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@Salamenace
 
Oh boy, I know those feels.

@LordDerpy
 
Take an art vacay.

I’m just burned out on art in general… :v

I wouldn’t say as an artist I’m burned out of pony. As I don’t draw them that often in the first place.
 
But as for generally artists burning out on pony or any fandom thing in general. I have to say this is why it’s a good idea to not focus too hard on one thing.
 
Yeah it may be fun at the time but you’ll certainly get tired of it sooner or later. It’s better to draw just a bunch of stuff. Draw what you like. Try something new. ECT.
 
The moment you start feeling like you are forcing yourself to draw something is kinda when you need to take a break or else you’ll never want to draw it anymore.

@Background Pony #8496  
(Sorry for the wait)  
It was an ask blog featuring my oc and his ventures. But I never followed through with my plans, and my blog has been on hiatus for over a year now.

@Salamenace
 
Ask blogs are interesting shots in the dark, what was yours?

@Salamenace  
And it won’t be done with FiM. I can’t wait to see what DHX can do with a clean slate.

I dunno if I’ll ever experience Pony Burnout like other artists. I mean, I still enjoy the show but I’m not as super hyped as I was in 2011-2014. Other than an ask blog that barely went anywhere, I never really started any big projects that took up my time and my fans are small and not as vocal so I don’t feel too pressured (Though that could change with this year). Other than ponies, I do try to draw other things from time to time like Pokemon and I’ve been meaning to work on my human anatomy. When I stopped drawing ponies for a while, it wasn’t out of over-saturation but frustration with the quality of my work and/or lack of drive to draw.
 
So, I don’t think I’ll ever abandon the franchise. It’s one of the factors why I even sought out getting a Wacom tablet, and I’m willing to see FIM to the end.

@luna the great!  
Go ahead, you can make more money by starting an original IP anyways.
 
Though again, franchise fandom. Just go into hibernation until we have a MLP show up that is to your liking. Though you should probably go into this hibernation like, yesterday. The last thing you want is to be so burned out that the very sight of a pony sickens you.
 
@Background Pony #4AD4  
Like this guy.
 
And I fucking miss Blockbusters…

@Darth Sonic
 
This is basically me. I was a kid when Blockbusters was still a thing, and one of my favorite cartoons was G1 mlp. As I grew up G3 flew right past me and I was in college when G4 started. Its probably gonna be a lifelong fandom thing for me. This and Transformers.

joins thread late
 
Yeah, I’ve been having burnout on pony art for a while now? I’ve been working on doing more non-pony art for about a year, and at this point I just don’t have a lot of interest in drawing them? Occasionally I get some inspiration, but it’s become more like an obligation to draw pony art, because it’s what’s expected from me.
 
It may be because I don’t have a lot of interest in the show itself anymore? And I don’t tend to get as much feedback for MLP stuff as I do when I draw for other fandoms, because I’ve noticed it feels like artists are more valued in the ones where there aren’t as many. In the MLP fandom there’s a lot of artists, and it’s hard to get attention for your art when there’s much better artists out there already. In many other fandoms, you can post something and get at least twice as many likes, because art is rarer. I get 20 likes at most for my pony art, despite having nearly 600 followers who are almost all there for pony.
 
I don’t know, I think I’m getting off topic here. But that’s a lot of the reason why I’ve burned out. Honestly I’ve been considering doing more original art instead of only fanart.

@ArrJaySketch  
Out of curiosity, how do The Simpsons, South Park and Spongebob compare on that chart?

I experience pony burnout almost all the time. My burnouts are usually pretty short; they only last about a week at most, and slightly less then a day at least. Once it’s over, though, I’m right back to making pone art. Sometimes, I pump out pony sketch after pony sketch with no signs of stopping. Other times, I’ll barely make two or three things in one month. The only problem is that when I experience these burnouts, I usually get downright depressed with myself, and slump on any personal activities for however long the burnout is. I think the only thing I can draw or focus on without ever experiencing any kind of burnout are my own characters.  
The best way I can explain what I mean is like this: Art is like a hilly road that brings your emotions on constant uphill climbs, and downhill runs. Art burnout is like the flat stretch of road on that course; you just mindlessly walk forward for days on end without anything to dread or strive for until you just collapse.

@ArrJaySketch  
It would be interesting to map show-related events on the date axis. For example, that last spike in the yellow line probably corresponds with (as you allude) the series finale of Gravity Falls in mid-February, 2016. Or the blue spike immediately before the last yellow one seems to then correspond to early January, 2016, when episodes 74-78 of Steven Universe came out. And the really big blue spike seems to correspond to the release of a lot of Steven Universe episodes from May-July 2016. (I’m way behind on those so I don’t know if any mind-blowingly interesting things happened there to explain the size of the spike.)
 
So, it seems that MLP is solidly popular whether or not there is new official content to discuss. And it remains popular today, if not quite to its all-time peak. Whereas the other shows’ fandoms are, pardon the pun, episodic. And driven only by show events.

@The Smiling Pony  
You got me thinking for a few days. Just how is pony fairing, compared to other cartoons? I just picked some cartoons off the top of my head:
 

 
Blue: Steven Universe  
Red: My Little Pony  
Yellow: Gravity Falls  
Green: Avatar: The Last Airbender (for shits and giggles)
 
Seeing how spiky SU traffic is (and understandably Gravity Falls after the mind-blowing series finale), Pony’s not doing too badly. Pony looked way spiky on its own, but it seems pretty steady compared to other shows. It’s remarkable!
 
Maybe part of it is brand penetration. Maybe part of burnout relates to perception. Like, I can see how someone might legitimately trick themselves into thinking “the fandom is dying”. I think taking a second look helps. :)
 
Some friends still go bonkers over SU episodes (YMMV). Even though the trend for SU puts it right back with Pony right now, I don’t think it actually means anything for SU’s popularity.

@The Smiling Pony  
That too.

@ArrJaySketch  
To keep in mind is that search interest is inverse proportional to brand penetration. If more people know about X, then they know where to find X instead of googling it.

@ArrJaySketch  
I think these folks should realize that this is a franchise fandom, and that instead of outright leaving the fandom when interest wanes like you would with standalone shows, you should just go into hibernation until an MLP show interests you again. And go into hibernation before the very sight of a Pony sickens you.

@ArrJaySketch  
Something came up on Twitter recently that really made me consider the concept of Intellectual Property (IP) changes in a show driving some people away. I was looking at some Google Trends recently:
 

 
Blue: “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic”  
Red: “my little pony”  
Yellow: “mlp”
 
The very last peak was the week of December 20th to the 26th of 2015. From there. there is a strong downward trend. There wasn’t even an end-of-the-season spike after the finales like in previous years. If we are going by Google search results, the season ended with a “meh” and then severely dropped off the week of December 25th through the 31st of 2016.
 
I guess if people lose interest in the show, it’s hard to keep wanting to make art about it. Doubly hard if all your pony artist friends also are having trouble sustaining interest.
 
I myself started watching the show because I thought it was cute, clever, funny, and just made me smile. I know a lot of other people did, too! If a show were to introduce changes that made one feel irritated instead of happy, one might first feel disappointed that the show perhaps isn’t as clever as it once was and one’s faith is a little shaken. If this is sustained, one might wander away to watch a cartoon that does make one happy. I imagine it’s hard to maintain a glowing outlook on everything when a fandom has a lot of fighting regarding divisive changes.

Here are some random shower musings…
 
I remember reading about something about how MySpace failed. It wasn’t just people dropping one-by-one…it seems that some people act as social “hubs”. If one person drops, a lot of other people would tend to drop with them.
 
I’ve seen it where if one artist drops, others drop too because they really admire the one artist. Their stuff was the reason that kept a lot of others going.
 
I think in some fandoms (like furry), there’s no real central “thing” keeping the whole thing together. There’s a vague concept of liking anthropomorphic animals in one theme or another, and people mostly decide what exactly that means for themselves. Occasionally an artist would burn out on that fandom—like a friend did many years ago—and some other people would be bummed and leave, too. Most people would stay, and the fandom remains stable.
 
When you have a concept centered around an IP, if some changes in the IP drive more people away than it attracts for any reason at all I can see artists dropping from a fandom at an increasing rate. After all, the reason why artists usually start drawing fan art of an IP is because it’s fun. If it stops feeling fun—like the show—I think people wander away. If people feel put off enough by the changes in IP, I can see some people not just losing interesting, but actively becoming disgusted. And thus they trigger the social hub phenomenon, above.
 
So, musing, the show would have to do something really phenomenally good to get people excited again.

@The Smiling Pony  
Oh I saw a teaser for that. I thought it was kick ass.
 
Well there that goes.
 
Off topic:  
I can’t get the flow for animating, too many format changes, my articulating monitor isn’t wide screen like my laptop, making things a cramped mess to juggle. I would like to draw nice tapered vectors in Sai, and use them in Flash, but I need a lot more practice.

@Ninji  

 
The animators were doing some really impressive work, but it seems they aimed too high and burned out badly.

The same reason I spend days straight offering bones to a digital alter on Runescape. The bar is too high.
 
Nobody is here to be less than.
 
I would be the first to bail on this fandom, but the show is so charming and fun I can’t miss an episode. I naturally stick my fetishes to cute things I like. I kinda make money doing it too.
 
Come to think of it getting burnt out on a drawing would do me a lot of favours, I tend to get flimsy with it halfway through.
 
PS: what is this thing that got shut down? I love grave digging drama, but so I don’t get banned maybe someone better just PM me.

Seeing other fandom material is part of what keeps me active. Still some good ideas floating around.

@Darth Sonic  
Yeah pretty much just not engage.I mostly would be a silent watcher of the show and certain tumblr blogs I keep up with.