Leaving bronydom

After a tough day, an emotional breakdown, and a bit of contemplation of where I am going with my life. I have decided. Under my pixel artist name, I will consider not doing any more additional pony-related artwork. I am at a point where it is hurting my social life, I am not too happy with being part of this clique, and money in consideration, is not worth the time. I believe this is gonna be the time to let my watchers know - if you are watching me for ponies, I am afraid I have decided it is a necessity to distance myself away from ponies.

Why? Long story.


Well over a year ago, a friend from Sweden was telling me. "Hey, we're coming to a convention that happens to be in the Seattle area!" I joined. People were having a blast, and I was missing out as I had very few people to enjoy the time with. At that point, I had a change of heart. I was no longer happy keeping to myself.

So then, I gave myself a goal, because I was an artist.... why not be a vendor next year? I wanted to be 'out there', having fun with people. I did not want to be just an attendee.

The months to come were not easy, and not a happy story.

July to August were the months after the con, and I took the time to explore my own city. It was due to embarressing moments when I realized I lived in a city that I didn't really know. I didn't have friends who enjoy the great outside with, and I also couldn't afford to have fun outside.
September to October were even lonelier months when I was working for many hours with little pay.
November to December, I crawled into a shell, and stopped enjoying the work I do.
January to February, I started coming out of a shell. Went outside meeting new people.
March to April, I bounced back and was ready to work on pixel art again. Right when I was opening up business again as a contractor, it was the same time when vendor applications, and The Gaming Colts wanted me. I eagerly joined because they were in my area. It was better than working with far-away people.
May.... I wind up having extreme difficulty balancing all the professional work and the work invested to get myself 'out there'. I effectively kill any chance of making a living because I wanted to 'get myself out there'.
June.... was a month which I pretty much stopped leaving the house from the stress from being always worried that I couldn't keep up with people's expectations. I can say that I lost one client for a project I genuinely enjoyed working on as a result of being too ambitious and overestimating what I can accomplish in a given frame of time.

And now... it is July again.... where am I? After all these hard months, I've had very little progress in regards to my goal.... and I was realizing how incredibly flawed my approach to this convention was...

1. I end up focusing on ONE quality piece due to extreme time constraints. This is a huge mistake. You need a large variety because prints tend to be hit or miss to give you insurance for prints that do not sell. You can predict what can sell, but I was told that it's generally 'those' artists who copy the MLP art style and their merch pretty much coming off as knock-off products.
2. I had very little time for social networking to build a proper following, which apparently producing quantities of art is most important to accomplish that. For this reason, I am generally known as 'that one artist who does something exceptionally well' but my following is very weak. There are many people who visit various artists because they know them. I do not get this benefit that would have made most artist's booths rather lucrative.
3. Generally being out of touch with bronies also does not help. I've seen people buy things that I don't understand. Just... why?
4. I literally thought I would have people come to me praising me as a god. One of my friends even joked about this. This is partly because I haven't been meeting enough people who don't know me as Pix3M (and they know me probably because they like what I do), but it was very clear looking at how most people normally react to my artwork - they either think I'm amazing (because they have a good idea of the challenges of what I do), or I'm just another artist.

So.... I talked to an artist haven't gotten to know enough. I remember telling him things about what it takes to do artwork professionally:

1. Have a portfolio that shows people your best potential. No degree required.
2. If people think your skills are a good fit for what they need, they'll hire you.

It is as simple as that.

For being a successful convention vendor though? This was what I got out of a long conversation with fellow artists.

1. Draw a lot. Quantity matters most.
2. If your style is like the show's style *but not quite*, you will pretty much have a solid style that is in harmony with what the show style communicates, but still have a style branded to you as an artist.
And finally, 3. If people like your works and you consistently output works, they will follow you and be interested in what you do.

And I had to stop... and think.... 

Could I output a consistent quantity of artwork? No, I could not. I have shown I already have had past difficulties doing that for people paying for my time.

That, and I lost my potential for mass appeal while I was taking steps to improving at what I do. I started from this. This was featured on Equestriadaily over two years ago:



Now, my art style generally is polished to the point they become much less obvious that it is pixel art, but also bouncing back and started working with a style that uses 2x pixels. Even then, I found that some of my 2x pixel works don't look 'pixelled' under the right circumstances.

On a monitor screen, this thing looks amazing:



When put into print, it becomes a silly intricate picture of a house, but only if you walk up close, it becomes clear that it's pixel art. This is now clear that it is bad for marketing as most of my sales of this print are from person-to-person salesmanship when I have to bring this print closer to people's eyes.




Alicorn Princess Blast was a game being shown at The Gaming Colts. IMO, it was amazing to play my own game at our own booth, and my eyes were relaxed so my own sprite animations don't even look like pixel art - they just look like fairly well-done, highly-stylized works of art from my point of view.

This was all a result of doing pixel art for a couple of years. I learned how to polish my pixels so it effectively... .... loses the very mass-appeal factor of being made of squares. Game developers love me for producing pixels of this level of polish, if it becomes less and less obvious it's pixel art. It is clear that I am now dealing with a completely different audience who don't make games, don't do enough art to appreciate the extra, extra miles I go with my art, and don't know who I am because I am more of a niche appeal than I thought.

That, and I have a surprising number of followers who love my art, but are indifferent or maybe actually dislike ponies. That means something to me. I will say these are my favorite kinds of watchers - those who paradoxically watch me not for what I draw, but how I draw.

Long time ago, I was tempted to give myself a pony-related name, but I decided not to and go with another name. I know there was gonna be a point that I'm gonna move on and shrug ponies as a phase of the past.

Don't get me wrong though.

I will continue drawing ponies - just not as publically, and only once-in-a-blue-moon if I do it as a pixel artist.

I will continue any current projects, namely with The Gaming Colts.

I will surely not cut ties with friends I've made along the way.

I just need to tone down the level of ponies now. It's a sacrifice to make so I can one day support myself. I am grateful for the business given from people who don't care about what I do for fun, but there's no telling what sort of business may be lost for coming off as a casual artist for this reason, and that ponies is a time sink that's no longer worth it.

I hope this coming year is better than last year. Maybe make a bigger name for myself not as a pony artist, but as a pixel artist.