#creativity advice

My name is BOGUS, I am the creator of multiple projects such as JAMBARI, FOLLIATH and much more coming soon!

I've decided to use this blog as a way to help people with projects and such! If you ever need tips on how to start a plot or what color your character should be coded as, Ask me!

To begin, just click on the CREATIVITY ADVICE button!

(Now, note. I'm not saying i'm the greatest and most creative guy in the world, the name says so, but it's just a little jest.)

Ohhh man. I’ve got so many projects that I want to make but haven’t because I view my current skill set as lacking— and they’re almost always drawing related, because I’m very insecure about my drawing skills— even moreso than my writing skills. To go on a tangent and paint a picture of how severe this visual art insecurity is, I will list off how many people I have directly permitted to read my major written pieces once I passed my mid-teens:

My older sister, because she was my co-writer for the project and not letting her read my work wasn’t an option

My mother on one occasion

My aunt, who has experience with writing and publishing, and I have only ever sent two pieces to

Look at that number of people. The number of pieces I shared with them, in total, was four out of the hundreds of projects I’ve made over the years. I was so precious about my writing because I’m insecure about it. I’m even more insecure about my art. I couldn’t list off all the drawing projects I hesitate to make because I think it’s impossible with my current skill level, not even in a thousand years, but I’ll give a few examples that are always in the back of my mind lately.

A semi-animated pilot to a fantasy-comedy cartoon parodying The Office, starring a goblin secretary who’s trying to assassinate her employer and take over as the final boss of an RPG-esque dungeon that operates like an office building, while her employer is a lich who misinterprets all her efforts to kill him as her being flirty, leading him to develop a very severe crush on the goblin. The project is titled “Boss Fight”, and I have all the resources I need to make it, but I drag my feet because of my art insecurity… also I would be doing all the voice acting myself, and I don’t find my voice very appealing even when I change it to fit different characters.

A webcomic about a fantasy world populated by bipedal bug people that features a very brief “save the world” plot, then focuses the rest of the storyline on how the characters recover from the events of their backstories and the trauma the experienced while saving the world. It’s titled “The Creeping Chronicles”, and I love the project but am so insecure about being able to do the story justice with my art skills that I’ve tentatively pivoted to making it a book series instead. It’s got 21k+ words across 10-ish chapters because I’m too insecure about my art to draw it fully.

A slice of life comic titled “Welcome to Wayside” that’s basically Gravity Falls meets Stardew Valley where a young girl saves a cryptid’s life and now he’s stuck helping her until he repays the life debt he owes. The story features a vaguely men in black-style evil secret agency called G.L.O.O.M. (Gents for Ludicrous Oddity Organization and Management) who have various ranks are named after facets of fashion (khakis are their grunt labor and pocket squares are researchers) and they use a threat-ranking system based on dress codes (i.e. “WE HAVE A BLACK TIE DOWN ON SOUTH STREET, REPEAT: BLACK TIE DOWN ON SOUTH STREET”), and I adored G.L.O.O.M. along with the cast of characters featured in the story, but I don’t feel confident in my ability to design interesting-looking original cryptids.

I could leave this post at that, but I’ve got an important thing to say on this subject—

If you want to make something but are hesitating to because your skill levels are lackluster, make it anyways.

Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever can. Let yourself make the thing, and let yourself make the thing badly. Love it and how ugly it is. The perspective is all askew in this part, and that character is horribly off model there, and isn’t it all amazing? You made that! You made a thing! And you wouldn’t have this thing that you made if you waited until the conditions were perfect to make it and refused to create the thing before your skills were sufficient.

consider the medium you are using. 5 chapters of nonstop combat in a manga is very very different from 5 chapters of nonstop combat in a fic. if that’s what you’re going for consider either switching to mostly pictures, switching scenes to something else like a mental palate cleanser before returning to the action, or learn to edit that waaaaaaay down to a manageable level.

if you are going to end a chapter/book/update on a cliffhanger PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF LITTLE GREEN APPLES give it some kind of possible hopeful note or just...wait to update with a less depressing ending. if all else fails let your readers/viewers know at the beginning of the update that its gonna leave off on a downer. this can seriously mess people up and they’ll be more likely to stick around with a warning than without one.

(thinking to myself) "Ugh I should stop posting so much travailshipping stuff... It's probably so annoying to everyone who sees it. I feel bad for my poor followers. I'll check my inbox real quick and then commit to shaking up my content by—" *gets obliterated by your niceness*

Oh man. I remember posting that poll where I hesitantly described a possible Darkrai/Twig pairing in the tags while proposing Twig/Kip as an alternative route, despite it not being the direction I wanted to take the characters, because I was so scared of what people’s reactions might be. If I remember right, I posted it a little bit before I had just barely reached 5k words in the first draft of TPiaG.

I've been trying to write up detailed responses to how I come up with good ideas for travailshipping in particular, but there's one rule I use that defines everything after it and speaks for all of them: I have fun with the characters.

That's it. That's the rule. If I don't want to write a subject, I don't. I stick with what I find enjoyable and resonant. Does a joke make me laugh? Does a scene make me cry? Does a villain make me punch a hole in my wall? Does a cute gesture make me squeal? If so, then into the project it goes. I think people can feel when someone is having fun with their work, and that fun radiates out into their own experience consuming that work. It's like laughter— joy is something we're sharing with others as long as we feel it. Fun is contagious.

Also: when you don't force yourself to make things you hate, you attract people who like the same things as you. These people will find your work even more fun— because not only did you have fun making it, they're having double fun consuming it.

An important tangent I'll go off on is that I think that every creative project idea is a good idea. There's so many beloved bizarro ideas in the world, even the ones who try to be cool about how weird their premises are. There's this weird show where the main character works as a service industry worker in an underwater setting that's ruled by a Roman deity— he lives in a piece of fruit, and his pet gastropod makes cat noises. This show sounds like word salad garbage on paper and could be tossed out for its nonsensical nature, and yet SpongeBob SquarePants has made Nickelodeon over $13 billion dollars and is a treasured part of many childhoods. There's also a character who spends his time locked in intellectual and physical combat with a wannabe clown and wears a costume with bat ears while doing it. Batman's been an icon for over 80 years.

All of this is to say:

Ideas are always good ideas by virtue of existing. They don't derive their goodness from external sources. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Make more of what you love. Don't make things you hate making.

If you have fun while making the thing, people will have fun while they consume the thing's content.

I hope this makes sense. I didn't touch on idea generation as much as embracing existing ideas. Fingers crossed that was the right response. I'd just woken up from a nap as I was writing it, so hopefully it's not too meandering and managed to answer the question and—

is that the title comes with a whole world of things you never expected. I am young, currently early twenties, and there is so much effort and stigma that comes with creating literally anything. I try to make short form content, but that requires editing, capture footage, and even that can be complicated by the fact that I have yet to find consistent times to stream on Twitch.

Trying to be the weird VTuber voice actor game dev gremlin of the internet is incredible, and I wouldn't trade it for the world. However, nobody prepares you for the hours and thought that goes into trying to create things professionally, let alone for a living.

If you are somone who is wanting to be a professional artist, or gamedev, or any kind of "creative" pursuit. Know this:

It is hard. It isn't fair. But it is worth it.

You will be passed up on jobs and offers because of nepotism. You will be passed up on jobs because of A.I. (throws up). You may even be passed up on something because you happen to be different than others.

This doesn't make it any less worth it.

Being a professional anything is hard, let alone just trying to be a human being. But someday, people will see you, see your work, and value what you do. It may only be a small few, but I would rather have no to miniscule amounts of fame, than be famous and hate what I do and or who I do it for.

learn by doing

there are thousands of "tips" out there, none of them will help you grow and learn as much as just doing it and figuring out what works as you go

stop worrying about making perfect art

1) art is subjective, there literally isn't perfect art, 2) often "imperfect" art has more personality to it, something i personally love

do art when you feel like it, do not force yourself to create

creativity is a process, and you will both enjoy it more and get better result if you don't force yourself to create when you aren't feel like it. if you experience lack of motivation, go do something completely else, and the motivation will come back

do other creative things as well