/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

[Anonymous No.4190044]

>A lot of aspiring [creators] will start thinking about their Big Project in their teens, and then they’ll spend fifteen years thinking about just that.
>It’s an ideal story in their heads, and it transforms multiple times, and eventually you’ve got this perfect story that’s actually kind of just a huge hodge-podge of ideas that you’ve been having for the last fifteen years.
I feel seen. Do you have a Big Project(tm) too?

[Anonymous No.4190048]

>>4190044
it's from the brandon sanderson lecture series, btw.
https://www.docdroid.net/HbAtxVv/brandonsandersonlectureseriesnotes.pdf

[Anonymous No.4190052]

>>4190044
yeah, I feel like loads of people do, hence why idea guys are a dime a dozen

[Anonymous No.4190056]

>>4190044

of course
I've had many Big Projects in my mind so far, every time I thought that this one is more "mature" than the previous
always heavily influenced by media I consume

But the general theme is always that it's a long series of something, spanning several years, with huge hype-building, teasing and revealing what's next.

[Anonymous No.4190094]

>>4190044
I've always worked on stories, but they usually broke apart and the characters and ideas from it recycled into new and better stories. I have a character I've had for 12 years and he is barely recognizable now. He started out as a brooding Jewish violinist in New York, and now he's a Filipino exosuit clad Marine with the personality of a golden retriever.

You know you're almost close to getting a finished product if you can make an outline of the story - how it starts, the climax, and the end (or how the character dies).

[Anonymous No.4190443]

>>4190052
This
Doesn't every single person have some autistic world that's just an amalgamation of the shit they've read/watched?

[Anonymous No.4190480]

>>4190044
This was me in elementary school through high school.
But I realized pretty early on just how derivative my ideas were. It really was just the amalgamation of a bunch of stuff I thought was cool in anime, movies and games.
Every few months I'd fall in love with a new setting or story idea, sketch some of those ideas down in a sketchbook, create rough story outlines and characters, then throw it all away and start fresh.
But they always grew so fast and escalated into some galactic multi-generational odyssey.
If I had focused on getting better at art back then I probably could've realized at least half of one of those ideas.

>>4190443
I doubt everybody, from what I've seen it's always people invested in some specific medium like anime, film, books or games.
Often due to some franchise they're a fan of (i.e sonicfags).

[Anonymous No.4190534]

I currently have 3 projects that could turn into great stories, the biggest one is the most unfinished one because it's so idealized it's hard to actually set things in stone - but I'm sensible enough to not make it cringy self-insert garbage writing like most "big projects" I see floating around.
The other two are built around limitations and would work just fine if I could decide on the VISUAL design, the stories are good to go.

I do have 3 other big projects abandoned, one was the story of fancharacters based on LOTR, the other was a parody book on the epic fantasy genre, the third one was your generic post-apocalyptic sci-fi story, which would also probably be a book. I didn't polish any of these too far, so they're full of flaws and I don't really enjoy the ideas that much.

Out of these 6 projects, only 1 is recent (conceived last year), the rest has been cooking for years, but the excuse is always "my art is not goo enough".
I've started working towards making some progress with visual development for the "least epic" one so that I can gain mileage and confidence, I might turn my favorite on into a "just do it" project as well, instead of waiting for a billion dollars and a million employees to fall from heavens to hand-animate everything in 24s for me.

[Anonymous No.4190538]

>>4190044
Every time I listen to a piece of music I like my brain is right there with an sage music video good to go.
Also your standard long term comic ideas.

[Anonymous No.4190542]

>>4190044
This. Except not 15 years just 2 years. You're exaggerating retard. .

[Anonymous No.4190543]

>>4190044
i do and its more of a book than an illustration.

[Anonymous No.4190544]

>>4190044
Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

[Anonymous No.4190554]

Yes and I already made it.

[Anonymous No.4190629]

>>4190044
what if my idea of a bigproject was a collection of small works from the start?

[Anonymous No.4190634]

>>4190443
hell no, somehow I'm not autismic enough to do that. Instead i have random funny scenarios I think of in my head that I save for later possible stories. Then i take those stories and flesh them out.

[Anonymous No.4190662]

I have a fantasy setting I'm working on. It helps me draw, because I like designing the world and characters, and it helps me learn, because I'm basing its myth and culture around Proto-Indo-European beliefs.

[Anonymous No.4190686]

>>4190542
Can relate to that, have developed (in written/sketches format) a couple projects over 2 years on the side. Never had something brewing in my mind for 15 years, that sounds autistic and very much what an "idea guy" would do. Not "ideas" guy, "IDEA" guy.
>>4190662
Yeah it's really motivating to want it to come to fruition. I hope you'll get to complete it too anon.

[Anonymous No.4190694]

>>4190044
I had one some years ago. I was working on a comic and a game about it. But I let it go since it was based on me and my friends. I'm walking alone now.
I have some other projects, sadly I often lose the juice to complete anything. It's hard to keep working on something when you have no one to share with.

[Anonymous No.4190916]

>>4190443
i always wonder if normies also have one, or if they don't, what they fret about in the shower and such.

[Anonymous No.4190931]

>>4190044
Not exactly. If I ever create a piece that will hit even a single person in the feels so hard, that it will make him/her better -- all the time of my life I spent on practicing art will be justified.

[Anonymous No.4190956]

I want to make a few dozen pieces that are very polished and mistake free as possible and make an artbook out of them. Not to sell though, just a single copy for me to have.

[Anonymous No.4190960]

>>4190044
sure but westerner ideas all turn out to be mediocre anyways. Meanwhile nips have had 100 ideas and discarded 95 of them

[Anonymous No.4190970]

>>4190044
I have two
>my fucked up life story
literally would only appeal to me and my brother
and
>a set of stories about fantasy creatures of all kinds, mermaids, vampires, gnomes, elves, orcs, centaurs, satyrs, finnish, wizards, witches, eununches, monks of all different religions and cultures, biblically accurate angels and demons and other religious entities, taking place in all different eras of time, past, present, future, different themes, cyberpunk, the thought of an elf just chilling in new york doing daily activities, philosophical themes, the greeks ideas of different kinds of love (would sweep in a lot of normies while also teaching some important things), just a conglomeration of stuff I practically fetishized throughout my life
>have separate stories, could turn into a series or a bunch of different mythology fantasy themed completely separate things
the second one is more like what you describe, the first one all makes sense and could be an opportunity to raise awareness for different illnesses if done in a way that other people become interested in it

[Anonymous No.4191029]

>>4190960
nip ideas only seem novel because you're not one.

[Anonymous No.4191193]

>>4190044
fuck this is what im doing

[Anonymous No.4191215]

>>4190044
Damn that stings a bit.

I did this for years, from 6th grade until about Sophomore year in college. same story and stories that arched off of it.

I kind of gave it up and started working on smaller stories. My writing is a bit more productive now, obviously I have one story I focus on doing work for but its much more loose now.

Its honestly pretty limiting now that I REALLY think about it to focus on one setting for years, perhaps even damaging to ones creativity. Thinking of different settings and different inspirations and personalities is what keeps stories fresh. Some ideas are good and some are bad but if you have 8 others its not that big of a deal.

[Anonymous No.4191217]

>>4190044
YES! I fucking love bringing worldbuilding into extreme wankery levels.
For some reason I even have a much better memory to keep all these stories/settings in my mind while I'm usually lousy and forget shit all the time.
I already have one full blown adventure game steaming in the pot of which I have an actual working demo (only gameplay no story because I wanted to get it right first), a whole novel of which I actually published around 300+ pages, a space game with space vikings and corporate wars, and now I also started working on a porn game of which I'm laying out all the lore, the settings and shit and hopefully start a prototype soon.

[Anonymous No.4191417]

>>4190044
I used to do this but stop when I realize a bunch of cool shit was already made. I thought is was a waste of time and resources to make something that appeals to me when that something already exists.

[Anonymous No.4191422]

I feel so validated right now. I'm not alone.

[Anonymous No.4191457]

>>4191217
same, i spend more time on /tg/ shitposting about lore than i probably should

[Anonymous No.4191520]

>>4190044
Actually, no. I break down seperate the individual story piece elements and reorganize all the ideas I have for big projects and outlines. I put good ideas that weave from one to the next as a full-fledge story. I never commit to them since I'm too young and stupid, but I record them for later

[Anonymous No.4191588]

I will take it to my grave

[Anonymous No.4191742]

>>4190044
Yeah pretty much me, except I ditched the project I was working on in my teens for a better one that I started at 21 and worked on for 8 years. It's a graphic novel. I made about $3000 profit selling a sort of prototype/introductory volume in 2014. Then I pitched the complete project (3 volumes, 700 pages lol who am I kidding?) to most of the comics publishers out there in 2019. It was rejected, obviously! You have to at least try to follow your dreams, otherwise you'll be haunted forever, but now I am free to try other things.

>>4190970
>my fucked up life story
Do this one, genuine human experience always contains universals, you will be surprised at how many people it will appeal to, how many people have been through similar shit. The bullshit with the orcs and angels and whatever is the same made up shit that other people are already experts at creating. Also, the first option is a smaller bite to take: it will be easier on you if you fail, it will be easier to polish it, it will be easier for publishers or investors to come on board be cause it looks easier to realize.

[Anonymous No.4191756]

>>4191742
heres the thing, I've been spouting my life story for years on /r9k/ and even anons there think I'm lying half the time
there is such condensed fuckery for my whole entire life
and considering only 1% of the population is schizophrenic, I don't know if many people will be able to relate. at least I'll get sjw points for being trans, but probably not because I'm the "wrong kind" of trans (ftm, I have possibly only seen 2 fucking movies with ftm characters, and infinitely larger amounts of mtf catered content) and they probably wont like how a "trans character is being shown as crazy", or they just wont like it because "its glorifying incel culture" or some shit, but everything else might be relatable, bullying, the more common mental illnesses, one parent household, absent parents, drug related issues, early childhood doctor supported imitation meth (adderall) drugging, rape etc. etc., standard stuff really

[Anonymous No.4191761]

>>4191756
Just do it, faggot, that sounds amazing. You have a place I can follow you?

[Anonymous No.4191767]

>>4191761
fuck, I could make one yeah, but I don't currently have one, any platform that's more preferable?

[Anonymous No.4191771]

I don't like this thread, I feel like I'm being exposed

[Anonymous No.4191772]

>>4191767
Well, I mean if you have no sort of content to post there's no point in that. I assumed you'd have a drawing blog since this is ic. What kind of thing are you envisioning? Novel? Graphic novel? Video game? Movie?

[Anonymous No.4191778]

>>4191772
I want to do an animation, but I have a long long way to go for that, otherwise, I could start it as a "comic" or similar and then move it to animation later on

I do have content to post, kind of, mostly just practices, I just dont feel very confident yet.

[Anonymous No.4191788]

>>4191778
Doing an animation of this scope by yourself is impossible... I dunno, maybe you could do it in short episodes on a youtube channel.

You might as well start having an online presence as early as possible.

[Anonymous No.4191799]

>>4191788
yeah, I know how difficult animating is, don't worry, longest an animation I've made is maybe 5 seconds, a simple black and white animation of an eye darting around
admittedly, I only spent 3 or so hours on it, mostly trying to figure out how to work the software

any specific website you recommend for posting art? I was going to study marketing before making one but each website is different and theres like 20 websites I could do, I can't even manage to check more than 2 discord servers in the same day

[Anonymous No.4191805]

>>4191756
I guess what I mean is that the relatability comes from the fact that it's a real story that you know deeply, not from the crazy specifics of the story. Being ftm trans or whatever doesn't matter, there was a time when nobody told stories about any trans people, or gays, and now that's booming. The trend is in your favour. People are becoming more and more interested and exposed to rarer and rarer fringes of the human story as the world becomes more hyperconnected.

[Anonymous No.4191846]

>>4190044
No. I actually think up a few different big ideas a year. Most are too anemic and I put them into an idea folder until I can come back to them and develop them further. Or I just scrap them completely. Usually I scrap them. But honestly those are mercy kills more than anything.

[Anonymous No.4191850]

>>4190931
Based and benevolentpilled

[Anonymous No.4192499]

i'm thinking about hiring a writer to look things over if i ever get a contract for a graphic novel. i feel like a lot of creator-owned gns are let down by self indulgent stories and not the art. good idea/bad idea?

[Anonymous No.4192504]

>>4192499
It's always good to have someone give you an outside opinion. You could do that with friends or people you think have decent taste instead of hiring a guy, to save money.

[Anonymous No.4192655]

>>4190044
Almost every person who has one of these ideas for an overly ambitious epic saga typically can't write for shit because they haven't actually bothered doing any writing beforehand, even just to practice. They just want to jump straight into their magnum opus piece with the blind hope that it's going to be as successful and great as they envisioned and don't really have any back-up plans if it ends up failing (which it will).

The reason why you think your ideas are so great is literally just because they're your ideas. That is something that you need to come to terms with.
Coming up with new ideas is exciting, I get that and I can relate to that. But you need to remember that there is an audience that needs to be considered, and you can't just assume that the audience is going to share the same unconditional love for the characters and lore that you do.
They need to be given a reason to care, they need to be given a reason to be invested.
A fatal mistake that a lot of aspiring authors make, is that they become absorbed by their own imaginary little world and they end up forgetting about the audience, but still expect their shit to get popular, which is just silly.
A lot of amateur webcomics start off with their characters in conflict before the reader is even given a chance to grow attached to them because the author is only thinking about themselves and riding off the belief of "it'll just work".

Either way, for most people, the "grand big epic project" never gets made and remains on the backburner indefinitely. All you're doing is wasting years of your life polishing a turd by daydreaming about it every hour, so just shelf it for now and work on small project that you can actually start and finish. You'll grow much faster that way and it sure as hell beats sitting around with your thumb up your ass and doing nothing.

[Anonymous No.4192890]

>>4190044
This is pretty much every long running fiction series. Some writers literally started in their early teens and continue for decades.

[Anonymous No.4192940]

>>4190044
I always wished I did, but I have the problem where I am most inspired by books, my favorite being the malazan series. I'd love to have the creativity to come up with that kind of world or story but all I can do is use it for my art.
When I was a kid I always wanted to make my own story but as I grew up and read more I realized everything I maybe thought I could do had been done before.
Now all I want is to find a writer friend who needs an artist to visualize their ideas. But I'm an antisocial loser so I'm stuck

[Anonymous No.4194159]

Is there a st/ic/ky equivalent for writing fiction? I daydream a lot about various stories I'd like to write but I'm very scatterbrained so I feel like if I don't learn how to structure my shit properly it's going to turn into a mess.

[Anonymous No.4194298]

>>4190044
fuck, it's spot on

but I still want to share at least some parts of it with the world. So what I'm trying now is:
-limit the scope, instead of introducing the entire family and history of characters, I just focus on a single year in a life of 3 people
-I try to think of specific arcs and themes so it feels at least somewhat cohesive
-I plan the outline of the story ahead of time so it doesn't turn into a neverending mess of a saga

but it's also fun to examione how the same characters changed throughout the years as I grew as a person and artist, from hackneyed cliches and stolen traits to hackneyed cliches with a Deep Meaning

[Anonymous No.4194334]

>>4192655
>can't write for shit because they haven't actually bothered doing any writing beforehand, even just to practice.

fucking this
your first, second, third, fourth, and possibly fifth works are going to suck shit, less so the more you do it
i've "started" my big project a few times only to get to a point that i need to stop and learn how to draw/write something so it makes sense

[Anonymous No.4194341]

>>4190044
I have two. One fantasy, one sci-fi. Neither have a single core story, those are just worldbuilding projects that can be turned into any kind of story. It's nice to have some personal setting as a storage for your ideas and a platform to "simulate" various scenarios.

[Anonymous No.4194431]

>>4194159
The book "Story" by Robert Mckee outlines the process of writing a story for a screenplay and the reasons why certain process' work and don't work. But he also delves into story in general so while the screenplay parts are interesting, it's still useful for someone who doesn't want to write for the screen.

Dan Harmon is also very vocal about story-telling techniques recently too, and he's great at breaking the process up into understandable stages, so just look him up and see what he has to say.

[Anonymous No.4194456]

>>4190048
Kek, I remember watching those on youtube.
I wouldn't take it too much to heart beyond a "get to work fag" admonihsment since he's a bit of a technicallly competent hack who can't write ending climaxes to save his life. (fuck Elantris, seriously)
Most of it's decent but there's a lecture where he shills publishers despite admitting they can't do much more than pay up front compared to online publishing, goes on about adding token heroines (and gays I think? I forget) and pretends that publishing agents totally aren't politically minded but that stories that don't have those are just so bad they don't deserve to get published anyway.
It was like a 180° from the previous lectures too.

[Anonymous No.4194727]

I have a world I've been building for five years and I'm starting to think it won't ever see the light of day because I don't know how to tell a story to save my life.

[Anonymous No.4194762]

Not sure if it's a project, but I like to think about lore when drawing mech girls in some imaginary military group. Things like weaponry, area of specialization, body design, and placement in said military. Plus, me using planet/ mythology name plays in sometimes.

[Anonymous No.4194782]

The biggest thing I want to do at the moment is make a few 6 minute cartoons and continue making short gag comics.

[Anonymous No.4195213]

>>4194159
there isn't really a dedicated 4chan place for writing since /lit/ is bigbrain circlejerk. i go on /tg/ sometimes to discuss settings and concepts

[Anonymous No.4195249]

>>4191756

what you're gonna want to do, is put the gun down, release the hostage, and go back to being a female

[Anonymous No.4195266]

>>4195249
nice try hostage

[Anonymous No.4196060]

>>4192655
yeah basically

'here is my lore encylopedia' is a lot of peoples first webcomics. and it's not cause they like comics, it's cause they can't make an animated series alone or etc

[Anonymous No.4196163]

>>4196060
Reminds me of Chris Paolinis Eragon books, in which he would, iirc, stop in a middle of an action scene to dump a massive infodump of the enemy, the enviorment or some other shit barely related to the scene taking place. If there is any one rule that new aspiring writers should remember, it's that lore and world building are just window dressing to the actual story.

[Anonymous No.4196586]

>>4190044
how do you actually start to write a story? I don't think I have a zinc of talent for writing, but I've always been daydreaming of fantastical stuff. but I usually don't think of stories, but little moments.
I can envision a moment in a fantastical setting and would be able to describe everything in clear detail - the smell, the light, the atmosphere and the people.
but how do I put this into a coherent and satisfying story?

[Anonymous No.4196601]

I've been working on something off and on for years. I realized I was too lazy to draw it all out so i started writing it. It's actually helped me form it out a lot better.
I also feel like I'm actually accomplishing something since I can spew out half a chapter at a time on my phone when I'm bored.

[Anonymous No.4196609]

>>4196586
you basically just put pen to paper and write. Writing is like art, you get better at doing it. The only problem is that it is exponentially more tedious than art and the learning curve is much steeper.

[Anonymous No.4196634]

>>4196586
Start with a scene, then another, then another. Eventually you connect them

[Anonymous No.4196677]

>>4196163
this

[Anonymous No.4196732]

This thread feels like a personal attack.

[Anonymous No.4197236]

Thank you for making this thread OP. You are not a faggot.

[Anonymous No.4197794]

>>4196586
heres a pretty decent /co/ thread with some comic writing resources: https://archive.is/diVPH#selection-5905.17-5905.54

[Anonymous No.4200648]

bump

[Anonymous No.4202146]

I think if you have too much fluff/lore/subplots in your "big project" idea it could be a sign that you're not confident in the story's main themes and structure standing on their own.

I've had some big ideas before and I feel like most of the planning that actually helps the execution is just trimming down the fat. Cutting or merging pointless characters or plot points, shredding off anything that doesn't contribute to the main theme, not dwelling so much on the "cool moments" you have envisioned and focusing more on all that juicy context, character conflict, and buildup that actually makes them cool in your head in the first place.

[Anonymous No.4202159]

>>4190044
It's scary how well this fits for me.

[Anonymous No.4203252]

>>4202146
i think that's a big problem that people don't realise an audience has no real familiarity with the characters and such like the author does, and their love needs to be won. you know like one of those movies that makes way more sense the second time you see it.

[Anonymous No.4203274]

>>4196586
For me it goes like this:
>identify shit I wanna make a story about, think about the themes it can convey
>create vague beginning and end point
>and characters/dialog/cool moments I want to write about between these two points
And there I got a skeleton for my story, and from there I can just add on it- characters, story beats, dialogs,... Cropping, adding stuff. Its easy to tie it all together after you put some work in that way. I like to have a separated document on which I put all the worldbuilding that goes into it but won't necessarily make it into the final draft and storyboards.

... You don't need to do all that though. You could just draw, just write. It works too depending on what you wanna make.

[Anonymous No.4203289]

>>4190044
it hurts

[Anonymous No.4203295]

>>4203274
i can't write a script. something in me just is bad at writing a whole script without changing it at the last minute

[Anonymous No.4203302]

>>4203295
If you're anything like the analytical sperg that I am you'll be delighted to hear that there are patterns that you can recognize and use for yourself. When writing dialog, I usually think about:
>who wants what from who (intention)
>what happens if they don't get it (obstacle)
>why? (why does the scene exist in the narrative?)
Helps me get to the point. Reading more comics/mangas/books while paying closer attention to how dialog is made helped me with that, too. And of course you gotta exercise that skill a bit. It's like drawing, you can get better at dialog.

[Anonymous No.4203312]

Only when I was a dumb kid. Now that I have a filter for shitty ideas all my ideas get caught in it.

[Anonymous No.4203315]

>>4203312
Instead of just filtering them you should refine them into something you find palatable
Believe in urself anon

[Anonymous No.4203563]

>>4203312
there is so much fucking garbage out there that has genuine fans, there's no way your stuff is worse

[Anonymous No.4205690]

I want to make a romance story about a qt brown tomboy, and a Short chad who is too retarded to realize that their friend is a girl. Kinda like Toma Chan but the guy is even more autistic.

[Anonymous No.4206305]

I'm incapable of writing a story because I cringe at myself everytime I write dialogues.

[Anonymous No.4206603]

>>4206305
put placeholder dialogue in
afterwards, read the script out loud, that will help make it less bad

[Anonymous No.4206615]

>>4206305
There's a lot of shit you can do without dialogue, if it's really that bad.

[Anonymous No.4206625]

>>4206305
For dialogue it helps just to make every line as simple as possible. Remember that people rarely express things with autismal accuracy, they just say the bare minimum to kinda sorta get the message across.

[Anonymous No.4206643]

>>4190044
Kill me now.

[Anonymous No.4207349]

>>4190044
It started out as a fan fiction even, I wasn't trying to hide it. Main character morphed from a circus performer looking goth twink (it was 7th grade ok) into a ripped monk who inherited his father's early baldness. I think I'll try a fresh setting once or twice, since this one is basically fantasy but no medieval aesthetic as far as technological advancement is concerned, so rather limiting in that regard, but I doubt I'll stray too far from my "big thing".

>>4191756
Your life story is the one you can tell best, my man. And any story's appeal, especially of one so personal, depends entirely on its narration if you ask me.

[Anonymous No.4207403]

>>4190044
got one big one and some smaller ones, they begun as writing projects but I kinda want them to be drawn as I'm horrid at descriptions, plus I hate writing those
though I don't think I'll ever reach a level where I'll be 'good enough', so unless I deal with that self-esteem elephant it's gonna stay as an idea

[Anonymous No.4207413]

>>4190044
I have one of these but I think I've solidified it enough to where it occupies a good niche.

I have a lot of other more realistic projects in the meantime to help me get there.

[Anonymous No.4207421]

>>4194456
Holy kek, where is this backtracking lecture? This sounds like a worldbuilding / sci. fiction / fantasy general meme I haven't been paying attention to.

[Anonymous No.4207422]

>>4190044
One of the biggest changes for me as a creative is the shift from just Building Worlds to actually Building Stories. Up until my later teens, my worlds would consist of "hey here's a cool plot idea" and then just a bunch of characters, species, environments added on and on and on forever.

The shift for me was realizing that no matter how much lore I make that doesn't create a story in and of itself, so I started actually putting themes and ideas into premises that allowed me to organically develop characters and plot-relevant lore aspects that match my intended theme. Which made everything much more cohesive and well-designed.

[Anonymous No.4208808]

i feel like i'm incapable of making one off stories. everything i make always bloats into a series, or feature length. i just love continuity so much