Fighting Burnout + The Plan Moving Forward (Patreon)

So, for anyone who heard through my most recent update video that I was working on an elaborate, three-minute long animation starring a new character named Ruby, I would like to announce that that project has been pushed further back on my to-do list. In its place, I am going to be making shorter, more slice-of-life projects involving Ashley and Olivia, the characters from my last animation, Girl Treats, in a variety of domestic situations. Essentially, I'm going to make the content everyone has been subscribing to the channel to see. I've already finished the rough animation for one of these projects, which is now available for my $10+ patrons to check out.

The reason I'm scaling back is due to a problem I've been facing lately. I've been trying to figure out what I want to do to follow up on the success of Girl Treats, which as of writing has nearly 300,000 views. I am aware of the significance of that number, but my brain is always telling me to change project ideas, from grand epics to super simple drawings. And I think the solution lies somewhere in the middle.

The Ruby animation (A Meeting With Ruby) was leaning more towards the "grand" side of the spectrum, with a new animation method that was going to lead to a much smoother and more theatrical end product. However, I burnt out severely trying to get myself to work on it, and I had a moment of panic where I wondered if I was going to have to take a long hiatus from the channel in order to recover from said burnout. During this time, I focused on making simple drawings, like the one shown above, to pad things out while I thought about what to do next.

I think the thing I'm struggling the most with right now is the idea of commitment. The idea of sacrificing the freedom of spontaneous idea generation with the stability of finished art. I have a very active imagination, and it's difficult for me to stick to one idea. This is why Girl Treats was such a big moment for me, because it proved that I was, indeed, able to fight through the drudgery of animation production and see a minute long animation through to the end, and see it actually pay off!

However, my mistake was in thinking that would be the end of my journey, and I would be able to commit to absolutely any big project idea I could come up with. Unfortunately, some ideas are still too big, even for me, and I'm still the same finicky, anxious artist I was before, just with slightly more work in my portfolio to show for my troubles. So going forward, I'm going to try and find a middle ground where I can still put stuff out that you guys can sink your teeth into, but are still achievable given that my energy levels are not always where I'd like them to be.

Hopefully I will be able to finish my next animation very soon. In the meantime, I wish you all a very happy pride month! :3