you guys gotta submit more cute things

@Inkwell

2 ай бұрын

All fantasy nerds all day, no cute only power!

@creativecalibre

25 күн бұрын

I wasn't brave enough to submit mine, maybe if there's a next time🙇

I really love this marketing focused art critique, I think is very informative and entertaining to watch. Great Idea!

Artist 7 here! Thank you for the critique Dustin! I think you're absoloutely right in that getting the right type of art that can fit people's home's are important. Figuring that out is definately of the challenge I guess haha! I really appreciate it man and you're doing an amazing thing for the community here lots of really useful info. Big fan of this content!

@Inkwell

2 ай бұрын

Thanks for submitting, beautiful work, and best of luck on your art journey

@timkongart

2 ай бұрын

@@Inkwell thanks man, likewise keep up the great videos!

I love the idea of marketing yourself in a memey or out of the box way too before your skills are leveled up. A lot of artists become professional by making the shaky/sketchy style their thing too! Also want to add, it’s completely okay to not make money off your art at first and to have to get a normie job to support your dreams. The stability of a regular paycheck can make it easier to fund supplies for creating and product stuff. Heck, even taking an art class is an expense.

Hallo! I’m Artist 3! Thank you guys for the constructive input ☺️ I am definitely NOT an animator, so making this piece was very out of my comfort zone. Sang’s comment about my composition changing with the smoke is something I didn’t even consider- I’m usually focused on just drawing still images- and all these moving parts were definitely an after thought. I’m really glad you guys like the “base” of this piece as though- it has been one of my best sellers! In terms of marketing- I’ve been pushing myself to make animatics to try to garner some more attention on IG- but I I would agree that the effort to audience response ratio is not worth it. That being said- I think it’s important for artists to try different things as opportunity to grow but as artrepreneurs, it’s important to keep what works- especially with our incomes on the line. Great takes yall! Looking forward to seeing more content like this 😊😊

@Inkwell

2 ай бұрын

Beautiful work! And thanks for submitting!

Hello thar, I'm Artist 4 and I did not expect to make it onto the video tbh, thank you for your invaluable critique! 🙇‍♂ I still have a long way to go on my art journey and finding my identity in the market, but I'm determined to apply myself and the critique mentioned in the video to further chase my dreams and make my art more marketable. I actually stopped drawing anything for a time (aside from a few pieces here and there) because art was too painful for me to engage in due to burn out and not feeling good enough. That lasted for about 2 to 3 years until October 2023, when I finally decided I would rather enjoy the journey and actually focus on improving my fundamentals, and boy, has it been much more fulfilling. I'm hoping to do more art commissions and share my work with the world; maaaybe I'll table at a con one day? But that'll be a long time from now! Also, I'd totally buy that "Art is Hard" sticker LOL

@Inkwell

2 ай бұрын

Thanks for submitting, it’s great work, best of luck on your art journey

This is genuinly some of the most helpful information I have seen online

LOL definitely would buy the "ART IS HARD" stick figure sticker XD

@Inkwell

2 ай бұрын

Got em! 🤣

@artbyinky

2 ай бұрын

Gave me the graphic design is my passion vibes and I’m about it.

Great stuff. I am Artist 8, and I might not have said but the piece was for someone else and we were discussing the green for a while. Granted I struggled to make it work, but the scene itself was described to me and I tried to make the most of it. But after a while of struggling we agreed to leave it, but oof. Last year I have had some single character commissions, they are indeed also my favourite things to do but I have not been able to get a single commission in 2024 and it has been quite upsetting. I'm very thankful you took the time to review my piece. I am working towards my "short term" goal of getting some work for WotC on MTG or maybe even D&D. Meanwhile it's been rough creating any kind of profit with my art lately, but I will continue to improve. Maybe I'll break 300 followers on instagram and 200 on bluesky this year ✨

@Inkwell

2 ай бұрын

Thanks for submitting, it’s really cool work, there is never a straight path in the art world. money will come as you keep at it! There are also a lot of mtg/ d&d themed conventions all over the world, think about attending one if possible, that’s where a lot of my job offers come from. And there’s also new indie companies looking for artists

@mohammedhassan-sn8ii

2 ай бұрын

Not sure if this is even possible, but I think this art piece would look amazing on a csgo gun skin I like the color and the design. Sorry if this is a bad suggestion.

The synergy you display between your creative ability and marketing acumen and knowledge of the art industry is super helpful. I would like to see you do a special on comic books and graphic novels that gives advice to those types of creators. Kind wishes from Australia. J

@Inkwell

2 ай бұрын

Kind of you to say! Thank you 😄

I can't believe my favorite artist sanglamart is in this video what a treat

@Inkwell

2 ай бұрын

Blessed by her presence 🙏🙏🙏

Love these kind of critiques of marketing for art

Was looking forward to this video. Good stuff! Marketability is definitely massive headache for me personally right now as I feel I could be fine on other aspects and am able to work on professional level in mobile and TTRPG fields. Feels like it's the missing piece to make things somehow 'click' and then I can happily keep on making my stuff. But as it is right now I feel my work is very much hit or miss and I have not figured it out yet. Sadly didn't make the cut for this video, which is understandable as my style is a bit different so it might not suit the video or might be difficult to concretely address in feedback. But I know one artist in there which is really cool to see.

@Inkwell

2 ай бұрын

Thanks for submitting, I’ll try to do more of these in the future and maybe have other guests to fill some gaps in my own knowledge so that I can better address more types of work and situations.

@sjZhyren

2 ай бұрын

@@Inkwell That's a great idea and probably a good format for consistent content. :)

Very informative, thank you for the video. Also your studio is so cozy, beats the hell out of my trailer hehe

@Inkwell

2 ай бұрын

Thanks for watching!

Thank you for the video, even that I wasn't chosen, it's still very informative for me to watch the other artists (that are clearly way more experienced than me) and I've got a couple ideas. I'll be waiting for the part 2! :)

@Inkwell

2 ай бұрын

Thanks for submitting, I wish I had time to go over everyone’s! Best of luck on your art journey

@maroon_leaf

2 ай бұрын

@@Inkwell Thank you, that's what I'll really need :) Keep doing art and videos, you are doing awesome things

Amazing artists featured in this video! Made me crazy self conscious about my own art and its sellability, as i am absolutely not as far in my art journey. Hope you can also review artists that have a smaller audience/ less technical knowledge :)

Great video and video type, please do more of this.

Much appreciated professor artist alley Inkwell Dustin for your wisdom and experience 😮💛

YOU ARE SO NEEDED! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR EXISTING

Artist 1!!! thanks for including me and great advice! I was able to print 30 prototype decks for my senior project and almost sold all of them! I wish to perfect the deck and go through maybe Bicycle or something to get that slick air cushion finish and do some foiling and embossing on the box.

@Inkwell

2 ай бұрын

I would love to purchase one once the final print run is done, great work and thanks for submitting

The sticker made me chuckle as that would actually sell well, Then made me chuckle again at who you consider "art royalty based on technical prowess". To each their own 😘 Keep the videos comin Dustin, you're killing it!!

@Inkwell

2 ай бұрын

Thanks dad! Will you put my sticker on the fridge?!

This was a very fun video to watch. I'd love to see more of this theme.

This was such an interesting video and really informative!! i hope you do a part 2 :D

Inkwell with another banger video, thank you for your time with making these informative videos!

i love this video, so informative and everybody is so talented

This is an amazing video, and very informative. I appreciate you making it!

@Inkwell

2 ай бұрын

Thank you!

This is pretty interesting. Thanks for sharing.

I'd love to see more vids like this!

Loved the editing and the abundance of information you and Sang shared! 😄

@Inkwell

2 ай бұрын

Glad you enjoyed it!

This is fascinating, thank you for sharing ☺☺

Maybe you should do this again in the future. It's helpful and insightful to watch this video. 😉👍

A very valuable and informative video! Hopefully I get to be in part 2 if there will be one :D

@Inkwell

2 ай бұрын

I’ll do my best! Thanks for watching

Solid video. Enjoyed each art review. Please do more. I want to compliment profiled artists for submitting their work. Heck, art is very personal. Takes confidence to put it out there for review. On a related note, I have one criticism of this video: not enough Sang Lam. 🤬

@Inkwell

2 ай бұрын

My apologies, I will beg Sang to grace us once again! If she takes pity on our poor souls we can only pray 🙏

@caringfamily8132

2 ай бұрын

@@Inkwell Yes, may the gods of color theory, proper perspective, and non-wonky anatomy bless us with infinite generosity. We can only pray...and hope......then pray a little more........and..........🤣🙏

making artist 6's work into something more for journaling, like splitting off the beets and weapons and adding them as stickers along with a smaller print would access another audience too!

The art card deck is awsome 🔥

I got to see your roomates at C2E2! I def bought some stuff and saw the fish bag there.

Thx for doing this I actually am not a good drawer but I like making diamond art and was thinking of making stickers.

Thanks for doing this video. Its alot of work and the info is appreciated. I hope you do another video and open up submissions again.

@Inkwell

2 ай бұрын

More to come!

@KiloGraham

2 ай бұрын

@@Inkwell thanks man :)

Great as always. Make a video about fundamentals you should tackle first before getting to more complex stuff

@Inkwell

2 ай бұрын

It’s on the list!

My main worry about my art is that I am more traditional. My digital skills suck. Heck I am barely skilled in traditional but it is my preference. It seems like its not as marketable as digital art.

@Inkwell

2 ай бұрын

You can always make digital prints or other products from your traditional work, I don’t think marketing is any issue there just adds a few extra steps, but then you have the original to sell as well

@napostrophen

2 ай бұрын

You can look at someone like Greg Simkins who is heavily traditional but has other options for digital products for an idea. Hope this can be helpful in some way😊

Animation is very hard to sell. The amount of time it takes to make it good as an illustration, and then also animate that, is cost-prohibitive to most art buyers. It's the difference between drawing 1 image versus drawing 120 images for the same price.

Solid banger bro. Im gonna have to look up the bankruptcy of ai schools.

This was super helpful, I hope you revisit this format soon!

Great video, thank you! Thank you for leading these discussions and exposing ways to make the dream real. How do you keep your soul, but still eat? :P You could do a whole stick figure series, and make decent money for less effort, but now you've become a clever meme generator instead of a painter. Or similarly you could labor over an OC for days, but you'd always know that you could spend 1/2 the time and just draw an adequate Harley Quinn in a bikini and probably make more money. I think I get poisoned: "what's the point? what I want to do won't sell and what will sell is not interesting to make".

@Inkwell

2 ай бұрын

It is definitely a balance specifically when starting out, I never suggest making work you are not passionate about, defeteintly not mentally sustainable. But I would ask yourself why are the things you want to paint not selling, you think they are cool right so there must be an audience somewhere who have similar intrests. The trick might be getting the type of work you want to make in front of the ideal clients. Or if it's a skill issue just making enough money to live off while you built up those skills to make what you want. Sure painting girls in bikinis might sell to a more general audience but I never felt the need to do that, as it wasn't something I wanted to paint. The memes are more of a example then a suggestion, pick something that is low labor to make money while you work towards those more fulfilling goals. Defitenily easyer said then done but its a starting point.

@trogjoe3538

2 ай бұрын

@@Inkwell thanks. Awesome answer.

I am dreaming to make a living out of art but is so DAMN hard even if I put my soul into it 😂 I really hope to get there one day. I can't do worst than zéro at least Thanks you for your vidéo, it is again very interesting

@Inkwell

2 ай бұрын

Best of luck! I remember that feeling, the journey is long and weird

Really informative, will you be doing any more of these? I might pluck up the courage and submit my work....

@Inkwell

2 ай бұрын

I plan to, I’ll post a submission form on my community tab once I plan it out

what does the colector audience look in an art? i am an artist but only familiar with the industry art and convention art audience. I wanted to sell more original work for collectors but i dont know what types of art they usually are searching?

Thank you for your insights! I hope you'll make this kind of marketing critique video a regular thing. There's so much to learn on this topic.

@Inkwell

2 ай бұрын

I’ll do my best!

Been going through your old videos again. The one where you're comparing your personal piece to a commissioned freelance piece had me wondering: what's your weekly schedule like? You said you knocked out that picture in an afternoon during the pandemic, I bet your current stuff takes longer (full scene with multiple characters) so I'm guessing 60-80 hours? So are you grinding art 9-5 all week long? Or is 1/2 your time spent wrangling etsy and shipping posters? Looks like you're posting new art around once a month on twitter. I just signed up for your newsletter but haven't gotten one yet. Did you have to have a faster release cadence when you were newer, and now that you're established you can be chill? Or is there a special spot on the internet where people are rabid about your stuff and post it back and forth all the time? Thanks for the patience and all the great information.

Artist 3. With a looping animation, couldn't he/she submit it to Artlist/Artgrid-like (stock footage) websites and sell it there?

Animatics could be turned into lenticular prints! Even possible to make them in a home studio.

In my experience, art for its own sake doesn’t sell. It needs to be tied to something, makeup something greater than the sum of its parts. So yeah, conceptually I like the deck of cards as a vehicle for art. But personally, it feels like something that would only be bought as a gift for someone else, or something someone would buy if they were really invested in YOU the artist or the characters on the cards. This isn’t a product people would really want for themselves; most people already have playing cards afterall, and I don’t think anyone even plays cards nowadays. Like, when’s the last time you’ve pulled out a deck for cribbage with friends or dealt out poker hands around a kitchen table? At most, it’s a gimmicky purchase that’s going to collect dust in some junk drawer after someone’s spent a couple days appreciating the art. Something that friends and family of the artist will buy, but most people won’t consider. But I’ll admit this could be mostly me. I hate clutter and junk drawer buys, the things I mostly appreciate are books, board games, video games (and even then only a few of them) or something that will have a practical use and place. Gift-giving has always been a nuisance for this reason. I don’t want good intentions that come bearing Harry Potter bookmarks, a magnet of the Eiffel Tower, or a bottle opener with my name on it, I'd much rather keep my space minimal and value the few things I do decide to own. Going back to the cards, if they were characters from a book, comic, or game that I like I would be more inclined to consider them, even more so if they were from an original creative work. But without that additional context and emotional hook, I don’t care for it. The point of this wasn’t to make an artist feel stupid or belittle anyone’s efforts-if anything I’m the one coming off as an idiot here with how much I’m saying apropos of nothing. But I hope my rambling will be at least somewhat helpful to someone. And hey, I know there are companies that would kill for this kind of honest, unfiltered window into the mind of the average consumer.

The filter on this, the aesthetic is sooo expensive looking

Should I make and register a company to sell my art? Or what’s an alternative?

@Inkwell

2 ай бұрын

depends where you live and those laws

9:45 It would be cool to see this style in an isometric fantasy rpg

@Inkwell

2 ай бұрын

Some day I hope!

Where do you want us to submit our art to for future critiques

Personally I don’t market at all I just route out lesser artists on eBay by price gouging my own original work and targeting sectors on the marketplace where I can throttle competition and take their profits 👍

Man the artists who asked for advice here, I'd probably look so bad compared to them =~= Though great advice, thanks!

@Inkwell

2 ай бұрын

Everyone’s at a different spot! Nothing to worry about 🦑

@alittleofsomething

2 ай бұрын

@@Inkwell will you review galleries instead of pieces of arts next time?

Making wine art sounds interesting and I wonder how one gets into that?

I was planning to make art card. I will give for free,maybe soon. I need more research

The most interesting part here was the discussion about the anime (younger) audience and the art collectors. Are all serious art collectors turned off by anime-ish styles? I feel like a lot of fantasy art has the same appeal as anime, just that the faces are drawn differently. The 4th artist featured was very skilled, it's upsetting to know they'd be dismissed by art collectors just because of the style they draw in.

@Inkwell

2 ай бұрын

There are definitely art collectors in that space but I would say it is more fandom focused atm, Also there is a lot more competition in that space so it can be harder to stand out. At least here in the states. As my generation gets older and has more disposable income I think we will see more demand for fancier and unique anime styled work within the collectors market.

1:35 I’m weak 😂

More like the one-trick ponies of the apocalypse, but it's one way to take on the market for sure.

Do you do any consulting on this?

@Inkwell

2 ай бұрын

What do you mean?

it feels like a cards against humanity prompt but i feel like fandom+nsfw=profit like 90% of the time haha it's a winning combo

that Ross Draws... 🤣

Sang, blink twice if you ate your dinner 👀

@Inkwell

2 ай бұрын

Sang can’t come to the internet right now 😈

bring back your poker card set!

@Inkwell

2 ай бұрын

Nah, I’ll make a new one someday that I don’t cringe at tho!

“character work is really popular right now” sounds pretty funny. I don’t know what you mean exactly, but yea it has been pretty popular in the last 4 thousand years or so 😂

bro some of these critiques are way too harsh

I don't think having SFW content and then lure audience into NSFW artwork is a great idea, at least that SFW bait content should also be in a +18 space so that you don't risk luring minors into the spicier content, it's already too easily accessible and I think we artist have a responisbility that has to be put before our financial gains.

"Liked" because you're still not a famous KZreadr ;) (And its cool information!)

@Inkwell

2 ай бұрын

Bless the 🙏🙏🙏

I dont get it...art is relative, some great pintors of the history...their paintings are trash