Hey guys, originally I wanted to record this as a quick video but I'm kinda struggling to find the motivation to get in front of a camera or mic right now, so apologies if this is a lot of text to read (video update will be at the bottom if you just wanna know how the next animation is going)
To be honest, I've been in a rough patch mentally since a bit over a week now. Usually conventions give me a surge of motivation, but for some reason since the last one I've been stuck in a state of having no energy and struggling to find hope & positivity (nothing bad happened while I was there so I feel like the con itself isn't the cause). In all honesty I've lacked the interest in doing anything except work (not that I'm forcing myself to work, I'd just rather do that than nothing at all) for a few months now, but I haven't had such a rough patch of negative emotions like this since December.
I'm having a hard time finding a decent justification for while I'm feeling this way, since nothing in my life is particularly bad right now aside from my usual mental struggles (low energy, social anxiety etc.) and my uncertain future financially. In regards to that, to be real with you, YouTube has been kinda kicking my ass the last 2 years or so. It's something that's been affecting a lot of other creators too, but a video's performance is now more unpredictable than ever, and because of that YouTube has not been my main source of income for quite a while now (honestly if I hadn't started vending at conventions when I did, I don't think I would still be able to do this now). I really hate that I suddenly have to care about analytics and views and all the buzzwords, but despite all that I'm still passionate about it and still motivated to keep making animations (partially thanks to you guys <3), so again it's hard for me to see these things as a reason to feel this bad.
Idk, sorry if this was a bit depressing to read, I just wanted to let you guys know what's going on and I do feel like I can be a bit more real with you compared to the happy/positive image I gotta keep up on public platforms (I'm also totally fine with you skipping things like this if you just wanna see video updates & such <3)
[ Next video progress update starts here ]Anyway, I finished scripting, recording & editing the audio for the road trip part 4 video, it is a bit of a shorter one but as I mentioned in my last post I think shorter, more frequent videos will be a bit easier for me to handle + with the roadtrip series in particular, I'm finding that certain topics/stories are better suited to their own individual videos, and I think working on them this way will help curb the "storytime animation burnout" so there won't be such a huge gap between the next one :> (plus I'm planning to edit them all together into one long movie when the series is over anyway lol)
I'm gonna start working on the base edit right after posting this, currently I have my deadline on Trello set for the end of April, but right now I think the chances I can complete it within about 2 weeks instead are pretty high since it's so short. So I'll likely have some visual updates for you some time next week!
Thanks for reading, I appreciate you guys a lot and despite the low points, I'm still excited to share all the projects and things I'll be working on over the next few months <3