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ask-sunset-shimmer-and-chas-blog asked: hey, what makes a good ask blog?
This is an extremely open-ended question that has a lot of answers so I’m going to give you just a few!
- The first rule is there are no rules. Comics are an art form and at the end of the day it’s your expression and something you do on your own time.
- The second rule is that there actually are some rules. Not “this is not allowed” rules, more like rules that describe how author, text and audience tend to interact. If you want the academic, dense and verbose version look into Audience Theory, but I’ll use some applied bits of it here.
- Identify what it is you want to get out of it. Do you want to improve the craft of writing or drawing? Are you looking to make friends? Are you looking to get an audience? All of those things are just fine, but you’ll need to approach them from different directions.
- For intrinsic reasons like self-improvement, it becomes a problem solving exercise. Find the aspect of the blog that is closest to the thing you want to improve or do, and structure it so you do it a lot. Backgrounds? Have lots of long shots! Action poses? Have fight scenes or performances! Dialogue? Have lots of dialogue! Plot and theme? Plan out a story ahead of time then follow through on it! Descriptive writing? Try the MSPA format! (Also seen in Prequel, Moonstuck and Stablequest (mirror, lots of awkward stretched images)) Similarly, this means that you can tone down elements that you don’t want to concentrate on.- if you want more story you can have simpler art, if you want to improve at art you don’t need much of a story, etc.
- For extrinsic reasons, like getting an audience or meeting people, optimise the blog for sharing. This means making it readable and accessible. Canon characters, light humour, “cute” content, the ask format and self-contained posts are good for this, because the barrier of entry is low. That’s what you want to optimise for sharing - how much can someone who’s never seen your blog before get out of this post? OCs, high brow concepts and long-running stories are less good for this because the reader needs to spend time learning who the character are, following the story along and thinking about what it’s saying. These aspects aren’t bad, they just mean that sharing it will be a harder sell. And for god’s sake make the blog presentable, don’t put any autoplaying music or desktop ponies on it.
Above all, if you’re just starting out, throw yourself into it without thinking about it too much. The biggest barrier to doing things is not getting started, and often overthinking can cause you to back down. Have some chutzpah! Jump in, make mistakes, learn, get better, repeat!
(Source: Flickr / arkangel8514, via moreanimalia)
Rosa the anteater from Amazon Animal Orphanage & Pilpintuwasi Butterfly Farm in Iquitos, Peru
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happy early valentines!!! I haven’t pixeled for so long, fancied being festive(??) and made some roses. you can get em as stickers if you’d like!
(via mizax)