Learning through Failure, Overwork and Methods of Preparation

Does enough failure eventually lead to success? Is Overworking yourself worth it? What is the best method of planning and preparing? I learned the answers to these based on my

14 years of experimentation.

When I was in my preteens, my parents would always disable the internet connection on my computer during summers to make me more "focused" in my studies. I took the liberty of using all the free time to learn how to draw properly just by trial and error. I spent four years drawing without any tutorials, references, and any help. The only person that can see my mistakes is myself. I would say this would be inefficient but the results are astounding. By eventually learning to see my errors, I eventually formed a very perfectionist mind-set. This would, most of the time, be a bad thing though, as I would always focus on little imperfections of my art instead of focusing on making a new one. Making more art, means you'd fail faster, and the more you fail, the more you learn.  By spending my summers just drawing, I enhanced my abilities to think of creative ideas faster. I always wanted to make a new drawing all the time, and my passion fueled my ability to think of new ideas. I kept wanting to make new works, with all of them being different. I wouldn't dwell on a single idea, I keep moving on to the next. As it should be.

Sadly, I no longer have that free time. I can't learn as much as I want to, on my own. I have to sacrifice something, just to even update my comics. Through sacrifice, I've learned that I get better ideas when I'm hungry and tired. The rush of finishing an idea that I'm passionate about is what's usually driving me to make art. The need to be focused on my studies is slowly wiping away my passion for creating artwork, and my craving for making new ideas.

For some reason, there are instances where my best ideas come from improv. Drawing and making up the story as I go. The best example of this is my series "Sketchy Shorts". All the episodes of that comic are entirely improvised. In fact, all my series follow different methods of episodic creation.
Sketchy Shorts is raw improv (usually directed by a core idea/scene/message), Tim is meticulously planned with scripts and plotlines, and Spontaneous Sketches is me being inspired by scenes or jokes and expanding upon it.

I never really know which is the best method, so I try them all and see which one works. Over time, I've come to realize that I really can't hold a passion for my ideas in the long-term. I must always make them as soon as I think of them. Otherwise, I would overthink and over analyze the idea to the ground until I would just disregard it entirely. Tim made me burnt-out to hell until I created Sketchy Shorts.
After making multiple episodes in a row, it made me realize that Tim started as pure improv as well until I got in over my head on making the story "complex".


Storyboard for a scene that never made it to Tim. (There are a lot of scenes that didn't make it due to me overthinking, over-analyzing or just losing interest in them) 

In reality, Tim was never supposed to have a story arc, It was just supposed to be a series of events, feelings, and tragedies, happened to me, represented by Tim and other characters. It was driven by my emotions. And those emotions give me the passion to keep going in making the comic. The complex story arc I wrote isn't what's making me passionate about making the comic, so why did I even decide to follow it in the first place? Again, I was fascinated by the idea, that I could make the story richer as it seems. In reality, I was turning Tim into something I'm not having fun in making.

Unused drafts for an episode of Sketchy Shorts that I've lost interest in

After seeing which methods ultimately failed, I decided to stick to the one that works. Improv. I learned through my failures, which led me to success. And with improv, I can fail faster, thus learning faster. And I'm enjoying it this time.