Make Comics Not Excuses

This can be interpreted a couple of ways. Either 1. You freeze up when it comes time to create your project. or 2. you freeze up when it comes time to show/publish/display your art and show the world.

In either case you have to ask yourself why are you freezing? What is it exactly that’s stopping you from doing “pulling the trigger?” Are you afraid it’s not going to come out right? Are you afraid your idea isn’t perfect yet? or is it something else?

Whatever fear you have that’s making you freeze you have to close your eyes, ignore it and just jump in.  I’m not sure how many of you can relate, but when I was young jumping off the high diving board scared the hell out of me.  I’d freeze up I’d just stare over the edge. I wanted to jump off, but I was scared.  I don’t know exactly what I was scared of. The falling sensation? (which i still hate, and why I hesitate going on roller coasters.) Was I afraid that hitting the water from so high would hurt? I’m not exactly sure now, but I do know once I closed my eyes and jumped in, i realized that all my fears were unwarranted.  Not only that, but the more I jumped, the more comfortable I felt, and I was able to do more interesting things when jumping.

Making comics, or art in general is the same.  Whatever your scared of, you have to just jump in and start creating. You’ll find that whatever your scared of isn’t as bad as you thought it was going to be.  And the more you do it, the more comfortable you’ll feel, and you’ll be able to make better, more interesting things with your media!  But you can’t do anything unless you just start.

Most importantly to note, is that whatever you do isn’t permanent. Whatever ideas you think up, whatever stories your write, whatever sketches you draw, none of it is permanent.  So if you make something you later think is terrible, you can make something new, and different.

Alot of these excuses I recieve seem to come from this idea that whatever you make, that’s it forever. So it better be good, or else. But that’s not the case at all. It’s your creation. You can change and improve it however, whenever you want.  You’re not stuck with anything.  And if the first idea you created turns out to be utter crap…  Guess what?  You can come up with a different idea, take what you learned from your first idea, and apply it to your new idea, to make it better and stronger.   We’re making comics here not brokering world piece.  The stakes aren’t that high, you can always start again or make changes. Besides, how are you going to learn unless you make a few mistakes to learn from?

So close your eyes and jump in, because there are no more excuses to make! Only comics!

I’ve been feeling ill these last few weeks, so I don’t know if I’ll have a post for you tomorrow, if not just follow me around the web!

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And remember: Make Comics! Not Excuses!