy place would be wonderful. I’ve done a test run of one to see how everything translated from the screen to the page, so now I’m reformatting some things and working on the Wii Interviews!
Working on a Jet Set Radio fan soundtrack. Basically a collection of 15 or so tracks imagining myself as the composer for a new game in the series. People are really into it. Some samples from Twitter vids.
Trying to do a proper learning of Gamemaker by transferring a fully-fleshed boardgame idea into digital format. Early days and constant headaches from every angle with every step, ha.
I’m trying to find an “easy” way to make games using Python for my students in Code Club. I want a good goal for them to aim for that doesn’t require knowledge of OOP as they are 11 and 12, so not quite their yet.
At the moment, I think I’m going to make some non-graphical games and then spend a couple of months just on graphics. Just have to make sure they keep on enjoying it…
Great thread! So many awesome projects.
I’m a writer. I’m working on short stories for various publications and I also run my own subscription service called Forgotten Folios.
I write stories that take place in the past and then recreate them using period appropriate props and aging techniques on the paper. So for example the story about a young archaeologist running from the KGB and looking for ancient Roman relics comes with artifacts from the Soviet Union and even ancient Rome. The story that takes place in the 16th century is on old fragile paper.
It’s a whole lot of work and I’ve been trying to edge it into being my full-time gig for the last year. Realizing I might have to go back to doing something other than writing to sustain myself has been tough, so this last month has been a real slog.
I’ve learned a lot though, about writing, creating, running your own business. It’s A Lot, and made me much more vocal in sharing and supporting other artists when I can.
I was inspired by The Mysterious Package Company, which provides a similar service, though their products have less mailings and cost a small fortune. I wanted to play around with how writing is perceived. For me writing is not just about storytelling but about the form of the writing itself. Something handwritten today looks different than it would in the 80’s or in centuries past. Reading a series of letters between friends is so very different than reading a novel. It feels like you’re discovering something, and that’s one of the things I love about the Uncharted Games or Assassin’s Creed. You’re uncovering hidden stories that make the world feel so much bigger, full of more frontiers.
Anyway. Some great art up in this thread. Keep it up.
It sounds stupid but my current project is trying to get popular on Instagram. I make illustrations and I really want to make it my full time job to make art for a living doing commissions/prints/freelance etc. It’s just really important to be popular on social media and I can’t seem to make it click with people. Lots of likes from strangers but no follows. Bums me out. Can I be critiqued? We’re all projecting folks here in this thread- I’d love to hear from people what they think is good/bad because I’m at a real standstill here.
Here’s my thing https://www.instagram.com/mattsmithmakes/
Just trying to figure out how to make this shit a living y’all
I’ve been really enjoying what you’ve been posting lately dude! I’m a big fan of that beat you made the other day with Nas on it.
I’m making a game about driving a space train. It’s called Pan Galactic Railway. Still a lot of work to do.
Current project is the same cyberpunk sidescroller I’ve been messing around with for way too long now. It’s embarrassing how long I’ve been working on it since it’s meant to be finished in a very short amount of time (like way less than five minutes). I’d like to be finished with it soon though because next month is NaNoWriMo and I’ve done that for several years in a row and found it really creatively fulfilling.
And then I have another game I need to do as a kind of cathartic exercise.
Still working on Let’s Plays. I’ve been getting a lot of anxiety about their quality lately and keep overthinking everything.
So here’s my advice and understand I’m not an artist but these are things I noticed that worked for others.
First the most important one, your website is non-existent. That should be your home base where you want people to eventually end up on because there you can link them to all of your work, your other social media accounts, and how they can contact you.
Second don’t focus on just one platform, not everyone uses Instagram. Branch out and get on as many as you can. You don’t need to interact with people on them all but when you post new art it should go up on all of them.
okay so:
having a lot of instagram followers (or even just getting a lot of instagram likes) will absolutely not translate into more/more consistent comissions etc, unfortunately. it feels nice and eventually you might be able to turn it into a platform to promote prints/etc but mostly it’s just a place where you feel nice about getting numbers. these days i feel like you have to be a kind of “personality” no matter what you do and illustration is no exception - personally i’ve had way more comissions from my twitter where i just talk about videogames in between posting art once a week than i’ve had from an art-specific instagram. try to reach out to people you’d like to work with, do fanart for indie projects, etc. we might be on the internet but people still get jobs through friends and acquaintances.
this advice can be applied more widely but if you wanna get popular on instagram then you gotta figure out how to make your art ‘work’ on instagram more. think about the platform. working in a square format is cool, but the detail on your drawings ends up getting lost due to the scale. be more critical with your cropping. what if this looked like this instead? being able to see the neat details you put work into is way more interesting than seeing the pen you’re drawing with each picture. and don’t shy away from using instagram’s colour adjustment tools to make the inks look blacker than they maybe are. black ink looks nice.
when you’re looking at art on instagram or just checking out artists you like try to think about how you found them or why you like their work, both from a technical standpoint and a i’m-looking-at-this-on-instagram standpoint. some artists that work with ink and tend to have a good sense of how to showcase their art on that platform: @rome_adzan, @katsuyaterada, @ianmcque, @momopich.
i hope this didn’t come across as meanspirited! i’m very tired at the time of writing.
adding to this basically just to echo a Social Media Following For Art doesnt necessarily shake out into more work ime
i wasnt like Ultra-Famous but i did pretty ok on tumblr and like. even when i was giving away comic downloads for free, the post w the gumroad link would get a couple thousand notes and my comic would get like, maybe ten downloads
i dont have a public twitter right now but much like swords my exp back when i did was that just like. being present, talking to people, talking abt other hobbies etc ironically enough lead to more work than my actual Art Accounts. that’s not to say. go make an account and attempt to make friends solely w the goal being To Get Famous bc like people can smell that a mile off, just. maintain an active online presence and try to think of ppl as yr peers and colleagues u know
one thing also i found before i uhhh gave the fuck up is: you might get a few people who become like Regulars in terms of commissioning you and they are Incredibly Nice to have around. keep it Business obv but try to maintain relationships with people like that. if i was about to start a big push for commissions i would sometimes email ppl who’d bought from me a few times before just as like a “hey do you wanna jump in on this before i make An Official Post anywhere” that sorta thing? tho ymmv
I’ve mostly been working and saving money this year, but I just applied for a PhD in music and philosophy so fingers crossed that’ll come through. In any case it’s motivated me to do more reading and thinking than I have been lately and I’d like to keep that going.
Finally forcing myself to learn this piano beast after around 4 years of procrastination. It’s been difficult to find the time to practice now that music isn’t my full time focus, but it’s darn rewarding. Un Sopsiro - Franz Liszt
I think that is all really good advice! Thanks so much and no it does not come across as mean spirited in the least. I went to art school so critiques don’t phase me lol. That’s great advice and I really appreciate it. I know more followers doesn’t mean more work but it does help build a group of people who are theoretically game to buy some shit when it happens. I dunno, it’s all still pretty new for me and I spend so much time honing the craft of making the shit that the posting of said shit is a major afterthought. Making it a priority to have high quality posts has been helping a lot.
That Rick and Morty piece I was talking about is up now!
Currently knocking out some HG101 articles before I dig into a long piece on Deponia and record a podcast with a friend on SUDA 51’s The Silver Case (in which I will scream “THIS SHOULDN’T MAKE SENSE BUT IT DOES” over and over).
I’m currently trying to make spaceship combat in Stars Without Numbers fun by adapting an excellent Swedish system called Coriolis. It’s taking a lot more time than I thought it would but I think it is turning out pretty well! Hopefully I’ll be able to balance it a bit once I get my players to try it out in our campaign.
