~Aaahhh Melon here, Im sorry I edited your post instead of quoting it! Can you rewrite this please!~

am i allowed to nominate my own? i worked a bit too hard on it. (obnoxious page warning)

rest in peace betty!

What a great page, the hard work put in is very worth it! Oldschool aquatic imagery always has a great whimsical appeal, and the message in a bottle email is such a fun touch.

Alethia is a sci-fi webcomic written and drawn by Kristina Stipetic.

"Abandoned by their creators, scattered groups of robots search for purpose in the factory-cities of their desolate world.
Though the robots differ dramatically in function and design, they share essential traits.
Drawing power from the common grid, they never suffer scarcity.
And the concept of violence is absent from their world.
What new ways of being might such creatures create?"

The first few chapters were pretty standalone in nature up to chapter 7, which led into the several chapters long "Narrative Arc". In my opinion, that segment had some of the author's most ambitious visuals and storytelling yet (although the first chapters are incredibly good contained stories, too). It's a bit more on the existential and philosophical side as far as webcomics go, but it's one I really enjoy; I think both the art and the story are very strong and unique. I hope someone else here will enjoy (or is familiar with) it too!

Being an expert at denying the laws of everything.

Then I could live forever!

Ha! I tried considering some manner of immortality for my answer, but I had no idea how I wanted to phrase it because "master at living forever" sounded too boring (and I don't think I actually do want to live forever). "Expert at denying the laws of everything" gets major bonus points for versatility, chaos, and just sounding cool. Props.

I don't exactly get the message. Is this about analytics and how numbers make people fell turned down?

Hey Ice! Hahaha, I will say that as I finished typing this, I thought to myself, "boy, I've typed a lot of word vomit". I've tried to edit some of the text to make some ambiguities clearer...that said, you'll have to forgive me: I don't know that there is exactly a question, but more of what I hope is a conversation starter, or a chance for folks to share their observations about what they think it means to be an indie creator. (Hm. Maybe I should have started with that. :omg:k:smile:

But maybe to put it another way: Hobbyists (by my definition, folks creating with less of a focus on turning a profit/liveable wage through the hobby) are able to produce their work with all their own personal desires with less consideration for business ramifications. Businesses live or die on breaking even/making a profit, so their choices and methods will often be driven by money rather than personal desires. So where does the indie artist fall, as someone who is likely trying to share their personal desires while also hoping to make money?

Or maybe to try posit it another way... The indie creator expects or hopes for engagement, but oftentimes only few will succeed to a massive degree; the marketplace is quite really big. In my vacuum world I've proposed, businesses consider engagement people buying their product, whereas hobbyists consider engagement people looking and enjoying their work (via comments, emails or just pageviews). I think that indie creators fall in the center of the line. What kind of challenges does that bring? Are expectations tempered enough, or unrealistic? Is there a better way of doing things?

I would say analytics and numbers do relate to this issue of what indie creators sometimes expect and become disappointed by: huge follower counts don't necessarily equate to huge sales, but sometimes that seems to be the expectation.

If you could suddenly be an expert at any one thing...what would it be?



I am putting forth this question yet finding it difficult to answer personally or think very hard about lol...the first thing that jumped to mind was music production, but that's only because I've been playing around with it, but slowly, and I have been...well, impatient. But that's small beans and I'd probably regret not enjoying the process as a beginner while I could. More realistically and thinking a little harder, I think it'd be nice to suddenly be an expert in a language, or sculpting (somehow, "skipping" ahead on this one doesn't make me feel as regretful compared to if I were to imagine myself fastforwarding music production abilities) ...More unrealistically, perhaps I wouldn't mind suddenly becoming a master at the ability of time travel : P

That's rad, appreciate the share (for both, totally missed the VTF had a download on their 404 page...what a neat idea)!

I recently stumbled upon an indie creator's post regarding the topic of engagement, and how audience members passively enjoying of creator works (ie lurking) rather than directly supporting via likes/comments/engagement would kill the indie scene (by extension, I believe dontations/patreon/etc fall in there but this was not mentioned by them specifically). As someone who does often lurk people's work, and someone who creates work as well...this struck a particular conflicted chord within me. I believe it's very easy to enter an unsustainable relationship with one's work, if one is not brutally honest about their expectations about being an indie creative, and what it entails...because being an indie creator trying to make it out there (ie livable wage) is really tough! But I think it is a very popular thing to try be and succeed in, in this day and age. (Melon's topic "What does a successful project mean to you?" from December has a few thoughts that also got me thinking about this as well...)

We all have different expectations and measures of worth of our work. Hobbies or business seem a little more black-and-white with boundaries, needs, and expectations, but the indie creator (at least to me) falls into a strange twilight zone with a spectrum of vastly different experiences, hopes, and expectations. Some people expect or demand that sort of attention. Some rework their strategies, or realign/sacrifice some things for other benefits. Some remain staunch to what they want to create and weather through business struggles. So what does it mean to be an indie creator who is sometimes both the "person" and "the business" in this day and age?

---

Some thoughts

• I don't believe any creator is necessarily "owed" attention, but this seems to be a rhetoric that is used these days (likely out of understandable frustration): that one has to support an indie creator with everything one has, or not at all. On the other side, I sometimes wonder if people are truly keeping up with indie creators because they genuinely connected or care about the work, or if they're just doing it because it's trendy. And what does that mean for the creator then? I think there is something very sad about the whole thing, and I'm sure it's only exacerbated by the current online atmosphere.
• That said, I think a lot of engagement these days are often on social media platforms that are not really...built for that engagement, which likely discourages some folks from wanting to participate.
• It seems to be a fairly common concern among creative people that level of engagement (meaningful or otherwise) seems to always be dwindling. But what even is the expected level of engagement in these spheres? The nature of being an indie creator, whether an artist, musician, game developer, etc, feels to be to be the equivalent of the rock-and-a-hard-place: on one side, the desire to make a living from one's (often very personal) work, and the other, the need to build a willing (and fleeting) audience, or to produce work for free without recompense and hope exposure will get you somewhere. I can't even begin to imagine trying to reconcile these aspects without somehow going bonkers.
• People will always lurk, I think that has to be accounted for -- even still, there's plenty of folks who are the "long time lurker, first time poster" out there. Direct engagement is a product of time, the community/fanbase, and a bit of the creator's own disposition. Whether that direct engagement becomes positive or toxic though is a different matter.
• In short: I personally wouldn't wish becoming an indie creator (with the goal of making a livable wage) upon anyone in this current atmosphere, but I wonder if there are methodologies or agreements people can come to to make being an indie creator more sustainable.

[edits made for clarity]

Welcome to the forums!

i haven't really had the energy to work on my site lately, only because i've been trying to reach a different audience. everybody in this forum more or less gets what i'm saying. so i'm trying to work on the people who are still very hooked in. if there's any interest, i'll make a thread about that at some point, right now i'm really just trying to get this out because i promised melon i would!! i'm actually pretty stoked about this, it's been hard to really engage lately because of everything i mentioned, but a forum is right at that sweet spot for me.

I'll try to wait for that thread; I have to admit I am already very curious about this point -- it certainly sounds like something I would resonate with, or at least would appreciate hearing other folks' perspective on.

Welcome to the forums, Kutan! That webcam is an absolute delight; very idyllic. Appreciate the share.

If I had seen this question perhaps a year ago, I probably would have had a lot more interesting things to say. More recently, I go to bed with pretty much zero thoughts, I am usually too primed to sleep to think too hard past any book or reading I have been doing prior to sleep -- it is a welcome change though, I used to keep myself up late at night worrying about all the things I wanted to do or accomplish the next day, or any pressing concerns regarding work : P

(EDIT: Or if this is just referring to nighttime in general: also pretty much nothing LOL, night time is the prime time for turning off the brain and working on creative projects! Unfortunately, it's personally getting harder to stay up late...)

How will computer files be discovered in the next 100 or 500 years?

What a great question to ponder! In a similar line, I wonder what new "computers" and their "files" will look like in about 500 years...without any particular lengthy thought or scientific rhyme/reason: I'd like to imagine one day the people of the future will be using Mysterious Floating Technology Spheres as their computers that blast images straight to your brain via touch. Impractical and unlikely? Maybe. Whimsical and chaotic? Yes.

Half sharing this here because it's cool, half sharing because I had a split moment of panic where I realized I couldn't remember the name of this site x_x

The VTF (Velvetyne Type Foundry) is a distributor of free and open-source typefaces. They've been kicking since 2010, but I only stumbled upon their site perhaps a year or two ago.



Lots of really cool and unique fonts to look through and get inspiration from. Many modern typography sites seem to rehash the same popular styles over and over, so it is a nice breath of fresh air to see such an interesting collection of typefaces. I admire that one of their bullet points on their about page reads "We want to turn Velvetyne into a snazzy playground for type projects that may present a low commercial appeal but that possess an highly poetic, aesthetic or technical value. We wish to encourage and cultivate these contemporary creations at the margins of the mainstream type scene." I think that says a lot about what you can expect to find browsing the site.

That said, if anyone knows any other websites or collectives similar to this, I'd love to hear it.

I'm still not the biggest fan of emojis. I'm not put off by them, but I don't really use them. There's definitely something weird about it being non-standardized; when you're trying to communicate nuance in text using an emoji expression, it's kind of worrying knowing it'll look different depending on your device. If you take a peek at emojipedia, you can see that holy moly, they show up a lot of different ways!

I do think non-expressive emojis for making pictographs are neat, though! For example, if I want to say something like "you can let the cat in the house, but not the dog," I can very quickly make something like 🏠⬅️🐈✅🐕❌, and that can be communicated to anyone regardless of language. Really useful!

Great point, I definitely agree that non-standardized emojis are definitely one of the negatives of current emojis as a system. I think that's why I'm personally interested in the more graphical/"lackluster" unicode symbols, and wish they'd come more into vogue. Miscommunication's already easy enough without another layer of varying symbols to potentially make things wonky!

Didn't see the irony in my posting this right now until I almost hit the post button - I'm in bed and my cat just joined me. He was nuzzling against my hand while I was typing which shifted my attention to him and it hit me. I'm in bed with a friend this morning! Love this little guy.

This one's got a great vibe, definitely put this one on while walking out and about today. Appreciate the share!

Welcome to the forums, TAS!

It's cool to hear how you found your way here. If you ever do end up setting up your own blog, what do you think you'd blog about? Programming? Interests outside of programming? Or a bit of a mix?