Creative Process: the little bug of perfectionism

sometimes the foe is actually a friend

Apr 30, 2025

The Bite

Sometimes I think I don’t suffer from perfectionism but in reality- I suffer quite a bit every now and then.

This week (April 13th) I had a hard time just feeling satisfied with my storyboard panel. Literally one panel out of 74, my brain is obsessing with it being perfect. “Screen ready”. I want my work to match up to a professional, and maybe to look like an illustration.

It’s weird thinking about it now, the bug of perfectionism is just my fear of being seen as absolute beginner- like a kid learning to draw with a pen for the first time.

Thing is.. I am a beginner- at most very early intermediate.

I want my work to be hirable right off the bat despite me just learning how to storyboard just 6 years ago, which considering where i was 6 years ago to now? my skills have improve quite a large amount (and i’m self taught)

this was my first storyboard i’ve ever done- created this in 2019! I was very proud of it, still am!

I was ready to just create in these new medium, no worries about if it professional enough- i just wanted to have fun and create a musical board.

now i’m a huge worrywart if my work is good enough, over polishing on panels that will only be on my screen for a few seconds.

what my perfectionism bug wants is to eat away my ability to stomach that i’m not where I want to be.

While my skills have improved drastically, I’ll never be able to create as freely as i did back in 2019.

I question and contemplate that even my peers recognize me as a somewhat competent board artist. It would be wrong of me to say that I don’t think about that- I absolutely do!

Swelling Pains

that being said, I ,of course, want to acknowledge there is a degree of racism present in my perfectionism- I realized that many opportunities i have been given to show my art and myself, I’ve been judged on the behalf of my black peers. when i enter predominately white spaces, i am representing every black person, not just myself.

when i mess up, have ‘beginner’ work, and lack proper terminology, it tells to my peers and even future bosses “why should we even take a chance on black people anyways, they cant even do _”

we are not given the same grace to our white peers, so everything i create must flawless. i have to work 20x harder to even be considered in these spaces. I have to carry this burden of being the embodiment of Black excellence.

so to my white peers, know your privilege and do your part to uplift black artist because your voice counts more than ours.

Relief

Although perfectionism is a bit of an asshole to deal with, i can say that it does show me that maybe i’m just scared and that’s okay!

I was reading an Animation obsessive interview w/ Craig Mccracken and even he suffers from perfectionism and wanting things to be immediately perfect. He kept buying all the fancy tools and paper hoping that it’ll make the art great.

eventually he focuses on the process ,and as time goes on, he learns to value progress and exploring. he revisits his old work and goes “what the hell was I going on about? this is great!”. It’s something that I’m learning to do.

sometimes perfectionism makes you blind to your own skill because you’re too busy looking at the light of your expectations.

however it also makes you focus on putting your best foot forward. ~~you might need sunglasses to see that tho~~

It’s a bit hard for me to post my pixie snippets since I’m exposing my soft belly to the world (I’ve been met with such kind words, thank you) so I can continue to explore my ideas and combat my perfectionism and to embrace the process.

But maybe I shouldn’t fight the perfectionism bug, maybe I should befriend it and listen to what it has to say. It just wants to show me where my standards are and what I’m afraid of !

it’s own little brain is on overdrive with imagination and I’m suppose to help ground it back into reality.

I can’t exactly get rid of fear during an artist journey, it’ll always exist so it would be best to just hold hands and skip down the yellow brick road.

so my fear rebranded as perfectionism, we’ll co exist for as long I am on this artistic path. Hand in hand <3

Book Talk

0:00

-19:02

Books Mentioned

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

video mentioned: art date with Fran Meneses

Pixie Snippet: Good Witch Flunk

okay so i’ve been moving a bit slower than i want on these boards, but i wanna make sure the quality doesn’t suffer from me trying to whip out shit as fast as possible. recently i watched a youtube video about making time for comics and i learned this method called batching- which is focusing on just one part of the process until that part is done and then moving onto the next step.

this method i’ve been doing for comics, but for some reason i hadn’t done it for storyboarding which is… funny so i was like oh what the hell!!

so I’ve been batching some rough panels instead of just thumb, sketch, clean in one panel and repeat ~~(burns me out like craaazy~~) and i’ve been moving faster since then!

anyways long explanation but possibly by next post, the boards will be done, don’t count on it tho… I’ll love to do pitch on it like i did for the last one