This came up randomly in a conversation with a friend and I realize now it's probably safe to talk about it publicly.
I had never really known what "burnout" felt like until 2019 when it happened to me. Unfortunately, there's not really a clean, happy ending because I'm still not sure I've actually recovered from it by this point.
I was doing a combination of 7th Beat Games work [where I currently work] while also trying to do freelance at the same time and the freelance was what did me in.
For years I had been doing commissions and freelance work for various Youtubers. Depending on the Youtuber, it was sometimes really fun and fulfilling! Other times it was drudgery.
The final straw was that I animated, like, a 9-minute Fortnite cartoon for this guy. Really crunched on the deadline, really rushed it. I think at some point he deleted it off his channel for underperforming or something, and he never sent me the final version, so I don't even have the cartoon.
After this, I was completely burnt out. On animating, on drawing, on everything.
I couldn't stand to draw anymore. Couldn't hold the pen, couldn't sit in front of my computer and make anything. I've barely animated since. It just completely drained all of the fun for me. All I wanted to do was lay around, and not think about art anymore. Trying to draw felt like a mental version of nausea, like trying to force a fork full of food into my mouth.
The love that I had for art from before 2019 never really came back in full force. It's still really hard for me to draw, or animate, or focus. I'm extremely grateful to everyone who has bought our games at 7BG as it has allowed me to continue this career. I haven't been able to figure out how to reignite the spark or get my old motivation back in the years since. Not sure if I'll have to try to "pivot career path" at some point, or go back to school or something.
I've tried drawing a series of autobio comics discussing my experience with burnout as a hope of warning other artists on social media about what it is like but...y'know...burnt out on drawing before I finished them. Lol.
To be clear, not really bitter about that specific Youtuber, it was just bound to happen because I was being careless. From what I've heard through the grapevine about him, his company kind of fell to shambles in the years since due to mismanagement. Lots of start-and-stop projects that never took off. I guess we have that in common now.