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« on: May 16, 2017, 11:01 AM »
I agree with Sabu and Jetster that we should implement some sort of help or rehab, as it were, to help defaulters.
Boot Camp is a good idea-- and judging on the two graduates so far it seems to be really working! But because Pyras can only take on so many people at a time, I also suggest small practices- 4 or 5-pager artist match beyond battles. We can even give them a fun name, like "greasers" or "minis".
Heck, even in an art thread, and I'll propose this one as an art jam: make a one or two-pager narrative. Just, small things to work back up to doing a comic on a deadline, and also ultimately (and I'll get to this later), they're FUN.
About serial defaulters: if we do just shun them or shut them out, then it's no better than the old Void tradition of giving people those crying baby icons. It's childish, vindictive, and ultimately unsympathetic.
Understanding a situation and trying to help someone deal with what seems to be a recurring problem is more important than yelling at them about things they already know.
Of course, if someone is offered help, and they refuse to even make the effort to go through 'rehab' as it were, then the burden is on them as an individual for either not noticing the problem or refusing to change it.
Another thing I would like to encourage is that you don't need to be perfect. I was talking to another voider who recently did a published comic, and she had mentioned when she sent in her comic she feared she'd be torn apart for various little things: lettering, or composition, what have you.
Turns out, her comic actually got really good reviews, and Void had just made her scared.
When I told my former university professor, and friend- a freelance animator- about the workload of Void (I've gathered over the course of TTT you need at least 10 fully colored pages in 2 weeks to not be considered 'underperforming'), it actually frightened her how much art we are supposed to do.
And I'll say right now, I'm still physically recovering from the work I put into Tag Team Tourney 2017-- and some Voiders have wrist issues caused by the overwork imposed by some tourneys.
But WHY are we working so hard? It's not purely out of competition-- it's also the shame of being incomplete, and making something that isn't perfect. The fear of being a disappointment, when you have tons of people's comics to be compared to.
And this is something that I think is related to defaults: we get scared to make something less than perfect, because of how we'll be viewed in the community.
Void is very much the 'it's harder in real life!' college art class of comic-making, and I also feel sometimes that pressure to not disappoint can lead to the ultimate disappointment OF defaulting.
Void is competitive, Void is collaborative, but Void is also fuckin' stressful as hell. As well as rehabilitative help, we need to work on our approach to viewing people's comics as good fun as well as competitive practice.