The Anxiety Creative Designers Face: Is It Just Me?

After staring at a character you have been working on for days, there comes a point when you can no longer tell whether it is well drawn or not.

Because there is no one to ask.

Ever felt worn out from creating alone? How creators support one another

There is no colleague sitting nearby, no team leader passing by with a quick comment. It is just you and your monitor, with every decision resting on your shoulders. Anyone who has ever made a living from creative work has likely experienced this moment at least once.

This is not a problem of individual personality.

In one survey conducted in the UK, nearly half of freelancers described their working environment as “lonely and isolated.”

The situation is no different in South Korea.

A study of adults found that 47.5% of all respondents usually experienced loneliness. Among people living alone, that figure rose to 62.1%.

For freelancers and creators who build their own workspace and make every decision on their own, these figures feel particularly close to home.

For office workers, loneliness may mean having plenty of people around but no one to share your feelings with. For creators, it can come closer to having no one to ask in the first place.

This is also why creative work can be especially lonely.

A proposal or report may be reviewed by colleagues, but the process of completing a character usually comes with no midway check-in.

From beginning to end, you have to make the decisions, revise the work and decide for yourself when to say, “This is good enough.”

When the finished work is finally put out into the world and met with no response, that silence can be exhausting, regardless of your actual ability.

What we need, then, isn’t a system but people

This is one of the areas Decoblocks cares deeply about.

There are things that even a good plugin or a convenient marketplace cannot provide.

Someone you can ask, “What do you think of this?” Someone who will say, “This is good,” when you upload a new character. Someone who will laugh with you and say, “I’ve been there too,” when your work is rejected. That kind of presence is what matters.

That is why Decoblocks does not want to treat individual designers as merely “vendors.”

We are putting just as much effort into building relationships where creators can exchange feedback on one another’s work, share the know-how and lessons learned from registering characters, and ask someone with more experience for advice when they feel stuck.

It may still be too early to call it a fully established community, but our direction is clear.

We know that when someone grows tired of creating alone, it is often another creator’s words that give them the strength to start again.

Well-designed tools make the work easier, but the people beside you are what help you keep going.

Sometimes, simply knowing that you weren’t the only one feeling this way is enough

Sometimes, simply knowing that there is someone somewhere wrestling with the same concerns is enough to give you the strength to draw the next character.

Joining Decoblocks is not just about gaining another distribution channel. It also means finding a place among people who create while carrying many of the same concerns.

If you have ever grown tired of creating alone, perhaps it is time to try creating with someone by your side.

Feeling alone is common—more common than you might think