people please...
Out of context: Reply #654
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- Horp0
Yeah, to my mind there is only one way to judge the commercial success of the work I am producing, and that is by the response from the commercial artwork buying population. They weren't buying into it at all, so by that measure and that measure alone I must conclude it is a fail.
Its a difficult point to try and clarify for people, but for me the well meaning encouragements from friends and family is subjective and largely irrelevant. I'm not trying to get pats on backs for merely putting pencil to paper and doing things that people who know me can look at and tell me how marvellous they are. There are people out there who create succesful careers and have portfolios of work that bring in more and more work and more and more plaudits leading to more work and more plaudits, the calibre of each getting higher and higher all the time.
If what I do leaves me standing at the bottom because it attracts no commercial interest then its dead work and any time invested in trying to kick it to life is counter-productive. My main studio has become closely associated with a very poorly produced sort of digital work of a style I do not value at all. I can't change the perception of that studio now. When I try, clients resist because they only come to me for the tat, they take their good briefs elsewhere to the darlings of the moment. Both jobs I have had on this week are for a style of work I got sick of in 2005, and yet both clients have an abundance of briefs they farm out all the time to other illustrators they deem to be of a higher calibre. When I suggest they let me do 'a better job' they tell me they want the crap style, done quickly, because that's why they've come to me.
So Orbit Lesser was my attempt to get around that perception and show a different style of work. But if that different style of work doesn't grab them from the outset and make them say "oooh, nice work, we'd really like to use that" then the work has failed if you put away emotion and consider it coldly and efficiently.
So there is no point in trying to excite people with a style of work that clearly doesn't excite them.
Outside of the people on QBN who I consider to be friends there has not been one single iota of positive feedback about the work. Its as plain as day, the work is shit. The plan didn't work out. I go back to the drawing board.
If I don't do something that excites people who look at it then its a waste of time.