Hey, for what it's worth, I love seeing everything you create. You're a creative and talented person, and that's not nothing.

creative and talented? Sure doesn't really feel that way

You are. You've got a ton of great ideas for characters and the vision to bring them all to life. It's great.

i guess that is true but...

I disagree. You're talented. You have a great creative mind and share it wonderfully through your art. I want to ramble on and on about why it's harmful thinking so negatively, but I don't want to bombard the comments with it. You have not amounted to nothing. You're great with what you do.

You are a great artist, don't ever doubt yourself, I really love your pictures and your sexy OCs and everything else, don't ever say that it is bad, you are a great and talented artist, and I love the pictures that you do!

Stop talking down about yourself like this. You're a great artist, you've got such amazing pics of characters like no other. You're unique in a good way. Don't say you're an incapable guy. Look how far you've come.

like no other?

Yes. I don't remember anyone else making pokemon fusions like you do.

Your art is great.

If it helps, you can do a project like a visual novel, comic, or game. they're tough to learn, but those leave an impact in people's lives.

I would certainly agree with this idea. Maybe something like Scratch (online or offline editor) or Stencyl (program) would be easier to start with for creating games, since those programs allow you to build code like lego bricks instead of writing all of it by hand. While Scratch has a few tutorials for basic projects in a menu you can find in the editor itself, you'll probably have to look up tutorials yourself if you plan to work with Stencyl.

Dude I love everything you make. Plus I'm usually a fan of fat but you're stuff I'm a huge fan of.

really?

Yes ya goof Ball. Honestly you do just the right type of muscle for me. Not overly exaggerated and too much. More like what those types of builds should have. Heck you understand muscle more than most people I know.

that's quite flattering

You can't dedicate your passion to be dictated under the standards of others. Your passion is your love, your enjoyment to create. Harboring the need to make things for the sake of fleeting value is a quick way to kill your passion.

Do you not enjoy being creative? Has the fire become an ember?

What would it even take for the scorn of their words to stop mattering to you? Their opinions should not lord over you, especially when you clearly mean something to these people. Don't chase the hecklers, embrace the loyal ones before you scare them off believing nothing that they say matters to you since they're not the hecklers.

Don't let others get you down and from my personal experience, we can be our own worst enemy. As the old saying goes, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Just don't beat yourself and take some time to
self reflect and make some changes. But that is up to you. Wish you the best. Big Minotaur Hugs

Art is meant to be enjoyable but as with anything that takes a set of skills you can all ways improve no matter what skill level you're in. You don't have to make ultra detailed or stylized art to enjoy art but if you still don't feel quite happy about your skill sets or art in general then you have to take more in-depth studying in art theory and be more experimental. As in looking into studying how to make your art more expressive by seeing example of other pieces that inspire you, studying via copying models either pre rendered 3d images of human anatomy or real pictures of modelers for artists, diving more into dynamic composition, perspective, and color theory(How to make colors more stylized and complement to eachother with a set of good rule of thumbs.), and other categories. You don't have to tackle every academic aspects of art, but inserting some extra studying into your free time or atlease trying to incorporate and being more conscious of art theory while doing art/commissions can help a lot over time.

So here's the thing:
If you did play into their hands, then you realized it before you died so you can do something about it.
If you're worried about fucking something up, yeah you probably will. But, you can't fail all the time; look at your artwork. You're creating things and have stories that are inside your head. You are doing THINGS, even if you're not impressed by them.
As for your friends not giving a shot about any of that, are you a mind reader? If not, you're assuming things about your friends. Ask them. Discuss things, some may not be interested but others will be.
Depression sucks, but it's not insurmountable.
Just keep moving forward, however slow or small, it matters.
As do you.

It's easy to fall into the mindset of doubting oneself at any time. I think with digital content like art it might be harder to gauge just how much people actually enjoy it. At least I know I struggled with it, since my own pixel art barely got any attention most of the time, making me think eventually that it wasn't worth posting anymore, but that's besides the point. If you doubt that your art isn't more than just 'average', you can always take a look at the comment section here to see people that tell you how much they enjoy your art, myself included, even if those ones tend to be more on the silent side of things usually.

That being said, I find most stuff you draw absolutely great! I think my favourite part of your content is your ability to turn any Pokemon into an even more huggable form. It takes a level of creativity that not everyone has. ^^

Even if what you've achieved so far can't be compared to your friends' achievements, I don't believe that that has to be the goal. The fact that you've made art that's enjoyed by people is great enough as is, at least I think so. ^^

I hope what I wrote made any sense. I just woke up, so I don't think I could do some proper proof reading at the moment. I was just typing out what had gone through my mind. ^^;

I too started this year with a bit of a rough realization and I have been feeling pretty bad about myself too. I have been following you for some time and im a big fan of your character desing! There is always room to improve but if you ever need someone to chat we could! Im always open to met new people