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Thoughts on furry art sites
5 years ago
such journal
Eyyy here's somewhat of a pointless journal about things I like (and dislike, but trying to concentrate on what I like) about bunch of different furry art sites I've used. On top of what I list here I've also used Furry art pile if anyone remembers that one (I barely do), aaaand I haven't even touched FurryNetwork. I've just found myself thinkin about what good I find on each site so hah yeah wanted to write this stuff out x3
Furaffinity - the "it works" section:
-I'm real happy those popular-categories are coming! Adding visibility to artists new or popular is always great.
-Being able to disable notes is awesome. I wonder if they could make it so that you can still note others and then they can respond via notes even if they are disabled... ooor maybe the system already works like that?
-The "Commissions" tab was such a great but simple addition. I wish the same page also had a toggle/view for if commissions are open or closed (for each category). A little "payment options" box could be neat too.
-Honestly everything just works pretty well here, buuut yeah it's all rather... well, outdated and barebones, not as much as it used to be, but still. Hoping for a proper group system, name change system, and maybe multi-file submissions.
Twitter - the "fame for a day" section:
-Great for getting attention and visibility even if it's often only momentary
-Doesn't work as a gallery - it's can be super difficult to find out what an artist makes overall if they only use Twitter and half their posts are like pics of their cat or lunch or whatever
Deviantart - the "it used to be good" section:
-Whiiiile I don't really like DA nowadays, I gotta admit the front page does quite well find images I'm interested in seeing. Whatever neural network system they use to figure out what stuff I like seems to work pretty well honestly.
-Groups used to be great - watch a group, go to watch/new submissions page to see what new stuff there's to see (now you need to check em individually and it suuucks).
-Gallery folders still work great. There's a basic view you can decide what shows up in, and there's an "All" view that just shows everything. Sofurry lacks this "All" button and I hate it lmao
-Watchers only submissions, while sounding great on paper, suck, since you can just watch an artist, check the submission and instantly unwatch.
-Page customization, even though worse than it once was, is pretty great. You can reorganize the boxes your site has, remove/add them, and so on.
-Thumbs were amazing. Why did they get removed??
-When watching someone you used to be able to toggle what material you wanted to see. You could, for example, not follow someone's journals. This feature too, was ofcourse removed.
Sofurry - the "it sounds neat but doesn't work as expected" section:
-The groups system of this site (at times called Pools) is simple to use when you want to add your image to multiple groups, but unfortunately groups are almost useless since there isn't any sort of "watch this group" button or a "new submissions in groups you watch" view.
-Market - a dedicated place to advertise buying/selling art is nice, but it's... eh, well the whole system feels like it's a big WIP. Can also be abused, whenever you update your request it's bumped back to the top of the listings.
-Being able to add tags to images by others is great, same with Inkbunny
-Realtime notifications is great. Inkbunny might also have them...? Not sure.
-Characters -system, while kiiinda hidden and such, is pretty neat. It's like a lightweight version of F-list but hey, it does the job.
Inkbunny - the "hey wow these features are real nice" section:
-Multi file/image submission is biiiiig, I love this feature
-Related: Being able to upload a .zip file with all the files you wanna upload into a single submission is really great.
-"Block guests" setting for submissions is nice, on FA I need to set pics as Mature if I wanna do that
-Keyword suggestions is great, same with Sofurry
-Being able to block keywords is also great. Like uh, most know that Inkbunny allows all that cub stuff, buuut you can just block away most of it by blocking the right keywords.
-Being able to hide submissions without deleting them completely is nice.
Weasyl - the "thumbnail creator is cool" section:
-Thumbnail creator thing is amazing, while uploading a pic you can then crop a section to use as a thumbnail, fast and easy
Sooo uh, what would my dream website be?
-Frontpage with new, recommended, popular, and maybe "random from 24 hours" sections
-Quick to browse "new from artists/groups you watch" section with hopefully a couple of settings to view everything in bulk, or seperated by artists or groups.
-Easy to use groups. Something like a mix of Sofurry and Deviantart (old DA specifically). Could have closed and open groups to make everyone happy with what's offered.
-Bunch of settings when uploading a submission (from ratings to tags to visibility), multifile submissions.
-Scheduled submissions, I'm a big fan of this on YT atleast.
-A nice keyword and category system to find stuff what you're interested in.
-Integration to other sites, for example being able to show your Twitter feed and Discord/Telegram groups on your page.
-Some sorta stream notification, WIP, and reminder system to keep that stuff away from regular feeds. Maybe there could be some type of sub-submissions so you don't need to upload a completely seperate thing for each reminder.
-Toggles for when you watch an artist on what you want to follow. Maybe you could "super-watch" someone too, which would make their new material show up on the frontpage, or something like that.
-There could be bunch of other features too, buuuut the emphasis I feel should be on visibility for all artists, and on the other hand on being able to follow the artists you really want to follow x3
Furaffinity - the "it works" section:
-I'm real happy those popular-categories are coming! Adding visibility to artists new or popular is always great.
-Being able to disable notes is awesome. I wonder if they could make it so that you can still note others and then they can respond via notes even if they are disabled... ooor maybe the system already works like that?
-The "Commissions" tab was such a great but simple addition. I wish the same page also had a toggle/view for if commissions are open or closed (for each category). A little "payment options" box could be neat too.
-Honestly everything just works pretty well here, buuut yeah it's all rather... well, outdated and barebones, not as much as it used to be, but still. Hoping for a proper group system, name change system, and maybe multi-file submissions.
Twitter - the "fame for a day" section:
-Great for getting attention and visibility even if it's often only momentary
-Doesn't work as a gallery - it's can be super difficult to find out what an artist makes overall if they only use Twitter and half their posts are like pics of their cat or lunch or whatever
Deviantart - the "it used to be good" section:
-Whiiiile I don't really like DA nowadays, I gotta admit the front page does quite well find images I'm interested in seeing. Whatever neural network system they use to figure out what stuff I like seems to work pretty well honestly.
-Groups used to be great - watch a group, go to watch/new submissions page to see what new stuff there's to see (now you need to check em individually and it suuucks).
-Gallery folders still work great. There's a basic view you can decide what shows up in, and there's an "All" view that just shows everything. Sofurry lacks this "All" button and I hate it lmao
-Watchers only submissions, while sounding great on paper, suck, since you can just watch an artist, check the submission and instantly unwatch.
-Page customization, even though worse than it once was, is pretty great. You can reorganize the boxes your site has, remove/add them, and so on.
-Thumbs were amazing. Why did they get removed??
-When watching someone you used to be able to toggle what material you wanted to see. You could, for example, not follow someone's journals. This feature too, was ofcourse removed.
Sofurry - the "it sounds neat but doesn't work as expected" section:
-The groups system of this site (at times called Pools) is simple to use when you want to add your image to multiple groups, but unfortunately groups are almost useless since there isn't any sort of "watch this group" button or a "new submissions in groups you watch" view.
-Market - a dedicated place to advertise buying/selling art is nice, but it's... eh, well the whole system feels like it's a big WIP. Can also be abused, whenever you update your request it's bumped back to the top of the listings.
-Being able to add tags to images by others is great, same with Inkbunny
-Realtime notifications is great. Inkbunny might also have them...? Not sure.
-Characters -system, while kiiinda hidden and such, is pretty neat. It's like a lightweight version of F-list but hey, it does the job.
Inkbunny - the "hey wow these features are real nice" section:
-Multi file/image submission is biiiiig, I love this feature
-Related: Being able to upload a .zip file with all the files you wanna upload into a single submission is really great.
-"Block guests" setting for submissions is nice, on FA I need to set pics as Mature if I wanna do that
-Keyword suggestions is great, same with Sofurry
-Being able to block keywords is also great. Like uh, most know that Inkbunny allows all that cub stuff, buuut you can just block away most of it by blocking the right keywords.
-Being able to hide submissions without deleting them completely is nice.
Weasyl - the "thumbnail creator is cool" section:
-Thumbnail creator thing is amazing, while uploading a pic you can then crop a section to use as a thumbnail, fast and easy
Sooo uh, what would my dream website be?
-Frontpage with new, recommended, popular, and maybe "random from 24 hours" sections
-Quick to browse "new from artists/groups you watch" section with hopefully a couple of settings to view everything in bulk, or seperated by artists or groups.
-Easy to use groups. Something like a mix of Sofurry and Deviantart (old DA specifically). Could have closed and open groups to make everyone happy with what's offered.
-Bunch of settings when uploading a submission (from ratings to tags to visibility), multifile submissions.
-Scheduled submissions, I'm a big fan of this on YT atleast.
-A nice keyword and category system to find stuff what you're interested in.
-Integration to other sites, for example being able to show your Twitter feed and Discord/Telegram groups on your page.
-Some sorta stream notification, WIP, and reminder system to keep that stuff away from regular feeds. Maybe there could be some type of sub-submissions so you don't need to upload a completely seperate thing for each reminder.
-Toggles for when you watch an artist on what you want to follow. Maybe you could "super-watch" someone too, which would make their new material show up on the frontpage, or something like that.
-There could be bunch of other features too, buuuut the emphasis I feel should be on visibility for all artists, and on the other hand on being able to follow the artists you really want to follow x3
