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Weekly Update - Cover art finished; Doubts due to lack of childhood encouragement

2 years ago1,254 words

I finished some promotional art, which I'm proud of, but... did your parents ever encourage you in your pursuit of your interests?

I've been writing these Weekly Updates a few days late for a while - ∞ the last one was on Monday, just 3 days ago ∞ - but I'm writing this one early, on a Thursday, due to some doubts that I want to work through by essentially talking to myself here.

On Monday, I shared a sketch of a possible promotional 'cover art' image thing I'd started painting. I've now (probably?) finished that, and it looks like this:



Here's a comparison between the ugly sketch and the finished version:



I've also posted a progress gif thing on ∞ my Patreon ∞.

I now finally have a proper stylised title, too, which is included in this... though it's in light text over a light part of the image, which doesn't work, so that might need some tweaking.

∞ According to a post on that howtomarketagame.com site I linked to last time ∞, the various 'capsule' images used to represent games on Steam are probably the most important part of marketing; the linked article talks about how a game got 20x more sales purely as a result of improving its capsule.

I'd always thought of 'marketing' as going out and promoting elsewhere, and I wasn't sure where... but I suppose it makes sense that a lot of people find games just by browsing the library in Steam directly, as you would when searching for something to watch on Netflix or whatever. So knowing that just preparing these capsule images would be such an advantage feels less like I have some insurmountable mountain to climb and gives me something directly 'actionable' to focus on.

The author of that site suggested paying a professional to do the capsule art, who'd charge between $500 and $1000. I tried to make it myself, as always.

And I think the result is comparable to something by a professional! Or am I delusional?



I'm really happy with it, personally, and proud that I - me! - have the skills to produce such a thing. It feels like all the years of hard work I put in in the past have manifested as something useful, and the thought that I can do high-quality work without having to pay someone else gives me a large amount of personal satisfaction.

(I also got wondering whether I could be one of the artists charging for the $500 - $1000 capsule art commissions...)

When we're proud of something we've made, it's natural to want to show it to other people. I thought I should share it somewhere on Reddit, but wasn't sure where; would it even be appropriate on r/drawing or similar? And posting in a gaming community feels like something I'd have only one shot at - posting it repeatedly seems like it'd annoy people - and I should prepare my game's store page properly before that...

So I thought I'd show it to the three friends I have first. I sent it to them a couple of days ago. None of them have replied. Not unusual - and one of them has in the past sent me her art which I take days to reply to - but... still at least a bit deflating.

I went to get food a couple of hours ago, and encountered my mum in the kitchen - the only time I ever really see my parents who I still live with - and decided to show her, naively assuming she'd be wowed that her own child could produce something so amazingly skilled or whatever. Or rather, I feel like I'm a disappointment, and hoped it might show that I have some sliver of worth after all, or something like that.

She stared at it for a second or two with no expression on her face, then asked me in a stern, dismissive, almost annoyed tone whether it was a game for children.

She's not remotely the target demographic, and she has no experience with games or the whole internet/pop culture world I've spent much of my life in - she wouldn't have a clue what a 'chibi' was, for example - so I can see how she'd assume that from the stylised character proportions, but...

Sigh. I wonder how many parents are supportive of their children's interests. Is it the majority, or just a few? I blame my father for my many anxieties and insecurities, but my mother's never exactly been supportive either. She's not overtly hostile towards me like some parents are, but I can only remember two times she's ever hugged me, and she never asks to see my creative work; on the handful of occasions I've tried showing her anyway, she's reacted much like this, with a kind of annoyance or impatience or something, or with criticism rather than ever a kind word. If she ever hung my incompetent scribbles on the fridge when I was a child, I don't remember it.

Her feelings about my work shouldn't even matter that much now that I'm (ostensibly) an adult, but I suppose the drive to please parents who've withheld positive reinforcement is something that sticks with us for a lifetime. The desire to make a parent proud motivating a character's entire adult behaviour is a common trope in fictional characters for a reason.

I'm really surprised that I've developed my creative skills to the degree that I have considering the lack of encouragement early on. I don't know why that is.



I can't actually use the image as-is for my Steam store branding, since it requires ∞ a bunch of capsules of awkwardly different sizes ∞. I drew each of the characters and things on different layers specifically so I could rearrange them for different sized canvases, and I've spent the morning working on that...

But this little thing just feels so deflating, just because it set off an avalanche of insecurities and feelings of unworthiness that have spent a lifetime building up, so now I'm left feeling like a tiny little child who'll never fit in or succeed because my primary caregivers never told me that I would.

(And of course the depressive episode I've been stuck in for months, which I thought I was seeing the tail end of, has turned around and pounced back on me at the smell of fresh blood... or something. Mixed metaphors.)

I suppose it's helped at least a bit just writing about it, but... I don't know. The doubts are hard to just push away, and trying to get back to work on this elicits a kind of disgusted feeling, or shame or self-loathing or something. The pride I previously had from looking at my art is gone, replaced with something like critical dismissal, and embarrassment. Hardly the ideal mental state to work on preparing something that's meant to be appealing enough to encourage strangers to spend their hard-earned money.

Maybe I'll hear from one of my friends and they'll be more impressed... or maybe my work is objectively poor, childish, they'll just talk down to me with pitying sweetness, as if I'm mentally handicapped or something.

I wish I could just disappear into a bubble and make stuff purely for myself. At least I like it...