Keep your Kinks and 34 at The Door! (A PSA announcement from a fellow artist)

[Dragonbums]

As a precursor this isn't addressed to anybody in particular so much as something I've been observing within the art communities I frequent. So with that out of the way here I go

Maybe I've just been browsing the likes of FA, DeviantART, and tumblr for too long and this isn't as prevalent that I'm making it out to be. But for a while now I've noticed there is always someone complaining about having to censor their "other" art and various kinks from the masses. Stating that if you don't like what they draw/write/photograph, then they can take the door to the left off your page.

This is fine and dandy and all but it does create a bit of a dilemma when those avenues are places like your Facebook, and general tumblr blog. Especially when you get to a certain following size.

When you start getting a large amount of followers you have to take into consideration why they followed you in the first place. This is especially important for mixed bags. If your a person who does porn and sfw (Safe for work) stuff on your blog then it's a nice gesture to mention that from time to time. An even better gesture- especially if your a tumblr user is to utilize that tagging feature. That way for followers who just want to see your clean work, they don't have to sift through your more raunchy endeavors as well.

I don't think we need to explain the Facebook issue either (I'm surprised there are some people who need to be talked to about it.)

As for the kinks aspect believe it or not people like to divide their own 34 into other subcategories as well. Most average viewers of porn just want the really vanilla gay/lesbian/straight porn. Yes, in general if you have kinks on the more extreme side of the internet it's best to divide that up as well. Granted...if they are watching your nsfw blog, then that probably means they know what you produce on a daily basis, but it never hurts I suppose.

Oh, and another thing. If your aspiring to be a professional artist in any way of the sort that doesn't involve actually doing nsfw art as a living then if you haven't started now, it is highly recommended you separate your nsfw are and your clean art now. The whole "Freedom of expression" and "it's my art" motto doesn't exactly work when potential clientele money is on the line.

That's just my two cents on that one. I hope for the artists that roam the Escapist it may provide some sort of guidelines on what to do if you plan on doing nsfw and clean art.

 

[EternallyBored]

Thought this thread was going to be about something completely different when I read the title, dunno whether that's a good thing or not?

As for your point, I'm not an artist, even my stick figures look atrocious, but I tend to look at it the same way I look at free speech interaction, you have the right to say whatever you want, and other have the right to judge you to some extent for what you say.

Some artists see their art as an expression of themselves, so they view segregating or separating their art as censorship of themselves. In those cases they tend to view their art as "you take the porn with the safe stuff or you don't take it at all". Which is fine, and they have every right to do so, just as their viewers have the right to not follow them, and if they are professional artists, employers have the right not to hire someone that publicly displays their pornographic work.

I agree that it makes more sense professionally to distance the two extremes, only if just to appeal to a wider audience, but some artists take their view of art and censorship very seriously, and while I think it may be a little unwise to do so, it is their prerogative to make such decisions in the end. Those that aren't professionals have little incentive to care beyond perhaps trying to attract more fans, which is going to vary a lot depending entirely on the artist's motivation for creating their art in the first place.

 

[Foolery]

Artists can draw whatever the fuck they want, where they want, within reason, as far I'm concerned. Their art, their site, their page, and therefore, their rules. NSFW is just a part of the craft for a lot of artists. It's great practice. Don't believe me? Pick of an issue of Heavy Metal. Even well known artists have dabbled in erotica at one point and some still do.

captcha: jump the gun

Hmm. How appropriate.

 

[EternallyBored]

Artists can draw whatever the fuck they want, where they want, within reason, as far I'm concerned. Their art, their site, their page, and therefore, their rules. NSFW is just a part of the craft for a lot of artists. It's great practice. Don't believe me? Pick of an issue of Heavy Metal. Even well known artists have dabbled in erotica at one point and some still do.

captcha: jump the gun

Hmm. How appropriate.

On a similar note, one of the original creators of Wonderwoman had a rather pronounced bondage fetish that ended up influencing a lot of the early Wonderwoman comics, but then again her original writer had some very different beliefs surrounding women in general and was in a polygamous relationship with two women, so yaknow, artists be weird and all that.

 

[Foolery]

Artists can draw whatever the fuck they want, where they want, within reason, as far I'm concerned. Their art, their site, their page, and therefore, their rules. NSFW is just a part of the craft for a lot of artists. It's great practice. Don't believe me? Pick of an issue of Heavy Metal. Even well known artists have dabbled in erotica at one point and some still do.

captcha: jump the gun

Hmm. How appropriate.

On a similar note, one of the original creators of Wonderwoman had a rather pronounced bondage fetish that ended up influencing a lot of the early Wonderwoman comics, but then again her original writer had some very different beliefs surrounding women in general and was in a polygamous relationship with two women, so yaknow, artists be weird and all that.

Interesting. I'll admit some of the stuff you can find on the web can be pretty depraved. But there is some great art that comes out of drawing NSFW content. Ever hear of Milo Manara? He's an Italian comic book artist who primarily creates erotica. Despite that, he even did a few issues of X-men.

And funnily enough, Kevin Eastman, the co-creator of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, owns Heavy Metal magazine. Which is partly known for showing art with a lot of skin and sexuality.

 

[InsanityRequiem]

I've always come to the understanding about artwork on the internets. Draw to your heart desire, but if the stuff you draw is NSFW/NSFL, do not be surprised if you going to get some low quality responses to it. And if you attach your real name to your artwork, accept that that NSFW art will show up outside of the internet if you're talking to people about what you do. If you don't like the art you draw online to bleed into the real world, best would be to have a moniker for it. For example if I did both SFW and NSFW art and didn't want my NSFW art to bleed into real life, I'd use InsanityRequiem as my NSFW name while my SFW would be my real name.

 

[Dragonbums]

Artists can draw whatever the fuck they want, where they want, within reason, as far I'm concerned. Their art, their site, their page, and therefore, their rules.

I never implied to state that they couldn't do any of those things listed above.

NSFW is just a part of the craft for a lot of artists. It's great practice. Don't believe me? Pick of an issue of Heavy Metal. Even well known artists have dabbled in erotica at one point and some still do.

captcha: jump the gun

Hmm. How appropriate.

Every indeed has, or still does do erotic art at some point in their careers. My thread wasn't to discuss the morality of it or whether or not they should/shouldn't be allowed to do porn. My post was to say that while it's all fine and dandy having a "My turf, my rules" kind of attidude- if your an aspiring professional, don't get all pissy when clients don't want to work with you because of your more erotic art. Especially if you made no effort to separate it from my main work.

I watch artists that I know do porn. However they all keep note of the fact that while they make it known they do that stuff, they take into consideration followers who may or may not be all that keen on seeing it and either separate them in tags for them to blacklist(again only applicable on tag operating sites like tumblr) or make s separate blog for it.

 

[Dragonbums]

I've always come to the understanding about artwork on the internets. Draw to your heart desire, but if the stuff you draw is NSFW/NSFL, do not be surprised if you going to get some low quality responses to it. And if you attach your real name to your artwork, accept that that NSFW art will show up outside of the internet if you're talking to people about what you do. If you don't like the art you draw online to bleed into the real world, best would be to have a moniker for it. For example if I did both SFW and NSFW art and didn't want my NSFW art to bleed into real life, I'd use InsanityRequiem as my NSFW name while my SFW would be my real name.

From my experience unless they are going for full time porn most artists always have separate handle names for their porn. If they use the same name then they simply make secondary places for their blogs and make note to tell their followers that so one doesn't misconstrue what that particular section is all about.

However at the same time people like Slugbox- who basically does porn 90% of the time still makes a note to tag the various pictures he does so that way his followers can avoid something he personally likes, but might make others squeamish. Going off of that he also has a blog dedicated only to his own personal thoughts with no real relation to his porn what so ever.

I'm just tired of seeing porn artists (and regular artists) get pissy when they put general porn on their blogs that anyone from their friends to art fans watch and said people complain about not tagging it appropriately or how it makes them feel uneasy.

It's not so much censoring yourself in my opinion. But the internet is still public in the proverbial sense so you would take care to just have a little off section for that stuff.

 

[Chromatic Aberration]

Well...the thing that this thread centers about is how much tolerance you can expect and how much you can demand it when it comes to certain things. I can fully understand that people who like the art of a person don't necessarily like to see say inflation-guro-tentacle porn pop up on their watch list. On the other, the artist has a right to be who he wants to be - and as a fellow writer of kinky pr0nz (who doesn't as of yet had a good idea for a proper sfw story beyond pipe-dreams, mind) I know that if they are into that kind of stuff it's already hard as it is to cope with it at times, so I understand their need to demand acceptance in the same way that they themselves have to do it at some point; So I get why people do put their nsfw and sfw art both on their profile. It's a part of who they are, after all.

On the other, nsfw work - especially of the kinky variant - is going to upset people, because as a smart redditor once wrote "One man's fetish is another mans nightmare" regardless of what happens. The question, as such is, if you, as an artist, want to deal with the fallout that comes along with presenting that stuff to an audience that...well isn't target for that particular sort of art. The degree of such is, of course, always debatable but I think it's a nice gesture to that audience if you should demand their tolerance to at least properly tag your art according to what it is. In terms of professionalism that is the same once again and it depends hugely on the scale: for instance, if you developed a hyper-kinky sex-game (think CoC) over years and then try to find a job with a different company yet also focused on game-design - will you write down what you did? If so what will you say when the question comes up and if, as some employers are wont to do, want the FULL details of embarassing facts? It is by no means an easy question sometimes.

 

[fix-the-spade]

The whole "Freedom of expression" and "it's my art" motto doesn't exactly work when potential clientele money is on the line.

I would argue that if you want or are planning to go professional then the best way to approach NSFW art is simply not to produce it at all.

That kind of work has a way of following you around and I know more than one person who have had clients abruptly lose enthusiasm when the client found their name attached to 'inappropriate content'. Commercial clients get very antsy about being associated with porn (especially if it's #ahem# niche fandoms) even by the most indirect and obtuse connections.

Of course if you just have to (or absolutely need the money) then I agree about separating accounts and contact details.

 

[Uncreation]

Am i the only one that thinks it's a bit ironic that this thread was opened by someone why the user name Dragonbums? I can imagine what you like drawing pictures of. Yeah, my milkshake brings all the dragonslayers to the dungeon!!

 

[Someone Depressing]

Say, being chopped up, boiled, then eaten alive while getting your feet licked by furries? On deviantART? Nonsense. On the front page? Bollocks, how long? For four days? Reccomended by an admin?

Oh Internet, you surely jest, the fine people of dA aren't like tha-

Hahaha, no.

There's nothing wrong with kinks, no matter how extreme or "odd". But when sites like dA do literally get flooded with this bullshit (despite the very prevelant "no prn plz" guideline, which the website's entire moderation is built on) and oh so often it ends up getting sold up prints. (for those of you who don't use that infernal website, a "print" is when an artist sends art to the marketing people; if they like it, they sell it, and give the artist royalties and a 50% discount when buying their own prints) and gets reccomended by all kinds of moderators...

I don't mind NSFW art, I don't think anybody does, but it's to the point where dA has got something of a reputation because of its "other" and "anthro" section where it becomes an issue.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

I thought most of these sites had specific sections for their NSFW stuff? Or do people just ignore those and post it wherever?

 

[Vault101]

I think NSFW/rule 34 art is fine (as an occaisonal...apreciator..of such things) ...as long as its good...theres nothing more awful than poorley drawn porn

but as somone said in the case of DA, keep it in its nice catagory...theres a line between artistic nudes and straight up "everyhting in your face" porn, yeah yeah I know its "subjective" but we know the the difference, you want to draw Aprial o'neal handling a bunch of big green you know whats then thats perfectly fine...but don't tell me its anything other than [i/]well done[/i] wank material


I can see how Porn might lead some people to be put off...particually if its fetishistic (is that even a word?)

 

[Vault101]

Say, being chopped up, boiled, then eaten alive while getting your feet licked by furries? On deviantART? Nonsense. On the front page? Bollocks, how long? For four days? Reccomended by an admin?

Oh Internet, you surely jest, the fine people of dA aren't like tha-

Hahaha, no.

There's nothing wrong with kinks, no matter how extreme or "odd". But when sites like dA do literally get flooded with this bullshit (despite the very prevelant "no prn plz" guideline, which the website's entire moderation is built on) and oh so often it ends up getting sold up prints. (for those of you who don't use that infernal website, a "print" is when an artist sends art to the marketing people; if they like it, they sell it, and give the artist royalties and a 50% discount when buying their own prints) and gets reccomended by all kinds of moderators...

I don't mind NSFW art, I don't think anybody does, but it's to the point where dA has got something of a reputation because of its "other" and "anthro" section where it becomes an issue.

is there a way they keep it from the eyes of the unsuspecting? I mean the fact it exists is fine...but not everyone wants that kind of shit in their art, even I get a bit irritated when I see a talented artist who only draws porn

 

[Rad Party God]

I'm not a furry and I definitely won't ever be (maybe), but man, some of the art you see in Fur Affinity is just nothing short of amazing and it generally keeps itself outside the boundaries of NSFW (if you're not a registered user).

I'm not an artist, so my opinion shouldn't be considered that much (I tried to hand drawn a bigger scale of a Hitler caricature in high school), but I think that erotica drawings are just par for the course for artists, heck, I think it's necessary to draw better proportionate and belivable anatomies in your artworks, even male ones.

I mean, obviously not every artist has to draw some fetish involving Sonic and his friends (there's plenty of that) or something from World of Warcraft (there's plenty of that too), BUT, even as silly as the Rule 34 tends to be, there's some truly well drawn ones and I think that any artist can post his work anywhere he wants.

 

[RJ 17]

As for the kinks aspect believe it or not people like to divide their own 34 into other subcategories as well. Most average viewers of porn just want the really vanilla gay/lesbian/straight porn. Yes, in general if you have kinks on the more extreme side of the internet it's best to divide that up as well. Granted...if they are watching your nsfw blog, then that probably means they know what you produce on a daily basis, but it never hurts I suppose.

Awwww, but surely everyone can appreciate a fan-art pic of Cloud dropping a deuce into Sephiroth's mouth while giving a reach-around to Barret who's in the process of mouth-hugging Red XIII!

=P

Seriously though, I don't think this is as much of a "problem" as you might think it is. People tend to have their own style and from that style it's pretty easy to come up with expectations for them. Granted, I can't say I really browse Deviant Art or Tumblr or anything like that on a regular basis so I could easily be way off on this, this is just my common sense talking and it seems to me that it's kind of a case of "you get what you paid for"...though you're not really paying for it, hopefully you get what I mean. You shouldn't, for instance, go to see a classical opera and expect side-splitting comedy. Nor should you go to a comedy show and expect to see classical (and non-satyrical) opera singing.

That is to say, if you have an artist or someone whose work you really enjoy, I'd imagine that they're not going to suddenly shift from posting their still-life sketches of bowls of fruit to posting the above-mentioned FF7 fan art. The artist isn't likely to say "I really enjoy drawing sweet looking cars and people seem to enjoy my work too. But you know what? Today I really just want to draw something involving S&M, bestiality, and yaoi facials."

I'm not saying that there aren't artists out there whose sites are a mixed bag...in fact I'd imagine there's quite a few of them. That said: first impressions are everything, and as such I do have to side with the "Don't like it? Take the door on the left" argument of the artists. If you go to an artist's site and start browsing through their work, enjoying the pictures of landscapes and fantastical castles before stumbling upon a 12-picture series of a feminized hermaphrodite Ezio jacking off everywhere, you have two choices. 1: Accept that this artist will, from time to time, dip into that kind of material and follow them anyway, knowing full well that as their follower you'll be subjected to such material. Or 2: Take the door on the left because you don't want to see that kind of material.

 

[Lilani]

-snip-

I think everything you've mentioned here is pretty on-the-mark. If you just start posting kinky/NSFW stuff on Facebook or provide links which go to this stuff with no warning, then there's a good chance you're going to make things very awkward for others. A lot of people view Facebook on their phones in public, or at work. The last thing you want popping on your phone screen in a crowded subway is a sexy fox lady with enormous tits. My sister-in-law had this problem with her brother for a while, except instead of sexy pictures it was...just kind of gross ones. He makes money trapping animals, which is a perfectly legal profession where we live, and he does everything the way he's supposed to. But, for a while he got in the habit of posting pictures of his catches on Facebook. He'd post the images of the terrified animals in the cages pre-kill, and he'd post the pelts post-kill. Needless to say some of the stuff was rather graphic, and my sister-in-law did not appreciate stumbling across these images on Facebook.

And for the professional aspect of it, that's also a yes. Nudes can be completely tasteful and have lots of artistic value, but there's a fine line between a "nude" and "porn." It's basically the difference between Michelangelo's David and the Playboy centerfold. Unless the client comes to you with something sexy or kinky in mind, it's best to keep that stuff stashed in the back. And I'm saying that as a fellow artist. Until you build a reputation that speaks for itself, being very upfront with your kinky stuff can very easily drive away certain clients, and most artists can't afford to drive away ANY client.

 

[Vault101]

I'm not an artist, so my opinion shouldn't be considered that much (I tried to hand drawn a bigger scale of a Hitler caricature in high school), but I think that erotica drawings are just par for the course for artists, heck, I think it's necessary to draw better proportionate and belivable anatomies in your artworks, even male ones.

theres a big diffeence between nudes and erotics though

I don't need to draw sex to get a good understanding of human anatomy and form

 

[Rad Party God]

I'm not an artist, so my opinion shouldn't be considered that much (I tried to hand drawn a bigger scale of a Hitler caricature in high school), but I think that erotica drawings are just par for the course for artists, heck, I think it's necessary to draw better proportionate and belivable anatomies in your artworks, even male ones.

theres a big diffeence between nudes and erotics though

I don't need to draw sex to get a good understanding of human anatomy and form

And there's that big difference, as I said, I know jack shit about being an artist, thanks for clarifying that though

I slightly edited my previous post to avoid further confusion and unnecessary quotes (not that this one wasn't unnecessary).