The Shopkeeper's struggle
issue #66 | not counting views
Hi! I’m Hannah Ruth/haruh and this newsletter is for those craving art talks, daily life philosophers, and the bored. Every two weeks (kind of, not really).
✦ Art
Priorities
A shop owner sets up their store window to be beautiful to attract customers. They do it with care and consideration, since customers are in a hurry and barely take a look. They need to understand in a second what the store sells, so it’s an important part of the business.
But after the shop owner put up their beautiful display, they go and run the rest of the store, the heart of the business. Inside, they attend to customers, inventory, accounting, and the actual selling of products. What the owner does not do is stand all day behind his shop window and check who is looking at it. They don’t count each view.
If the store is not getting a lot of customers they might adjust the display, but if the owner only gives the display all his attention throughout the day, who will make the sales? Who will talk to customers, do inventory and accounting? The shop owner knows better than to count every person that looks at their window.
I recently came back from the Annecy animation festival and it left me reflecting about my body of work. I realized, there is barely a body to take note of, more like a loose hand here and there. I realized I’m kind of being a shop owner that is too caught up with the shop window. I feel an urge to focus on the heart of my shop - the art itself.
Last post was about burn-out, so while Annecy left me motivated and inspired, it also intimidated a little, as I don’t feel 100% rested yet to tackle everything I want to make. How to conciliate the urge to create with a lack of energy to actually do it? I want to write about that at some point, but I feel that this post should be more uplifting and light. I will dedicate the rest of this issue to positive things that are currently on my mind :)
✦ A series of nice things
I am working on a print version of my Webtoon
Together with a graphic designer, I’m reformatting the webtoon to become a book! How exciting is that? I’m a little intimidated about finding a good printer and the overall quality, but if everything works out that’s literally going to be the highlight of my year. Aside from the book, I have another exciting announcement about the comic, but I will leave that for later.
I got a Steamdeck
On my quest to find ways to recover from work, I realized one big thing keeping me from gaming more casually was only being able to do so on my PC, where I also work and get back pains at the end of the day. So I got a second-hand Steamdeck to be able to play on the couch! I’m super happy about the deal I got and right now my main wind-down game is “Is This Seat Taken?”. It’s so relaxing and cute. The second game I’m playing that is also super cute but at times less relaxing is “Cult of the Lamb”.
I posted a WIP animatic for my circus project
Before even starting my other animation, SONHOS, I was working on a teaser for a story I want to turn into a feature film someday. I had to put it on hold to focus on my graduation film, and now I decided to post a WIP version just like for SONHOS, because I really wanted to share the concept. It also has a soundtrack composed by a friend, and I absolutely love it.
Steven Zapata started streaming regularly again
If you don’t know him, you could call him an art therapist. Whenever I need to rebalance my anxieties around art, I listen to an old Zapata video meditation or just ask questions during his streams. It’s very chill to listen to in the BG, prompt some reflections, or just interesting to follow along his drawing.
Speaking of shops, a game about making dresses
You can play the demo on itch.io but also wishlist it on Steam! It’s really cozy and takes me back to when I wanted to be a fashion designer as a teen.
What are some nice things in your life right now? Please share! Thank you for reading my occasional reflections, I love writing those issues and always hope they are a little bit helpful to someone out there.
✦ Watching
Ozark, Vox Machina, Detective Conan
✦ Reading
re-reading The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy