Marching forward

So, Christmas has been and gone for another year. As the dust settles after the new year’s celebration, I thought it would be a great time for an update.

After my first week of pushing social media, it’s hard to feel satisfied but also wrong to feel like I haven’t accomplished anything. Directing most of my efforts into Facebook and Instagram, I joined some groups, found local artists and some local outlets connected to comics. I was concentrating on keeping a posting schedule and trying to plan it to be manageable enough to accomplish every week. I did post a few more sketches than I would have liked but my week was very much a script writing and thumbnail sketching week. On Instagram I’ve gained a few followers, but comparing them to the number of accounts reached is disappointing. I also have less likes per post than usual, but I am posting a lot more than I usually do as well. Next week I will be starting some larger drawings and preparing some canvas for painting, so I am curious if I see any difference in interaction. I am hoping that if the art quality in my posts is better it might help gain more followers or at least reach a broader audience. In some way I think that the small number of viewers I have on Instagram are mostly connected to streamers from twitch. Some of which I am on friendly terms with, along with others that have not shown any love from the beginning and almost acting a group denying entry by looking the other way.

So, the dust has slowly settled on the excitement of having the first comic I created arrive in the mail. I’ve shown a few people, been congratulated for the accomplishment and now sit in front of the script and page layouts for the second issue. I’ve been asked a few times about why the first issues digital version is available to read for free . And the more I answered by saying “The first book was a test, to see if I could actually make one”, the more I realised I am very much at the next stage of this comic creation path. Promoting it and hopefully Making money from it! It sounds strange to say out loud but the goal was not about money. The goal was to make a 22-page comic! Something I wanted to do way before I got married, had children and settled into a happy life as a husband, stay at home dad and freelance artist/designer. Making a comic has been in my mind for so long it just became part of my thoughts, so to make the comic is an accomplishment I forgot to be proud of. I guess in a way, I try to stay humble by not being proud. By realizing there could always be someone bigger, better or faster right around the corner. Okay, maybe this is also a mentality I picked up from playing sports, but either way it encourages me to not relax or be satisfied with what I’ve done. But now being in the position of growing an Instagram , Facebook or You tube channel and starting from scratch is a whole lot of humble all at once. Until now I’ve only really put effort into twitch streaming, having what I think was decent success with what time I had available to stream. The experience was enough to see that in the beginning there isn’t an audience just sitting there waiting to view my content. There are countless groups of content deciding if engaging in my creations help or hurt them! And a possible new fan or follower is floating somewhere in between unaware of my existence. So, I will stay humble as I enter this new stage, try to stay proud of what I’ve accomplished so far and focus on the next step!