Maf: The Road to 100k Part 2

We cover her Instagram growth, biggest challenges and much more

Welcome back to our interview with Maf

If you haven’t read part one yet check it out here. This interview is a long one so be sure to save it so you don’t miss anything.

How did you get your art noticed at first?

After my computer science degree I had a complete reset. I started off trying to reconnect with the DeviantArt community I’d been in before, but it was a stalemate so I ended up moving out of the platform and onto Instagram.

I don't remember exactly what happened in the beginning but I remember reaching 800 followers because I did a contest to celebrate that, which in retrospect seems really awkward haha. The contest was something along the lines of share this post on your story and get the chance to win a drawing of mine. So a few people shared and I had more participation than I expected. I even had this person that I admired a lot on DeviantArt back in the day follow me from this contest, it was a nice serotonin kick.

Things picked up more as I started reaching out to people, It was tricky to find the “perfect” approach, that balance between being insistent/annoying and just interacting with people casually. The example I remember best was this one time I replied to an instastory of an artist with 4k ish followers (which, at the time, felt like a bold move from a small account like mine). I basically went “omg I play that game, too”, just testing the ground. If I’m the first one talking to someone on social media, Instagram in particular, I try to start with an ambiguous tone, then base the rest of the interaction on the type of reply I get and what that tells me about the other person’s personality and antics. This was particularly relevant in the beginning, when I had less of a presence and an online persona.

This 4k artists I replied to was immediately friendly, geeking out about the game for a bit before congratulating me on my 800 followers contest. This was a big surprise - I didn’t expect her to have even noticed that much. We kept talking and eventually became friends, shouting each other out and helping each other grow on the platform. She’s still one of the best people I’ve met since I’ve started working my way around the artist community online (go give her some love, @miyonautica on IG).

One of the most consistent ways you can grow an account is by getting other people to boost you and boosting other people, but you have to put in some effort. If you do shout outs but you don't actually connect to the person you’re supporting, it might not do much in the long term. It needs to come from a somewhat genuine place.

If you actually go out of your way to say something about what you're sharing, it goes a long way. For instance, looking at somebody’s work and commenting on specific parts you like (“oh I love the colors here!”), or prompting them to give you additional info on it (“I’d love to know more about this character!”). Obviously, I'm trying to push the genuine part here so don't say this stuff just for the sake of it. Genuine comments take you places but the opposite is true for spam.

This is what I say to people when they ask me how to grow. It’s social - emphasis on the “social” - media. So if you don't socialize, and I’m saying this as a very introverted person, it might be harder for you to grow your presence there.

Throughout 2018, another thing I did was participate in other people's challenges. This was the start of the “draw this in your style” challenge, which was a great way to get big artists to share your work whether you'd interacted with them or not. It’s also just a fun challenge overall, making you draw things outside of your comfort zone, with diverse character designs and coloring techniques, etc.

I would wake up at like 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. and finish one of these in an hour, two hours max. My schedule was basically one before work and another when I came home. I realized that this was helping me improve my art style, since I was testing things out, and the more I did the easier they got. Its a good mix of interacting with people and pushing your boundaries.

Fanart is another way to grow a following, more true for Twitter than for Instagram from what I’ve seen. It has a big downside to it if you’re also interested in creating original content, though. I know a lot of people do fan art because they like it, but I’ve also seen a lot of accounts suffer because most of their following came from a specific fanbase, and when the artist tried to move away from it they either left or ghosted the content. I’ve personally never had any motivation to get into fanart.

For my account, I just gradually built it up. I never really got an instant follower boost, so I can’t say that my rise to “fame” was quick. It was over a short-ish period of time but it was consistent with the effort I put in. So much so that I kind of stagnated at 98k for a few weeks (months: whatever) because I just wasn't putting the effort in.

In my opinion, the best way to go about growing numbers is to naturally build up your own fan base. Instant growth for whatever reason might put you at risk of losing touch with your audience and having big follower-like ration fluctuations. To me, growing organically meant that I always felt like I knew my followers and was comfortable with interacting with them. If not the majority, there’s at least a core group of people that I know genuinely will follow me anywhere. Even if that doesn't reflect on a number, it reflects on the experience I have using the app.

I used to do follower shout outs and find some hidden gems in there, though I’ve been less active lately. Not everyone is about being vocal on social media; sometimes you have the chance to bring other people - good artists that don’t put themselves out there - into your little spotlight. I definitely think that if bigger artists were more about the community and not as much about the numbers you would be able to elevate a lot more people.

What went into making your art into a business rather than a hobby?

The interesting thing is I would say it's still a hobby for me, even though I'm getting paid for it. That's the thing about art, and why I never actually consider it to be a viable career path for me (emphasis on the “for me”).

If I'm working on my own project, I'm cool. I get really productive. If I’m working on somebody else's comic, and I’ve tried this at a point back in the day, I just can’t find the same type of motivation. It feels very restraining. The drawing process on itself tends to get very repetitive and boring for me, so the way I keep motivated is to see it as a means to an end. I love seeing my own stories and characters come to “life”, and if I need to practice and become better at drawing for that, so be it.

What's your business model, and how have you grown your revenue?

Lately I have been trying to make a shift away from my social media intensive days. Mostly because I'm studying again and I can't afford to invest as much time in it as I did before. My focus has been turning more towards Patreon content. I don't like putting things behind a paywall, but I'm trying to just maximize the value that my patrons get because they do pay me out every month.

Originally, Patreon was just a way for me to dump spoilers somewhere haha. I just can't help myself. It was my dumpster fire; it still kinda is, but now I'm trying to structure it better. And, well, going into less safe for work areas because honestly it’s a lot of fun, and people are into it.

I have commissions open but they're not openly advertised or priced, otherwise I'd be flooded. I will mostly accept requests via email, if the commissioner bears in mind that my waiting list is around three months long. I only work on them for about 2-3h each week, and to be honest the main reason I have them open is the chance to draw different characters for a change.

So what are your goals for the future?

Again, I'm still studying right now. I can keep up studying and Webtoon for the time being, but whether that will be true for like second year or second semester is up for debate.

My idea is to use what I’ve achieved with Webtoon to become independent from them, or negotiate the rest of the series on looser deadlines to have compatibility with my workload. I do want to complete my series, with or without them backing it up, but the production pace is overkill.

Also, sequential comics are still pretty awkward for me. Even though that's my job right now, I don't feel 100 percent comfortable doing it because I don’t use the Webtoon format properly. I use it as a storyboard, a sort of sequence of cinematic shots, rather than making full use of the medium as it is. Mostly because my mind works better this way.

I also love writing prose, but I don't have that work out there yet. I like to ensure my audience is diverse enough that, if I wanted to have a go at another area or medium, I’d have some people backing me up. Interacting with the online book-art community (mostly cover artists and fanartists) has been my way to browse the market for it, albeit not very extensively.

If I go forward, I might play around with something more akin to a graphic novel or switching between prose and comic in a sketch style. That would be easier for me to keep a story going without spending so much time on it.

What challenges or obstacles have you faced?

Breaking into social media might have been the largest scale challenge. It was a big undertaking. In 2018 I was spending like seven, eight hours a day working for Instagram, on top of my full time job. When people ask me how I did it I usually just say “don't take my advice to heart, I'm a workaholic”. I try to squeeze productivity into every moment of the day, whether it's art or something else, and that definitely helped me keep up the momentum for a while.

That being said, even though working my a$$ off is my natural state, it does get vexing and exhausting at times. There are a lot of “why am I doing this?” moments, especially when you compare myself to others. I try not to do that, but it's kind of inevitable when you're exposed to so many artists and accounts.

In terms of obstacles, the motivation side of things can get hard. The main issue is keeping myself motivated with the story, characters and figuring out how to get them out there for others to get invested in. I get asked “how do I get people to like my original characters” a lot, and I never have a proper answer. Personally, I just started posting my characters randomly, and I was very insecure about that. It’s one thing to put your drawings out there; it’s a totally different thing to put your brain children out for scrutiny. Especially if you don't like your art that much and feel like you're not doing them justice.

The hardest part to me, at least with comics, is being confident in your characters and your story. It's really easy to think “oh well my stuff is sh*t, everyone else’s is better”, especially with how much media we get exposed to these days. So most of the time I try to stay inside a little intellectual bubble, and limit myself to bite sizes of art or stories that I think I could compare myself directly to. It has advantages and disadvantages but I manage to remain my #1 fan haha. It might sound very self-centered, but you do need to be your #1 fan when you're working on something that takes as much time, energy and motivation as a long comic.

I think you should just be helplessly hyped about your own stuff. As individual creators, we’re oneman teams, all of us. We’re responsible for most, if not all parts of the production of whatever we’re making, and all positive and negative feedback will fall directly on us. Which is daunting, and something to bear in mind before you rush into releasing your work. The trick for me is to have enough hype to burn through that, with enough levelheadedness to distance myself from it when needed and weigh factors in when deciding what to share, when to share it and who to share it with.

Where can we find your art?

My instagram is @m_maf_f and Patreon is velnna go check them out!

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