Hi, I'm here to ask about ArtFol again, since it's been a few months and, well, you know how tumblr is doing right now
Have you been using the site since? What's your opinion of it now? Would you recommend it as a place to jump ship to from having an art blog on here?
I have been! Artfol is nice all things considered, they have a strict anti-AI policy which is a breath of fresh air right now. That being said I'm not entirely sure what precautions they have set up to deter AI scraping in the first place.
Ultimately, yes I would consider Artfol a good art blog alternative as long as you don't mind having a smaller audience than what you'd normally get on Tumblr. This especially goes both for posting original content, or fan art (which usually gets a lot more eyes on your stuff on Tumblr fast but for Artfol, it doesn't really do much to draw attention.)
There's still some discrepancies between the web version and phone app version- specifically features like the featured gallery tab and commissions sheet for your profile are still app exclusive. A little bit ago they finally integrated the groups feature to the app and opened up group creation to all users, not just premium subscribers. Best user experience you can get if you want access to all the free features is to have the app downloaded on a phone if you can and switch between using that and the web version on a laptop. It's deeply annoying to have features split like that but Artfol hasn't been around for too long, so I'm willing to give it a free pass for now.
I will admit, Artfol hasn't really been keeping my attention recently. Part of that is due to my new job, the other part of that is that I don't have any of my old mutuals on it. A huge reason why I've stayed on Tumblr for so long is because of the other people and especially the other artists I follow and everyone is more or less scattering to the four winds, rather than all jumping to the same exact platform.
With that being said, Artfol still has a relatively active and thriving art focused community! I haven't interacted with other users too much but the few times I have, everyone has been friendly and polite. If you're worried about missing the community aspect Tumblr provides (which I personally very much was!), Artfol is pretty great in picking up that slack. Community groups have been a personal favorite! Just pick a group you feel like you fit into, join it and now you're able to shoot the shit with others in that group, as well as make posts exclusive to that group! I'm in a furry group and a clip studio paint group right now.
And, of course, Artfol's main feature of serving as a gallery for folks to post and show off their art is pretty damn good. I really like the gallery set up, the featured artwork section is fun (you can put up to three pieces you've posted in a separate section above your main gallery! so everyone sees those pieces first, regardless of when you posted them!) and the collections feature in general is a HUGE favorite of mine. Beyond using tags, you can organize your art in separate folders for both yourself and for people visiting your page to peruse!
Artfol is still relatively small, especially in comparison to Tumblr and hasn't really gotten the same level of immediate traction such as BlueSky. It seems to be doing well right now, so if you're looking for a stable platform as well to host your art, Artfol could be a good choice.
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