Hey there.
So I've been having a comic-making block for a few years now, and it's not so much a writing or a drawing block, as just... irrational fears, I guess? It seems like every time I come up with a story and start working on it, a famous cartoon studio (or game studio, etc) will release a cartoon/whatever with a *very* similar plot or character design to my own before I get a chance to release my work (or sometimes after I've released it, but my stuff isn't very well-known, so I assume any new readers won't be paying attention to the dates I started posting things).
A few examples:
- That game/manga/anime Angels of Death has a similar tone to my comic Imitation Nightmare, as well as a character that looks very similar to the main character of my comic, and even has a similar name (her name is Ray, my character's name is Reyn). My comic came out years before that series, but since it's been on hiatus for so long, I feel like most of my old readers are probably gone by this point - and again, new ones won't look at dates and will just shrug it off as a cheap knockoff of the much more popular series.
- My boyfriend played this game recently called Fran Bow that has basically the same plot as Imitation Nightmare, down to specific details (it also came out years after my comic, but... yeah).
Those are just a few, there have been many other instances with other stories/comics of mine as well.
I realize that literally every idea has been done and will be done again and again, it's just that these are such recent things so similar to my own, and I'm worried that readers won't take that fact into account. I do draw comics for myself; I don't have any real plans/hopes of monetizing off of them or anything, but still - the fact that anyone who stumbles across them might just see them as ripoffs of more popular things stresses me out to the point where I don't want to work on them at all. And not working on them stresses me out because making comics is my stress relief/something I miss terribly. It's a real catch-22, haha.
I guess what I'm asking is if anyone has had similar issues and maybe knows a good way to train your brain not to care/worry about these things, though any other advice is welcome as well! And thank you for taking the time to read this.