FrankHightower

It has come to my attention that what I feel like I'm getting the most practice on with this year's size drive is drawing hands!

The obvious (shall we say) "academic" purpose of the size drive was to practice bodies in perspective, but I really feel like what I'm actually learning with it is how to draw hands in a number of positions and angles I don't usually do. This is probably because the size drive does have a bit of a story behind it so I "have" to keep moving.

But this isn't the first time this happens:

The stated purpose of the Pokémon TF drive was to practice drawing backgrounds (and I guess it helped, they don't bother me that much now) but I feel like what I actually practiced were expressions!

The purpose of the original TF drive was to practice humans, but instead I practiced movement!

The purpose of the original size drive was to practice size ratios, but instead I practiced drawing my characters (turns out I wasn't as good at it as I thought!)

The purpose of the 150+ pokémon was (obviously) to learn how to draw pokémon, but instead I got a lot of practice on clothes!

None of this is bad "per se", it's just surprising!

Today I have to write about the movie everyone loves to hate… but, in my view, it’s for all the wrong reasons. On the one hand, it’s movie made to coincide with the 100th anniversary, it “had” to come out on the 100th anniversary day which meant parts of it would be rushed, what did you expect? On the other, people keep echoing a single word: soulless. There’s a lot of little things in this movie that make me disagree. Now, sure, I can already hear the counterargument that an overworked inbetweener pouring their soul into an animation sweep does not compensate for the lack of effort from the higher-ups, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Firstly, the only reason I was able to watch it was that someone finally put it up for pirating, so no yelling at me for giving Disney money to see it, I’m still too poor for that. Secondly, friendly reminder that when I watch movies, it’s as therapy. Did this movie fulfill that role? It’s debatable.

To start, no I do not find the “quirky Disney princess” to be a tired trope as literally every review I come across points out. I could see it working in some scenes. If anything, I’d argue our “princess” (whose name I can’t remember and that’s a problem other people are way more qualified to talk about) is not quirky enough, and that’s why it feels like it falls flat. Secondly, no, I did not catch the “her seven friends are the seven dwarves” reference. Not even with the blatant “I’m grumpy” line. So everyone pointing out the movie is too obvious and heavy-handed, I’m living proof it’s not.

I also had no problem with the multiple references. The movie is clearly trying to seed a “grand unified Pixar theory” for the Walt Disney canon. When the Disney Princesses line was created, one of the main rules was that no princess can ever acknowledge the existence of any other: if two or more princesses appear in the same image, they can’t look in each other’s direction nor interact with the others’ items in any way. I’m sure you just said “that’s stupid” aloud; because I did, too, when I first read it. If this realization has finally reached the Disney higher ups, I’m totally here for it and can’t wait to have The Great Mouse detective nervously negotiate a safe passage past Lady and the Tramp because his latest case involves Peter Pan since these are all set in about the same time period.

And yes, I liked the dancing chickens ...and the star.

My problems

My problems with the movie actually start with the “I want” song. If you haven’t watched it, the song that plays during the trailer (“This Wish”) is that song, and is a bit of a unifying theme to the movie. Most people fault this song for “so you want …what exactly?” I found it strangely fitting that the protagonists wish is incredibly open-ended and vague; after all, it’s what our villain faults her grandfather with. Slight spoilers for the first 10 minutes but, the grandfather’s wish is to write a song so heartfelt, it inspires an entire generation. The villain says “inspires them to …what exactly? To create or to fight? It’s too vague!” So having vagueness run in the family works for the movie.

The problem is that this never affects the movie in any way. How fitting would it have been, for “This Wish” to have been the song the grandfather wrote? (Spoilers for the ending, but it is revealed that everyone in the town knows this song! If the grandfather wrote it, he had already succeeded! Everyone in his generation clearly taught it to their kids and them, in turn, to their kids! It would’ve been a beautiful message for the movie to say “you don’t need a billionaire to buy your idea off you for it to come true, nothing can take that drive away from you!”)

Then there’s the talking goat (he talks in the trailer, so this is not a spoiler). Yes, I know everyone complains about the goat, but the goat, too could’ve been a beautiful message. Expanding on Tangled’s “Well that's the good part, I guess. You get to go find a new dream.” Our protagonist clearly has more than one wish, and the goat being able to talk is explicitly stated to be one of them. Society tells us to focus on just one thing, which is something modern media is questioning (see the Kung Fu Panda series). So the villain asks you to give up a wish, your deepest driving desire. So what? You can have multiple deep driving desires. Even if we accept the premise that there are some wishes that can only be granted by essentially winning the lottery, you can still be, pun intended, fulfilled by chasing your other wishes.

My second big problem

Which brings me to the second big problem with the movie, and here’s where the more serious spoilers start: the protagonist’s magical ability. She clearly must have some, otherwise why would she have made it to the interview phase to be The Sorcerer’s Apprentice? Yet she goes from being an amateur to being able to create intelligent life with no effort on her part. We’re told it took the villain a lifetime to achieve that level of ability. This seems to be a very bad message to give, and as one YouTube commenter wrote, runs directly against the message of The Princess and the Frog (which I interpret as referring to “the star can only take you a part of the way”). Sure, the magic star refuses to outright grant her wish, making her work with the new ability, but it’s still a bit of an overkill ability to give her for nothing.

But my problems with this don’t end there. The villain feels the need to stop this new power …but doesn’t know what the power is. If he was upset at precisely what I’ve just described, the conflict would feel earned, and it could be a commentary between people who just “get it” (i.e. they’re “naturals” at a certain skill) versus people who have to struggle to consciously remember all the little quirks.

What we instead get are pieces that hint at “I made a law that made magic illegal. No one in my kingdom would break my laws because they love me so much. Therefore, the only logical conclusion is someone in this kingdom is a traitor!” I mean… no? You could be getting invaded, the move does state it’s an island in the Mediterranean. And is it the policy of this kingdom “people show magical ability, they get interviewed, rejected and then are expected to never practice magic again”? That’s just not human nature …or have all the magic users given up their wish to get good at magic to him? He does state no one ever wished to be his apprentice, so the problem is they wished to harness their magic without the villain watching over them? I have so many questions!

My third biggest problem: the Mediterranean

But I did mention the Mediterranean, and this is my third biggest problem with the movie: no “once upon a time in a small kingdom” Disney movie yet has chosen a real place to set that kingdom in. Even Frozen which is “obviously Scandinavian” hasn’t explicitly said they’re Scandinavian, just that it’s a kingdom that has “southern isles”, which could very well mean an alternate history Alaska, if we want to get creative with our interpretation.

…and then they go and put a raccoon in. Which are animals that are not native to the Mediterranean. Forget the bear which is not native to the Mediterranean but could have wandered there or escaped a roman circus – raccoons belong to the new world. For a movie that’s trying to be consistent about being the ur-prequel to all other Disney movies… why, just why?

(You thought I was going to complain about the weird character names, didn't you?)

Fourth problem: the wishes themselves

My fourth big problem is the fact that the villain keeps the wishes and I just have to ask… why? He doesn’t discover that wishes can augment his powers until later, so that clearly isn’t the reason. He doesn’t even like to look at them so an “obsessed collector” theory doesn’t work either. And, unlike Fantasy Island (70s TV show this movie is clearly ripping off), he gains no money from this and the people learn nothing.

There’s also no indication of him considering the problems taking people’s driving wishes can bring, such as making the citizen unproductive (though it’s suggested that, when he reviews them, he grants those that would keep the citizen from being productive, but we don’t see that, in fact the opposite!)

Several reviewers have suggested it’s because it keeps the population complacent, but again, what happens when someone has two deep driving wishes, and only the second-deepest is a problem? We don’t see any villainous hubris of that assumption (like we do in, say, Snow White with the evil queen repeatedly dismissing the power of true love). Has this simply not happened yet? Why isn’t this part of the message of the movie?

5th Problem: The queen

My fifth big problem with the movie is the villain’s wife. When the villain goes into full villain mode, she remains calm and collected and queen-like, and that’s fine. But when the villain is defeated …she just smiles. There is no sense of loss coming from her, ever, that the man she’s loved for her entire life… is so “far gone” in every sense… she’ll never feel his cheek against hers …ever. Forget realism, what kind of message does that send?! We hear from the protagonist’s mother “oh this is grief, I know grief” presumably referring to the death of the protagonist’s father …is there no grief from the queen?!? Is there only grief in this world for the loss of wishes?!?! If this was supposed to tease at her becoming the “evil queen” later… where are the other hints earlier in the movie?!?!?

Other problems

I mentioned the protagonist’s father, and a lot of people have complained that we never see this father. I guess my brain went “oh this is another ‘no Disney dad’ movie” and that’s fine. The mysterious missing Disney dad is practically a running gag by now. Modern movies have started adding them, but if you need proof it’s not really necessary, consider, again, The Princess and The Frog: for a long time, my only way to watch it was when it aired on TV, and I would always catch it late …but I never knew I was catching it late. The entire movie worked for me without the “little girl Tiana” scenes.

…But the villain clearly knew him, and he was clearly some kind of astronomer, and the protagonist clearly used the knowledge he taught her to pick out the right star to wish on …but we don’t see that! It would’ve been just a few more lines of dialogue, possibly something along the lines of “my father always told me to wish on the second star to the right, for it is always the first star you see tonight” would have sufficed, but we don’t get anything that comes close. And there are clearly some lines they only added because they were rushing production …Why was something like this overlooked?

Another thing people seem to have problems with is the fat boy’s wish to be a knight. This seemed to me to be a pretty realistic wish for the time, especially considering how old he was. And the fact that he had nothing else in life once this was taken away also to be pretty realistic: not everyone is creative or ambitious or has easily-transferrable skills.

I’ve also seen criticism on the fact that the protagonist’s grandfather is 100 years old, most of them assuming this means he’s been waiting for his wish to be granted since he turned 18. I, again, take no issue with this, because the kingdom is established in the opening narration to be a nation of immigrants. For all we know, the family arrived in the kingdom a year ago, possibly because the king needed an astronomer, and the fact that in the grandfather’s vision of his wish he looks as he does now, hints at the wish having been surrendered rather recently. (The alternative of the vision aging up as its owner ages à la Dorian Grey is a little uncomfortable and I don’t think Disney would go there.)

You’ll notice I didn’t number these last thee, and that’s because I consider them pretty minor.

So what’s left?

The movie, however, does have an important message, and it’s not “everybody has a wish” (though that’s a good message too). The problem is we only see it twice: It first crops up with the baker friend, who bakes beautiful cookies that look like portraits. Clearly, this wasn’t her wish, since you have to give up your wish in this world as part of the social contract, but the movie does not go into details here. We later find out her wish was to make beautiful dresses …and this is never really addressed again. Later, we see the protagonist ask everyone in the town to make a wish, and this is so powerful it helps defeat the villain.

The message, then, is that you can always make a new wish (this is distinct from my earlier “you can have multiple wishes to begin with” because the new wish here comes after you’ve lost your old one). Yes, you will feel grief when you lose your wish. You will feel empty. (And in fact, if you see someone that looks like that, this is probably why!) But you can make a new wish and become an excellent baker, because losing your wish does not make you lose your abilities, your personality. A wish drives you, but the wish isn’t you. And that makes you and all the other wish-makers more powerful than the billionaires.

Sounds beautiful, doesn’t it? Almost as beautiful as the messages I proposed earlier. But if that was the movie’s message, why do we only see it twice?!

Today's journal came out a bit longer than expected, so I made it it's own "story" submission. You can read it here:

I've been meaning to write about this for a while now, but PayPal charitably reminded me of the $600 reporting threshold this morning (which will no longer require you to pay taxes, but still, wasn't originally planning on assigning neurons to that today) so it's as good a time as any.

I started seriously pursuing commissions in the summer of 2021 (you may remember I'd been talking before the pandemic about automating most of my badly-paying dayjob away to free up time for other pursuits, this was the point where I finally said "I've done it!"). The failure of the 2017 opening still weighed heavily on my mind, though, so I was pretty sure simply posting "hey, I'm open" and uploading 5 "samples" a week wasn't going to work. I tried to get an art stream set up since I remembered getting followers that way in 2014, but I could never get it to work.

So instead, I took to Discord. I've always been bad at keeping up with multiple forums, but I made an effort to participate in all of them. I was very casual about my commissions (since, you know, pandemic: I kinda needed the social interaction more ...and pandemic stimuluses were keeping me afloat) and sold a grand total of 2 commissions that way in the whole year.

Here came the first hard lesson: Do not give free samples of your work. People will always say "do you have a sample?" and since I was being asked for combinations I'd never done (such as, let's say, "cell-shaded and macro"), I'd always say "no, but I can make one", and then would go off to do just that. Several things can happen in that process:

1. You take so long to produce the sample, the would-be commissioner loses interest

2. They judge your sample as not good enough

3. The free sample satisfies their "need" and they no longer want "the paid version"

(also, commissioners, don't ask "do you have a sample", look at the artist's gallery and talk to them about that; artists love gushing about their art!)

From here, I decided to be systematic about it: I was going to create a sample of every possible combination and put them on a price sheet (I don't recommend this, by the way). I'd long planned to get "volunteers" to appear on my price sheet, but by this point, the pandemic stimuli had stopped so I decided to sell the slots in a huge YCH.

To promote it, I started using Twitter ...I mean really use it. I'd never "gotten" Twitter much, but again, I made the effort and soon went from replying to 1 or 2 tweets every few days, to replying to 20 tweets a day.

And here I learned the second lesson: The online art space is an interconnected ecosystem. I only sold 2 slots on Twitter itself (people I knew saw my retweets), but by posting the slots sold on FA, DA and Tumblr, I was able to get more attention there. Then, by making reminders for FA and DA since they don't have a retweet option (and posting those reminders on Twitter), I was able to get more attention back on Twitter ...and the feedback loop continued until I had people asking for slots when I'd run out!

I kind of already knew this, to be honest. I'd always praised EA's pre-2007 strategy of "cross pollination" (releasing the "same" game on multiple platforms to motivate people from one platform to get the other) but seeing it firsthand was just next level.

I considered myself too busy during the Winter Quarter of 2022 (we work in quarters at my school) so, though I was still brimming with ideas, I wasn't posting anything.

...Then I noticed my friends on Twitter were depressed.

I mean, a lot of them were.

They needed me.

I'd been to therapy during the pandemic (and it bankrupted me so I knew not everyone could afford it) but it had given me the tools necessary to deal with it. I could tell they didn't have them. And one of those tools (which I was underusing) was "draw something every day".

So I started the "Free Hugs" series.

From a commercial standpoint, this was a great way to get "out there", since gift art is far more visible than the average twitter reply, but that was not the main reason to do it.

So let's call this the third lesson: Gifts are good. A gift is not a free sample, it is a labor of love. You wouldn't buy a gift for someone you don't know at all, and giving the gift doesn't weigh on your conscience as a waste of time in the same way as "the prospective commissioner never got back to me" does. Sometimes the receiver only responds with a like, and that's more than enough. Sometimes they'll comment show their followers in turn. But because you're not doing it for the attention, it's always a bonus.

What really changed things was something unexpected: I reached 150 followers on Twitter! I'd always planned that, if I reached 150, I would draw the 150 pokémon. I'd kind of resigned on the idea years ago because I'd "stopped growing"... and then it happened. I now had to put that plan into action! (and no, "celebrate milestones" isn't a lesson learned, I'll come back to this later)

Turning my daily drawing into "the next pokémon on the list" was a huge boost to my productivity (so long as I kept the list handy) and it contributed to the "ecosystem" positive feedback loop.

Let's call this the fourth lesson: Always have something to do. If you're ever "out of ideas", have something you can turn to that will allow you to keep posting. Something that doesn't stress you out (drawing Pokémon is a huge comfort for me, it's literally therapeutic). Something that doesn't require a lot of effort to decide what to do next. Something that (for all practical purposes) you could do forever.

And now, having a huge roster of pokémon under my belt, came the next turning point. I'd always considered black and white sketches to be "unfinished" art, but people were quite happy with them as they were. And with Pandemic payments stopping, I offered to "finish" them... as a commission.

Approximately one out of every ten people who received a pokémon sketch were willing to pay to see it "finished", which is the exact ratio taught in marketing classes.

This brings me to the fifth lesson: Direct marketing works (ha,ha, just kidding, please don't spam your followers). The fifth lesson is: Keep in touch with your follower base.

They already made the decision to follow you, they are clearly interested in what you have to offer. Make sure you talk to them, listen to them, study them individually, and yes, give them fan service (and I mean this literally: give them what they came for, not what a stereotype says they want).

After about a year of toil, my price sheet was ready (remember I said I don't advise making them like I did?) and I sold 2. and here I learned another hard lesson: Commissioners are creative people (they just lack the time, tools, or skill to do the art themselves)

This should be a good thing; what better person to work with as a creative, than a creative? The problem is that not many people are creative, so a broad "throw anything you want at me, the only limit is your imagination", only works with people who have unlimited imaginations. Not even lowering prices helps in this situation.

If you want to reach a larger audience, you need to do what most artists do and offer donation drives, YCHs and adopts. If you need ideas for these, celebrate holidays or milestones (told you I'd come back to it) but do it with intent, not out of obligation. Try to stay away from newsbites or trending topics as these will become dated very quickly (and you want the stuff people paid for to act as an ad).

So I launched a donation drive. I'd always been planning one for Macro March. This taught me the next lesson: People want to give you money!

This may come as a shock to many of you, but it's true. Your followers do like you that much. Give them opportunities to show it on their terms. And never fail to acknowledge it!

I soon after launched another huge YCH, got only 1 response, and learned the 8th hard lesson: Some months are just dead.

If you've ever wondered why no artist ever does X in the month of Y, this is why. People just disconnect from the internet at certain times of the year (and with the pandemic ending, doubly so!). Trying to get anyone to even see what you're doing at these times is literally shouting into the void.

By this time, my mother had lost her job, and her severance pay had run out. My family was financially in trouble. I went back to my list of pokémon, and people who said they'd be interested in paying to get it finished "later". Only 2 of them still did, which taught me two new hard lessons:

9: Buying art is an emotional endeavor. Once emotions subside, the push to put money on that particular piece is gone. This also means that art should always have emotion (and probably why so many people hate AI art for non-"it was made by AI" reasons)

10: People wait for their paycheck. Even if your followers may recognize your situation on the 23rd of the month, even if they want to give you money, they won't have any money to give until the 30th. But by that point, they may have forgotten (after all, what is the internet but a myriad of things trying to get your attention?) so you need to time your announcements considering this. Use that week for a personal project or try to cut back.

Things went very well for a while... but then there came the Death of Twitter. What do I mean by that? I track "views per followers" on my art tweets. I normally get 1 view for every follower, thanks to my carefully scheduled retweets. However, I've noticed a steady decline in that number since July (when the "rate limited" debacle happened). Starting at about the last week of September, it's been stuck at about 0.2 views for every follower. I doubt this is a matter of algorithm suppression, though, since I'm also seeing people I follow, post less. I conclude people really are spending less time on Twitter, which brings me to the final hard lesson: Don't put all your eggs in one basket, don't even put the majority of your eggs in one basket!

From the beginning, having many more followers on Twitter than on any other platform set off alarm bells in my head (and if it's been your situation, it should do so, for you, too!) The fear was not that Twitter, as a whole, would fail, it was that I could lose my account! I am happy with the fact that I currently only have about 50% more followers on Twitter than I do on FA (ideally the numbers would be equal, but since FA relies on people using "browse" and "search", that number is really hard to raise!)

To bring it full circle, cross-pollinate! Link your other accounts constantly. Anyone who's finding you for the first time in one platform should quickly be able to know if you're in any of the other platforms they use. This is how I've managed to survive the Twitter-pocalypse.

So those are my 12 hard lessons:

1. Do not give free samples of your work

2. The online art space is an interconnected ecosystem

3. Gifts are good

4. Always have something to do

5. Keep in touch with your follower base

6. Commissioners are creative people

7. People want to give you money!

8. Some months are just dead

9. Buying art is an emotional endeavor

10. People wait for their paycheck

11. Don't put all your eggs in one basket

12. Cross-pollinate!

They're all "easier said than done", but don't let anyone tell you that artists hate sharing their secrets!

And Merry Christmas.

I'm too broke to celebrate Thanksgiving, but I am thankful for this year, and what a trip it's been!

• 27 people have commissioned

• a total of 55 art pieces, of which

• 20 were donation drives,

• 7 were YCHs, and

• 5 were adopts.

You've literally kept me fed!

(For comparison, last year I got 20 commissions total)

Interestingly, doing this analysis, I found my top commissioners are Jespe on FA and NezMog on Twitter who are practically tied in number of commissions and total dollar amount given!

Thank you all and Happy Thanksgiving