Does anyone on here still use deviantart? What are your positive and negative experiences with it? Is it worth it to make one?
Doesn't hurt but I wouldn't invest much time in it. Your stuff will probably get a dozen views at most unless you work to get it out there by posting it to groups, and the process of posting to groups has a bunch of irritating hoops where you need to apply to join it and then apply to have your art accepted. I'd say if you get it, just dump your art there and don't worry about it, and make tumblr your main place to post your shit.
Deviantart is so saturated with shit that your new posts will be buried almost immediately with a dozen ponies and other garbage, and the entire site is built around funnelling everyone to the top 1% most popular artists that already have tens of thousands of watchers. At least tumblr has a system where you have people actively looking for shit to reblog in whatever subject matter they themed their blog around.
>>2270632
No, it is not worth making one you will delve into a level of delusion to the point you will hinder any form of improvement or pursuit of knowledge.
>>2270632
deviantart is synonymous with mental retardation
No but I'm to lazy to learn a new format for other sites so I just use DA as a place to dump my stuff online all in one place.....really need to get tumblr, or something.
>>2270641
>ponies and other garbage
>implying pones aren't the best art
Get out.
>>2270674
>that word filter
I actually lol'd out loud
>>2270669
>>2270674
pony art is shite tho
I had a negative experience... two words: Minion Yaoi
actually most of the people that comment here don't use much Da or don't understand it, as the guy who said that is plagued by ponys, is true, there is a lot, but but it is also full of everything else, he is concentrating only on one point.
The thing is that there are two ways to have public there, the first is to have a great ability in the genre that you're developing (ponys, anthro, hentai, porn, etc, etc) and the second is use the groups, of course they are complementary, but, for example, i see people with very good works have very small public, and they works aren't in any group, and people with normal to mediocre works have a lot or more than the first, but they works are in like... 20, 30, 40 groups, and they do commissions and everything.
Basically you have to choose well your target and aim straight to them. I've seen people that started doing commissions after two months of activity. Some people draw horribly, like those drawn anime style super deformed overweight women with giant tits and ass, have commissions. Or people that stands out in an area doing something new and earn hundreds of visits (how to make a decent short animation of... ponys)
For example this guy that i found in one group, he started a year ago, and do commissions, he draw very normal anime style, and even don't do hentai, even he have a comparison, they post only in anime related groups... just one year.
I used to have one, but not that many people release genuinely good art. Most of what I experienced is just weird fetishes, ponies, and photos (whether it be cosplayers or just selfies)
I'm not interested in going back there anytime soon but if you'd like to share art easily then I guess you should go for it. However, looking for good art is just about as easy as looking for a safe for work post on /b/.
>DISCOVER MORE DEVIANTS TO WATCH!
>WATCH AT LEAST 5 DEVIANTS
I don't even know how to watch my own feed
i think for convenience sake. if you like uploading things in bulk and quickly facebook is probably the best place to keep a portfolio second only to a website you actually own.
behance has quick uploads but its all a bit too ceremonious with "oh this is my project this is my lifes work" kind of shit. tumblr is pretty fast but you have limits to how big one post can be.
deviantart is super slow to upload. it acts like every individual piece is this big important thing with tags and titles and descriptions.
if I were you I'd just start a facebook "page" for your art and organize things on there. unless you REALLY want to be hugboxxed and get your "networking" on.
Con: It's mostly a shit site for shit people and insufferable teens.
Pro: You can actually get work through it because it's still a big and well known site.
Spread your work around, anon. You never know where and when it'll bring work to you. That 17 yea old random watcher on DeviantArt might 5 years down the line be doing a startup that needs some art done. Suddenly that 17 year old random watcher means work for you. Could happen from DA, could happen from Tumblr, could happen from a portfolio site.
>uploading lewd pictures in groups right now
>groups full of innocent souls who just having fun
It like selling drugs to kids. What's the awful feeling. When I was 14 yo I smoked weed, drank everyday and did wrong choices in awful situations. But
>16 yo girl asking if I have free time to draw her horrible OC or not
>so polite as fuck
>cheking her page
>she 100% bullied at school
Jesus Christ
It's kind of weird. I have so many watchers on dA yet I don't get nearly as many favs as on tumblr or artstation.
Anyway, I'll stick with it until it dies or until it gets a mandatory subscription fee.
It is great for promoting yourself if you have above average skills eitherwise you will get buried among hundreds of crap that are posted daily.
A DD will give you a huge boost in followers.
I once wanted to create an online presence and made a deviant art account, joined the /ic/ group.
Within 1 minute of uploading new artwork, several spam bots favorited it.
Within the group itself, nobody talked and nobody gave critique, so I just gave up on it.
I think DA might be dead.
>>2270882
Looks to me like the ic group might be dead
hey can you guys suggest some groups to submit stuff to?
What i do is mainly conceptarty/fantasy characters or illustrations.
>>2270787
p-pls tell me you drew for her anon
I updated my account some weeks ago, it's very weird and really really hard to get watcher if you're not some artist that goes viral and show at Kotaku, for example. lol
It's really awkward because you think if someone put your work on favorite he probably will want to see more of it, but nop, probably is that he won't even look at a second drawing of yours. Favorite is equal = likes on facebook, you see a random image, hit the button and it's good to go.
To show up you have to go surfing trough scores of groups and after the second time you do it and you don't get that many attention you just give up on trying.
I will only post my work there and forget about it, eventually pop in a chat and show my work, but besides that the work involved is not worth it unless you're already getting commissions or plan to do it for a defined genre.
You can also get kind upset that some really low skill artists have so much attention because they spend their days networking there.
Now if some well know tumblr shares a good piece of yours, you'll probably get 50~80 followers. If a famous artists favorite your shit you won't get any follower, maybe 1 or 2 max. lol
>>2270643
This is stupid.
>>2270776
WordPress is good for large dumps
>>2270776
It also depends on how good your art is. DeviantArt, Facebook, and Tumblr you could be shit to uber-tier and get some followers/watchers, which I see these more of a social media platform anyway. Behance and CGSociety you have to be good in order to get attention. And certain blog platforms such as Blogger you can easily put a shit tonne of shitty random works and sketches.
>>2270949
Not really, unless you're meant 'Wordpress.org' and not 'Wordpress.com'. Either way it may be no different than Blogger.
Seks club
lmmmaooo
>>2271113
To be honest, I don't think any of us were truly invested in what we were doing.
It sounded great at the time, but there really was nothing to be mutually gained from it.
Might as well have just started a skype group and drew dirty things. That would have been a lot funner.
>>2271113
>mfw i remember this
Oh, I discovered that Llamas Badges are just a way people use to make you look at their profiles without much effort. I don't even thanks for that anymore.
>>2270787
Goddamn anon. Living the dream
>>2270895
What kind of style? If you're doing anime style there's TONS of anime groups. Just do a search for anime in the groups page and filter by 1000+ members. There's concept art groups but the skill levels are generally much higher. You can make do with fantasy groups too, they usually have a wide range of art styles. If you do girls of any sort with even a slight anime look (like Sakimichan) you can pretty much submit to any anime group.
>>2270930
The reason you get favorites but not watches is because people use the watch queue to go through their watch. This means they'll favorite your work, then hit remove from notification to quickly go to your next work. It's too much work for them to go to your page and add you.
Here's where the llama system comes in. You give anyone who favorites you a llama. About 50% of the time they'll give you a llama back, which requires them to go to your page to do so. If you have your artwork prominently displayed on your page by using the featured artwork widget they'll likely watch you then.
But yeah, if you want explosive growth starting from a nobody you need to spend a LOT of time marketing yourself. I've seen a Japanese artist with only a 4 month account with < 10 comments get 1400+ watchers because he submits to 100+ groups. He was also extremely good but without the group spam he wouldn't have nearly that many watchers. Groups are the only way you can get any exposure if you're a nobody.
You want a few of the 10k+ groups, but most of your groups should be in the 2-5k range. Don't bother with the groups that take everything. There's so many updates in those that nobody will bother looking through them. Groups that review everything are the best, but they are slow to approve your submission and may reject or forget you. If you get featured on a group with a selective feature process that'll get you a decent amount of watchers since your art will be seen by everyone trying to submit.
>>2274685
Llama spamming is another tactic. If you sub to a bunch of groups, you'll get flooded with updates. Instead of deleting them outright, browse through the thumbnails and find people who you think might be interested in your artwork based on their thumbnails. Give them llamas which will give them incentive to check your page and give you a chance at getting a watcher.
These are the two most consistent ways of getting watchers. However, it's a LOT of work. You pretty much need to set aside an hour or two every day just to do this if you want good numbers. If you don't want to bother dealing with all the social network and marketing crap you'll pretty much get stuck no visibility on deviantArt. I've seen decent artists that's been on it for years with < 100 watchers because they don't know how to play the marketing game.
Of course, all the attention you get is pretty much going to end up being empty praise. Nobody is going to give you a critique or give you any useful insight, they're all too busy trying to promote themselves. So only do this if you need a wide audience for some reason or another.
>>2274685
>>2274692
This shit is why I barely bother with deviantart anymore.
I have several times the number of followers on tumblr with a fraction of the monumental effort required to get noticed on deviantart. Groups are seriously a pain in the ass and the time it takes to apply to them could be spent gitting gud.
>>2274692
A slightly more advanced tactic is to use a custom 'thank you for watching' graphic that you drew yourself. Good ones attract a lot of attention, so while your comment is on the person's front page of comments it's basically free advertisement for you.
>>2270656
>deviantart is synonymous with mental retardation
yeah
because /ic/ or /tumblr/ is certainly not.
>mfw i realize most of people here draw anime
>>2274762
>i feel butthurt but i will point out minor details so i wont look like i have butthurt
>>2270641
At the same time tumblr tagging leads to massive amounts of low quality, tunnel vision fanart and reinforces pandering over quality too.
It looks like any system has compromises.
>>2274766
I would say Pixiv has got by far the best visibility as a big art site. The good drawings/terrible drawings ratio is way lower than on DA or Tumblr, there are neats stuffs like being able to uplpaded several pictures in a set and you can choose the minimum number of bookmarks. Usually, everything with more than 10 is already good.
>>2274777
>I would say Pixiv has got by far the best visibility as a big art site. The good drawings/terrible drawings ratio is way lower than on DA or Tumblr
there is one negative thing about it
>anime style
>>2270787
ask for lewds in exchange
>>2274782
Your problem, not mine. Complain about western having shit sites.
>>2270632
Meh, sometimes I feel like hitting people in Deviantart with actual feedback and try and plant a seed of doubt in their precious talent to get them to seek lumis, it doesn't work if you feed them it off the back. I find the One-Two punch and finisher approach really handy. First by pointing a lot of shit they did wrong as curtly as possible. If they respond, then tell them they're shit and you're better than them in the most subtly bombastic (not outright rude) way, and if they respond again, then tell them to seek guides and give them only a couple niche guides to drive them to look for more.
It's a pointless thing to do, but out of the twenty times I've done it, it's worked once. Don't do it constantly, and you should try just sticking to the front page.It's some stupid crusade on bad art. It's just something I like to do every now and then
>>2274777
Yeah but unless you're as good as those Japanese artists you'll probably have a hard time getting noticed, whereas on western sites if you can imitate the Japanese style well you'll already be leagues above the weaboo artists that plague the western anime art scene.
>>2274787
They dont
Im just happy that weebs go to their reservations and wont shit outside of their circle
>>2274789
I've gotten more than 1150 followers so far and it has been increasing pretty fast for some times already, so I think I'm fine.
>>2274794
Link to pixiv?
>>2274685
>>2274692
Really nice insight, but I'm with this anon:
>>2274696
I tried it for 2 weeks, got my art forgotten in some groups, it's not worth the effort because I don't have the free time or the willpower to go through so much profiles giving llamas or posting on all those groups.
Tumblr is usually not that easy also, but you have a chance a nice tumblr with a solid follower number reblog your work and then you're set.
I would probably benefit from more follower on DA as I'm thinking about starting a webcomic, but I can't stand the system.
>>2274798
I don't know... Pixiv don't look like a place you could build a fanbase that would be helpful in the long run, but I may be wrong.
>>2274696
How do you get followers on tumblr?
>>2274837
Tapastic way better for webcomics
>>2274685
>what kind of style?
the realistic kind i guess, I dont do anime.
Anyway I cant seem to find these groups, like how to even find them in deviantart?
>>2275265
nvm me i found them under the "more" tab
