Sooner or later, no matter what manner of wunderkind you may be, your work is going to get pooped on by somebody.
"This doesn't work, because X, Y, and Z, and you're going to need to do this again-- you're going to need to do this better," they'll say.
So, you'll do it again. Better, one would hope, but not every time. Sometimes, you're going to miss the mark-- a lot-- in your efforts to be a boarding badass.
Best to know going into this, you're going to have to take some criticism.
Some of it will be arbitrary, and that's fine. Not everyone will dig your stuff or your style or your whatever enough to, say, give you a gig, or keep you on a gig.
Even those who do are unlikely to dig everything you produce, all the time.
You take a breath and you try again.
And then, some of it won't be arbitrary. Sometimes, the cracks in our game settle a little too deep into the work. (I am aware my own bag of tricks is… we’ll say somewhat shallow.)
This is the criticism that'll make or break you, depending on whether you choose to stretch and grow, or leave yourself at risk of falling short.
We should all prefer the former, right?
Anyway, the correct response here is actually the exact same. You take a breath and you try again.
So, let's say you've toiled for weeks on a sequence. You've given it last looks and you're happy with it, and I mean happy with it.
You've sent it in.
You’ve gone to bed three, four, or a dozen hours later than you should've.
You are sure you'll wake up to praise-if-not-a-raise.
But instead: "This doesn't work, because X, Y, and Z, and you're going to need to do this again-- you're going to need to do this better."
Step 1: Don't get defensive. If it's not working, it's not working. You're not going to explain your boards into a higher level of coherence. You tried a thing and the thing flopped. It happens.
Step 2: What you can do is ask your critic to be crystal clear on why and how they feel your creative choices fell flat.
Step 3: Make the changes. We're all here because we love to draw, right? Well, you get to do a little more of that now, so... it can't be all bad, can it?
If you feel it was one of those arbitrary moments, file away for later the cool bits that got dropped. Chalk it up as valuable experience in finding different ways to solve the same problem.
And if it's one of those less-than-arbitrary moments, well, the work needed work and you got called out on it. That's OK, too. It could be you stumbled onto a means to make your bag of tricks a little deeper down the road.
Cheers,
Damien