Gotta Go Back to Go Forward

It's a shame that Instagram and Twitter have shit the bed so hard. Because they were invaluable resources in the art community especially when it came to staffing. In my job, I have to periodically look for storyboard artists to hire. And Instagram, in particular, was a great way for artist to post accessible, digestible, uniform portfolio work. Even if it wasn't official portfolio work, it would give you an idea of what the person's art was like and usually it would have a link to an official portfolio.

Recently, I had to look for Storyboard artists and I still kind of defaulted to scrolling around on Instagram. Seeing who board artists, whose work I admired but were unavailable for employment, were following. And it lead me to new talent I wasn't aware of previously. But, also, Instagram has lost and is continuing to lose users due to their shitty policies of the algorithm only pushing video content and the possibility of your work being scraped for Generative-AI training purposes. I, myself, have stopped posting art on it! I even took down all my drawings. So, because so many people have left that platform, I'm sure there are hundreds if not thousands of people who could really use that exposure that are no longer getting it. 

A lot of people have fled to Bluesky and/or Cara. Both are great. But, their userbases are so small that it's not really useful for recruiting purposes. 

I contemplated making a new "Work" account for Twitter (I refuse to call it X) just for the purposes of talent scouting. But, again, as with Instagram. So many people have left that platform that it's not really worth the hassle. 

TikTok is for video content. So, board work/drawings/etc wouldn't really work in that capacity. 

LinkedIn is fuckin' USELESS when it comes to anything other than very standard corporate, business-type, jobs. 

Tumblr is basically a tomb. 

Facebook is such a non-option that I honestly forgot about it until I was proofreading this post. 

I know that a lot of people have portfolio websites. And that is SUPER useful and helpful. They're great. And I recommend everybody get one for their portfolios. But without social media ala Instagram or Twitter... how are you expected to get your website "out there"? 

So I was left to think about how it was done in the heyday of blogspot. Back before the internet seemed like it was just a handful of websites. And it was basically this: "You had a blog with your sketches and stuff. But you had a link to your portfolio. in your links, you linked your friends' blogs which had links to their portfolios. And they had links to their friends' blogs with their work. And so on and so forth." And I feel like that was a solid way of doing it. You basically posted your work and had lists of people you were willing to vouch for. 

Now, I appreciate the irony of me calling Tumblr a tomb while extolling the virtues of Blogspot. If Tumblr is a tomb, then Blogspot is the ashen soil that said tomb is built upon. But, I would be remiss if I was longing for the internet to be a different place than what it has become if I didn't attempt to do something within my sphere of influence to try to pull it in a positive direction. So, I'm starting up my blog again to try to be the change I wanna see in the world. 

I'm hoping to post mostly Animation Storyboard related stuff. If you have an art blog, go ahead and drop a link in the comments and maybe I'll put it in the sidebar of my blog!