The Bane of the Uncreative!
Preamble
I am a content creator! I tell myself this every time I am creating videos, blog posts and adventures or streaming live on Twitch.
Although I am a content creator, I lack any artistic talent. This makes being a content creator very difficult when it comes to making money!
Sites and Stickers
I was browsing through my Facebook posts the other day and I saw something that made me so jealous! Within my feed, there was a post in which one of my Facebook Friends was celebrating by selling stickers! They had created some excellent art and had made them into stickers and were selling them via an online shop. I have to say that the artwork was epic and I am very pleased that they are selling them. I am not really jealous of them directly, but more of their talent!
When it comes to artistic talent I have very little! I know that drawing takes time to learn and develop, but I am sure I have nothing to start with! Plus at my age (at the time of writing this post, 56 in a month’s time!) I don’t feel I have the time to invest in learning how to draw!
Being a bit of an Adobe fan boy, I have tried to create characters via Illustrator and have had some success. I created a robot for my Twitch streams called I.N.I.C.O. (Non-sentient Integrated Computerised Operative) and made some different versions of him. To my amazement, I actually sold a hoodie one year at Christmas time, with I.N.I.C.O. on it! – I’m not sure who bought it, but thank you! But generally, my designs remain, well shall we say, yet to be discovered!
Staying Positive!
This was my next venture into the realm of designing and drawing!
I wanted to create a logo/brand for my Twitch channel and, after many false starts and disasters, arrived at the stay-positive logo!
This was created with the aid of Adobe Creative Cloud Express – told you I was a fanboy! This actually gave me some faith in my or Adobe’s ability and I created a ‘Stay positive’ shop! I sold a couple of mugs and a sticker and thought I was on a roll! I made another design with a giraffe and then an elephant and that was when my shop started to slow down to a dead stop!
Before you say anything, I know – your younger child could have made a better elephant than that!
I think that is my problem. Because I can’t draw, I even find the creation of very simple characters a problem. I have no idea how to colour, shade or texture. Without these skills, I find that all my characters and logos appear flat and, well, boring and dull.
I have always wanted to draw superheroes so had a go at creating them out of basic shapes. I was pleased with the product but I understand that it is not a design that people would want on the front of their T-Shirt!
What can I create?
At this moment, I was just thinking about giving up on my creativity. But thought there must be something that I can create! And that is when I remembered my RPG experience!
I have probably been creating content for Fantasy Role Playing Games for decades! From the age of 14, I have created dungeons and campaigns. I have built and populated whole towns and weaved what I consider to be engaging and imaginative plots across several different worlds. Within my campaigns, characters have brandished swords, ray guns, internet sprites and even starships. Thinking back over all these adventures, I suddenly realised that this might be where my creativity skill lies! Creating adventures from my own imagination!
With this in mind, I set forth on a new venture! I would share my ideas as Encounter Sheets and Adventure Plots!
GMs are always very busy people. I know this being a GM myself. So, I thought if I could create short encounters that can be downloaded for a reasonable price then surely GMs would grab at these!
Encounter and Adventure Plots
Starting with encounters that I know have worked in my own campaigns, I started to think about what would I want in an encounter I purchased!
I came up with the following list:
- A preamble providing an overview of the encounter
- A creative narrative that could be read to the players
- A series of possible events within the encounter
- An outro, answering the question – ‘Anything else I need to know’
For each encounter I create I kept to this format, exporting the information via a PDF and adding an attractive front cover. I uploaded these to my Ko-Fi page, choosing to sell from their page rather than from my own website.
And the response – well – to this date – nothing 😥
In an attempt to show what is available, I created a free version of an encounter. This so far has had two downloads. I am thinking, that I have got it wrong – again!
Is the future rosy?
Not to give in, I am polling my community to see whether the encounter sheets are a good idea or not! Maybe they have no use, or they are too expensive or they just don’t meet the needs of the market!
It will be interesting to see the results of the polls. I thought I would wait and see what this is before I start work on the Adventure Plots. Of course, I might have to come to terms with the fact that being creative in the form of designs or things to buy, might not be my strength and I just need to focus on content like this post, my videos and my live streaming!
All RPG players/GMs – I’ve been making Encounter Sheets to sell in my RPG shop – there is a free one too.
— 🤓 Inwils 🎲👨💻🎮 (@inwils) November 21, 2022
No purchases so far – thoughts on these#roleplay #ttrpg #tabletopgames #roleplayinggame #tabletoprpg #RPGlifeUK #rpg #dnd #dnd5e #vttrpg #ttrpg #TTRPGs
I understand that I might not be the best at creating things that people will want to buy. But I do wish I could produce something that people will enjoy and their will value.
And, maybe one day, I will be posting on Facebook that my product has sold and that I will be spending the rest of the week celebrating!
