As I like to introduce myself just about anywhere I poke my head in: hi, I'm Avelyn. That's not my real name, naturally, but it's been my online pseudonym since high school and I'm too attached to it to change it. And as I'm sure you've noticed, this is my blog. I'm not great at maintaining blogs - I had an old Wordpress in high school, where I made maybe three posts in the span of my entire high school career. But maybe this will be different. Or maybe this will drop off after a couple posts too, who can say.
For now, here's a blog, and here's me yapping on it.
Specifically what I wanted to talk about is this pet project I've been making vague mention of for who-the-fuck-knows-how-long-now: a Baldur's Gate 3 fancomic. I've been wanting to try my hand at making comics for a while now, and while following Mister Crowbar's comic series Brainworms, I got the idea to try something in a similar vein - a series of smaller mini-comics following my beloved Dark Urge OC through the trials and tribulations that make up the story of BG3. I figured it'd be something fun, relatively low-stakes, and hey, maybe it'd get me some new followers, too.
Though I feel like it may be a touch misleading, given that I'm primarily an OC artist. Come for the BG3, stay for the OCs?
Seriously though, give Crowbar's comics a read if you haven't. They're great fun, and Aldiirn is adorable.
And I did give it a go - I even posted a few WIPs about a month or so ago of my attempt at the first page...
...And then I floundered.
So, what's the problem?
The problem is me, really. I'm really, really nervous about making this thing. And it's for a few reasons.
For one, I don't really do fanart.
I'm not really in fandom in general, not really. I tend to keep fandom at arm's length, given how nasty some folks tend to be where their fictional blorbos are concerned. Plus, I get nervous enough drawing other people's characters (yes, even for commissions, though I've never gotten a complaint yet) - drawing characters from established IPs is territory that I don't often dare tread.
For two, I have a REALLY hard time getting out of my own head.
That's actually partly why I started this blog. Getting thoughts out of my head and out into the world is something I've struggled with for a very, very long time. Part of it is not being entirely sure how to articulate my thoughts in a way that makes sense, part of it is not being sure that anyone cares. And that second one, that fear of rejection? Yeah that's a bad one for me.
For three, I'm a HORRIBLE perfectionist.
I think this is something I inherited from my father, another sufferer of chronic does-not-finish-anything-ever syndrome. His main hobby is woodworking, and for the stuff he HAS finished, his work is pretty solid. He just runs into this loop of starting something, deciding he's not happy with it, scrapping it, starting over, deciding he's not happy with it, scrapping it... yeah. His garage is full of projects he swears he'll finish eventually, much like my ever-growing WIP folder.
The problem is I have a relatively clear image of what I want my art to look like in my head... but my hand can't quite project exactly what my mind is seeing. I know what things should look like, but not quite how to make it look like that on the canvas. And it's annoying. It often leads to me wasting an ungodly amount of time nitpicking, endlessly redrawing things, or just scrapping the illustration altogether.
Anyone who sees this as an opportunity to shill generative AI to me will be banished to the shadow realm. Fuck all the way off with that mess.
Some advice I've heard a bajillion times, and yeah, it's very good advice
I'm just not very good at internalizing shit like this.
Make mistakes. Learn. Move on = Growth - alt title: "Nobody fucking cares, just post it." This is advice I've heard a million different times in a million different ways, but Cole's recent Youtube short was just uploaded the other day and it's relevant. Plus, Cole's cool. Go watch his stuff and look at his art.
No one starts off being incredible at anything. My older attempts at drawing1 were... well. The stuff you'd expect from a 10-year-old obsessed with anime. I'm sure Van Gogh didn't exactly pick up a paint brush for the first time and paint Starry Night.
Making something in itself is practice. Every time you make a thing, you've learned something - about your workflow, about what medium you like, about how to make things look "good", whatever that looks like to you. You just have to make the damned thing first.
I have... something of a plan going forward, I think?
First of all, flying by the seat of my pants isn't working. If I want to make a comic, I need to actually start scripting shit.
I also kinda want to start off small. I have a few silly little strips doodled already, maybe I should finish those and post them, both as a kind of teaser and to practice actually making comics.
Hopefully spilling my guts about this to the internet will help me kick my ass into gear and actually make this happen. Who knows.