What am I doing wrong? - General Discussion - Forums

Lord You Know Who

I notice several of my pictures are getting a massive amount of downvotes.

One user even called out what I do “shitposting”.

So, I’m gonna ask you directly:

what can I do to improve?

Is it the “meme generator” thing? I already told you that I can’t draw, so it’s really the only way I have to make pictures.

Is it the storyline thing? I’m not giving that up (at least until the show ends in 2019, at which point I’ll stop making pictures altogether), but I’d like to know how to make the storyline more accessible to you. For what it’s worth, the “undoing the snap”/“destroying the Infinity Gauntlet” plot point will be dropped once “Avengers 4” gets released this May.

I always strive to make something that all of you can enjoy, so please give me advice on how to do it.

Posted 5 years ago Report
Edited 5 years ago

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Derpy Whooves

Looking For My Doctor

@Lord You Know Who
These are just my suggestions.

Stop uploading images that you almost immediately regret having made. After you make one of your ‘flamebait comics’, ask yourself if you want to be publicly associated with it, or if you are just making the comic as a coping mechanism and it’s something you should delete, rather than sharing on a site with more than a million unique visitors every month.
Even if you can’t draw, try to make the images in your comics reflect the narrative. You tend to find two, and only two, images that you juxtapose over and over until you come to the end of your text. If you just want to post that text, post that text - don’t paste it onto two screencaps or crops over and over.

Personally, I believe that a plausible explanation is that your downvotes are a combination of you using beloved characters as mouthpieces for your own internal debates that you yourself do not want to be associated with almost as soon as you publish them. If you have so much regret over sharing these with others, maybe you shouldn’t share them, or be surprised when others don’t want to see it.

Instead, if there is something you actually want to say and stand behind, lay it out. Here’s a tutorial on laying out a comic - I have only just perused it but it seems solid and valid, maybe it will help you create interesting comics that deliver your narrative in a way that even you consider insulting and offensive and indefensible.

And maybe sleep on your comics to get you past the “2 hour regret” marker that you seem to have. If you make something today, hang onto it. If tomorrow you don’t regret it, then upload it.

Those will probably do better.

I also recommend Scott McCloud’s Making Comics. Take a look for any local events or classes that host Scott, or any local art schools that he is teaching at. He tends to pre-flight his expensive classes VERY inexpensively at local art schools, like MCAD in Minneapolis, and his week long storytelling classes will dramatically improve your ability to create stories that people will want to read.

Also, Neil Gaiman (the author of Sandman and a lot of other stuff) has a magnificent workshop on MasterClass on storytelling. I unreservedly recommend it to anyone who wants to communicate or tell stories, and who isn’t disturbed by sitting in Neil’s basement with him practically in your lap explaining what the fuck is wrong with your approach to writing.

Your ability to draw is immaterial in all of this.

Your regret for what you create says that you are getting close to something fundamental for you that you need to communicate - but are terrified of others hearing. Maybe check out “Writing Down The Bones” by Natalie Goldberg; it’s a master’s class in giving up everything for the purpose of discovering and being true to your own voice. Basically, if you want to write, your job is not to keep asking to have things deleted but instead to go to the deepest place in your psyche and dig a hole there as a trap for your worse monsters, and as the monsters fall in and tear your emotional flesh until you are a bloody wreck, your job is not to scream or try to escape or to beg for forgiveness or mercy, but to WRITE.

You have something you are trying to say, but you come across as massively embarrassed by it. And when something connects with people you demand that it be deleted, even if the response is positive. And I think that effects how others receive your work.

So, that’s just my two cents.

Posted 4 years ago Report

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Jarkes

GOKAAAAI... SILVER!

@Derpy Whooves

Did you just respond to a year-old post?

Posted 4 years ago Report

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Derpy Whooves

Looking For My Doctor

@Jarkes
It just showed up in my notifications today, or ended up being on top of something I was working on which for some reason made this post something that was apropos something else, either way it seemed like it wanted a reply so I replied. I didn’t notice that it was a year old until you pointed it out.

I guess that makes me …

T _h E N _e C _r O _p 0 _s T _e R _!

BW ^A HA _HA ^HA _HA ^HA HHAAAAA _AAAAA .. >cough< wheeeeeeeze _(whiny)

For what it’s worth, I also just liked an image that was uploaded 2 years ago.

Posted 4 years ago Report
Edited 4 years ago

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