I post whatever on Artstation now, but I when I looked for work I would send off the website version of my artstation that had only certain pieces on it. Recently I posted a bunch of art I did throughout the past 10 years, mostly college stuff.
Which is a smart feature by the Artstation team and is the reason why this discussion is probably redundant. It really depends on how many job scouters actually search through AS to find an appropriate artist. My guess is that most of the time the portfolio is sent by link and in this case AS works perfectly as this "elite" portfolio site. In that case all the questions about the quality of content, the polishednessness of the content, the flooding of some specific content etc. are completely redundant, because the social platform AS has become has nothing todo with its Portfolio functionality. In the other case, where the Artists reason to post work on Artstation is to be found by potential scouters, these are legitimate questions. But easily answered, because in that case everybody has the right to be found by potential scouters, no matter the skill level.
If I was applying for a creative industry job, I would definitely want an ArtStation.
However since I straddle several different fields and have a lot of time invested in building a personal brand using technical blog posts and my rather unique namespace, I like to use my website for the majority of my stuff.
So I would say unless you have specific reasons, don't use a website. Just use ArtStation - it's where everyone is, you should be there too.
I'm wondering why it really matters, when an artist is using artstation as their professional portfolio they send a link to their specific page. It's not like you just direct the employer to newest submissions and say "hopefully you find something decent of mine in this sea of other stuff." As long as the work on your page is the work you choose to represent yourself with why does it matter what everyone else is doing.
There's one really annoying trend going on in ArtStation, people posting pre-made posed characters, which are rendered in DAZ Studio. Sometimes when I'm looking for great character artists and their artwork, these images are blended with rest of the actual artwork on the front page of ArtStation.
Sometimes they look convincingly good from a thumbnail for me to click them. After clicking them, first signs are plasticky, anatomically generic look on them (and "I've seen this face before" feeling), when I already start to suspect them from being from the DAZ Studio. I'll scroll right away to the sofwares used list, and when I see DAZ labeled, I think "Fucking DAZ fooled me again, this guy/gal has no idea how 3D characters are actually done, and how much time, passion, blood, sweat, tears and skills it takes to create them."
I'm more than okay DAZ Studio being used for initial posing of characters for 2D concept art, like how Maciej Kuciara has done a lot in his past artwork, but I hate seeing full 3D rendered stuff, which fools us from the real 3D character artwork.
im laughing so hard at this, cause Im thinking the same thing, I held back from posting anything on artstation for long time cause my work was 'utter shit' and after taking some brutal critique from forums such as here and reddit, I did what anyone would do and did some tutorials to brush up on my topology etc and then went back to the drawing board..
now I follow a lot of people on artstation and i've noticed there is a glut of students and hopefuls posting anything which isnt bolted down, and I'm under the impression a lot of university courses have a habit of choosing some students based on their outstanding ability and then other students are selected because of 'enthusiasm' (it was the same deal when I studied art a long time ago, you have people who knew what to do and others who seemed to have ended up on that course by random chance) so you'd find a room of mixed ability which sort of craps on the idea of higher education being a 'specialist' reserve.
and I can only assume the professor/lecturer/tutor from day one says: 'now kids you will need an artstation page if you want to work in an AAA studio' and the enthusiastic yet hopeless students during that lecture write down in their notepad 'artstation page', and its pretty pointless to emphasise artstation if your students aren't able to produce minimum standard work.
I recently paid extra for a pro-subscription, because Im taking my 3d modeling seriously and I want to stand out from the crowd.
its gatekeeping, but hospitals and engineers have a similar approach regarding standards and gatekeeping and I think the visual arts should likewise do the same.
As a working engineer who has a passion for 3D art I want to point something out regarding your last comment. Standards in engineering are very distinct and accurate, nothing is based on one's opinion. Art is entirely different, who judges what is considered "good"? What is considered a minimum standard in a profession that is based solely on free expression and creativity? Personally I don't like over sexualized anime I see on artstation, its creepy to me and I hold no value to it. But I don't think it would be fair to remove it all together because it doesn't meet my specific art standard. Just my opinion.
art may come across as a wishy washy anything goes medium, but 3d, even weird 3d needs good topology or it just wont work. I got lots of good ideas and good intentions but if my models have artifacts or other things which cause issues I cant expect my boss to not be angry.
Keep it calm and keep posting boring cute chicks for easy front page on ArtStation. That's also one of the trends. Seeing DAZ artworks hit anywhere front page is actually disgusting.
Tough choice in all honesty I've been seeing a lot of - questionable material on A.S.S recently.
Art
station
site
and well with the pay to use Artstation as your blog, seems to work for some, i fear what restrictions will come to the rest of us. Is it as long as you pay us you can use the site for your art dump no matter the quality now? is it smart or shady? idk, but what i do think we need are options, move to (list some sites).
I am making "fun" above, stumbled upon some sections they haven't limited and recently they halted the upload of those types of images - it was an animated .png "backdoor" to animated gif uploads they don't seem to allow. Its in the older work section if you care to view, on my end its animated.
Tough choice in all honesty I've been seeing a lot of - questionable material on A.S.S recently.
Art
station
site
and well with the pay to use Artstation as your blog, seems to work for some, i fear what restrictions will come to the rest of us. Is it as long as you pay us you can use the site for your art dump no matter the quality now? is it smart or shady? idk, but what i do think we need are options, move to (list some sites).
I am making "fun" above, stumbled upon some sections they haven't limited and recently they halted the upload of those types of images - it was an animated .png "backdoor" to animated gif uploads they don't seem to allow. Its in the older work section if you care to view, on my end its animated.
Artstation does a good job of making it so you don't have to see low quality art if you don't want to. So I don't see why you'd want to stop people from posting poor quality art. How are they supposed to become good artists if they can't share their art?
Artstation is really the corporate side of art, you present things for views. They ask hundreds to post job ads. Discussion is not wanted.
The more ArtStation is in focus the more important sites like Polycount become for the health of the industry imo.
Artstation does have any means of discussion. It is not a place for artists to connect and learn, its primarily function is making money and for you to show off, and should be treated as such. I think the frontpage is good as is, it does what its intended to do.
Artstation is really the corporate side of art, you present things for views. They ask hundreds to post job ads. Discussion is not wanted.
The more ArtStation is in focus the more important sites like Polycount become for the health of the industry imo.
Artstation does have any means of discussion. It is not a place for artists to connect and learn, its primarily function is making money and for you to show off, and should be treated as such. I think the frontpage is good as is, it does what its intended to do.
Their recent efforts kind of contradict that. Those efforts and features are all locked behind the pro subscription to be fair though.
Artstation does a good job of making it so you don't have to see low quality art if you don't want to. So I don't see why you'd want to stop people from posting poor quality art. How are they supposed to become good artists if they can't share their art?
I don't want to stop anything, below explains the situation they are moving towards though, i kind of knew it was a matter of time / traffic till they requested, $ as they should be as an option not a forced upon and then to add insult to injury lets continually increase the price for those that haven't yet made an artstation or liked how it was before the pro option arose.
What was it $3? month at 1st, now its double and they will double it again(?), who knows. (i like artstation no matter the situation, i was around the 1st hundred users at least, so been there a while.)
Their recent efforts kind of contradict that. Those efforts and features are all locked behind the pro subscription to be fair though.
^ I recently didn't know of the locking, i had 2 videos on one post/artwork and once i removed that 2nd video i could no long post another. Its fine i was just upset when i tried to replace that 1 with another. It works under their pro status, if i could i would do the pro i can't so i won't. Just wondering what will become of the site and since those enthusiastic individuals ranting/raving the site should be of the elite only, looks like they will get their wish, they just have to wait it out.
I honestly think the price is extremely fair for artstation pro, they are constantly adding new features to justify the price. The amount of server space and data transferred each month must cost them TONS of money, so of course they are going to need to monetize, it's a business, not a charity.
I mean you could go the random portfolio website route, lets break down that cost: - actual fast/good web hosting that can compete with the speed and reliability of AS - $8-10/month - $96-120/year (yes I know there are dollar a month hosting options, but those are hot garbage 99% of the time) - domain name registration fees - $10/year - the hope people remember your domain or see your art when you post new stuff
vs artstaion pro which is what $84 a year where you get - super fast speed and 99.9% uptime - offline portfolio on your phone/tablet - blog option that drives free traffic to your work and gives you visibility in the community - Tons of free highly relevant organic traffic to your art any time you post and a constant stream of eyeballs over time. Lets say someone gets a junior level position with a 40k a year starting salary because a hiring manager actually saw their latest post and reached out that's probably the best ROI on 84 bucks you will EVER get. - their recently added tutorials section where you can learn from pro artists with in depth content created by people actually in the industry and not some low quality "game design program" school that charges 10k+ a year for usually outdated information.
I am actually happy a lot of the features are locked behind the pro section because if it was all free, it would be spammed into oblivion with SEO link builders, people trying to scam and make money online etc and just wave after wave of posts looking to take rather than give value. anything 100% free is usually a haven for lowest barrier to entry spam. It would turn into a scammy asset flip marketplace that would need constant auditing and be a full time job to manage. the fact the blogs section is locked behind a pro account probably removes 100% of the automated robospam and bots for that content.
in my mind the value proposition with all the features they currently offer is hilariously underpriced and greatly in the favor of the user. to get the kind of traffic to my content that I get for free by using the blog features alone would probably cost me about a thousand dollars a month in FB and youtube paid advertising.
there are a bunch of artists out there probably making $100k+ year in side hustle money just off artstation and building an audience and offering useful products and tutorials to them. anyone can do it with time and hard work, you just have to change your mindset first. Artstation pro is just a tool, how you use it is up to you
@DavidCruz kinda off topic but i noticed in your signature it says your page is 404'd... is it due to the hyphen added at the end of your link? it came up fine once that was removed
@DavidCruz signature is 404'd...due hyphen at end of link? fine once removed
Thank you very much, idk they did a few searches in engines, its fine no biggie, their site if they want to 404 people(me) its whatever. On topic i guess but a lot of people outside u.s. get a ton of views and traction, I've been noticing, that is good, wonder if anyone else noticed.
Agree PixelMasher - would look like deviant art search results, oy. (to update i was able to add 2 video links to a new post so no longer an issue, same for Animated gif/png.)
Replies
It really depends on how many job scouters actually search through AS to find an appropriate artist. My guess is that most of the time the portfolio is sent by link and in this case AS works perfectly as this "elite" portfolio site.
In that case all the questions about the quality of content, the polishednessness of the content, the flooding of some specific content etc. are completely redundant, because the social platform AS has become has nothing todo with its Portfolio functionality.
In the other case, where the Artists reason to post work on Artstation is to be found by potential scouters, these are legitimate questions. But easily answered, because in that case everybody has the right to be found by potential scouters, no matter the skill level.
However since I straddle several different fields and have a lot of time invested in building a personal brand using technical blog posts and my rather unique namespace, I like to use my website for the majority of my stuff.
So I would say unless you have specific reasons, don't use a website. Just use ArtStation - it's where everyone is, you should be there too.
The more ArtStation is in focus the more important sites like Polycount become for the health of the industry imo.
Artstation does have any means of discussion. It is not a place for artists to connect and learn, its primarily function is making money and for you to show off, and should be treated as such. I think the frontpage is good as is, it does what its intended to do.
I mean you could go the random portfolio website route, lets break down that cost:
- actual fast/good web hosting that can compete with the speed and reliability of AS - $8-10/month - $96-120/year (yes I know there are dollar a month hosting options, but those are hot garbage 99% of the time)
- domain name registration fees - $10/year
- the hope people remember your domain or see your art when you post new stuff
vs artstaion pro which is what $84 a year where you get
- super fast speed and 99.9% uptime
- offline portfolio on your phone/tablet
- blog option that drives free traffic to your work and gives you visibility in the community
- Tons of free highly relevant organic traffic to your art any time you post and a constant stream of eyeballs over time. Lets say someone gets a junior level position with a 40k a year starting salary because a hiring manager actually saw their latest post and reached out that's probably the best ROI on 84 bucks you will EVER get.
- their recently added tutorials section where you can learn from pro artists with in depth content created by people actually in the industry and not some low quality "game design program" school that charges 10k+ a year for usually outdated information.
I am actually happy a lot of the features are locked behind the pro section because if it was all free, it would be spammed into oblivion with SEO link builders, people trying to scam and make money online etc and just wave after wave of posts looking to take rather than give value. anything 100% free is usually a haven for lowest barrier to entry spam. It would turn into a scammy asset flip marketplace that would need constant auditing and be a full time job to manage. the fact the blogs section is locked behind a pro account probably removes 100% of the automated robospam and bots for that content.
in my mind the value proposition with all the features they currently offer is hilariously underpriced and greatly in the favor of the user. to get the kind of traffic to my content that I get for free by using the blog features alone would probably cost me about a thousand dollars a month in FB and youtube paid advertising.
there are a bunch of artists out there probably making $100k+ year in side hustle money just off artstation and building an audience and offering useful products and tutorials to them. anyone can do it with time and hard work, you just have to change your mindset first. Artstation pro is just a tool, how you use it is up to you
I thought I was going crazy.. glad to know others notice.