| Re: Hello! Is anybody Home? |
Subject: Re: Hello! Is anybody Home?
by B on 2012/8/5 1:18:40
So, okay, I kinda missed this thread before (my own damn fault for never looking at the forums). But...
I'm one of those people who've drifted away from HM. I used to hang out here all the time, chat a lot, and comment and post, er, occasionally. In recent years, that's mutated into checking out the site every couple weeks or so. If I remember. That's partly down to real life, of course, but it's also due to the lack of life here. If there's never anyone around to talk to, there's very little impetus to hang around. And of course, the general lack of participation means lack of comments, which in turn means lack of inspiration. I'm happy for (and a bit jealous of) those who don't care about comments and can find that artistic impulse elsewhere. I'm not one of them, sadly. It usually takes me a lot of work and several weeks (if not months) to put together an image, and it's pretty disheartening when I finish them and then no one even seems to notice they exist. Sure, I still occasionally WANT to make an image, but then I think about how it'll take ages, and I'll work my ass off, and then it'll quite likely just sink without trace and... bam, the impulse is gone. This obviously is no one's fault but my own (well, and maybe Dar's-- being blamed for shit is his job), but it still basically means I just don't end up posting here.
And I love HM. This community has meant a lot to me over the years. I've spent a lot of time in that Shoutbox over to the left. I've gotten a lot of help and inspiration from youse guys. There's folks here I consider among my closest online friends (though they probably just see me as that annoying guy who bugs them for comments). Those with long memories will recall that I was also a member (and occasional minor deity) of one our sister sites, Comics2Film. That community withered and died as its core membership drifted apart (aided by outdated technology and a change of ownership). I'd hate to see the same thing happen here. I have tried elsewhere -- I posted a handful of things at DeviantArt (boo, hiss). But I'm not sure anyone even noticed. Not surprising, given how quickly stuff disappears from the front page... Unless you're the second coming of Rembrandt, I suspect you need to already have a fanbase for anything you post there to attract much attention. I don't really have the time or energy or productivity to work on that. Plus DA seems focused more towards drawing and painting than towards the medium I'm actually good at. So... yeah. It's really not the same.
What can be done, I don't really know. Challenges are nice and all, but they won't help much if there's no one here to see them. A thorough technological overhaul and wider web presence are probably necessary, but I'm nowhere near techie enough to know where to even start. (Though I can guess it'll probably involve a lot of time and money, no?) But wouldn't it be really nice if we could somehow pull it off?
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