Alessandrafiorile - Blog Posts

alessandrafiorile

3 years ago

Hi Jade I have a question about this post...but the images of this post is the next page of The Brains and The Brawn that is page 17?

I mean a trailer of the comic?

Here’s a sneak peek for my entry in the @mad-dogz-zine. As one would expect my entry is a comic. It is titled “Collapse”

You can order a print of the zine over here!

A free PDF will also be available on September 20th on the website so stay tuned!

We need to talk

I recently posted my latest “The Brains and The Brawn” comic page the other day. I was feeling really awesome about it and got lots of wonderful feedback! It made me feel very happy, and I was happy to finally bring a new page to you!

Then today I got this as a comment on the page:

And beyond this being just very rude, it made me realize that I really need to have a talk with you guys.

Because this isn’t the first time I’ve gotten something to this effect. It may not always have been this rude, but I have gotten dozens of comments of this nature asking something to the effect of “when will we see the next page?”

To reiterate from a section in another post where I talked about this in brief, I really DO NOT like these kinds of asks/comments. They make me feel stressed and ashamed and pressured, which can create negative feelings around my work and make me less likely to finish them. I get that you’re excited, and that’s cool. But literally no one likes those kinds of comments.

First of all, a big reason why I have not given myself a set schedule for my Rise comics is because I did not want the pressure of a consistent deadline at a time when I don’t know if I can hold a deadline. To be perfectly candid, I’ve been recovering from a frankly very mentally stressful scenario, which I do not want to get into here.

Second of all, my recent slow-down in frequency of comics is because I’ve been trying to get my life back in order and get an in-real-life job. I’d been living overseas for the past 6 years, and coming back to my home country amidst a pandemic while also dealing with the previously mentioned mentally stressful scenario has not been easy. I’m also juggling doing my own projects with doing commissions for people, and I will of course prioritize something that I am actually paid to do.

And MOST importantly: I shouldn’t have to provide a reason for the frequency of my updates to begin with!

I’m fine with explaining a little bit about my situation, but not everyone has the means to do so. You don’t know what different people are going through. Myself and other online creatives are often creating content for free, and do not have to answer to someone asking for more content at a pace that may not be reasonable for them. Making comics is hard work! I render everything from the characters to the backgrounds myself, and that takes a lot of time! And that is in between everything going on in my daily life which you don’t see much of because you don’t have any right to!

I make my comics for myself, and I can easily block someone if all they are going to add to my day is some passive aggressive nonsense like this. Unless you are literally paying me through a commission, I do not make art for you. I make it for me.

And because a friend of mine said it so much better, here is a link to some nice guidelines on how to respond to a creative whose work you are excited to see more of without being rude about it.

To repeat, you don’t know what different people are going through. Creatives have lives outside of their online presence. Try to think before you comment and remember that you are talking to a human being, not an art-creating-machine.