i read this post by kayin, the designer of i wanna be the guy, and it's really good but i wanted to add some thoughts of my own on this bit:
If you're making art for success and praise and you're drawing cuddly OC stuff or making a heartbreaker TTRPG book, or WHATEVER fucking stop. They're called heartbreakers for a reason. Go listen to some of the great comic artists, or game designers talk about why they made games. They are making art to serve their audience. They're not getting hung up on their childhood creative ideas, they are designing ideas specifically to find success and if that feels awful and heartbreaking to you but you still want that sort of success, you gotta recalibrate.
i think kayin is right, and hearing it phrased like this helped me put into words what i think on this subject.
this is often phrased as a dichotomy between art and commerce but i don't think it is. i think it's between individualism and collectivism, or selfishness (here meant as neutrally as possible) and selflessness.
many people feel for some reason like considering what other people might like about your art at all compromises its very nature as art. they go on and on about how anything short of their singular creative vision is crass capitalist garbage. this is, in a word, bullshit.
there's a bit from timbah on toast's excellent video essay all my homies hate skrillex that i think about a lot:
People often think about DJing as a one-way street where the DJ decides what songs they're gonna play and the crowd vibes to their selection, but in reality DJing is a lot like.... well it's a lot like having sex. You have your own specific tastes and preferences which you want to try out but at the end of the day, your main goal is keeping the audience happy. if you're doing something and they like it, keep going, why would you stop doing something that gives them pleasure? If you do something that you really like but they're not into it at all then maybe save those eccentric techniques for another occasion. Your ultimate goal here is making sure other people are happy for the duration of your performance.
i think the reason why people complaining about nobody they know caring about their art often rubs me the wrong way is because of this. your friends aren't acting out of malice, but if you're receiving a pretty clear "no" signal every time you try to show them anything you're making, it strikes me as kind of myopic and self-absorbed to be frustrated with them for something they can't control (whether or not they like the things you make). either you care about making things for your friends or for whatever audience you want to like what you make, and you'll pay attention to what they like and don't like, or you're just making things for yourself and shouldn't be surprised or upset when other people don't like it. there's nothing wrong with a little intellectual masturbation (so to speak) but dragging other people into it and being mad at them when they don't behave like you want them to is pretty annoying.
a lot of the time when i see people complain that nobody they know is listening to their music or playing their games or reading their comic or whatever, i look at it and it's technically competent but extremely derivative. the most common problem i see among technically skilled artists mystified by their work not receiving the same level of attention as similar work is that they have not thought about why someone would listen to their work instead of those obvious influences. why would i listen to your ambient drone music when i could instead listen to brian eno, whose music been with me since i was a teenager? why would i play your sentimental indie rpg when it looks and feels exactly like undertale, a game that already made me cry eight years ago?
audiences want the right balance of familiarity and novelty because if something is too familiar, it will always lose in comparison to similar works that they already like and have an emotional attachment to. you have to give them something they can't get elsewhere, not just "that thing you already like, but i'm making it". it's worth noting this is not just a problem with the kinds of independent artists i'm mostly talking to with this post. i've talked to a lot of people working on projects with millions of dollars in funding whose pitches boil down to "that thing that's already successful, but we're making it,"1 and it's always doomed.
anyway, some actionable advice:
- don't just think about other creative works or aspects of those works that you like and want to imitate. try a little "design by frustration." think of things that make you frustrated with or disappointed in the works you love (or the works you hate), and you will often find great starting points for new creative work.
- don't mention your influences when you're trying to pitch your stuff to people. it makes people go into the experience already trying to compare it to a thing they're familiar with, which puts you on the back foot. don't hide your influences if people ask about them or identify them, but just don't start there. start with what makes your work unique.
- make gifts for people. they can be people you know or people you don't know. there's joy in art made only for oneself but there's also loads of joy in putting aside what you want for a moment and thinking about what would make the people you care about happy. there's nothing shameful or inherently crass and commercial about making things with other people in mind.
- there's a lot to love in work that's the singular vision of an extreme weirdo, but if you're putting work out there by following your muse and nobody even bothers to hate it, maybe you're not as weird as you want to think you are.
1: (anything described as a "cinematic universe" conceived after the success of marvel movies comes to mind as well)