tumblr's overrated as an art gallery platform. It's poor-to-decent for exposure, but absolute shit for fan browsing. I hate trying to browse someone's work when their only platform is tumblr. Same with Twitter, but I'm told that's better for exposure. (Still hate it.)
FA; personal preference since I rarely check Tumblr as I'd have go to each individual page to look for new pics. FA's inbox is simply more convenient as opposed to the endless scrolling you do on Tumblr. I wind up missing out on more art on those platforms than this one.
Dragoneer needs to ditch the upload size limitations. They were understandable in 2005.
Probably invest yourself into twitter a little bit,
FA has its own issues in the long term and doesn't exactly have the best exposure mechanics, if you go dead for a while, your pages goes dead for a little longer.
Tumblr is like a raging torrent of people screaming for attention and views, and if you aren't in the first 20 posts on anyone's dashboard you'll never be seen anyway. :V
With Tumblr, there's no way to favorite your work, nor any easy way to browse through new content; it all just comes as one big timeline which must be navigated page by page. Further, there isn't a good "gallery" function outside of certain layouts, meaning it's tough for folks to browse through your past works. Tumblr is a pretty terrible sight for any artist that really wants to make their work more accessible, archivable, and navigable by fans.
FA isn't great either, of course. It's terribly lacking in terms of moderation tools, the code is only stable-ish, it forces resizing of large images, it has no way to link multiple images together in a single post, and the people in charge are... questionable.
Honestly, I'd suggest either FA or one of the other furry gallery sites, specifically Inkbunny, FurryNetwork, or Weasyl, in that order.
Personally, I'd go with both. Tumblr has ease of use, but FA has the audience and that's not even counting the users who have picked one or the other and stuck with it.
Really, there shouldn't be a need to pick between the two. Maybe picking which one will get steady updates and which one will only be updated every so often, but you should never have to pick just one or the other....
Pro:
Art that you upload is catered to furries who are the target audience
it is designed to BE an art gallery, all art is in one place, minimal bullshit, and convenient for your watchers to find your art without going through garbage
Better sense of furry art community
Con:
Art that you upload are only shared with the people on the website (furries mainly), so still big but limited audience
Pretty outdated and inconvenient compared to other platforms: no mobile app - so no notifications, no drag and drop upload, no dynamic image resize, each time you upload you have to categorize your submission (which is annoying if you have 10+ things to upload
Tumblr
Pro:
Good as a personal web archive since you can add /archive to URL, and it gives you a nice view of submissions
Fairly decent at getting to certain audiences who wouldnt be able to see your content otherwise
Convenient to use to upload and tag art
Con:
no sense of community
layouts can be often annoying
it takes great effort to interact with your audience
Twitter
Pro:
More content of various interests can be shared
Instant gratification/fast feedback
Way larger audience (from numerous fandoms within the furry fandom, to access normies, anime, game, celebrities, companies)
Uploading is very convenient and care-free, so much that you can post the smallest of doodles, memes and art conversations can happen fast and it produces interesting results
Interacting with your audience is very easy
Con:
it's filled with garbage. so much garbage.
Easily miss art posts, people rarely care to go to your profile and click on "Media" tab to check what they've missed
lots of theft, "drama" and RP accounts
It really depends on what kind of an experience you're looking for. I personally like to interact with my followers, and doodle dumb things, and sometimes even go into a doodle spree with some other artist, so i use Twitter as my main platform, because uploading and maintenance is so much easier. I keep my twitter all art, so my followers dont have to go through shit posts, and i have a private one where i like to tweet everything else.
I do miss being on FA, but sometimes i produce sketches and doodles so fast and so frequently, it is just too much of a hassle to copy/paste them all into one big canvas, then try to make sense of it to people who werent there, and then i have another 10 commissions waiting to be uploaded, and i have to categorize each of them and give them desciptioooouuuughhhhhhhh so i just dont do it at all tbh. but that's me
my advice: do what it feels best to you as a person and artist and what kind of an experience you want to have while doing this
As an art consumer, FA is much easier to use than Tumblr. An inbox makes it easier to find new art uploaded by watched artists, and galleries are leagues better than wading through reblogged pictures and text posts. Plus I feel that the community is better on FA than Tumblr.
FA, or indeed, any website designed to be used as an art gallery. Doesn't matter which, but Tumblr is not a good choice, unless you spend far too much effort setting up a custom tagging system and use a custom theme to allow people to do more than just look at your last 20 uploads easily.
For fans browsing Tumblr, its major drawback is the buggy search and that annoying feature where it randomly decides to "slide" their page from the edge of the screen halfway to display it, instead of simply routing you to the actual page itself. Should have slapped that idiot right out of his chair.
Twitter has a habit of randomly putting a cap on your feed when reviewing it. That really sucks for fans that follow a lot of people.
As of 2020, FA. Tumblr has bots that are frankly dumb as fuck and would end up censoring the hell out of your artwork, if not outright making damn sure your audience can't get access to it, even if it's art that is G to PG rated.
Plus, Tumblr is kind of a Dumpster fire right now, so yeah. FA is your best bet. Or Twitter. Or Mastadon.
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Dragoneer needs to ditch the upload size limitations. They were understandable in 2005.
Probably invest yourself into twitter a little bit,
FA has its own issues in the long term and doesn't exactly have the best exposure mechanics, if you go dead for a while, your pages goes dead for a little longer.
Tumblr is like a raging torrent of people screaming for attention and views, and if you aren't in the first 20 posts on anyone's dashboard you'll never be seen anyway. :V
FA isn't great either, of course. It's terribly lacking in terms of moderation tools, the code is only stable-ish, it forces resizing of large images, it has no way to link multiple images together in a single post, and the people in charge are... questionable.
Honestly, I'd suggest either FA or one of the other furry gallery sites, specifically Inkbunny, FurryNetwork, or Weasyl, in that order.
Really, there shouldn't be a need to pick between the two. Maybe picking which one will get steady updates and which one will only be updated every so often, but you should never have to pick just one or the other....
Cause of this new shit-fancy NSFW-Blocker on tumblr
not everyone would be able to see and appreciate your art.
FA
Pro:
Art that you upload is catered to furries who are the target audience
it is designed to BE an art gallery, all art is in one place, minimal bullshit, and convenient for your watchers to find your art without going through garbage
Better sense of furry art community
Con:
Art that you upload are only shared with the people on the website (furries mainly), so still big but limited audience
Pretty outdated and inconvenient compared to other platforms: no mobile app - so no notifications, no drag and drop upload, no dynamic image resize, each time you upload you have to categorize your submission (which is annoying if you have 10+ things to upload
Tumblr
Pro:
Good as a personal web archive since you can add /archive to URL, and it gives you a nice view of submissions
Fairly decent at getting to certain audiences who wouldnt be able to see your content otherwise
Convenient to use to upload and tag art
Con:
no sense of community
layouts can be often annoying
it takes great effort to interact with your audience
Twitter
Pro:
More content of various interests can be shared
Instant gratification/fast feedback
Way larger audience (from numerous fandoms within the furry fandom, to access normies, anime, game, celebrities, companies)
Uploading is very convenient and care-free, so much that you can post the smallest of doodles, memes and art conversations can happen fast and it produces interesting results
Interacting with your audience is very easy
Con:
it's filled with garbage. so much garbage.
Easily miss art posts, people rarely care to go to your profile and click on "Media" tab to check what they've missed
lots of theft, "drama" and RP accounts
It really depends on what kind of an experience you're looking for. I personally like to interact with my followers, and doodle dumb things, and sometimes even go into a doodle spree with some other artist, so i use Twitter as my main platform, because uploading and maintenance is so much easier. I keep my twitter all art, so my followers dont have to go through shit posts, and i have a private one where i like to tweet everything else.
I do miss being on FA, but sometimes i produce sketches and doodles so fast and so frequently, it is just too much of a hassle to copy/paste them all into one big canvas, then try to make sense of it to people who werent there, and then i have another 10 commissions waiting to be uploaded, and i have to categorize each of them and give them desciptioooouuuughhhhhhhh so i just dont do it at all tbh. but that's me
my advice: do what it feels best to you as a person and artist and what kind of an experience you want to have while doing this
It allows you to submit to several sites at once. Saves me so much time! =}
Twitter has a habit of randomly putting a cap on your feed when reviewing it. That really sucks for fans that follow a lot of people.
Plus, Tumblr is kind of a Dumpster fire right now, so yeah. FA is your best bet. Or Twitter. Or Mastadon.