🌱 planted 240504
what kind of comics do i make and why? what kind of comics would i like to make?
i usually make autobiographical comics comics about my thoughts and feelings – very simply-drawn, stream-of-consciousness comics whose writing-drawing ratio is heavier on the writing (in terms of space it takes, not necessarily effort).
i make them because they’re fairly easy to do! i’m impatient and have trouble sticking with a project if it takes too long, which usually happens when i’m trying to make it look nice. but i don’t feel the need to make my goofy personal comics look that nice, so they end up being what i draw the most. my audience also is very receptive to my personal comics, and i can’t pretend that’s not something that keeps me motivated.
i want to keep making autobiographical comics, and maybe do them more regularly. but i’d also like to tell fictional stories and spend more time with my original characters… i want to make more polished, planned-out comics that take me longer than one night to draw.
i want to make art that is: expressive, dynamic, warm, personal, sincere, genuine, narratively cohesive, heart-tugging.
what would i like to make comics about?
- relationships - platonic, familial, romantic, etc.
- family depicted as a positive force, despite its issues
- queer and female friendships
- weird, freaky, unconventional romance
- wrangling with identity and belonging
- characters that look and behave like me and the people I love
- people who are extremely flawed but try their hardest to be good people
- growing up on the internet/in fandom
- silly, funny, unrealistic scenarios that require suspension of disbelief
- “what if this thing happened, would that be fucked up or what”
- personal growth
who am i making comics for? who is my target audience?
i make them first and foremost for a younger me—meaning that i want to write stories she’d find interesting, and that i want to keep writing stories because she always wanted me to.
i also make comics for people who get it. i draw for neurotic people who like to cosplay as normal, people who put effort into thinking about or doing things that are useless but incredibly fun, people with similar/adjacent experiences… maybe this is just another way of saying “people who are like me,” lol.
but i also make them for people who just like when someone tells the stories they want to tell, no matter how un-marketable or niche.
who is my actual audience?
my actual audience consists of a handful of the people described above (yay!), with some irls (family, friends… acquaintances?!) and fandom followers mixed in.
i have no idea what the appeal of my silly comics is to these two other groups. the former probably does not understand 40% of the obsessive fan activities i draw myself doing, and the latter i can’t imagine enjoying my less polished scribbles about myself when they presumably followed me for slightly better drawings of their favorite characters.
sometimes i hesitate to post certain things because i worry those two groups will not like them (because, again, i don’t know what they like about my comics?). i particularly worry about irl acquaintances judging my life and inner thoughts, or extended family feeling tmi’d… but i should maybe just not worry about it. people can think what they like, and unfollowing costs zero dollars.
what parts of making comics do i like? what parts don’t i like?
what kind of persona do i present in my comics or as an artist? how are they separate from me?
how am i going to talk about my comics?
are my comics precious?
yes.