Asking Advice: Online Gallery Social Networking sites (DA,FA etc)

[furry1337otaku.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry if this isn't the right place for this, and I'm cross posting (spamming) to a few communities to see what the general consensus is, especially for those lucky few whom are considered successful.

Now, I'm sure we're all familiar with and many of us do business using at least a couple of these websites. Deviantart, Furaffinity, Inkbunny, Sheezyart, Concept Art, and Nabyn to name a few examples. The latter is why I decided to ask advice as I already have an account on most of the others. While some make sense as many of them specialize to certain interests or offer different types of feedback, I'm beginning to realize that it is becoming overwhelming for me to keep up with them all (for awhile now I've been in a constant state of reorganizing watchees deciding what notifications I want to keep, and who I need to ditch, which is rough when you have a good friend but they aren't what you're looking for in artistic inspiration or a fabulous artist who won't stop babbling about memes). Obviously, I should probably cut down to just a few, or so I think.

So this is my real question, is it better to specialize in one or two of these sites, or is it advisable to join near all of them for further promotion to a wider audience? Also, curious what sites people have used and how they find them compared with other sites.

Here's my experience with them.

Deviantart. I've been with Deviant Art the longest. It is not necessarily my favorite, although I enjoy many of their features (it has been very pleasing watching various premium features become standard over time). Some report serious issues with this site, including but not limited to malicious ads and plagerism (art theft for the layman). I feel like this site is most popular with those whom have an Anime type style or very strong photorealism. It is probably the largest of all the sites and offers the most opportunities, especially if you don't mind paying for a premium account. However, it is also hard to make a real following or get very big on your art alone, like most of these sites, it requires a lot of hard work, networking, self promoting and pandering to popular media. As is often bemused, a five minute fanart will get several times more views than the masterpiece you bled your soul out producing. The Job Offers and other forums are pretty diverse and the competition is terse. There are real job offers, but mostly is a matter of one party or another looking for an artist and mostly artists looking for work.

FurAffinity. My current favorite despite the overall poor site integration, lack of features and questionable content. Not surprisingly, this art website is mostly home to furries; artists and fans of all sorts. While the furry fandom is many things and often undeserving of the less than favorable reputation it has earned, there is no denying the expansive collection of erotica and outright explicit fetishes that are present on FA. That being said, there is a very open and friendly community, for all that there is a bit of drama to be found. Its smaller size means it is easier to stand out, but even still it is fairly crowded and networking is important. Toony and expressive styles seem to be more popular here, although there is a strong body of psuedorealistic styles. The forums are fairly reliable for work, and especially for basic feedback and critique. It can be a little rough though if you are sensitive to critique.

Concept Art. Generally regarded as the place you go when you need real critique and seek to vastly improve your art. This is a place where professionals work on self-improvement and occassionally help out freelancers looking to transition to full time jobs. This is not a place for those who are dependent upon their personalized style and require positive feedback. This is a place where all or at least most have been professionally schooled and survived the harsh critiques of professors. If you have ever been hurt or offended by an honest critique I would not suggest this place. And this is considering that you are even noted. A lot of people join Concept Art thinking they can just pop in for a quick critique, but Networking is even more important than in larger communities. Until you have gained a name for yourself, most people will not bother to look. The site itself consists only of a forum and it is generally considered that you should start a single thread to update your work as you produce it.

Inkbunny is very similar to a hybrid between the ease of use and clean site design of Deviantart paired with the material of Fur Affinity. If your sensibilities are offended by the likes of FA, IB is worse. While the filters and tag systems offer more browsing freedom, I feel that the sheer volume and proportion of pornography deters from the otherwise pleasant browsing experience. I have not used it very long, and I'm not certain I will use it for more than updating information or using its broadcast on twitter feature for streaming and announcing new art. I have not used its forums, if it has them. There seems to be a stronger preference towards cartoony styles.

Comments

[minoriko.livejournal.com]

Quick question: Has anyone had experience with using Tumblr? I find that the reblogging ratio to actually looking/finding the artist's Tumblr page is incredibly low, or am I missing the point of Tumblr completely? It's nice to have people reblogging your stuff, but it's more of liking what they see and not so concerned with how the image originated and the methods used to get to that point.

[dangercrow.livejournal.com]

depends on the kinds of crowds you run with. personally, i see a lot of commission posts getting reblogged to here and back on my dash, and a lot of people will reblog as a sort of signal boost even if they dont buy. not too sure how high the reblog to actual customer ratio is, as i havent actually done it myself (not a commission guy)
of course, this is all dependent on you having a lot of followers or being reblogged by people with a lot of followers.

[frazzled-niya.livejournal.com]

If you are going to sign up to many places and take commissions from them all I would say have a document for each site or a spread sheet/book with each site and keep track of your commissions that way.

It probably wouldn't hurt to have small galleries everywhere show what you are capible of art wise and link a page for your prices and ToS and the sure fire way to contact you (possibly with a form to fill out)

Name:
Where: (DevART, FA, Nabyn...etc)
Type of commission:
Payment type:

as an example.

Re: Kind of an off topic question

[taasla.livejournal.com]

I do not believe so. The ads themselves are usually bought by the users of the site, and they have to be furry themed. The admins approve them, and irrc they haven't had a problem with them.

[greenreaper.livejournal.com]

No, it's nothing to do with having an anthropomorphic character - it's to do with the human. The rules are fairly straightforward (http://wiki.inkbunny.net/wiki/ACP#Human_Characters):

Human characters are permitted in artwork, however they must not appear in sexual situations and must not show genitals or sexual arousal.

Human characters are permitted in stories only so long as they are not involved in sexual situations of any kind.

Characters that are essentially human (pixies, faeries, elves, orcs, trolls, etc) or just have ears/tails or other superficial animal features applied are considered human for this rule.

Basically, we don't want of real people, and we don't want porn that could qualify as an indecent image of a minor (the UK and Sweden have laws which include human + cat ears/tail as a minor - more specifically, if the overall impression minus those would imply that it was a child).

[wolf-goat.livejournal.com]

To be fair, I've chosen intentionally to keep apart my usernames for art websites and my LJ. Some people no doubt know, it's not that I keep it a huge secret, but if I say something here that some person don't like, I don't want them attempting to hurt my business over it. I think that's fairly normal for a lot of people who run a business and use social sites/forums.

I guess it might be jarring for people to see me talk about my experiences in commissions or selling at cons or whatever, and have nothing to "back it up with". It doesn't seem to have caused me any problems so far though. :)

[wolf-goat.livejournal.com]

Just wait till it comes out of beta then. :)

[wolf-goat.livejournal.com]

My experience:

DA. Been on there since 2003, and while it used to have more of a community feel and be a great place to make friends, it's changed in scope over the years. A lot of the viewers on DA are young teens, and so commission work is pretty damn difficult to sell to them. Money? For art? Kan i draw u a pokeyman for it lol? As someone else stated, unless you draw fanart (even bad fanart - my largest number of faves by far is on a horrible old Lion King pic I drew in 2004) or animoo wolves/sparkledogs or hyper-rendered wolves or anime tits, you're gonna have a hard time getting noticed.

FA. Whether you are interested in porn or not, this is a must if you're a furry artist. You can block all mature art. But the viewers here are mostly 18+ and with money to spend. They are prepared to spend, and by and large the majority will be happy to pay a fair price. The community is enthusiastic and generally friendly.

SoFurry. Originally Yiffstar, it's retained that feeling: it's more or less a pure porn site. People aren't really interested in buying art, they're just there to fap. The beta of it looks good though, and the staff are pleasant, but I don't know if they can turn the site around to be a general furry gallery.

Nabyn. Has much of the feel of the old DA, seems to be well-coded and show promise. It runs the risk of becoming a predominantly furry site, and though that's no bad thing for those of us who are involved in that, it seems to be a matter of concern for the ownership. Time will tell, but for now Nabyn is a nice and friendly place. It's of course inhabited by artists only at the moment, though, so I can't see it being a great place for commissions...yet.

These are the only sites I use actively. I have accounts on several more just as placemarkers, but they don't seem worth really keeping up to date on.

[dinogrrl.livejournal.com]

Heh, exactly. I mean, dA can be questionable sometimes, but coming across porn there when I'm not looking for it isn't a daily experience for me like it can be on other sites >>'.

[dinogrrl.livejournal.com]

I do understand wanting to keep your online identity small. Still frustrating though :p. (And I have been in a situation where people caused me trouble here on LJ, but surprisingly they never made the jump to my dA. Nowdays I guess the story might be different, but I try to avoid causing any drama to begin with. :p)

I think another thing is that if I were to come across your name on another site and there was nothing to connect it to any of your other known sites or contacts, there could be a question of whether it was truly you or an imposter. Which I have run into before.

[dinogrrl.livejournal.com]

Oooooh yeah, I remember that from back when I browsed the place. It was like being an anime-inspired artist meant you were held to much, MUCH higher standards than other styles would be. Yeah, I get it, anime is way overused by beginner artists, but I remember CA being somewhat ridiculous about it.

[aerospiritual.livejournal.com]

I have an invite!

it's yours if you want it. just send me a PM with your e-mail. =D

[ocelotish]

The issue is more that you're not developing your own visual language, you're using short cuts without knowing what those shortcuts mean. Because the structure is missing from the shortcuts, they don't work.

This often comes across as a dislike for anime style, but it's really a dislike for any short cut like that, but let's be honest, a lot of people from da going over there are going to want to try the anime stuff as opposed to any other borrowed stylization.

I could go into it more, but generally speaking drawing anime is the most common symptom rather than the disease. Most of the more well-respected members of the forum will be down on anime when it's clear the artist has never worked from life. There are a few members who will just be down on anime to prove how edgy they are, but don't pay them any mind.

[ocelotish]

I'll agree, it is quite frustrating, because while you may be avoiding a saboteur, but by the same token you may also be avoiding customers.

What you may consider doing (although this is mainly for other viewers who might have a simiarl situation) is have a professional and a personal journal.

[clockworkshadow.livejournal.com]

I'm actually wishing I could consolidate to one place, it's hard for me to remember I have more than one page [I have a DA and FA]

But there's issues with that: Even though FA accepts non-furry art, there's an undercurrent of "gtfo" running through the place. And I have friends on DA that don't have FA accounts for varying reasons.

I got a Nabyn invite, and signed up admittedly, because the idea is nice, but I can't keep up. :(

And I can't consolidate to DA because if I ever want to draw adult stuff, and I do like to draw tasteful adult art sometimes, I can't post that there.

[dixiedyboski.livejournal.com]

Im on furaffinity now, and if friends/family ask to see my art, I can't tell them to look on fa, and even the safeforwork variant has some iffy stuff too....ergh. May as well just get a free website thingy and put it all on there...

[clockmagic.livejournal.com]

I've noticed that too. Even the general art can be a little uncomfortable to let people see.
Free website is a good idea.