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Jun. Update (Furry Art Platforms)
5 years ago
Hey people. I feel bad that I haven't posted any art recently. I've been having a lot of trouble focusing on stuff and not abandoning pics halfway through and I really need to do better. I have a pic I've been inching along on and hopefully it comes to fruition. There's a lot of stuff I really want to draw, just getting myself to see it through has been a bit of a challenge recently.
One thing I've been thinking about is platforms for ero furry art, or rather, the frustrating lack of them. Ever since Tumblr banned NSFW, FA has basically become my base of operations with my InkBunny for redundancy more than anything (I love you IB watchers too!). I don't think I really need to tell any of you about FA's shortcomings; Lack of features, shitty search system, clunky uploader, and a front page constantly flooded with endless YCH reminders, non-artwork, and straight-up e-begging (also they made it display LESS images recently too???).
Now, because of the dearth of platforms Twitter has become the de-facto furry nsfw art platform. It's become increasingly common for artists to upload exclusively to their Twitter. Now Twitter is great for discoverability because of retweets and the sheer amount of users on it, but for everything else? I could go on a bit about everything I hate about the user experience, the culture, the management of that site, but instead I'll just focus on the relevant topic: Twitter isn't designed as an art gallery. It auto-compresses images, gives no way to distinguish between artwork uploads and everything else, and lacks a satisfactory search system for finding specific content. This ultimately means that an artists older work isn't easily accessible. Many artists just use the same account for everything which makes things even worse since now to even view their art you have to sift through memes, animal crossing screenshots, and political hot-takes. The most concerning thing of all is the looming threat of a NSFW ban. It happened on Tumblr where adult content was a MUCH bigger part of the site's identity, it can sure as hell happen on Twitter.
Anyways, I feel like this journal is just becoming a self-indulgent rant on Twitter so I'll shut up. At the end of the day, as long as I can draw weird fantasy animals having sex and get someone to see it, I'm pretty much happy. It's nice to see numbers go up of course, passed 800 watchers just recently! If I really wanted more attention I'd have a Twitter already but I'm just a bit too stubborn for that I'm afraid. Last thing I'll say is that if you know of any other sites that are geared towards the kind of things I draw I'd love to have a better idea what my options are. As it stands though, I don't intend to stop uploading to FA or IB unless they really fuck something up.
One thing I've been thinking about is platforms for ero furry art, or rather, the frustrating lack of them. Ever since Tumblr banned NSFW, FA has basically become my base of operations with my InkBunny for redundancy more than anything (I love you IB watchers too!). I don't think I really need to tell any of you about FA's shortcomings; Lack of features, shitty search system, clunky uploader, and a front page constantly flooded with endless YCH reminders, non-artwork, and straight-up e-begging (also they made it display LESS images recently too???).
Now, because of the dearth of platforms Twitter has become the de-facto furry nsfw art platform. It's become increasingly common for artists to upload exclusively to their Twitter. Now Twitter is great for discoverability because of retweets and the sheer amount of users on it, but for everything else? I could go on a bit about everything I hate about the user experience, the culture, the management of that site, but instead I'll just focus on the relevant topic: Twitter isn't designed as an art gallery. It auto-compresses images, gives no way to distinguish between artwork uploads and everything else, and lacks a satisfactory search system for finding specific content. This ultimately means that an artists older work isn't easily accessible. Many artists just use the same account for everything which makes things even worse since now to even view their art you have to sift through memes, animal crossing screenshots, and political hot-takes. The most concerning thing of all is the looming threat of a NSFW ban. It happened on Tumblr where adult content was a MUCH bigger part of the site's identity, it can sure as hell happen on Twitter.
Anyways, I feel like this journal is just becoming a self-indulgent rant on Twitter so I'll shut up. At the end of the day, as long as I can draw weird fantasy animals having sex and get someone to see it, I'm pretty much happy. It's nice to see numbers go up of course, passed 800 watchers just recently! If I really wanted more attention I'd have a Twitter already but I'm just a bit too stubborn for that I'm afraid. Last thing I'll say is that if you know of any other sites that are geared towards the kind of things I draw I'd love to have a better idea what my options are. As it stands though, I don't intend to stop uploading to FA or IB unless they really fuck something up.
I'll have to look into Furrynetwork, though initial impressions aren't super good I'm afraid.
Not trying to attack you, I just love ranting about Tumblr any chance I can get because I hated it so much. It was such a lousy place for artists. I'm glad it's dead.
I don't like Twitter for art much either because of those same reasons. Regardless though, from what I've personally seen, new artists are having a much easier time getting their presence out there on Twitter than they ever have on Tumblr. Maybe it's just because there are more people on Twitter? Perhaps because Twitter purposefully promotes social interaction? I'm not sure, but I don't mind it as much.
I prefer gallery sites because, well, they're galleries. No having to dig through an endless timeline of memes and personal posts. I can just see all the art, plain and simple. But what sucks is that there's still no universal art gallery site out there.. FA is horribly clunky like you said and still compresses art if it's too big. e621 is a booru, so you lack a customizable profile and gallery. Deviantart is dead and doesn't allow porn. Every other site that solves these problems just has no userbase. I wish there were a real universal platform, but FA is just the best we got for now. xwx
I did mention that Twitter is great for discoverability in my post. I think there's a bit of a downside to that unfortunately, as there are a lot of artists now blindly following trends and drawing popular OCs and stuff, mindless clout chasing.
I really wouldn't mind Twitter as much if people weren't content to use it as their only place to distribute art (other than donation platforms turned paysites). Even worse if they actively keep their art off of other sites like e621. Even if the perfect site with all the features anyone could want and an ideal UI came along, it'd be nothing without a substantial user base. And right now I couldn't see any site like that taking off because artists are just so comfortable with twitter and aren't willing to acknowledge it's many, many flaws.
I guess the smart thing is to just get all the goodies from all the places, if you can manage that! As much as I dislike it, you have tools like postibird that helps you maintain all your main sites uploaded with less effort, I just don't like the copypaste feeling it gets, I enjoy that post-to-post unique feeling, writing unique descriptions, etc~
I wish twitter was less trash overall, if it allowed for following only media content, it'd make it a better art-related site imo
I also had made a Newgrounds account but I never ended up using it since the community apparently wasn't super keen on a bunch of weird furries invading their platform from Tumblr.