I’ve been a bit inconsistent with the art supply videos, and I’m working hard at being okay with this. In March and April the growth of this new YouTube venture was exponential. I’d set goals that I’d hoped to hit after eight videos, posting one video each week. When I reached these goals after just the second video, the one about the Blackwing pencils, and it just kept going from there, the project took on a level of excitement that I hadn’t expected. I was an influencer!1 I had a new audience as well, one that didn’t already follow me on Instagram, and one that hadn’t necessarily seen my children’s books or other illustration work. And, unlike Instagram followers, a YouTube audience is engaged. They have opinions, and they comment. I was loving it.
But then, around mid-April, it flattened out. Growth of the channel followed the same curve that each new video follows. It’s a sharp rise with a gradual flattening. A lot of activity at the beginning, then, well, not nothing. But not much.
I’ve lost a little steam. I don’t really understand how the algorithm works, even after researching it and trying a few new things as I produce new videos. This pattern would make more sense to me if my videos were momentary, meaning if they were tackling subjects that by next week weren’t relevant. Think of a film trailer, for example. When a new movie is getting press and in the public consciousness, it’s going to get a lot of attention for a week or so. Then the trailer will get the majority of its views during that period. Six weeks later, who cares? So what we try to do is have the video be “evergreen.” Meaning, something that someone might be interested in now, or in six months. Some of the stuff I’ve posted, like the viewer mail episode, or maybe what art supplies my students are using, sort of has an expiration date to it. But I don’t really follow this pattern as it defines a video comparing two pens. YouTube says it all has to do with the title and the thumbnail image, and people choosing to watch when that thumbnail is suggested to them. And it suggests changes to the thumbnails and new titles to the movies based on its content.2 I don’t disbelieve this, but it doesn’t fully track, either.
So, my attention-span wavers. I found myself looking at my list of potential video subjects and mentally crossing them off. Too complicated, too involved, doesn’t excite me. These videos are a heavy lift, and If I’m going to take a day or even two days and write, shoot, and edit, I want it to be something I am really enjoying using and talking about. I am writing a lot lately and I could spend that time making some real progress on these projects. I have this Substack where I could explore topics important to me in a much less complicated way. And the weather right now is excellent. Heck, I could be out on a 30-mile bicycle ride. It’s become hard to justify the time and effort.
I spent my mornings last week right here on my porch, editing a story about a grasshopper. I try to follow my 500-words-before-email rule and just work in spurts, closing up the file while things are really cooking rather than getting to difficult spots. The idea here is that it’s much easier to pick up the next day, especially after thinking about it for 24 hours, when things are going well rather than trying to start cold with some structural problem that left me hanging the day before. It’s not always the case, but it generally works.
After four solid mornings of solving plot points and character-building, I woke up this last Friday morning and decided I needed to shoot a new video. My typical YouTube schedule is to shoot on Wednesday or sometimes Thursday morning, start editing after lunch on Thursday,and finish things up with music or titles on Friday, posting by noon. This time, though, it was Friday and I hadn’t even considered a new movie. I decided I’d see if I could get in to the studio, turn on the lights and cameras, talk about whatever it is, and just get something done without a lot of stressing about it. I’d ordered a couple of new pens the week before, and they’d been delivered on Thursday. So I read a bit more about them and watched some reviews over coffee, made some notes, hit “record,” and just improvised.
The two new pens are the Sailor Fude de Mannen ($19.50 on Jetpens) and the TWSBI Eco ($38 for this model) fountain pens. Other than being fountain pens, these two pens have nothing in common. The TWSBI is a daily-driver fountain pen, and over the weekend has become one of my favorite tools, easily topping any other under-$100 pen I have3. The other, the Fude, is a special-effect weirdo and I don’t know if I’ll ever really find a use for it.
Here’s the video.
Another part of the equation is that I often find myself doing work that for one reason or another, doesn’t translate to YouTube “content.” For example, I can sneak bits and pieces of a picture book I am illustrating into a video, as I’ve done several times with the new book about buildings I’ve been wrapping up (even in this new one), but I can’t show off too much. So there are limits there. I’ve been spending some studio-time creating and sketching a character for another potential book project, one that I didn’t write, and I can’t show off anything related to that. I am working on revisions for a new Little Golden Book on the iPad, but I can’t show any of that, either.4
Sacha and I are heading up to Massachusetts later this week for the Solid Sound Festival in North Adams. We decided to stick around up there a few extra days and get some work done in an AirBnb in Bennington, so I’m thinking about what I’ll be working on while I’m there. I’ll take the iPad of course. But I’m also taking a small pile of pens and pencils. I carry my nice camera everywhere, so I figure I’ll take a light and an external microphone, and just plan to shoot something about my travel supply case while I’m up there, with images from any drawing and sketching I’m doing at our AirBnb. I worry that once I’m there I’ll just want to work, draw and write; and then not work, go for a ride and make dinner with Sacha, and this weird in-between work-not-really-work of producing YouTube videos will get lost in there.
We’ll see. Stay tuned.
Seems that every time I write something new here, there are new tools on the toolbar. Substack’s writing platform has been problematic for years, with weird choices for formatting text and design. I’m excited to see that I can now color my text, something that I’ve often wanted to do, especially when writing about my book projects.
Speaking of which, I’ve made some interesting progress this weekend on The Walk, the graphic novel I’m creating in full view o my Substack subscribers. I’ve had the plot for years, but I’ve been needing something to say with this story, something different than what the picture book had to say. I think I kind of landed on something, and later this week I’ll be writing about that. Subscribe and tune in.
And, as always, thanks for reading.
Brian
I’m writing this on the very same day that I got my first YouTube payment. It’s a reason to celebrate, and I don’t want that to get lost here. It’s $160, but had you told me in March that I’d be making YouTube money, I’d have laughed at you.
One thing I learned quickly is that clever movie titles and lovely thumbnails are pointless. There is a reason titles are click-baity (this pen SUCKS!) and thumbnails make everything seem like a A/B comparison. It’s the same logic that explains the thumbnails on Netflix and even cereal boxes at the grocery store. No one has time to figure out your creative one-inch JPG or alliterative video title.
If the nib was flexible, I feel it would rival the two $300 Pilots I have. It’s really good.
This isn’t necessarily a contractual rule. It’s just good practice. There is an argument that showing work from a new book can only be a good thing, getting the book into viewers’ consciousness, they might want to order a copy when it’s out, right? But also, publishers like to coordinate things like cover reveals and other publicity. What I find myself doing is filming things I am working on in hopes that a year from now, when publicity begins for a new project, I’ll have footage I can use in some sort of promotinal thing. But often, I just want to draw and not be thinking about any of this.
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