/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

blimp

Any art engagement groups? These are quite helpful imo. (You like their content or not, they do the same)
I gained 2000 followers with it.

>>6348055
Draw as much as possible and post as often as possible.

More art = More exposure time = Higher chances for people to notice your art.

So now that Musk has bought Twitter should I still bother trying to build a following? It would feel real bad if it closed down in like a year or something. Now that I think about it I shouldn't be putting all my eggs in the same basket anyway, what else should I post on? insta?

>Even if its untrue, having a large following will motivate you to draw more and probably encourage you to improve your existing art.
Stop talking about yourself in second person.

>>6348979
>should I still bother trying to build a following?

If he gets rid of that gay AF "shadowbanning" shit, then yes

>>6348979
I use Pixiv, DA, Twitter and NewGrounds. Pixiv and DA brins more action, fans, comms and engagement

Appeal/Soul + FOTM + Decent art + Consistency

Optional - NSFW. Doing nsfw lowers the skill barrier. Viewers will think less with their brains and more with their dicks. So decent art becomes great art in their eyes.

I did all of this and it carried me from 300 to 20000 in the span of 4 months. Beyond 20k, the dopamine hit from follows is no longer there. Im now on month 6 sitting at 35k.

>>6350684
what do you mean by consistency?
what did you draw to carry you there

>>6350684
Do you interact with other artists (retweeting each other etc.) or just post your own stuff?

>>6350697
mutual follow sure but rting maybe no
big name artists arent slaves to small time artists

>>6350691
By consistency, i mean post regularly. I posted atleast twice a week. As for what i drew, I just spammed fotm chacters. Yorr forger in this case. She breezed me towards 20k.

>>6350697
Initially I was on my own. I think i was in the 10k that i started diving into twitter interactions. i Checked who retweeted my works then followed the accounts with a good follower/follow ratio. Id retweet their works hoping that theyd retweet me again in the future. Half the time it worked

>>6350705
do you post forger like in a row? how many times you need to do that?
whats your advice on posting 4 times a week?

>>6350717
I noticed that my Yorr drawing received very positive reception. So i decided to focus on her, and it worked. This was when season 1 was still airing. Id especially post on the day a new episode aired.

>whats your advice on posting 4 times a week?
Its a marathon, not a sprint. You might burn yourself out. But if you can do 4 drawings a week, i suggest posting only 3 drawings. Save the 4th one and post it on weeks you cant draw, just to keep your account consistent and activd.

>>6350684
can you post an artwork that you based your art on?
preferably the artstyle that you prefer and try to replicate

>this thread is actually useful
huh we should keep this alive
15 posts in and im learning lots of stuff

>>6348055
>having a large following will motivate you to draw more
>having the amount of discipline you have for a skill be dependent on external factors that fluctuate randomly depending on what algorithm they decide to use which in the end, doesn't even correlate to higher revenue

No.

>>6348055
>Even if its untrue, having a large following will motivate you to draw more and probably encourage you to improve your existing art.
WHAT is untrue? That you have a large following? That it will motivate you?

HOW IS HAVING A LARGE FOLLOWING UNTRUE IF YOU HAVE A LARGE FOLLOWING? HOW IS GETTING MOTIVATION UNTRUE IF YOU'RE GETTING MOTIVATION?

WHY DO YOU SPICS KEEP MAKING NODRAW THREADS WITH RETARDED THOUGHTS LIKE THIS?

>>6350788
>>6350801
i knew 6 guys from /ic/ who drew here since 2013 then stopped drawing permanently after 2 years posting their stuff on twitter and getting jack shit following.

>>6350808
>Twatter culling the herd of attention whores who only draw for twatter points.
I never thought I'd see something useful come from that cesspool.

any patreon money tricks?

>>6350902
Draw furry porn and tell people your working on a visual novel

>>6350902
put your timelapse videos behind the wall
so when you gitgud people will ask "HOW DID YOU DEW DAT"

whats the difference between patreon and subscribestar

>>6350988
im unironically willing to make a visual novel and actually release it

What the fuck did they do to instagram and why is every video post a “reel?”

Are hashtags useful on Twitter anymore?

>>6350753
Look up Jujunaught or Kunaboto. It's not as good as theirs but it's the look i was going for.

>>6348956
Larger quantity of average, simple art or Few but fully rendered art, something like one piece a week?

>>6348956
Untrue

>>6348055
i just feel like disappearing everywhere
i’m tired of the internet

how come i cant scroll through tags on instagram anymore? it just shows the top 9 most popular and thats it, just a void after that
using explore doesnt help either
this happened like a few weeks ago

>>6348055
You think the shadowbanning/throttheling/astroturfing/blacklisting will finally end with Musk purging the tosspods at Twitter?

Or is he just gunna c•u°ckout?

>>6348956
That was BEFORE the shadowbanning blacklisting leftoid woke algorithms, but with Musk taking over twitter, i allow myself that one hope.

>>6352815
You can't say cuck on /ic/?

Twitter is a confirmed ghost town where only the top 10% drive the vast majority of traffic, with porn and crypto vying for the scraps.
Why not focus on something that drives more engagement like Instagram?
I guess it depends: who’s attention are you really trying to grab, and why? I’ve made more relationships with like minded people over insta than twitter.
Then again I’m a fuckin’ stillborn zygote when it comes to this, 140 on twitter and 530 on Instagram. I’ve shifted my focus to client work and I can’t blather about it on socials sadly.

>>6353029
People here draw porn which is why they can't into Insta.

>>6353029
DA and Pixiv bring me the most traction, followers, comms and networking with other artists of my niche

>>6348951
Do you have one that you’d like to float here? I’d also be interested
>>6348956
Here’s some cursed advice: have a project, character or story you focus on.
>cursed because as soon as I realized it on my own, it’s like the world suddenly parrots back to me my own thoughts through YT videos and other Internet people.
As an artist and art enjoyer, I mostly follow and get excited to see work from people who have ongoing projects or a character I like that they keep drawing. These are also things that are easier for the artist to be passionate about and build an identity around.
Think about hooks too. A cool character is a hook, a story is a hook, and the style and delivery of those things are what people will really remember. Once you’ve given people proof of sorts that you can make cool stuff, they’ll be excited to see whatever next thing you've got cooking.
Pic rel is Mackle, who has a comic called Chokepoint, which has a really nice visual style and atmosphere. A great series of illustrations too themed around death and a cyberspace afterlife. He branched into commissions and I can totally understand wanting something of my own, a character or scenario perhaps, drawn in his style. Now he’s doing album covers. And I think it’s all really cool, I love seeing it, I want to see whatever he does next, because he hooked me with pic.

Bump for actually useful thread. I don’t have any advice other than git gud and also follow up with the people who actually talk to you, don’t leave people hangin.
I see artists I follow talk to one another all the time in a fun shitposty way and wish I had that.

>>6353366
git gud is 10%, the other 90% are drawing the right things and lots of networking with big follow accounts
pic related was drawn by a guy with 600 followers 22 days ago and he's still at 600 followers now

>>6353376
alright that's enough blackpills for this week

bunmp

>>6350705
>I posted atleast twice a week.
This has never helped me. If I only posted twice a week, I actually lost engagement completely. People who used to see me would never see me again.
>As for what i drew, I just spammed fotm chacters. Yorr forger in this case. She breezed me towards 20k.
I believe this. However I almost completely draw original character art. When I drew Arezu while she was super trending at the beginning I got 6k likes and 200 new followers though. Still have less than 2k total. Good on you getting your 20k, I just hope you draw better than I do.
>>6353376
I believe it. I'd follow them though, if you share their social.

bump

>>6348055
Pretty sure its standard knowledge but just RT your old shit. If you don't want to make Twitter a diary of some sort (like me) just start RTing old shit. I do this to get some engagement and maybe get some commissions

Not sure if post this into the right section,
but a friend of mine is doing some 'so-called' how-to video 'art-work'. He is at the very beginning of his journey, but will be happy to hear any critique from you guys.

Here is an example of his 'work':
https://youtu.be/aFH-jomOLew

>>6348055
What's the difference between sucking off a popular artist and genuinely liking their art or even the artist themselves who so happens to be popular?
Because there's an artist I found who I really like the art style of, but because they have 20k followers I'm unsure if I'm communicating in a way that would make me look like I'm trying to get something out of them.
Like if I start posting art on my account and they so happen to retweet it how would I know that they're doing it because they genuinely like the art that I made of their OC or something or because "ah it's this annoying little shit, I better retweet their stuff because they keep commenting under my shit".

Is drawing fotm just unavoidable?

>>6356705
How are you expecting people to find your work?

>>6355214
What benefit does this actually have? If there's tags in the original post does it bump it up in tag search?

>>6356705
idk some of the stuff twitter shows me isnt tagged or anything

>>6356717
Kinda? At least I have some fellow artist followers (with their own following) who RTs my old stuff. If you want some engagement in some form for the least effort its worth a shot

Do you guys just want followers, or do you actually want to make money?
If you were posting Youtube, I'd understand the need for numbers because advertising dollars are real.
But you people seem to just want to farm numbers instead of trying to focus on markets where people are already set to spend money.

I dont care about making money. I just want to express the ideas in my head instead of thinking about them all the time.

>>6357071
i dont see a single artist with 20k+ followers who stopped drawing.
ive seen shitloads of artists with less than 1k followers stopped drawing though.

>>6357150
there's also a shit load more people with less than 1k followers. if you need followers to stop you from quitting you should just quit

>>6357150
>>6357442
I think some people are just doing it for the attention. They don't really like creating, they just want to find a gimmick to make themselves relevant.
There's nothing stopping them from taking other angles, but I see so many people who get caught in the social media gimmick and whose artwork never improves from a technical level. This is why, it seems, the best way to gain followers is to piggyback on drama and do callout posts, then link your art when it explodes. It goes further than drawing the current FOTM.

>>6357071
Ironically, your follower count heavily correlates to money. It determines your commercial fees, game company usually pay an absurd amount of commercial fee to popular artist because carrying their name is part of the marketing, something like a brand name

>>6357071
>>6357442
>>6357489
Psychology and philosophy say it's important to receive recognition/attention for a healthy sense of self, so people don't go kill themselves, and instead you crab-minded people just think "Naw it's a vice, you're just needy and attention-whory." Have you wondered where that idea comes from, and for what design or purpose it's been fed to you?
>>6357150
Of course. Instead of people thinking "You must not care about art if you need attention" /ic/ should remember why Van Gogh committed suicide, and why many great creators did, or struggled with depression, alcoholism, addiction to meds, and why some of them grew to hate their works that they asked their friends to burn it all at the end. Some of those friends saved the writings, the drawings, and so forth, and the world realized it was great. The other anons are just stupid.
>tl;dr
There might be good artists, genuinely good, who give up because nobody was there to encourage them, and the world's going to be worse because of that lost potential. Better to support people, than have some shitty crabby social darwinist bullshit mentality.

>>6357524
yeah van gogh killed himself because he was unpopular.
He made barely any money from his art and he was known as a small time artist with an unlikeable artstyle.
If he is alive now and has a twitter account, he would get less than 100 followers and average 2 - 4 likes per drawing.

>>6357524
Van gogh was poor. Like super poor, he lived in absolute poverty and had to hunt scraps and hunt rabbits to survive. Nobody wanted to buy his art. People at the time said his brain is damaged because his art looks like what little children draw.

He killed himself because nobody understood him.
He killed himself because he didnt got clout for his art.

>>6357542
Didn't he accidentally get shot by his friend while drinking but covered for him by saying it was a suicide?

>>6357150
Every chicken comes from an egg, but not every chicken lays eggs.

I've been in and out of drawing my whole life. Had an Instagram since 2012, I have 188 followers. The only reason I still draw is because it's the only thing I'm remotely good at. Every time I quit drawing, it's because of that feeling that i'm never good enough and no one cares to look at my work. Obv my work still needs improvement, which is partially why I still draw. But I am tired of lying to myself saying "i only draw for myself". I burn to share my work and I know there's people who'd be happy to see it.
>not sharing my username bc I don't want sob story associated with it

Relatively new NSFW artist. Just got my first commission request on shitter. How do you guys do the transactions, preferably anonymously? I think the requester is ESL too

>>6357853
im new too, but heres how i do it
>business acct on paypal
>send invoice to client
>remove all your personal info on business info
>preview
you should be seeing a preview of you invoice,
double check it, sometimes i almost forgot to remove my name...
also for safety measure, dont name your product/service some nsfw words.

btw how long it took before you get a client?

>>6357873
i made the account like a month ago and only have 10 followers but transferred from another site so some guy was nice enough to retweet my shit. ive been in talks with this commission guy for like an hour now. wtf is this. says his budget is within 2k?? is this normal

>>6357904
too good to be true, be careful

>>6357906
he wants 15 pics and is going into details on the alts. is it really? how do i confirm cash before i deliver if i do this?

>>6357908
work in milestones,
do sketch, invoice, do more, invoice,
explain you want security too

>>6357911
this is literally my first comm and he wants al these specific alts. holy shit, is this normal?? how much do i charge for this holy fuck. i was just expecting like, one or two pics

>>6357918
i dont know, its too good to be true, unless he really likes your work or style

>>6357921
he wants cumflation, is that an autist mega bucks magnet? I don't draw it, but 2k is 2k... I said no to the vore ask, though.

>>6357519
I want people on IC to succeed, but I'm trying to wrap my head around the thoughts and goals of everyone prioritizing social media. If it's just to have an audience of any kind, that's sensible. But I've seen so many artists on Twitter who stagnate because they rush to get anything out to where you'd think they were on a webtoon deadline.
I've been a commercial and print artist for over a decade and never bothered making a social media page because I don't have time, even though it's been suggested a few times.

>>6356997
Yeah but, if I just retweet my own stuff, without really gaining in the way of followers in between, isn't it pretty much pointless?

>>6358045
There's nothing wrong with being a blatant shill in socmed, desu its not even that blatant of a shill.
>>6357918
Just take it I guess? Alts aren't that hard compared to doing an actual drawing. At very best it only adds a few days or a week on your workload. Probably cover your life spendings for a month or two if his fetish is that niche

>>6358055
i don't think it's happening after all. he stopped responding once i brought up payment. what a waste of time, fuck. do they think artists are stupid? I'm not doing over a dozen fucking images without proof of payment. Guess he's trying to take advantage of a nobody artist, this sucks

I finally discovered my niche this year and want to get started on posting my work online, though I haven't touched social media since 2014. Are Deviantart, twitter and instagram still the go to places?

>having a large following will motivate you to draw more

untrue to the highest degree

>>6358979
Proof or you're talking out of your froggy behind Pepe

>>6358979
I feel some obligation to not disappoint the really good artists who follow me. And yes, publishing my work online has motivated me to be more consistent with art in the last year than ever before. I feel an obligation to try and to get better, even for the small amount who may actually like any of my work in any way.

>how to network

Pied Piper: Dhe Eternal Spider-Man
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6D1nK7q2i8I
Dhe Devil ensnaring sinners; dhe miser bleeding dhe poor∴
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kgjkth6BRRY
WEB: Denotes dhe snares ov dhe world, ov dhe Devil and human frailty, also dhe malice ov evil-doers∴
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4X-rtLgYN0

>Dhe Debt Ov Gwen Stefani

>>6362344
>>6362319
>I feel some obligation to not disappoint the really good artists who follow me

this had a net negative effect on me, before i used to post without a worry, now there's so many eyeballs, and artists that i looked up to for years, and everything just HAS to be better than what i did before. even better than the pieces i got lucky with and can't manage to replicate the same soul if i try.

i did end up making a second secret account that i post too, and things are 1000x easier to deal with.

>>6362379
Yeah the feeling of obligation and not wanting to disappoint also messes with me. But I’ve mostly gotten over the negative aspect of it. It’s a balance.

I originally started my twitter with the goal of just encouraging me to actually finish stuff to post, but I already feel the pressure to try and make stuff that will be popular. That said I'm somewhat limited by my niche fetish that I mostly draw.

As for myself, I decided to return to art after being highly depressed, going through a very sad and failed relationship of many years, having to return to my home country, leaving everything I had there and trying to look for my happiness instead of working in something I wasnt really enjoying all alone. In the past I won international contests as an artist on a completely different field and now I decided to create nsfw animations. As you know this content is not suitable in many places, thats why I wish I didnt have to rely on twitter for everything. In the past I tried:

>hentai-foundry and thats the latest place I would return to. Its moderation is just awful and disgusting. They deleted my latest animations because they were "anatomically incorrect" (while they were featured on other websites in their top row)

>reddit is a roulette. it works sometimes for exposure.

>newgrounds, too niche for me. they have their own ecosystem with their own artists, memes, flash animations and such. I didnt update my profile there and I didnt find myself comfortable either

>pixiv, great for asian exposure, bad for animations. I cant spend 15/20 days on an animation and showing just a single frame. Only like 20% or less of public click the link.

At the end theres only twitter. I dont trust tumblr anymore and, as always, community will be split once again if we are leaving it. Its always a bad time for being an artist.

In these 8 months I started my twitter account I am at 4k followers. Of course is not a lot but is less than nothing. Saw many accounts grow out of just a single tweet. Theres this guy who went from 5k to 50k in just one week because 3 tweets went viral.

Good luck /ic/

>>6350684
>FOTM
What do you do if you're detached from what's currently popular?

>buy Twitter Blue once it prioritizes your posts over others
>Reply to all top artists when they post
>Profit

I feel as if once you focus more on prioritizing normies over waiting for a more popular artist to throw you a bone, it becomes a less stressful and more fulfilling experience.
Twitter is the worst place for artists to network as they seem primed for paranoia and drama. The shit with the hashtags doesn't help. Prioritizing everyone down to a set of eyeballs seems to work for accounts that post mostly artwork and spend more time promoting it outside of the platform. I think the checkmark will help w lot of people, too.

>>6362974
>prioritizing normies
okay, i'll bite. what kind of content does this?

>>6348979
It's an improvement since Tumblr refuges are leaving

>>6363004
The most basic shit, but it will depend on your audience. If you want to cater to coomers, just about everything in this list will be irrelevant.
These come off as banal, but I've seen the following succeed:
>SFW FOTM or popular franchise with high rendering quality and nearly pointless detail, that triggers a sense of storytelling, but not to AI vomit levels
>above, but with edgy/humor twist. Harder to do because you need to have no fucks and a sense of nuance if you want to avoid coming off as pure edgelord. You could go full edgelord if you wanted.
> "lol!!relatable" topics rendered in the most simple details
> memes to hook people in, created with awareness that they might be dated in a week
> pretty girls/pretty boys doing daily life stuff in a non-threatening style. slice-of-life shit
>ideological shit. Only do it if you've got your own ideology or you're willing to dig in and learn. You can focus on a religion, politics, or a line of thought. Great way to start a cult if you go too far. No, I'm not joking.
>pinup art. If you can combine the above, even better. Refer to classic pinup art for examples on how to tackle normie-tier examples. Asses in the void aren't enough.
Bonuses for the above:
>timelapse videos for the more detailed stuff
>merch potential if you want extra $$$ and can bother with it
These aren't set-in-stone examples, but what I've learned from my own and other people's experiences from other platforms.
However you decide to go about this, it helps to remember that the parasocial appeal is even more important for normies. You're the person playing guitar on the street for them.

>>6350902
just use hive.blog

>>6351329
when I tag it seems to get more exposure since people search stuff like "furryart" and "pokeart" or whatever and search by latest, completely ignoring all algorithms

>>6351320
Algorithms. Instagram loves it when you post videos

I feel like giving up entirely. Tags never work for me.

So are people actually moving from twitter or is it a meme? where are they moving to?

>>6363757
Enough people started moving to tumblr that it crashed the site yesterday. Also seeing more positive talk about abandoning ship.

It doesn’t help at all that musk is being an insufferable faggot, either.

>>6363757
Galaxy brain move is to make additional accounts regardless and post on them all. Pick a handful that gain traction and ghost the rest. If your target demographic is coomers and weebs they probably wont be moving off of twitter any time soon though.

What's the general consensus on making/joining in on networking?
Like submitting art to groups or working together to spread each other's work?

If these people are going back to Tumblr after leaving during the exodus, they may not last for long. Once again: no porn.
I'll stay on both Twitter and Tumblr. Don't like Twitter, but the defagging of Twitter and the banwaves of idiots who can't cope with what Tumblr is now should strike up some kind of balance.

is pixiv the best option for the most degenerate of degenerates?
do you have to do that retarded jap black bar censoring?

>>6363936
Baraag is probably a better option, unless you cater to a specific fetish.

>>6363965
i thought baraag was pretty much for loli/shota? i draw some of that but it's not my main thing. i thought pixiv would be a good choice because I DON'T cater exclusively to a fetish, and also I draw some SFW, so I'd want some of my work to be visible to people who don't want to browse a site that's mostly borderline CP. the only real drawback I see on Pixiv is the censoring which does suck but I'm willing to put up with it because it otherwise seems like a better community overall, with higher quality standards that would be more receptive to the relatively wide variety of content I'd be posting. plus I know Jap so more potential for commissions.

what should I do if I've been posting exclusively my own art for about 5 years now and only have like 80 followers?

>>6364820
like on dA I've been posting for over 10 years now lol, and i have 76 watchers.

>>6364820
maybe you should reconsider it. I think every artist needs to have self-criticism.

>>6364820
What's ur handle

>>6364901
which one im fluorite on like e621 but im fluor1te on deviantart. the issue isn't my skill level because I see eternal prebegs getting like 60 likes on every half assed pencil scribble they post

>>6363757
I got a bunch of notifications from tumblr saying "xyz just posted for the first time in a while! Check it out."
So maybe

>>6363985
It's focused on it, but even the owners have said it's not exclusive to it beyond having an NSFW focus. I only mention it because it's an absolute last resort, unless someone makes a fetish-driven Mastodon that doesn't allow lolisho

>post art on deviantart
>someone favorites it
>check it out
>favorites folder is full of fetish shit
>suddenly feel very disgusted
every time

how did you guys get your first follower?

>>6365625
I have 2 followers and they're both bots

>>6365630
been around long?

>>6365011
>>6364820

Well... you draw like a 6 year old or someone with mental health issues, to be completely honest with you.

>>6365712
interesting, I didn't know a 6 year old could work a job as a caricature artist at a theme park, or make over 500 dollars from commissions. And yes I do have schizophrenia btw.

pyw tho let's see who's talking. here's my latest wip

>>6365712

>anon says I draw like a 6 year old
>won't pyw
anything you have ever or ever will say is invalidated ad infinitum. This is as if you had gone into /cbt/ on /fit/ and called me a hamplanet and never posted body. you are even more of a permabeg than I ever will be. lmfaoing at your life senpai kill yourself. keep seething.

yes yes let the thread die, it's all according to plan. fuck you nigger here's a bump

and another blackpill: did u know that being in public highschool and having tons of friends who use (insert socmed here) that you use will gain you a fuckton of followers? its true.

>>6365853
yeah but i don't want my friends to find my art

>>6365857
based

>>6365750
>And yes I do have schizophrenia btw.
kek

>>6364820
>>6364858
On Twitter, start following people, especially small and middle sized accounts (say 1k-4k followers) since any bigger they stop noticing or caring to follow any new person. Start interacting, retweeting, liking, commenting, and if you have talent people will support you somewhat.
>Deviantart
Again going to matter based on talent but if you find you're not getting any traction, try using groups. Join a bunch and post art there. Might get some likes. That stuff helped me around 2019/2020 when I was a small account. I had like barely reached 500 watchers on DA from as late as mid-2022, four years after being on the site. Suddenly the algorithm has been much nicer and now I have 1k followers. So their algorithm might be nice to you but I notice it helps to post semi-regularly, like at least twice a week.

>>6365874
yes it's especially hilarious how a schizophrenic man can pyw but not you. kill yourself.

>>6365882
you are based and not a crab like these other anons. thank you.

>>6348055
I just use reddit, wordpress, and my own website

>>6366103
Why would you use both wordpress and have a separate website on top of that?

>>6366119
I use wordpress similar to twitter - for the social presence, posting sketches as I do them, tidbits about my life. Semi personal blog slash art blog.

The website is more static. It's a portfolio of your best work, and where I keep pages of my webcomic.

A lot of traffic comes via reddit and wordpress.