Reflection

Last time I dived a bit into my history with trying to break into the comics and animation industry and how I felt about what I've gone through. I think with this blog I want to briefly touch on how I feel about my art and not what I do with it in terms of "breaking in". I've always felt like I was always behind in my journey with skill compared to other artist around me. I remember in high school, these feelings were the strongest I felt because there was a transfer student who was also an artist. I was so use to being the only "artist" in school and by artist I mean the only one who was drawing manga, but out of no where there was this kid who was drawing Marvel and DC characters at a level where I was nowhere near.

I felt less than, like what was I doing with my life that I was drawing everyday but my skills wasn't advancing quickly enough. I started to question my very existence of what I wanted to do with my life just from this interaction with another artist. As a kid, my talents wasn't treated as a serious thing so I was never in spaces where I could connect with other people like me. For my entire childhood and teenage years, I was never around others who can draw characters nor was there someone to teach me. I taught myself through watching tv, reading comics and manga that I came across, and having an overactive imagination. There wasn't a bar I was trying to hit, but I knew where I wanted to be and what I wanted to do. So seeing someone else who can draw eons better than I, it was a wake up call and the first time I can recall feeling like crap about my skills.

I feel like if parents took their kids talents more seriously and actually provided environments where the child's talent can thrive, then there'd be less impostor syndrome. Since I was doing everything by myself, this interaction triggered an unhealthy approach to how I went about studying. Unfortunately, since I was really into manga an anime, I adapted the Japanese way of working yourself to the bone. Thinking that this would fast track a way for me to get better quicker, but it only fast tracked my unhealthy relationship with my own work. You see, art is supposed to be an outward expression of the soul but in modern times, we've gotten so used to capitalism that we have forgotten what a soul even is. Everything is competitive and calls for fast output, we're not given time to flush out the stories we really want to tell. So if your not working with the soul in mind, then how can you even call yourself and artist? You'd be no different than an AI machine, learning new things and spiting them out to move on to the next thing.

The renaissance artist spent decades under study of the masters to make 1 art piece that defined their life. The study of the human body, perspective and life itself captured within their tools so that way it can move the souls of people. This is the type of discipline that has been lost to modern times. Now, what are we working for if it's not for the betterment of humanity in some way? Is it merely to appease algorithms and train machines on stealing our works? But I digress. I spent years under this stressful habit of waking up early and sleeping in late. No exercise, no good diet change, and since I'm an introvert I didn't like hanging out with people that much. This kind of grind culture, coupled with never getting an opportunity broke me.

In my early adult life I though I can be this over positive artist who found the good in everything. I took up streaming, tried to be an influencer, tried to be tutorial creator, but none of that seemed to stick. I found my way on to twitter where I quickly gained a following in the sonic community. I wanted to be a comic artist for the Archie sonic comics and I did send in a few samples but never heard anything back. Being a comic artist for Sonic the Hedgehog was a goal I've had most of my life, I loved Sonic. I still do, but you know, after years of retrying and not really moving.. I had to rethink where I was in life. I think on twitter I only hit 1.5k followers after nearly 10 years of being on there. I used to post every single fucking day, used tags, posted at specific times of day, started doing videos at one point. And somehow, everything I tried never worked. My goal was to gain followers so I can get noticed by larger artist and studios who would want to work with me, but obviously that didn't work out.

I believe it was in 2021 or 22, I was already loosing steam. I was already thinking about other things that I wanted to do and I blamed comics for holding me back for most of my life. Comics was the thing I latched on to since my childhood. It got me out of a lot of hard times in my life, even when I was at the point of no longer wanting to be on this earth a couple of times. I always turned to my characters, my world of getting me out of the dark thoughts that was always in the corners of my mind. But when I reached a breaking point, I blamed my love for comics and subsequently, I was done with comics. I remember doing the 30 days of sonic challenge, then after that I was really done. I barely gained followers/ interactions, pushed myself daily to completing something, and wanted to be that charismatic person that I knew I wasn't.

This period of my life was meet with uncertainty and I felt like a wandering soul, no purpose and no reason to live. Somehow, I found philosophy and turned to Hermeticisim. This reflection taught me about myself, it taught me that maybe I've been going about my whole art journey the wrong way. Who was I doing this for and by what definition and I holding myself to? Why was I giving social media this ambiguity level of importance that it triumphed everything else? Once I started to question my own reason for even wanted to pursue art, that's when the true meaning of art opened up to me. I learned that the poisonous roots of social media had been planted in my mind at such a young age and I allowed it to flourish. I allowed my own doubts and impostor syndrome to drive my entire reason of wanted to even be an artist in the first place. And I knew that it was going to take a very long time for me to rebuild the broken relationship with my art and soul. But it was worth it.

Today, I feel more angry than ever and that's okay. I'm angry because I know that I am deservant of opportunity and I understand the sphere of the online world better. I understand that follower count is nothing but a facade and genuine online interactions are hard to come by. I'm angry that I spent my entire life teaching myself skills, only for the industries to be crumbling by the hands of corporate America. I'm angry that I grew up with the best stories human beings had to offer and the next generation will not. But with this angry comes a new resolve and a drive so fiery that I don't see myself stopping. I want to tell my stories, I want to create my worlds, and I want to share them with the human world. I want to inspire someone to pick up the damn pencil and start. Because without art, there is no soul. And without soul, we're all just machines.