i think those posts that talk about how The Fandom Turnaround (tm) has gotten much much shorter in the past years & how the sharing of fan-made content is on a steady decline have a point, but they've also rung hollow for me for quite a while and i've just realized why:
oc artists have been living like that this whole time. and i myself am an oc artist— an amateur, for sure!!! i am not nearly as talented as nearly all of my friends when it comes to the visual arts, but i am improving and my work still deserves to be acknowledged.
i get trapped in these little echochambers where i wonder if my art is the scum of the earth, or if people just aren't reblogging it because it isn't directed at a specific fandom.
take my voidfish cosplans. that was a once-in-a-blue-moon fandom post. and it was a sketch. it took me all of an hour to make, and it blew up to a hundred notes because it's fandom content.
my oc art takes me much longer, and it's a miracle to even get half as many notes as that. my oc art usually gets anywhere from 15 to 30 notes:
[ID: three screenshots of the notes on some of my art posts. the first has 24 notes, the second has 18, and the third has 30. end ID.]
and this includes all of my self-reblogs and, of course, likes, which i'm sure we all know by now don't do shit. one of my most recent pieces i spent nearly 40 hours making, and as of writing this post, it sits at 24 notes. taking into account self reblogs and likes... yikes!!
most people whose oc work gets popular does so because they were either popular fanartists beforehand or the work displays insanely good technical talent (or, rarely, they just get very lucky). and good for those people!!! but i also put a lot of work into my oc content, and so do a lot of my friends. our work also deserves recognition. supporting fanartists is not the end all be all. independent artists who aren't heavily tied to fandom often get discouraged because no one is interested in the work they create. it's really sad to see.
so support oc artists!!! scroll through "my ocs" "my characters" tags on tumblr!! yes the sorry excuse for an algorithm here sucks but you never know!!! you might strike gold!!! support your mutuals that you already have!!!! support small artists and beginners!!! enthusiasm for more independent artists' work can and will only foster an attitude that will help both fandom and non-fandom creative settings, but don't leave non-fandom work behind.
feel free to drop the urls of oc artists you know in the notes :]
janainaart
theartofmadeline
areudirty
yousharknotpass
pixelskylines
gummygunk
annaxmalina
