People like Myron Golden, Layla at ProcessDriven, and Tim Ferriss have helped me understand that business is about experimenting to find out what works. It’s literally try, fail, try, fail, try, fail, until something finally works. Always be ready to fail fast and try something new.

A lot of business stuff is common sense, tbh. Ask questions, find out people’s needs, and create something that fills that need or otherwise solves a problem those people have. You can get a lot of education from YouTube for free!

Speaking for myself, teaching is the only stable income source I have. There are (and will always be) people who either need or want (for themselves or those in their care) to be educated. However I do agree that a lot of course sales and marketing tactics are disingenuous and prey on people’s hopes

I have my own creative struggles too, so you’re not alone - and we all need to support each other as we grow artistically.

The first time you do something will always take the longest - once you have a template to work from, things will go much quicker! I’ll follow you on Twitch and hopefully I’ll be able to hang out on some of your streams!

This looks so good! How long does something like this take to draw, rig and animate?

YouTube Music here, as I have YouTube Premium.

Art is as much for you as it is for others. If you need to create for others, do so. If you need to get something out of your head for your eyes/ears only, that is just as valid. Art can be healing and therapy too. Sometimes you need to ignore the world and retreat to externally process through art.

I still use one sometimes! 😆 I use Firefox (actually Librewolf) and I have a download manager for it called DownThemAll - it’s a nice dose of time travel back to that era when I need to bulk download stuff!

RealPlayer and the DivX codec made SO much anime-watching possible for me in the late 90s and early 2000s. Having to leave download managers open at least overnight and sometimes even for several days just to watch a pixelated anime episode was still an incredible experience for the time!

It’s also worth noting that in the Great Recession in 2007-8, one academic paper I read states that “entertainment spending often does not decrease much during economic recessions”. People need art and music to keep themselves going and maintain stronger mental health during darker times.

I watched a video on this very topic a few days ago. I hope it helps you as much as it helped me to realise that even though I sometimes don’t see the point of creating when the world seems to suck most, art is actually needed more than ever when things are (or even just seem) bleak.

Welp, time to move to Reelcrafter! I’d been putting it off, but now’s as good a time as any!

Indeed. I've heard and read from other streamers that having "Follower Only Chat" enabled is a quick way to kill your stream's growth. I get that it can sometimes protect against AI bot-spam, but it's a double-edged sword and, in my opinion, I don't think it should be used as a default preference.

There are many artists with simpler styles who are creatively blocked and can’t finish anything - but you, even with a more complex style, have shipped artwork for a finished game. If complex works for you and you can finish things, then you do you! No need to be envious. Speed isn’t everything!

Yeah, I think this is mainly a concern for producers etc. who use longer samples. I doubt the problem would exist for one-shots. Anyway, one recent video I saw on the topic related to getting DMCA’d after a livestream. Might not be relevant to your use case!

That’s encouraging, but I’ve also heard stories of people getting copyright-struck from Splice samples used on their music. At any rate, I wish you pain-free music-making, both legally and physically!