UPDATE : My next step. by Straz3D on DeviantArt (original) (raw)

Hello everyone !

As you noticed, I am not as active as I used to be in the past. There are a few reasons for this, the first one is the most obvious, social media's algorithms can sometimes be quite obscur and I definitely got a victim of those as my DeviantArt enagement highly dropped for reasons I'll never be able to explain, and as of Twitter, ever since the change of owner, I got first shadowbanned, and even if it was lifted ( And I'm a lucky one on that part ) the numbers have never been the same as before major features of the websites changed since then, the website used to be many bubble filters where everyone has content related to what he likes / accounts he follows, that philosophy is slowly changing into something more global " Everyone likes this, you probably will too, despite it has nothing in common with what you usually talk about "

I started posting on DeviantArt and Twitter in March 2022, and got a lot of attention, at least more than I ever expected, I used to post on a forum's topic dedicated to this, and a friend kind of pushed me to make a Twitter and DA to be seen by more people, I thought I was " not good enough " to post on social medias, I thought I wasn't worth it, and would just be invisible on those sites. The " Me " from last year would never believe that he could reach such numbers in a so short period of time, so for this, thank you so much for all your comments, and love. Thank you to all other artists that helped me climbing and grinding !

Now, why do I make this post ? I've been posting renders for about a year and half now on social medias, and at first my main goal was to get better to make myself feel confident enough to be able to make my own Visual Novel. I tried to work on it aside, but in fact I was always deleting the progress I was making on that project, thinking : " Hmm, this could be much better. " I could be better " " I don't like this, I'm not to sure about that ". Slowly, I was forgetting why I was here in the first place, and it's weird but I think it's also because I wanted to forget aswell, I am hiding the fear of the blank page. Making this game is all I ever wanted, I wouldn't be here without this project, yet with the " success " I had by just posting, I could satisfy a part of myself, and kind of put aside this project and tell myself " I can still get better, so I must wait before rendering for my visual novel. "

That idea of " I need to get better " makes no sense now. I am not the best artist, but I am surely good enough. I came to the conclusion that posting regular storyless renders here are a way for me to escape the fact that I am scared to begin as I am scared to fail, just as I was scared to get on social medias because I thought this would fail and no one would watch what I do cause I thought there were better people than me, and why would anyone watch me when there are better options. The imposter syndrome, The fear of the blank page, the perverse effects of perfectionism are blocking me from moving forward, I realise it as I feel like I'm posting more and more without that spark of " Oh I got much better now knowing how to do this " In fact I don't learn a lot anymore in terms of rendering, I know where's the gap between me and the best and there's no point reaching this, as a visual novel requires thousands of renders, all I needed at first what to know how to make good multiples renders that wouldn't take me hours each.

It's time for me to take on what's scares me : What I don't know to do as good as rendering, which is writting. I know how to code, I know how to render, and even if I've been writting years ago, writting multiples story branches is much different than writting a linear story. Writting branches means you write for someone to makes choices that would fit to who he is, it's an exercice that is very blurry to me but I MUST get to it, or I will never do it, and posting renders the way I do leads me nowhere as I feel like repeating myself, and a big part of the enjoyment is gone as I do not have any goal anymore.

So what changes now ? Am I moving away ?

No, I will keep posting, but I will force myself to post only renders related directly to my visual novel, means less renders, especially in the short term as I need to write before I render. I am confident that I can make a top notch product but I must overcome everything that is blocking me from doing it. I remember how posting my first renders here felt, that excitement of creating something and showing an idea that came out of my mind was, this is pretty much the same thing but on a totally different scale, creating my story, my characters ( That most of you know visually ) giving them in some way a life and a soul.

I wanna thank you again for all the love you've been sending me, I am sorry if that was long to read, I also needed to write it for myself, to remember why I got here, how I lost the hunger and how I will recover it, this is a post to myself as much as it is to you, I didn't re-read, I didn't correct anything I just wrote and click post.