Well if you aren't aware of the state of the world, I guess it's time for you to get out from under that rock.
As a Full Time Artist I've been struggling to find commissioners and work, I can't blame them, we're on a crisis everywhere and art is actually a luxury. I've been so lucky until now that I can find so many good people who want to take some of their money and give me their awesome characters to draw so I can eat another day.
The thing is.
- Social media is being constantly censored so it doesn't spread content freely
- Not to talk about how NSFW content has been shadowbanned from most of the social media and internet in general
- The world is entering another economic regression, so creative jobs and other non-essencial stuff will suffer first
So, as artists, as clients, as a person who just enjoys art on a daily basis:
What do you recommend to do from here? What can we artists do to survive this? Have you found some place were you think you can thrive through this challenging times? Do you know any place where artist and clients can interact and be actually seen by others without fighting algorithms or AI?
Twitter//X is full of yatzhees now
Bluesky is full of other artists, who I love, but they don't buy
NewGrounds has been working more as a forum than as a hiring place, it's nice tho
Furaffinity... Is furaffinity. Really cool too but people are not very talky there either.
Patreon has been bullying nsfw artists since 2020
Instagram, Facebook, pff do I even have to say anything?
TikTok? I'm not an animator, it simply doesn't work
Tumblr sold it's soul
Whatever happenned to Pillowfort???
I've even tried Hive, Cara, and loads of emerging sites, to no avail
I can't get interactions, I can't get connections to real people. Anywhere I go is bots, scams, invisibility cloak(?).
I'm so tired of how the world is out of control and it makes me so frustrated, because I chose to be an artist, is what I want to do. I don't need to sulk in agonizing regret for not choosing some other career like laws or medicine or programming.
I'm not even trying to whine about it or even plead for work. I literally break my back and ass working each and every day to make content, keep up on commissions, participate on communities, trying to interact with my (mostly) silent patrons. I'm absolutely burnt out (roasted, ha-ha) and I can't afford to even take a break because if I do so, I won't be able to pay my rent next month. That's just life for most artists and content creators I know.
Please if you have read this and have any input on it, do comment, share your opinion. I'd be happy to share any feelings or hearing from you.
Thank you for reading.
dadeaner
I have no experience in the struggle and I haven't created anything outside of my job in years so take this with a grain-of-salt...
I have seen some artist grow their work by collaborating with each other. Maybe one person draws a pin-up and the other creates an idle animation loop from it. While you would have to share the credit and commission, this would get more eyes on you and demonstrate greater value in your portfolio. You can take an older piece and make something simple like ( https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/sirlenward/the-edds ) or a more ambitions animation like ( https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/prywinko/professor-garlick-animation ). I've been busy myself, but I would be happy to create a free example for you sometime; However, my focus is only 2D tweening and effects ( https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/dadeaner/carmelita-fox-2-animation ).
Apologies if I missed you mentioning it, but I have also found a lot of new artist who post to specific subreddits. You may find some like-minded regulars in smaller forums and discords. There's a ton of niche communities for smaller Streamers and YouTubers. Fan Art shared in these communities an be carried pretty far. V-Tubers typically have a high demand for art to use in thumbnails, social posts, merch, emotes and stream assets. That may be a good place to look.
If you want to sell your own work, I would reach out to artists like Sabtastic ( https://sabtastic.newgrounds.com/ ) who attend conventions and artist alleys to sell their own merch. Though I believe they have a full-time job outside of art. Most artist who attend these sell fan art for mass appeal like REIQtv.
Other people to reach out to include Jim Lee and Dave Greco who are both industry veterans with decades of insight on the struggle.
Some artists stream their work/commissions on twitch and picarto so you may be able to get more insight on how they're managing. Some of these artists (especially on picarto and artists' discords) have multi-streams with open mic and chat if you need more interaction in your day-to-day.
You do good work that absolutely should be seen and I wish you the best :)