Thread:DatAsymptote/@comment-25234327-20140325011752/@comment-14800267-20140325034404

I'm not Zena, but I saw this and I had to butt in.

Why did you create your OCs? Did you create them to be popular, or did you create them for yourself? If you created them for popularity, leave. Leave now.

I'm not saying fishing for attention is a bad thing, but if you want that, you can't just do things your own way and start crying when no one pays any attention to you. You HAVE to tailor your work to the public, and that's bloody hard. Figuring out what's going to be popular and what's not is something NO ONE has worked out yet. Did you know Disney expected both The Lion King and Frozen to be failures?

Yeah.

Let's be honest. Very very few people like OCs to begin with. OC's are self indulgent, vain creations made in the image of their betters. Brutal, but true. You need to play people to get them to pay attention to ANY OC character not of their own creation.

"People don't care about the info and they judge the characters according to their art" That's an unfair and judgemental comment. I'm going to sound horribly arrogant (Which is suitable, I AM horribly arrogant), but Jane is one of the most popular OCs for EAH around at the moment. It was purely accidental, initially she was just drawn as a challange, but her popularity isn't JUST HER ART. Sure, that's the bait that draws people in, but after that it's the fact I know a metric buttload about Peter Pan and Hook and have knitted it together in a creative way that isn't articulated with the literary skill of a seven year old. If she was just art, sure, I'd get comments and love for her design, but people are INVESTED in Jane. I have people asking me very specific questions, writing her into their stories (often without permission), talking about her in complex theories about the psychology of her and Esmee, and nameing her ship with Lizzie.

EAH and Monster High, for that matter, are design features. Story is in there, but I know what I'm looking at and both of them were created to sell dolls, and the dolls were designed to look appealling. It's a little unfair of you to expect everyone to a) connect you with multiple OCs when half the time they lose track of their OWN OCs, and b) expect fans of a visual based series to be devoted to a conceptual based OC.

People are shallow. You can't change that. Beating your heart up against the callous, unfeeling wall of "Plz giv me luv 4 art!!11!!" will destroy yu. I've seen countless artists, visual and written fall under that bus. In the end, you have to either learn how to market your creations and sell your soul in the process, or create just for yourself and enjoy the popularity you will occasionally hit unexpectedly, but not expect or demand it.

You can leave the site if you like, but honestly it will make you look petty and petulant.

Art is brutal and it never gets less so.

Lilly