I hate to say this AB, but I have to echo this statement. Personally I create to entertain, however I love to create to entertain not only others, but myself as well.

I used to write loads and loads of Fanfics, I started an attempt at Funnies once before, long ago, involving my UT figures. Those images are still on my harddrive and backed up, but I removed them from Imageshack because mostly I needed the space.

I began a new funnies attempt, I wanted to share my creativity with others. I thrive on feedback quite a bit, and sadly I tend to let it drive me some of the time. While others I find myself getting stuck and needing time to re-work what I'm working on in order to get back into the groove of things.

I've been unemployed a good six years now, doing my damndest to get back into the working world. It has destroyed my ability to focus a lot on creativity and creative endeavors long term. I get ideas, then I never follow through on them and it saddens and frustrates me that my once prided creative side has fallen into a slump. A terrible slump. But one that I still force myself to work around, to figure out.

Once again though my funnies need to go bye-bye, It probably would have helped if I'd planned out my story arc through from beginning to end and done all the photos in one shot. One of my big problems though is always rushing out a new project to share with the masses to try and recapture the magic of recieving feedback, knowing that I've managed to entertain people yet again and captured another great story idea on paper. (Or film.)

Of course it doesn't help I also started reviewing Kre-O sets and need the space on my Imageshack account for the photos for said reviews. If I wasn't unemployed I'd be able to pay to upgrade my account and have more room to do things online. Hell eventually I'll probably wind up with the photos for my reviews coming down too.

Ummm, the point I was trying to make though was that if I'm not even entertaining anyone anymore then there is little point to contiue on. You however, no matter how little feedback or posts you garner, at least you still have loyal readers interested in seeing what you have created and crafted.
I only ever got one or two posts from someone and that was pretty much it. My funnies thread winds up with more posts from me in consecutive order than anybody else. So I've decided to let it go.

This is getting all muddled up though. I think.

Create for you first and if you love what you do don't let others dictate or determine your enjoyment. If you're getting burnt out and feeling overtaxed there is no shame in taking time off to restore the juices. (I've been sitting on over twenty-five fanfics I started that I'd like to get back to when I can destroy the funk I'm in. There's no shame in that.)

Is what I'm typing making any sense? Or am I just rambling incoherently like some old timer?

There is however one other reason for why a lot of the 'old guard' may have stopped posting. Aside from the amount of time, effort and work involved, the real life situations that can arise, there is a much more serious problem we photo-comic toy funnies creators have. Eventually we wind up with way too may toys we want to use, too many characters we'd like to include because of how cool they are or because of the favorite nostalgia of the character. This in turn leads to juggling WAY too many characters, the readers start getting angsty and annoyed because it's been too long since their favorite character has shown up, we get pissed at them for constantly harrumphing and bringing us down because we aren't using their character they want to see and so... We just give up. How many of the older fan funnies dudes have collections in the 10 000 range? Not just TFs but every other toyline they collect. How many of them fell out of love with the hobby and sold off huge chunks of them, or for financial reasons just streamlined it down and gave them up?

Those are serious issues that we must consider.

I have always thrived to create, hell I've got a META fanfic I spent almost five years writting out on paper! With most of it done and posted on Fanfic.net, I still want to go back and edit all of them someday and we're talking over 20 000 pages for some of them. Plus I've still got four unfinished installments on paper I'd like to some day finish typing up. It's a curse sometimes. When you live to create, when you want to entertain, when you have the urge, you can't just abandon it because nobody is reading it. I mean you won't feel fulfilled if you do that, no creative person ever can, instead you'll start to feel empty inside. You'll wonder why you aren't the way you used to be, what changed, why you're busting your ass for the other guy when the other guy isn't even there.

Don't just create for others, you can't please the world. If, at the end of the day, you aren't creating for yourself too then of course you're going to start feeling like it's just too much work. No fun anymore. And move on to something else, or nothing at all perhaps.

Anyway, I'm going on and on and just walking around in circles at this point. Don't feel as if everyone has gone away and left you alone. Don't lose heart, times change and some days we may wish we could go back to those carefree days of our misspent youth. But if we don't embrace the change, adapt and find new ways to express ourselves and have fun for our own peace of mind, well I'm sad to say this, but we'll wind up extinct. And damn it I'm getting all existential and philosophical and stuff! Ending this, now.

 

Sorry to hear that, man.

I understand about the interest slipping. Mine waxes and wanes over time, and even when it waxes, sometimes real life is there to step in and block me.

But honestly, I wouldn't give up making WaP for the world. Even if I'm not making them as fast as I'd like.

Why? Because every figure in my collection is a character. My mind creates a persona, a backstory, and varying levels of depth for them as soon as I unpackage them and start messing with them. That's how it's been with me since I was a kid. I anthropomorphize things to a ridiculous degree. And all of those characters generate stories in my head that I want to tell.

I can't tell all of them, or even most of them, and that's frustrating. But what I can manage is better than NONE of them.

And hey, if five people read my comic, and one of those five thinks it's kinda neat? Even better. I won't lie, it's EASIER to make the story when people say they like it, and anyone who claims it makes NO difference is a liar. We're Pavlovian beasts, after all, we respond best to a carrot now and then. But it's not the only reason, and not the main one.

The main reason is to just get them OUT, out of your head and into the world. It's just... grown ups playing with our toys. More rules, more structure, and photoshop to fill in what we see in our mind's eye.

If you do it, do it because you enjoy it, because you want to tell the stories of your characters, and because you want to share it. And if that isn't there anymore, then don't feel bad about stopping. All things change, including how we play.

 

AB:

Your honesty isn't brutal at all, and don't worry about upsetting me, you'd have to try awfully hard, and even then it probably wouldn't work for long. I actually do take criticism seriously, but I've seen enough that I no longer have to take it personally.  

I think you're faced with the difficulty everybody runs into with character drama. It's a hard sell. You have to put a lot of original work into a character to get them to the point where something like that can happen at all, and you run the risk of making that character run counter to expectations. Dangerous. But...the reward when it works, is huge. Nobody in their right mind would try to set up Animated Bumblebee as a deeply sympathetic character, let alone place him in a tragic love story, for Gallifrey's sake. But Purdue, clearly a mad genius, made it work brilliantly.

And killed Yda. The bastard. She meant so...nothing...to me...before I read that comic.

So do you go for an easy win, Burnout, or shoot the moon? I think I know what you'll do, because I've read your earlier arcs. The Miracle Code could have crashed and burned very easily, you know. All anybody ever has to do is say, "That's a toy", and the spell breaks. But if you can keep the magic going until the story is done, you're a wizard.

So what do you do?  

 

I say end things, so you could be revisit or restart it down the line (llike the end of Star Trek: The Next Generation, JAG, MacGyver, or even Smallville)rather than end things with the "Nobody gets out alive" approach (Zeta Gundam, Angel, depending on the view point of the viewers)

 

While I'm of the "You're better creating stories for yourself first" side, I'm gonna play devil's advocate and ask : Do you still want to create those stories ?
Because if you have to try and force yourself to do it, that's the quickest option to be fed up with it.
So, if you don't wanna do it anymore, I'd suggest to not try and force yourself.
On the other hand, if you do want to and it's only the low response that makes you give up, do remember that most people generally only write to complaint. The fact there are any people at all that praise your work should tell you that it IS a good work.

 

Wow, thanks guys, your responses and support mean a lot to me. As I've said, I didn't want to end the comic, but the reasons probably had more to do with me just being frustrated about not being able to do comic stuff and a massive overload of college courses. However, even though the college thing has been addressed and beginning to balance out, I'm afraid that I honestly don't know where to take the comic from here even if I get a chance to work on it again. I mean, it's not like I have anything new to put into the stor-




Well, okay, so I MIGHT have gotten somebody who MIGHT be qualified to be a menacing new villain, but even then I-









Okay, fine, so I've got THOSE "potential characters" as well, doesn't matter, it's not like...

Oh, hey, what's this old folder burred in my pictures directory?

*blows dust off*




















Coming sometime in the near future!

 

Phew, don't scare us like that, Halloween isn't 'til Wednesday. Also, I can't believe you of all people want to use that version of Knock out in your comic, or is he just on the same shelf as the characters?

 

YAY!

 

Note that I said potential. Not everybody I've shown actually has a planned role, and not all of the new characters planned to appear have been shown either. Got to keep some surprises under wraps!

 

when i saw the first pic the first thing that came to my mind was... "big daddy"

...

 

So, it's "Robot of Miracles" with another Vocaloid? I was kind of expecting Len to be the next Macguffin-powered robot that everyone was after, but whatever.  

 

That was a long-ass post. There was a lot of good stuff in it, though, so I appreciate you taking your time for telling me all of that.

Still working on how Diamond Rose is going to get in the comic, though, since I've decided to scrap the original idea.

Look, Pol, you can be open with me. I know CI's Strarf is holding a giant gun (or more) to you head and constantly screaming at you to get things moving in the comic so she can go home. Maybe you should get Pinkie Pie to help her smile or something.

I feel this explains a lot about what I was feeling when I initially said I was ending the comic.

Honestly, I think I'd forgotten the fact that the comics are merely nothing but adult playtime with our toys on a higher level, mostly because I haven't been able to make them for such a long time. I was reluctant to try doing the college comics thing again, since the ponies didn't seem to be popular, but really I've been dying to try and make a little comic where my Lyra Heartstrings keeps stalking PCC Heavytread because of Groundspike's hand-like weapon mode...

What do I do? Easy.

I make Animated Bumblebee become a deeply sympathetic character and part of a tragic love story. Well, maybe not for this comic, but there's always Project E.V.A....

Oh, wait, some dude did it already? Hold on.

*BANG!*

Problem solved. Unless he's one of those damn timelords, then this might be more serious than it seemed at first.

I assure you, there will be no whales or whale noises in Twinkle Twinkle Falling Star.

To be honest, bringing Len in was an extremely early concept I'd considered when Robot of Miracles became much more than just a short project meant to pick up the slack for the delay in Innocence Lost, namely as a kind of "Anti-Rin" or something (the concept never got beyond the initial idea). However, a glaring problem with the figma, in my opinion, is that his facial pieces are reversed of Rin's where his "straight ahead look" has an open mouth and his "looking right" face is the closed mouth. That would have been EXTREMELY hard to use him since he'd never be able to look straight ahead when not talking. While I can get away with Rin not having an open mouth when talking, like pretty much every other character in the comic that's not imported from Japan in one way or another, the fact she DOES have an option for an open mouth is something I want to use when I can because it helps break down the always present fact she's really nothing more than a plastic figurine and strengthens the illusion she's real (remember, in comic cannon she's not supposed to have started out as a toy-sized figure, but as a fully functional android).

It would also ruin the kind of running joke about all the Japanese figures being female if Rin's male counterpart was around.

 

Fair enough.  

 

Oh, color me intrigued about a future chapter involving Miku.

 

Hows about you just make the comic for you. If anyone responds, then you have people reading, if nobody responds, you could always go the Late Marvel G1 stance where Hasbro had no real interest in the comic and you could go in any direction you want (this is just the ramblings of a G1/BW/ Prime/ Animated fan though, and since it's your comic, you have final say on what goes on. I'll just be reading like always and trying to keep my wilder theories in check)

 

I now wonder if Lugnut would be Megatron's loyal enforcer

 

I'm already doing what I want with the comic, I'm not trying to do something like sell the toys or anything (although if I recall correctly, I've gotten at least one person to buy Alt. Battle Ravage because of this comic).

Which one? Remember, I've got two Lugnuts in the comic, Animated and RTS.

 

Wait, you were going to stop making comics? That would have been a crime against the Funnies forum. I may be an irregular reader and commenter but I've always enjoyed all of your work, right from the beginning when you had Sixshot as a main character. You have a great ability to combine humour and dramatic storytelling, don't let that go.

 

Ah, a new arc. When it rains, it pours.  

 

Completely agree!