What is Going on With Art Sites?

[Tsuujou]

I hate how little options for decent hosting sites there are, and I feel like I missed my window to really try to get my name out there.

One day I want to be a big enough name I could work an artists alley and not worry about whether I will lose money, break even, or gain profit, but it's next to impossible to get commissions, heck, even getting someone to just comment more than nice would be fine.

I know there are a lot of ways to get more people looking at your stuff, but really, I just try to post once a day.

I hate to say it, but being a sfw only artist on FA seems to be a deal breaker, and drawing furry related things on DA is way past it's time. As for the rest, good luck getting anyone to say anything.

Your whole comment I was saying to myself "watch her be SFW only". Yup.

You guys get the short end of the stick and it's honestly upsetting. Even though I specialize in sexualized content (though outright porn has taken a backseat in the last few months), I get frustrated when I see swell non sexual work go under. And it bothers me when I see people go "I LOVE ALL OF YOUR STUFF" but completely skip over anything I've drawn that isn't overtly sexual or fanart*. FA is a graveyard for SFW artists which is why I will never give it the respect of calling it an art site. It is a -porn- site and no one will dissuade me otherwise. There's talent, but no one is there for talent. They're there to masturbate. HentaiFoundry is shit, but it's at least honest.

You CAN make it in places with just SFW but your hill is much steeper to climb.. I have a Russian friend I've been pushing that's a professional: [Pic] [Pic] [Pic] He's been uploading to Tumblr for months and these new pieces of his were almost completely skipped over, the rover being a painted 3D model he put 80 hours into. But then he posts this which was something he did for me a year and some change ago and it blew up in mere hours. It's not that it's worse than those prior 3, it's not. I love it. But it's one of two things he's uploaded to Tumblr that got any sort of "attention". The other being another popular pinup. He was actually frustrated at one point because now alllll the furries are clamoring to commission more of this stuff and begging him to draw more of it and making sure that this is the only thing that's relevant on his blog. He does this sort of thing every once in a blue moon. He enjoys it when he does it, but it's not what he wants to specialize in or be known for, but people don't care. It proves that being a master, spreading yourself out, and being frequent just isn't going to cut it sometimes.

I know why this is the case. I know that people like to get off. I get it. But it's just an unfair circumstance. And even when you bust your ass on porn, which is every bit as wonderful as SFW, I'm not belittling it, it's like...why even bother uploading sometimes? To get such engaging one-word comments like "nice", "dat ass", "hawt", and terrible overused sex jokes? That's why I don't even care about notifications anymore and just look at peoples stuff; helping artists that genuinely want help if I can assist. Fuck reblogs/watche/faves/comments, the last of which was all I wanted at one point. I like TALKING about art just as much as looking at it.

*And on the topic of fanart, holy moly. Again I do it frequently, but I'm sad to say that if you aren't doing porn, fanart is the only other way to quickly getting viewership. Basically selling out. And it has to be specific fanart. It has to be realistic Elsa, or a "progressive" gemsona, ANYTHING pony related, or some HiLaRiOuS comic on a new popular video game that beats already unfunny references into the ground. Then you have tremendously popular artists like Doxy actively acknowledging it kinda sucks that you have to do fanart to get anywhere but vocally enforcing it anyway rather than use his influence to -try- and make a paradigm shift to gaining a following. 

That went on longer than I thought, but I'm glad I got that off my chest because I have some big gripes about online arting "communities" (cliques is more like it and that's a whole other paragraph I'm not getting into). Over the years, I've gotten extremely cynical when I used to be enthusiastic. I can't believe at one point I thought that getting known, in these parts anyway, only required skill and a lot of creativity. Nope! MLP porn. And it doesn' even require effort. I've seen rubbish get to the top. It's disheartening.

[Charrio]

I can't believe at one point I thought that getting known, in these parts anyway, only required skill and a lot of creativity. Nope! MLP porn. And it doesn' even require effort. I've seen rubbish get to the top. It's disheartening.

That is so so true, been around for a while watching many rise to the top, most are mainly on fanart or porn.

The only SFW artists i have seen make it already had a name or a book involved

[Tsuujou]

That is so so true, been around for a while watching many rise to the top, most are mainly on fanart or porn.

The only SFW artists i have seen make it already had a name or a book involved

Exactly. It's usually industry folks that can make it doing their own thing since their work has been featured in something commercial.

[AyGee]

Guh... The pangs of being a SFW artist on FA.  I remember plodding through making submissions, being virtually invisible, and then unwittingly creating a character that caught the attention of fetishists and now... well, I'm only -mostly- invisible now.

But if I may create a hope spot here - Xo, can you give us a proper link to your Russian friend's tumblr?  I rather liked that third pic with the rover and soldiers in the city.

[VLZerda]

Your whole comment I was saying to myself "watch her be SFW only". Yup.

Sadly, I can honestly say I've tried. A tasteful pinup is about the extent of what I'm comfortable doing. While I have someone irl that wants to commission me, he wants to commission me for porn of his character. Mostly with my fursona. That was a deal breaker, and he even went so far as to say that he didn't understand why I would turn down the chance for money with that. 

FA is a graveyard for SFW artists which is why I will never give it the respect of calling it an art site. It is a -porn- site and no one will dissuade me otherwise. There's talent, but no one is there for talent.

It really is a shame that this is beyond true. I even tried tumblr a long time ago, but got next to nowhere with it. Currently I am making sure to upload to FA, DA, Weasyl, and the phone app Instagram. All of them give me about the same amount of attention. Granted I've seen a few names from the community here following me on FA, which is really cool, but at the same time frustrating that FA has such a lack of people who seem to care about art.

You CAN make it in places with just SFW but your hill is much steeper to climb..

*And on the topic of fanart, holy moly.    

I'm with you on the idea of fanart being the only way to get famous, but then people come for that content and that content only. The only other thing I can think of besides making fanart is making a comic, and considering I don't feel my own personal stories are good enough that will probably never happen. I don't think I could even storyboard for anyone either. I tried to as a request but just couldn't find the inspiration. I might ask my best friend if maybe we could try to do a comic using her characters (seeing as I feel her stories are solid and not just conflict one page, resolution the next) but that brings up the question of where would I have it hosted? Katbox is always accepting applications but unless you have been active and posting in the forums they won't take much look at the application. (Which i agree is a decent system, if you're not going to be active in the community you shouldn't be allowed to just jump from nobody to newest comic owner.) 

 I like TALKING about art just as much as looking at it.

I have found that unless you're in an art community irl, (aka art college) you're probably not going to get much in terms of discussion. The one thing I truly miss about being i college is being surrounded by other artists and having that chance for open critique and discussion. Ways to try new media, techniques for the ones you're already adept in. DA offers up a lot of great tutorials that I have collected over the years, and I love that I can refer back to those at anytime I want to try something different. Just wish I could ask the original artist about how well they feel I executed something without getting a flame war started because "I copied their style". Copying a style is one think, practising a style to teach yourself new things, whole different ball park.

Sorry also for the multi reply, but you had a lot of really good points. 

 

[Sidhenearlahi]

It is a strange position to be in. I actually have no qualms with NSFW art. I look at plenty of it, and I suppose I technically draw a little, though it's only nudity and nothing much more than that. But the fact that pornographic content is just about the only way to secure a following with any real certainty, short of catering towards a specific fanbase, is in and of itself the reason I resist doing it. It isn't that I'm against drawing porn, I've just fallen into the mentality that in doing so I'll just be contributing to the problem at hand. Or that I'll just be pandering, that I might end up regretting opening that can of worms entirely.

I was by no means a popular artist amongst the Brony community, but I had a fairly active following, one that I was happy to have. And I was pretty terrible, but good enough to at least have plenty of people lining up to get me to draw their OC's, y'know? Even if it was empty, I had encouragement, compliments. I had fun, but like any developing artist I eventually wanted to try new things, and I'd always wanted to try and participate more in the Furry community. Something I'd been a dormant member of for some time. So I made the transition, not necessarily immediately, I had a brief Pokémon period in between, which helped I think keep some of my viewerbase around through the transition. Loads of people are down for Pokémon art, after all.

But when I dropped MLP stuff entirely, I'd lost pretty much my entire active little community of watchers. I don't get near as many comments, near as many favourites, likes, reblogs or what have you. I rarely even have people approaching me hoping to get a request done. It was upsetting, it aggravated my anxiety and I fell into severe inactivity for quite some time. Which naturally didn't help things.

So, a while ago I cleaned the slate somewhat. Changed the name I go by on all these art sites, started focusing more on bettering myself and less on trying to garner interest in my work, and have spent the last couple of weeks convincing myself that I can build things back up. But still, the experience has been had, and I can't just forget how clear it was that many people don't really care so much about artists as they do about the content. And as soon as that content no longer holds any relevance to their interests, it's of no consequence, no difficulty at all for them to move on and forget.

And so I worry that should I have any more changes in focus in the future, should I feel the need to minimalize the amount of Furry content I produce and draw, I dunno, primarily Mass Effect content or something like that, then I'll just end up falling right back down to the bottom again and be forced to rebuild. Which reduces any potential monetary future I might hope to find in my work a significant amount.
But I know that there is a way to avoid that, and it's pretty simply to go full NSFW. I've seen it work for so many artists that have run the gambit of fandoms and have only picked up more of a following, rather than lost it.

Maybe I should just get myself to a good place, skill wise, and then just go for it. I don't think it's a bad thing, I would never claim that in doing so I'd be "selling my soul" or some such nonsense. I'm all for sex positivity and whatnot. But I do feel like in doing so, I'd be contributing to the status quo that serves to throw all hopeful up and coming purely SFW artists under the bus.

[Summercat]

That is the case, yes. Unfortunately, the stuff that gets the most exposure outside of Tumblr is the undesirable shit. You don't ever see a link to a Tumblr based around "Twenty Ways to Improve Your Cooking". Nope. You see "Twenty Ways Your Heterosexual Male Friend Is Destroying Your Life". God damn it. None of my straight male friends have destroyed my life. Stop trying to make me think they are, idiots.

... Which is pretty far from my point anyway, so I kinda screwed my own argument over there.

Usually that's someone trying to find something that pisses them off, and spread it around as 'proof' that Tumblr is cancer. Meanwhile, unless you go looking for stuff like that on Tumblr you won't see it.

[Kaedal]

Usually that's someone trying to find something that pisses them off, and spread it around as 'proof' that Tumblr is cancer. Meanwhile, unless you go looking for stuff like that on Tumblr you won't see it.

I concede that's the likely case. Not uncommon that someone with a rage-mood will go pick out flaws in a place and use them as evidence that the entire thing is tainted and must be burnt down. Goodness knows, happens to this fandom often enough.

[RTDragon]

There's a lot of stuff on tumblr namely cooking as well as art tutorials. Considering most of my recommendations are mainly art related. Though for the NSFW blogs they somehow do pop up even with SFW on depending on who following you.

[Tsuujou]

Guh... The pangs of being a SFW artist on FA.  I remember plodding through making submissions, being virtually invisible, and then unwittingly creating a character that caught the attention of fetishists and now... well, I'm only -mostly- invisible now.

But if I may create a hope spot here - Xo, can you give us a proper link to your Russian friend's tumblr?  I rather liked that third pic with the rover and soldiers in the city.

Sorry. I didn't notice this on my phone. Here you go. 

http://jacksavageart.tumblr.com/

[dischimera]

They will always have issues. I keep my gallery in at least 6 different websites. I have something to complain for every single one of them, and things to praise. Including the so-hated Inkbunny. Be it hideous aesthetics, terrible staff, elistism and bias among artists, atrocious browsing system, community preferences, half-dead activity, "in-your-face" animated sexual user icons, etc.

I wish you were right about Tumblr being biased. I tried reporting a whole tumblr page consisting of nothing but explicit sex gifs and images, as well as a bunch of stolen artwork. I didn't know any of the artists as I don't like straight up porn, but I knew they were stolen just 'cause each artwork was VERY different to the other. And still the user would talk as if they were all his work. The staff's response to my report was "the real authors need to report it themselves" and they didn't do shit about the innapropriate content either, despite their rules saying it wasn't allowed... Tumblr's probably another one of those websites which become so big the moderation becomes more inconsistent over time.

As to keeping a gallery on tumblr itself... I could never handle it. Tumblr's hipsteriffic design makes my eyes bleed and I'm too old fashioned for its browsing system.

 

Edited September 28, 2015 by dischimera

[Summercat]

 

As to keeping a gallery on tumblr itself... I could never handle it. Tumblr's hipsteriffic design makes my eyes bleed and I'm too old fashioned for its browsing system.

 

Indeed. One of the reasons I don't use tumblr is that I can't figure out how it works. I am not exactly the smartest of otters.

[TrishaCat]

The NSFW artists getting kicked off of Tumblr has been really grating on my nerves lately. Some more famous artists wind up getting banned on Tumblr because some members of the community there report their artwork due to them finding it offensive in some manner. And of course the way Tumblr sees it is probably that its safer to just appease the complainers, otherwise it might make the site look bad. Which is a shame, because a lot of really good artists have been forced off the site.

I mean I don't really follow porn artists all that much, but I've seen some of their artwork and its oftentimes really good. And the artists usually don't mean anything bad by their art, its just...the community. I worry that even non-pornographic lewd artists like Gashi-Gashi will be kicked out of that place someday.

Edited September 28, 2015 by Battlechili

[Obsydian]

I love Weasyl, and it's up to the population to move there and actually create activity.  The fact that people stay away DUE to lack of activity, it's a vicious impossible cycle.  Where does it end?

[RTDragon]

Xopachi can you reupdate the link to the page on what your friend was saying about HentaiFoudry. I'm curious considering i know that site has quality control considering it's an adult site.

And this entire post really reminds me of this video on tumblr. Which unfortunately is noticed quite often.

http://ahumbleprofessor.tumblr.com/post/120928001147/

[Summercat]

I love Weasyl, and it's up to the population to move there and actually create activity.  The fact that people stay away DUE to lack of activity, it's a vicious impossible cycle.  Where does it end?

When FA comes crashing down or enough people move to Weasyl.

That's the basic calculus I came to the conclusion of back in 2011. 

[Tsuujou]

Xopachi can you reupdate the link to the page on what your friend was saying about HentaiFoudry. I'm curious considering i know that site has quality control considering it's an adult site.

And this entire post really reminds me of this video on tumblr. Which unfortunately is noticed quite often.

http://ahumbleprofessor.tumblr.com/post/120928001147/

I did.

[Zeitzbach]

The foundation of the artist is built on his or her watchers. This is why even if it's a no effort bull shit crap, Fanart or porn will always sell more than original work unless the original work itself because popular enough to have a fandom. Just look at the bigger earning people who are even big on Patreon. Fanart porns everywhere.

Look at it this way.

Your OC piece is a pie.

The fanart or porn pieces are cakes.

Leave it on the table. Some people will give your pie a chance but in case of cakes, they will just scream and go "Yay more cakes!"

It's not like art site can control what its people will be like. The first major group pretty much decide what else will follow so even if Weasyl becomes big with the same amount of people using as DA, it will be exactly THE SAME as DA if all of them come from DA. If the major of the people come from FA then it will become another FA (Why is what the forum is atm).

Come from DA : I love fanart and bad OCs base.

Come from FA : Yiff yiff base.

Come from Tumblr :Faggots base.

Choose the Fate for weasyl. Water won't remain clear and transparent if you pour ink into it.

And I wouldn't really say it's that much of a graveyard with SFW only on FA. It takes time but it's worth it. My activity recently doubled with my DA average per day views tripling and I'm really happy about it. Art growth is exponential after all so it shows that my base is becoming more and more stable now and this is a wave I must ride.