Friday, March 31, 2017

Getting Out There and Pounding the Virtual Pavement

I finally hit that point that many people dread, the cusp of college graduation when the people who were previously students go out and make their way in the world. The hardest thing for me by far is thinking "I have these skills, I have all these ideas, now what do I do?" But I have also kind of gotten over it. I've had my time to fret and fear but now I just want to work.

I know the best way to gain recognition and fans as an artist is to post often and post good work. The work that doesn't have to be groundbreaking but it does have to catch attention. A lot of webcomics start out as a neat concept and the artist gradually improves their craft. Looking at the first and last page of a web comic, no matter how skilled the artist was when they began, always shows the drastic changes an artist undergoes through time. Still, there has to be more subtlety to it than throwing noodles at a wall. Surely there are effective methods to promote yourself and improve  the reach of the work,

I talked with someone from Career Development, and the biggest piece of advice they gave me is that modeling yourself after someone successful almost always works. Then the question becomes who to model. Every artist is unique in their own way. Every creator is a specially made cocktail of influences and techniques and themes. So before I start throwing my art at the wall, I'm going to throw my voice at the wall.

I'm going to talk to various creator about how they rose to where they are. The main criteria is that they are seemingly a self-sufficient creator. This does not exclude creators in groups. The spirit of the law is that they have content that stands on it's own. That they post the content to somewhere and then people come to view it, So I don't mind talking to groups or channels. If somebody made really great work and built a fanbase and then got brought into Hiveworks or some other comics group, that's fair game.

With that in mind I have made a list. It runs from comics creators on small facebook pages to youtubers with hundreds of thousands of subscribers to people that work for channels but create really unique, stand alone work, I'm publishing this list ahead of time, but it depends entirely on the goodwill of these people to answer. Some of the people I'm going to talk to are actually entertainment sites. I almost didn't add these, but then realized that the perspective of somebody who exclusively promotes and comments on media would be really valuable to taking myself out of the artist role for a bit.

When I'm done I'm going to edit down all the notes into a list of advice and techniques. This will be helpful for me because it will make me sort through all the information I find and also may help others. Wish me luck out there!

PS: Most of these are either on facebook or have a facebook page. If they don't have a facebook page, they are on youtube.

List of Peeps:
Sad Ghost Club
NHOJ Comics
Things in Squares
Kaijira's Pixel Art
https://www.facebook.com/pixelartmosaic/?ref=br_rs
@PixelArtMosaic
How to be a great game master
museum of NES art
https://www.facebook.com/metrospect/?ref=pyml_chaining
8 bit stories
the sad ghost club

Safely Endangered
Mr. Lovenstein
Jake Likes Onions
War and Peas
Death Bulge

Catsuka
Taste of Cinema
Open Culture
Good Films make your life better
Music and Art from Mars

The Nerdwriter
Justin McElroy via Facebook.
Armored Skeptic
Shoe0nHead
Cryaotic
Above Average
Mark Crilley

Swords & Sworcery