I was always curious how I could grow a dedicated audience or following.

I hadn't been on newgrounds for long so I'm a really creator for now

Nobody is ever gonna tell you.

You see, unless you have the mental capacity to invest time and energy into being in some Discord chat where you have to get to know people, you will always struggle. I have been in this damned game for 15 years, I have been through art theft and humiliation only to never get ahead simply because I do not trust people enough to have conversations that involve opening myself to some strangers online. If you do not have the stomach to handle that or the money to pay for advertising, you will not get ahead.

If all you care about is growing an audience its so pathetically easy the post before this one boggles my mind. Imagine trying to get ahead in art for FIFTEEN YEARS and the conclusion you come to is that because you couldnt succeed in a discord server you're doomed to obscurity LMAO.

just fucking draw things people want to see. its not hard, you dont even have to be that good.

when you draw something ask yourself "who the fuck wants to see this" and if the answer is "nobody" you are doing it wrong. personally if you are drawing only to get an audience to begin with you're doing it wrong anyways.

In my experience, first you get really good at making art, then the people come to you. So focus all your efforts in cultivating your skills first and then make things that you and other people enjoy, and you’ll be on your way to an audience.

Instead of "grow" the right word is find. IF your product is good and has value then there is a market(audience) for it, they just don't know it exists yet. Why do you think companies spend what seems like a ridiculous amount of money on advertising and marketing? However on an individual level the best you can do is interact with the community as much as possible, whether that be here, Instagram or Twitter to get your name and more importantly artwork in peoples minds, even for just less than 3 seconds. If you keep it up you'll have a following... at some point, the important thing is not to give up even when it feels like your stagnating and not "growing".

However your market(audience) is only as big as the "value" of your artwork. Generally speaking the 3 main things that give artwork value is it's:

Quality - Technical skills, Drawing skills, Painting skills

Subject Matter - What the artwork is about/says; think fan art, or something that resonates with people on a deep level or makes them laugh or makes them really horny.

Rarity/Demand - How rare that particular genre of subject matter tends to be or how in demand it is. Or if the style of the artwork is unique.

Notice how "Quality" is only 1 part of it, however it's the hardest to get. It's not hard to figure out good subject matter to make art about it's all over the place, and even if you can't think of any just copy the subject matter of artist/media you enjoy/resonate with, If you like others probably do too your life most likely isn't that different from anyone else so your taste in art is probably more common than you think, but it's pretty subjective as the name suggests, multi-billion dollar companies spend so much money trying to figure out what people like and it's not like you have that kind of cash or power so guessing and relying on what YOU like are the only real two options. And figuring out what is in demand/rare is easy if you keep up with social media trends even just a little.

Just try not to give up, some people go "under the radar" for months, years even before finding their audience. Sometimes the audience finds you!

Alright, I am a professional art appraiser/ promoter, I've worked with numerous artists to get them on the right track to success, so feel free to accept my advice or don't.

1. find a non-suppressive site or even create your own site to upload your art, you need a foundation for your art.

"based on your art depends on the art suppression of a site, for example, one of my most successful clients specializes in fetish anime art, he had several accounts on sites including ng, but the problem with newgrounds, in his case is that those in charge of the art section are judgmental towards fetish art, meaning they were suppressing the chance of his art making an impact on the site, people are biased and judge mental everywhere! pick your platform carefully!"

2.You need to make people aware of your art you can't just upload to a site and think to yourself " I did a thing now watch my fanbase grown, no, not going to work, you have to stay active and dedicate, make a video showing your process, or make videos talking about your artwork, especially if it's expressive and has elements relating to real life situations you've been through, it turns your art into more than just art and can shed light on unseen elements that went into its creative state.

3. buyers, you can find a lot of people will be interested in your art at this point and some will be ready to purchase commissions. it will all vary at this point and your success will depend on this, the client I mentioned gets 100 - 500 dollar commission offers often and had 1 art piece sell for 1.5 mil making him have the highest paid art sell out of all my clients. but still 100 to 500 hundred for an art piece if it's something you enjoy doing anyway, is a nice bundle.

4."optional" get an art appraiser/promoter, hard to come by but if we say your art is worth so much, it'll be worth so much.

we seek galleries and auctions for clients as well and can often net clients a hefty sum, and use that in accordance to appraise their works for future ref.

All of these are good to keep in mind, but my only question is where do we get art appraisers/promoters to work with artists?

In reality.. the nature of gaining an online following is really like lightning in a bottle. I've come to accept this as a small artist myself, though there are ways you can work towards that goal if that's what you really want.

Like the others have said, posting art that other people would enjoy seeing is helpful, though I wouldn't worry too much about forcing yourself to draw something you really don't want to. Try to think of drawing things you like that other people like too! As for this website, interacting with other users in any way you can will help people know that you, well, exist! Eventually if people see your name around, they'll check out your profile and may even want to stick around. Connecting other social media accounts such as Twitter and DeviantArt is great too.

As for your work itself, and this applies to any type of artist in general, constantly improve your work, and try to make your next piece better than your last. Having a good amount of work on your page that has a clear indication that you're improving will encourage followers, as they might not want to view your page if there's only a handful of great drawings with only a few others being sketches. While it's important to have plenty of works on your page, you also don't want to force those numbers through sheer amounts of lower effort drawings. That will discourage viewers from looking through your work, and you may hide certain works that you are really proud of.

Consider checking out the community in here as well! There are opportunities to collab with other users for a chance to make something greater, and more users working on something means a bigger potential for an audience. Paid work opportunites may await there as well.

In short, work harder and better, and stay active! As I said previously, a lot of people who gain a huge following online almost always get a lucky break through one or two things they do, and gain followers through that. As long as people see that you really care about making great things rather than trying to gain clout, you'll get an audience eventually!

Seems like there's really no good way to grow popularity unless you do several things at once: you need to be updating consistently, (best odds are daily, bare minimum is weekly,) you need to be constantly talking to artists and art viewers in a way that engages them rather than begging for follows, and you need to have good art that people want to see. Even if you do all of that, there's still no guarantee, but your odds will only be above zero if you keep pumping out content as if someone was paying you for it until, someday, maybe someone actually might.

Algorithmically speaking, quantity outweighs quality, so if you're doing ten doodles for every one finished piece, and you're uploading once per day, you'll be doing better than someone that does a finished piece each week with nothing in between.

That said, most of what you need to do, I don't do. I took the path of appealing to studios that would hire me full-time or give freelance contracts if I answered want ads with an application, so most of my time is spent making art that I can't show online. All the things that I do for myself, or things that come off of NDA, are usually too infrequent to grow a following.

kill yourself

Don't have the perfect answer for that, but showing your artwork to as many people as you can is a good start. Make sure to also have a somewhat sizable portfolio as well. Drawing often also helps if you want to form a fanbase. I'm still trying to learn how to get my art done fast without the quality of my work suffering.

Make porn art, the most followed person in NG is a porn artist (i am just kidding dont do that)

Like the guys are saying, there's no one universal answer, but finding a good niche is a great way to stand out.

Thanks for all the advice

you need to have a good amount of skill and/or have an appealing art style, keep doing art at your own pace, not be a flaming jackass (even though even they can slip through the cracks sometimes), and do something that appeals to a lot of people while also doing the things you like

if you develop a fanbase centered around fanart of a specific franchise, make sure you make it clear on a consistent basis that you draw other stuff too, or most of them will pretend you dont exist the second you draw something else

I noticed that getting noticed is more like roulette. Sometimes you just get noticed at random and people just make your art blow up, while other times you have to be active on a platform for a while to even get a small fraction of what the big artists have on here.

Making art dedicated to a specific fandom or niche can help with that since it's more recognizable and will appear in tags. Like if you make a lot of steve universe fanart you may get a steady following of SU fans following you because you are making art of something they like. Catering to a niche can be good for growth, but not always good for a consistent following if you decide to stop making art for that niche.

Get better at drawing, learn to draw stuff other than just characters (like machines, backgrounds, clothing, etc).

If you pay attention to the art portal most of it's 1 or 2 character with no interesting background, also learn how to use tags and participate in the forums. I'm just guessing though, I'm not popular at all :p.

Thank you so much for this topic! Very useful info!

I have an Etsy shop and also l am learning how to grow an audience in an art sphere. Nowadays you need strong SEO skills and the content is still the King! I recommend you to check this tool - similarity checker - it helps to stau unique with the content. Also, I think it is very important to communicate with your audience and always stay in touch!

Being noticed has more to do with who you're friends with and how much fanart you can draw. You'd like to think being really good at art would get you more attention, but not really. I know plenty of people that draw worse than me and they'll be getting all the attention because they'd rather draw some popular character from Naruto than make their own characters.

But you know what; I'm okay with that. I'd rather have a smaller circle of friends who are interested in my art for what it is than to be popular and unhappy because they'll only pay attention to me if I draw fanart they want to see that I'm not interested in drawing.

It's maybe not the answer you're looking for, but you can still grow a niche audience if you keep at it, and you post on platforms that cater to the things you're interested in. I did manage to grow a following on Tumblr that way.

That said, maybe it won't mean anything any more because of how saturated all the popular platforms are becoming.

Draw thicc girls, there’s a lot of horny people on here, and they like that shit.

I'm quite proud of most of my art. not to be too self congratulatory, but I think I have skill, vision, and ability. HOWEVER... I have a looooong ways to go before my art is worthy of an audience. What I've always been told and understood as true is that if you do good drawings, people will show up. Just keep cracking, eventually someone will take notice.

Instructions Unclear

Made a corny animation on newgrounds

I'll use the fact that your animation is on Under Judgement and blame it loololololoollol

I heard some Japanese pro say in some tutorial that you need to draw fan art exclusively until you get 100k followers on twitter, then you can start drawing whatever you want.

Draw nsfw

Why do you need to "grow an audience" with your art?

Okay

@sourcherryjack maybe this should get locked?