Hey all.
I’m back with another dump of my thoughts. I like to do this every so often as a way to get things off my chest and hopefully give you some insight to myself. It’s not because I want you to know every last detail of what I think but I know myself well enough that when I keep things in my head they fester and effect me on a day to day level.
I guess more recently my time has been stretched thin. I’m working lots right now and it seems like I have no time for my hobby. My free time at the moment is filled with adulting. While this is fine the itch to create grows stronger when this happens. It’s hard not to resent the thing I “have” to do when all I want to do is create things. This is usually why I put out a group of old photos as a tweet, usually themed around a certain celeb … it gives me something to distract myself from the mundane (and it’s always nice to look back on past things I’ve made and be proud of them) I don’t really like Twitter all that much but it’s a way to show people my stuff in a quick and in the moment way.
Twitter is really my only place to put out everything I do to a wider audience. Yes, everything new is here on blogspot with a curated selection of past images too but it’s more of a gallery than anything else. I started putting my feet fakes over on Deviantart too as they are non-nude and, at the moment, don’t seem to be getting flagged or deleted. With what has happened in the past with people targeting me/reporting my Twitter (and everywhere else on the internet I try) this blogspot will hopefully always remain. Just in case everything gets taken down again it’s best to see my new stuff here. I have been trying to make the blog look better to when I have the chance but either the editing tools are lacklustre or I can’t figure out how to edit it in HTML. I don’t know, I’ll keep trying.
There’s been a resurgence recently of people asking for commissions or requests (as well as other things, I’ll get to that!) while this is usually the case it seems to have doubled. I’ll try to explain as to why I don’t do these …
Back when I started 7 years ago there seemed to be less people in the faking game. I spent about a year learning how to actually make things and use Photoshop. During this time I mostly had people saying everything I made was awful, that I should quit and just generally bad feedback from the things I made. While it was demoralising I knew it’s how I wanted/needed to spend my free time. So I continued on and eventually found a ONE person who liked my stuff and they championed me saying I should continue. With everything I’ve done I have always thought “If one person who sees my art and likes it then it was worth the time to make it” so I continued on. I started to do commissions for them for a short time. While doing this I took some from anonymous people too and it was okay but that one person who championed me didn’t want random people. They wanted a celeb. So for a couple of months this is what happened but after some time we actually became friends and spoke about more than just porn art. So I stopped charging them for the art, stopped requests from people all together and just made stuff when they asked me for it because it was never frequent.
7 years later … this is still the case and we’re still friends.
I don’t do commissions and requests now because I don’t feel I have the time and honestly I don’t want to disappoint or let people down if things take too long. There also the backlash when you make something you’re proud of and then the person doesn’t like what you’ve made and starts with the hate. I also don’t believe in charging for my work nowadays.
Honestly that’s one of the weirdest and hardest things to deal with online for me. I know there so much conversation around trolls and online bullying/hate theses day but if you’ve never experienced it first hand it’s hard to understand how it feels. I’m not talking about little troll comments either, I’m talking about focused and malicious comments/posts/campaigns. People show and tell me things what people say and it just confuses me. People who fabricate this false persona of me or insinuate that I do things based on false pretences. It’s just odd. Now I get there will always be people like that and when you create things people will always been drawn to you as a focal point of either their inspiration or hate but most of the time the people that hate never take the time to talk to you directly or even try to garner your point of view as to why you do things. It’s funny to read just what these people think is happening in their heads when you know yourself that it just isn’t the case.
I’ve seen it a lot where people don’t agree that I put my stuff out for free, don’t take requests/commissions or engage with others that do this. The simple truth to all of this is that I don’t tend to engage with others that do this because I’ve been burnt before and I’ve seen the hate it seemingly generates. I keep to myself when it comes to making stuff. I actually mute 99% of the people I follow on Twitter and the 1% I don’t is because they’ve reached out, actually had a conversation with me and we’ve got on well. I also see a lot of people treating what they do like a business, like it’s a sole form of income, while this is fine for others to do I have never wanted that to be the case for me. I’m not sure why but it’s been said to me on multiple occasions that me making stuff for free “dilutes” the pool. Like me making stuff for free takes away money to them. Weird because I don’t think that, if you’re making money from your images then that’s awesome … but they’re your images and not mine. People will want to buy your stuff because it’s yours. My work should have no effect because it’s from a different artist. If for some reason your work isn’t being commissioned then that is not my fault. Just a weird situation. I don’t care about money, I never have, it doesn’t drive me.
And, if for some reason you’re one of the people who do hate/send hate towards me and are reading this, I forgive you. I have nothing against you. I think I simply would wish to understand where it comes from but perhaps you yourself don’t know that either. Either way, you won’t get any hate from me personally or any general interaction because my mental health really can deal with that.
As I’ve stated a lot of times I started this for my mental health. I used it as a way to silence the bad thoughts and create something I could be proud of and share it with people. That still holds true. That’s another reason I don’t charge for the work I do. I make what I want to see first and foremost and share it. I have a full time job that takes most of my time, then home life and friends. I actually have very little time to sit down and make things (Another reason for no requests and commissions) So when I do I like to not have external restrictions on me because my own brain/depression/anxiety do that just fine without anything else.
There may come a time I retire … heck I’ve thought about doing it for years but I do enjoy the finished work and I love that people like them too. It’s what keeps me making stuff. That and I always strive to be better at what I do.
Thank you if you’ve taken it on yourself to share my work anywhere, I appreciate it and I will never ask people to do that. You do that on your own metrics and it’s awesome. Thank you for the likes and in helping me rebuild after my 40k+ Twitter account was taken down. I wouldn’t do this without the people who like my stuff. Thank you Thank you.
Until the next rant,
Danny.
