You’ve created your art…but now what?
Brittany Lowery
Great, you’ve created something you’re extremely proud of and want to show the masses. That sounds simple, right? The internet exists, so there’s no shortage of places to post your work!
Here’s the problem though.
Where?
There’s a plethora of communities for young creators to engage with. Sure, there’re fan fiction sites for writers and Deviant Art for digital art, but beyond those, what’s out there? Whether you’re looking for a space to share your writing, your music, your voice acting, your digital art, or something else, there’s a place for you.
First, my personal experience as a writer led me from Fanfiction.net to Deviant Art to Tumblr. Fan fiction was all I wrote, so I never worried about original content gaining traction. The first fan fiction I posted was a Fire Emblem one on Fanfiction.net when it was still extremely popular. Later during college, I started writing more fan fiction on Deviant Art and eventually Tumblr. Now, Deviant Art’s new Eclipse had made it extremely difficult to post any writing due to how many steps there are unless you upload it as a PDF which can’t be read on some mobile formats.
However, for fan fiction, Archive of Our Own is where it’s at. It’s not a fancy website by any means, but it definitely gets the job done. A lot of people frequent it, and it has an extensive tagging system. If you want to post original content though, it’s easier if it’s a well-known genre that’s common in the West. Royal Road accepts original work as long as it’s not a one shot. If you have something that’s multiple chapters, it’s a place with an active community. People will leave reviews and give feedback, so you need to be open to receiving that.
Now for digital artists, the tried and true place has always been Deviant Art. That still hasn’t changed due to how active it is for digital art. I frequent it daily, finding new people to watch, getting inspiration for my own characters, world lore, and more. With Deviant Art, it’s not hard to upload. There’s a system called sta.sh where you upload your images. From there, you create a “deviation” that’s posted for the world to see. I know Deviant Art probably has retained the reputation of being a place for only fan art, but that’s not true. So much of it is not fan art. I’ve seen some fantastic landscapes and original character designs on there. Another option out there is Twitter. Twitter is still a hit or miss considering it’s not a website dedicated to creation, but I’ve found many good artists on Twitter. To start, you’ll definitely get further with fan art than original content which is just an unfortunate part of the process.
Those looking to do voice work will probably be inclined to hop straight to YouTube, and there’s no problem with that. In fact, it’s probably your best bet to getting noticed, but there’s a smaller community on Reddit’s subreddit, Audio Candy. As long as the content is safe for work and not rated higher than PG-13, you can submit some voice work. You can write your own scripts to fill and share with other people. You can fill other people’s scripts. They don’t mind if you submit improvised ramblings either. The mood doesn’t matter. As for YouTube, there have been successful ASMR role-players. Another option is recording story readings. I’ve seen people record stories from Reddit’s horror writing subreddit called No Sleep.
For instrumental music, YouTube is definitely the place where people find the most success at being noticed. One of the most notable independent composers I’ve found is Adrien von Ziegler. Proper labeling of your music is important to getting noticed since some people search for very specific genres. In addition, doing covers of popular songs attracts more traffic, but I’m not talking about popular artist covers. For relaxation and studying purposes, covers of different media scores are popular, foreign ones especially. People love hearing different covers of their favorite tracks from dramas and video games from all over the world. I’ve personally lost count of how many covers of the song “Big Fish” from Big Fish and Begonia there are. I’d say dabble in a little of everything, find what you’re comfortable with and go for it!