Real Talk Blog 08 : Pixiv

Hi guys, how are ya'll doing?

Have been wanting to talk about this for a while and now it might be a good chance due to me still researching which poses I should do for the May batch's characters.

I want to talk about my sacred place, Pixiv.

As you know Pixiv has been doing me favor for years. It's the main reasons I'm here today. This site alone has been giving me 80% of my overall exposure and fame, and I want to talk about why is that.

When I started out Patreon, I thought I MUST hug on Deviantart as much as I could due to the majority of the popular artists on Patreon tend to do great on DA which wasn't a problem for me. I've been using DA just for fun for ages.

But things got me realized that the site was corrupted and falling apart. The community was super toxic, witch hunting left and right, staffs don't do work and let automatically bot system handle things, everything on the site is unorganized, tag cloud is a nightmare that doesn't function, and there's no way one could rise to fame on Deviantart without spending even more time to gain exposure on the site more than actually drawing by spamming groups submissions. The site was already dead. What's left was a ruin of once the best art site, now just a simply garbage disposal.

But Pixiv has been giving me love since the beginning. The site has been the perfect solution for artists from the start and everyone using could feel it. Here are reasons why;

• The community is rather quiet, but that's a good thing. Japanese people don't just throw random comments, they act. They appreciate works by spending time liking, giving score rating without getting anything in return. If they like your works, they promote them on their twitter without you even noticing.
  
• The tag cloud is great. Everything works well due to the strict manner of Japanese people's internet usage. You can expect actual Sword Art Online fanarts by looking up  ソードアート・オンライン on Pixiv for example, unlike DA where you'd find random stuffs unrelated to the tags when you do the same thing. That means it already gives you the right exposure you want by just putting in the right tags, because people in the fandom looks up stuffs there every day.
  
• Ranking. BEST online ranking algorithm. Unlike other places, if you are good enough with just a decent fame, you will rise. You are guaranteed a rise on Pixiv some way or another. This part is what got me noticed and appreciated a lot. It helps artists so much and you wouldn't find this anywhere else. There is even a Rookie ranking to help new artists. Again, unlike DA where no matter how godlike of an artist you are, if you don't spend a good 2-3 hours looking for exposure after EVERY art you post, there's no way you would gain any unless you're already super huge on the site and the groups want your arts on their groups for the groups' exposure, which is completely another way around.
  
• There is wayyyy less gender preference clashing there. Lots of time you will see super erotic hentai artists being female, or straight out sweet and cute yaoi artists being male, and we both appreciate each others' works. There's no kink shaming on Pixiv. It doesn't exist.
  
• "Free requests" almost doesn't belong on Pixiv, too. I don't play DA anymore and haven't been posting for more than a year but every time I log in to check out something, I still get 10 or more free request notes sent to me... while I get that kind of thing rarely once a month on Pixiv, and most of the time it's not from Japanese users.

That sums up reasons why I like Pixiv and why I respect it so much as it respects me. Everything on the site respects me and you and everyone. It's great.

If you've noticed, I don't put Patreon logos on my Pixiv posts like the others. I've been doing it that way since the beginning. It's not like it's a bad thing, but I just respect Pixiv so much that I don't want to throw ads and tell other users to go to somewhere else that could potentially give me money. If they want to support, they will see it themselves the little text I put on the description. I don't want Patreon logos to ruin the images I post there. I love Pixiv that much.

Hope this was good enough written and well put together. If you are a striving new artist that feel like your works are decent and deserve more appreciation, go there. It's the best art site on the world with its system at the moment. You just have to do a little adaptation; getting tags put right in Japanese, a little setup, and you're good to go.

That's it for today. Ya'll have a great one.

And no, this is not sponsored lol. Pixiv never contacts me for anything besides the ranking notification.