At the start of section four, the coursebook introduces the student to the changing face of contemporary illustration. It was clear from the text that this coursebook had not been updated recently! It was amusing and interesting to see how far things have developed since this section was written.
Social media exploded to become a dominant part of the illustrator's experience and practice. It has continued to develop, some might say past its zenith and has moved from the static image to being predominantly focused on videos and other moving images. It feels like social media is waning; with the collapse of Twitter (now 'X') competitors sprang up to take its place, and somehow when we were presented with things that seemed to give us what was lost from the earlier days of Twitter, we realised we didn't want that any more.
Social media, as it stands, is in decline yet it is not clear what exactly will replace it. In the meantime, however, it represents a 'necessary evil' for creators to market themselves. There is now also a balance to strike between producing content and protecting that content from being harvested by the technology companies behind social media to train large language models and visual generative AI systems. The very things that risk many creative disciplines and reduce creativity to keyword descriptions that then create homogeneous and derivative creative works.
The one positive shift that seems to be emerging is the one away from large, open 'town hall' social media experiences to those that embrace smaller, more focused communities. This is what appeals to me most as an artist - to find different places where 'my people' live on the internet, and engage in creativity that supports and engages, rather than tears things down and apart.
Commercial Opportunities
Marketing is still important. Instagram is still ostensibly a visual social media platform and is probably still a base that can be leveraged to some degree. I have stopped using Twitter/X on principle, and given I haven't got a following there I fear losing, I do not think I will be tempted to use it. Threads provides me with a similar experience which feels psychologically safer, and is integrated with Instagram which could prove to have some useful synergy.
There are other sites where visual artists post their work, to attract commercial opportunities. DeviantArt and Artstation are both online galleries (typically attracting artists hoping to work in the entertainment industries) where one can create an online presence or digital portfolio. Artstation has taken a stronger stance on the use of AI-generated images, as well as its images being scraped and used to train generative AI models without any thought to intellectual property. I think I would feel more comfortable using that as a potential place to show certain artwork.
Adobe has created a similar online gallery with the Behance website. It is tightly coupled with the Adobe ecosystem, which is something I actively try to avoid if possible, so I am not sure it's a website I want to engage with, especially given that Adobe allows images to be scraped to train their own AI features. It's a shame, though, as the content on Behance feels more broad, and would have better commercial reach.
I feel the best strategy will be to have a strong personal website to bring people to. That way I have more control over how my work is presented and used. It's also a lot easier for me to protect my work using tools like Glaze and Nightshade [1]. Additionally, it allows me to adapt to the changing landscape of social media and not put all my eggs into one basket. I am not sure how best to engage with the current trend for video over images, but sharing my work on YouTube in a way that helps others appeals to me. This could potentially work for TikTok, but I have actively tried to avoid that platform as I do not think it promotes healthy interaction.
One of the best opportunities to help cultivate commercial income is through crowdfunding platforms. Patreon is the most popular of these and allows creatives to monetise the work they'd make anyway by engaging with the fans directly. It requires creatives to build up a following, which is where the necessary evil of other social media platforms comes in, but for many artists now Patron is a sustainable source of income. Once an artist has built their following, the next way to monetise their work is through project-based crowdfunding like Kickstarter. There are also other ways to monetise one's illustration work through sold objects like prints, pins and accessories. There are many platforms for this approach from drop-shipping options through to marketplaces like Etsy.
Professional Networking
The most prevalent professional social media is LinkedIn, which I find a difficult site to use for any length of time. I find it very false and far too focused on self-promotion over community engagement. However, that's also related to the fact my network is currently linked to my day job. I hope that as I can move out of one industry towards a more creative one, my experience on this platform will change.
I have had a much better experience on the Discord. It's designed around communities with specialist interests, and as such is a much more fulfilling place to exchange work and ideas. I help to administrate the unofficial OCA students' Discord server, and I genuinely don't think I would have made it this far in my OCA journey had it not been for the community we have built there.
I am a student member of The AOI, and their website is a useful source of networking opportunities, learning, and discovery. They also house a portfolio area which I don't currently use, but I think would appeal to me in the future as a safe place to have my work seen.
Discovery
It can be a dangerous thing to spend too much time looking at (and worrying about) what other people are doing. When used proportionately, however, social media outlets allow artists to engage with and be inspired by the art of others.
I currently use Instagram mostly in a passive way. It's a lot harder to see the content that I want nowadays, and often get trapped looking at an endless stream of random videos. I find that Pinterest is probably the most useful social tool I have for discovering ideas and information. It's also very easy for my own collections to be used and inspire others as well.
I have found some other resources that have helped me discover more about the industry. Creative Lives in Progress, It's Nice That, and Creative Boom have all been useful in keeping me engaged with topics in the creative world and exposing me to a broad range of ideas and work. I have also recently discovered Replay, which has a repository of useful industry video presentations.
I have found that Domestika is increasingly a very useful platform to expand my skills and learn. The way that it structures its courses is to encourage its students to present work to each other, so it also has merit as a place to engage with other creatives and have work seen.
Conclusion
I have not proactively interacted with social media for over a year. Partly because of other things going on in my world, but mostly because of a feeling of disconnection from my work. I simply don't feel I have anything to offer. This is starting to change, and I am feeling more like myself again. More equipped to start using these platforms as tools, and most importantly more confident to create work for the sake of just creating, and to put more of myself back into the world.
References
Shan, S. et al. (2024) What is nightshade?, Nightshade. Available at: https://nightshade.cs.uchicago.edu/whatis.html (Accessed: 20 April 2024).