Sunday, August 14, 2011

Director's Anxiety



Since Roxanne is starting her game project, she starts to experience the Director's Anxiety. Yes I just made a name for it. lol

It's something I have gone through before, and still have it occasionally, the worry of "what if it fails? After all of these efforts? All of these time, all of the time of the teammates and everyone else who pour their souls and heart into the project?" 

For Roxie's game, it's a demo currently... maybe it will need 100 hours... for my Edepth anime, it's something that would take up at least 1000 hours of all of our combine efforts... it's that costly.


Eventually I got tired of worrying about the unknown, if it has not happened... it has not happened.
The good thing is... the US... or somewhere around the world, is big enough to accept our projects, someone, somewhere out there might like it. 2Master's short film, being where it was won us some money, I am sure the next one will do better because it's a lot more effort going into it.

As for effort...
Zeiva , Mirage, once mentioned how she felt about her games not doing as well as she wanted after working on it for 3 years... I do fully understand effort does not equal to success... I feel for her on that part...some of the most popular stuff out there are not things that took too much effort... it's about the trend.

However... it is also suggested by Fred from Frederator, who made many kids show possible: "Do something you love. Don't care about the times. You never can predict the trend 3 years later."

Doing this kind of stuff is just a risk. You never know. You can guess all you want but trends in popular media change every year or two... while some part of it is ever lasting similarity (like shonen shojo) others are completely up in the air... it's like stock market right now, unpredictable. So all that's left is just enjoy what you do... If I must dance in the rain, I might as well enjoy being soaked. It's the path I chose.
It's not like I haven't been soaked before... If my stuff is out there, I will get negative comments. I view them as a form of baptism. lol~ Being showered by the market itself.

It's not your friends cheering you on, it's not your mom saying "good job." it's not your family who support you... but it's a bunch of people nit-picking praising, loving, supporting, stealing, hating your work, tearing it up, ignoring or worshiping it, I have one thing to say:
Welcome to the real market, where everything goes.Welcome to the pro world, this is just a norm.

If my project is only good enough for a small handful of people to like it, that's where I am. I have to level up, push it farther. Or just stick with what I have.

If my project is good enough for a lot of people to like it, then it's a success, and we don't have to talk more about this anxiety. 


As for my team, everyone who put time into it... I have obligation to them to sell this project as much as I can, to do my best, exhaust all resources I can to push it out there. I may not have the best personality for it, but that's not an excuse for me to just make stuff and not promote.

I am doing everything I can... I hope I will be joined by my teammates in the future to help make the project a success.... as for how big of a success... we will have to wait and see.

For now, just making it happen is enough work for us.

Creative entertainment projects is a form of self-torture for others' enjoyment... one really have to be a little crazy to keep doing this.

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