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Tagging Artwork, An Introduction
5 years ago
So, you're posting artwork, but you don't know how to tag it and skip that step. I've been there. There's a learning curve to tagging, but it's very important in order for people to easily find your work. No tags or bad tags can make searching for your art a pain. Let's break it down and go over the most important tags for you to include, starting with:
-Your <USERNAME>
This may seem obvious, but I rarely see it tagged. Get into this habit. If people are accustomed to your art, this is the first thing they'll type in to search for you. In addition to your online name, what else should you include? Well, is the picture a commission for anyone? Consider including:
-Commissioner's Online <USERNAME>
-Any character's name who appear in the piece (with sonas, sometimes this overlaps with a <USERNAME>)
Again, this helps with the search function. Maybe I want to look up art of "Trevor-Fox_(character)" or "Nearu_Nikos" the character. This helps greatly with that. Let's continue to look at the picture. Here are some other things you can tag:
-Title of art piece
-Species of characters
-Sex of characters
-Picture theme (transformation, gender_transformation, comic, superhero, etc.)
-If fanart, list company who owns the character/movie title/game title/character name
-Is it from a video game? Tag "video_games"
-As mentioned by
IzyBun below, FA does not recognize tags that are only two letters. "tf" will NOT work as a tag but "tftg" will. Make sure to spell out words if the shorthand for them is only two letters long
These are suggestions and examples of what to look for and how to break down your art to get you started. Recognizing different elements to a piece and understanding how to tag can be a daunting experience at first, but doing it right can really help you out in the long run. As you go on, you'll learn how to tag more precisely and efficiently; it just takes some time to familiarize yourself with it. Please, though, above ALL else, tag your own username so that people can find you.
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-Your <USERNAME>
This may seem obvious, but I rarely see it tagged. Get into this habit. If people are accustomed to your art, this is the first thing they'll type in to search for you. In addition to your online name, what else should you include? Well, is the picture a commission for anyone? Consider including:
-Commissioner's Online <USERNAME>
-Any character's name who appear in the piece (with sonas, sometimes this overlaps with a <USERNAME>)
Again, this helps with the search function. Maybe I want to look up art of "Trevor-Fox_(character)" or "Nearu_Nikos" the character. This helps greatly with that. Let's continue to look at the picture. Here are some other things you can tag:
-Title of art piece
-Species of characters
-Sex of characters
-Picture theme (transformation, gender_transformation, comic, superhero, etc.)
-If fanart, list company who owns the character/movie title/game title/character name
-Is it from a video game? Tag "video_games"
-As mentioned by
IzyBun below, FA does not recognize tags that are only two letters. "tf" will NOT work as a tag but "tftg" will. Make sure to spell out words if the shorthand for them is only two letters longThese are suggestions and examples of what to look for and how to break down your art to get you started. Recognizing different elements to a piece and understanding how to tag can be a daunting experience at first, but doing it right can really help you out in the long run. As you go on, you'll learn how to tag more precisely and efficiently; it just takes some time to familiarize yourself with it. Please, though, above ALL else, tag your own username so that people can find you.
Posted using PostyBirb
Also another thing is to look at other pieces for the picture theme for the most common tags as they're the ones most commonly searched. For example to use a tag you gave, "gender_transformation" has only 994 results on FA, while "tftg" has over 20,000 results and is most common tag used for gender transformation (TG is too, but again two letter tags don't work :P). I've seen some artists who use tags that when searched show that they're the only one using them :P
Great guide overall though, wish more people utilized tags
I hope this is able to help some who may have felt overwhelmed by it!
There's been a good amount of works that I have and would have missed because of improper tagging. That includes the whole TF thing too