2016 New Year's Resolutions
It's become a yearly tradition for me to share my New Year's resolutions, and reflect upon the past year. This reflection is intended to help me grow as a person and an artist, and to help me keep track of these goals in a public place (accountability). For the most part, I try to only list things I know I can accomplish through my own pursuit, so rather than listing "be published in five anthologies", I might say "apply to five anthologies".
My theme this year is financial stability and growing my career as an illustrator and comic artist. My 20's are quickly coming to an end, and I've spent the last year incredibly frustrated about how little has changed in the past three years. I want to continue to turn my focus away from anime conventions as a major source of income, focusing on just a handful of shows that are rewarding emotionally and financially. Anime conventions aren't really a sustainable income for me, and attending so many hasn't really built the audience I'd hope to have at this time. I could make a lot more money at anime conventions if I devoted more attention to high profit margin items like fanart prints, but that's not the path I want to take as an arist. Instead, I'd like to focus on completing Gizmo Grandma and Book 2 of 7" Kara this year, and promote my comic as my main focus. Ideally I'll launch a Kickstarter campaign for Book 2 at the end of this year, but more realistically, it will be at the beginning of 2017. I want to start making a living off the work I've put into this blog and into my Youtube Channel, so this year I'm going to focus on monetizing both of those in a variety of ways.
If you'd like to help me achieve that goal, the easy way to do that is to use my affiliate links when you're interested in purchasing a product, clicking on my ads from time to time, and sitting through 30 seconds of ad on my Youtube videos. You can also keep an eye out for my upcoming Patreon launch, which will give backers the opportunity to decide which tutorials and reviews the blog and Youtube will focus on, as well as exclusive giveaways, and original illustrations.
My theme this year is financial stability and growing my career as an illustrator and comic artist. My 20's are quickly coming to an end, and I've spent the last year incredibly frustrated about how little has changed in the past three years. I want to continue to turn my focus away from anime conventions as a major source of income, focusing on just a handful of shows that are rewarding emotionally and financially. Anime conventions aren't really a sustainable income for me, and attending so many hasn't really built the audience I'd hope to have at this time. I could make a lot more money at anime conventions if I devoted more attention to high profit margin items like fanart prints, but that's not the path I want to take as an arist. Instead, I'd like to focus on completing Gizmo Grandma and Book 2 of 7" Kara this year, and promote my comic as my main focus. Ideally I'll launch a Kickstarter campaign for Book 2 at the end of this year, but more realistically, it will be at the beginning of 2017. I want to start making a living off the work I've put into this blog and into my Youtube Channel, so this year I'm going to focus on monetizing both of those in a variety of ways.
If you'd like to help me achieve that goal, the easy way to do that is to use my affiliate links when you're interested in purchasing a product, clicking on my ads from time to time, and sitting through 30 seconds of ad on my Youtube videos. You can also keep an eye out for my upcoming Patreon launch, which will give backers the opportunity to decide which tutorials and reviews the blog and Youtube will focus on, as well as exclusive giveaways, and original illustrations.
- Continue to produce more Youtube content aimed at helping others, ideally on underserved topics
- Collaborate with other artists and Youtubers
- Finish Volume 2 this year
- Engage blog readers more, build a better community
- Inspire and encourage other comic artists
- Do fewer, but better conventions
- Work towards monetizing my content so I may make a living wage
- Write more about 7" Kara progress on here and other platforms
- Launch the blog and Youtube channel's Patreon
- Finally finish Gizmo Grandma
- Purchase and utilize a laser cutter
- Streamline convention production to increase margins
- Complete a wider variety of monthly challenges
- Complete more non-comic watercolor studies
- Produce more tutorials
- Continue to fight anxiety and depression
- Spend less personal money on items for review
- (X) Blog redesign (Completed in Dec 2015 as a present to self)
- Connect and build relationships with other artists
- Seek out more OFFLINE job and display opportunities
- Stop judging your own worth by how much other people do or do not care about what you produce
- Try to have a more positive attitude
- Quantify your improvement this year, and set specific improvement goals
- Decrease reliance on social media for support and companionship, focus more on reaching out to friends when help is needed
- Find and do things that are rewarding to you
- Finish Louisiana Travel Book project
- Draw a wider variety of things
- Write and publish the reviews for all the products you reviewed but didn't post in 2015. Clear out that backlog.
- Cut back on reliance on social networks like Twitter for support or encouragement.
- Find an illustration agency to represent my work
- Contact companies whose products I review often for free samples of new products
- Try to participate in online large scale comic discussions more often
- Try to increase the variety of your work to appeal to a larger audience
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