How we lose when we try to follow the "shoulds" and lose our Passion

[benedictrm]

As some of you will know I have been pretty active here over the last few months, like a man on a mission. I am. I want to help dispel the myths I see destroying this marketplace and in turn to better understand how they affect me as a seller, or more accurately as a living person with a family that needs feeding from the things I do.

This thread was part of the catalyst for the video below: I posted a buyer’s request for a logo… I’m shocked at the seller’s offer - Your Fiverr Experience / The Ranting Pot - Fiverr Community Forum

These videos are aimed at Musicians I encounter but apply equally to sellers (and buyers) here in all types of work categories.

The cover image tries to say it all as I show someone trying to shove their thing through a Retrowave shaped & colored window that isn’t a good fit. Because they have tried to color their thing exactly the same shade of Retrowave Pink to “fit in”, they have lost contrast or visibility in the market.

All that following the “should” rules that are mostly laid out by people who are not winning anyway, we tend to stop ourselves from connecting with and delivering the unique things that we were meant to do (you can argue over who meant what but that is irrelevant to getting the outcomes you and the world need).

🙂

[imagination7413]

IMHO, there are only two things that mimicry and imitation are good for and only if they have the right intentions backing them: learning for self education, and tributes for showing off the quality of original.

[benedictrm]

IMHO, there are only two things that mimicry and imitation are good for and only if they have the right intentions backing them: learning for self education, and tributes for showing off the quality of original.

Anyone who comes to me wanting me to score their movie with clones of Hans Zimmer, The Avengers (Alan Silvestri) or John Williams gets nowhere. It is the perfect way to guarantee a fail if the film is going to a Festival to get gongs.

That and if you want Hans Zimmer, hire the guy. He is superb at doing Hans Zimmer. The best in fact! I can only ever be a second-rate Zimmer. Silly seeing I can do a first-rate Benedict (and have gongs to prove it).

Doing your own work but saying oh it has to be all these things someone else did is a total killer.

🙂

[zreine]

I started out by copying pictures, it’s an amazing tool to learn. But this led to people sending me picture and asking me to copy them, because they saw I was good at that. I felt more like a printer than an artist. I got bored quickly, I quitted doing art completely for a couple of years because of this. It was even more depressing seing my “copies of picture” were getting more positive attention than my original artwork that had heart put into it.

It 's a positive that Fiverr brought me. I get orders because they like my art style, not because I’m a human printer and it feels nice.

[benedictrm]

I started out by copying pictures, it’s an amazing tool to learn. But this led to people sending me picture and asking me to copy them, because they saw I was good at that. I felt more like a printer than an artist. I got bored quickly, I quitted doing art completely for a couple of years because of this. It was even more depressing seing my “copies of picture” were getting more positive attention than my original artwork that had heart put into it.

It 's a positive that Fiverr brought me. I get orders because they like my art style, not because I’m a human printer and it feels nice.

And this is how it should be.

Yes it is easy to clone others and get the easy accolades but soon we realize that when we draw Star Wars characters or re-tread Trailer Swift’s song, the accolades are really going to the other person not us.

Sure, many audiences seem incapable of recognizing anything that isn’t exactly a clone of something someone already told them is cool, but as artists, that is our fault for not showing new work. For letting people be lazy and unchallenged (as they sit there slack-jawed watching Game Of Drones because it comes with a the Hipster Stamp of Approval).

Both of you do nice work and if I were paying for an album cover to be creative’d up, I’d be looking for something with character - something with Story. Never something that looks like clones of something someone else cloned off someone who was cloning Blade Runner.

🙂