Is the average Weasyl user LESS tolerant to fetish-driven art?

[Uluri]

so i'm not alone in this matter? sometimes this fandom makes you feel like that if you don't draw smut you're not a real furry and i think this is kinda a problem because that is not art. and if you become only famous through that well damn. )

It is COMPLETELY possible to become famous as a "Clean Artist" on a furry site.
It's just a little bit more hard work is all. It takes a little more advertising on the artist's end at first,
but once you get a foothold in your pretty good to go as a General/Clean/SFW artist.
Just keep on Working! Kep on Advertising! and most importantly, don't post a lot of
negative journals 24/7. Post some neutral or happy topics from time to time.

[Mei]

It is COMPLETELY possible to become famous as a "Clean Artist" on a furry site.
It's just a little bit more hard work is all. It takes a little more advertising on the artist's end at first,
but once you get a foothold in your pretty good to go as a General/Clean/SFW artist.
Just keep on Working! Kep on Advertising! and most importantly, don't post a lot of
negative journals 24/7. Post some neutral or happy topics from time to time.

Completely agree with this. All of my favorite artists are sfw and a lot of fun to follow <3

[Sassafras]

I don't see anything wrong or lesser about sexually oriented art. Some might call it mindless, appealing to lust, but I've been on the recieving end of the same logic...because my completely SFW art "isn't real art! People just like it because it's a cute animal and makes them go 'aww'!". Appealing to an emotion doesn't erase artistic merit, or destroy the possibility of conveying a message or higher meaning. It does not destroy one's desire to improve any more than fluffy cute art does.

[Viciviser]

I really do think some of you guys are letting reasoning and being overly cautious in navigating the internet waters get to your heads. Let alone just overthinking internal politics.

Who cares if people flock to fetish and pornographic art when it is astounding, good, subpar, or plain crap? If it is pinup material so be it. If it is erotica, cool, some people like that. If its pornography, okay that's going to happen. People search out what they want, whether it be SFW or NSFW. The attention level is just people thinking with their nethers, but that's what they're wanting. So it's that straightforward. It relieves an itch.

(Not to ignore XoPachi's frustration or anyone else's. It can be a bummer.)

But my message is you do what you want regardless of trends on the net. If you want to post fanart, graphic novels, dirty smut, cutesy and clean fursonas, rampaging monsters, etc. Just do it. (Yes, read that in Shia LaBeouf voice if you want.) It's not important to take into account whether it'll make you popular or get you more faves than some so-and-so smut monger to the left of you, and a fetish artist specializing in leather-strapped boobs and bulges to the right of you. Just draw and put out what you want to.

On the matter of those trying to make money as artists, if you feel like someone doing SFW stuff should get more attention then promote them. It's that easy. Do shout-out journals, fave artist plugs, toss it on your Tumblr feed, whatever. So along the lines of what Uluri was saying but you be the proactive part and help.

Those artists doing they're best keep doing their best and find their niche eventually. It seems the best ones do art for themselves and people end up loving their style and demand commissions. Some people just make cute/cool icons and badges. Others make paraphernalia with their character's faces plastered over everything. What have you. But there are many SFW artists that make a living regardless of the fetish/erotica/smut levels.

Some of my favorites are those that are at the whims of their muses and put out the whole gamut. Ratings G to XXX. And they're not afraid to post anything because nothing takes away from what kind of artist they are and they make what they make.

[dischimera]

Before I go on, let me confess.
The reason I started this topic had more to do with me feeling uncomfortable as I happen to enjoy updating my galleries with suggestive muscle pin-up material. In reality I draw a lot more content outside the gallery's theme but I keep both things isolated from one another for personal reasons (I almost had my reputation buried underground by the first and last FA user I bumped into offline by sheer misfortune, almost had him recognize some of my OCs).
The last thing I wanted was to be shoved alongside what is viewed as "low quality" or not serious art.

I don't disagree there is a majority of smut artists who don't seem to try.

I don't exactly follow a lot of artists with similar interests since this kind of niche's material is sort of "love or hate it" to me. But I've seen some that, if you look past the basic objective of giving perverts a boner, have technical quality that trumps a lot of SFW material. On the other hand I also see a lot of, say, bara artists that intentionally draw the exact same faces in every character and still rack up thousands of watchers because apparently the body is all their fans care about.
I have also seen artists who draw like 5 year olds and still achieve twice as many views as me. You can probably guess why: Nudity.

But that is hardly something exclusive to smut. One thing that made me, for a long time, look down on furry art in general was the abundance of mediocre artists I always saw as people who copied each other so strictly like from a same school of generic Looney Tunes, scribbly Sonicsonas or VG Cats-wannabe style anthropomorphism on deviantart back then. I know now it ranges way broader than that, but the fact is, artists like that still exist in droves.

Now does porn or smut or whatever nets more fans more easily? Definitely. That applies just as much outside the furry fandom.
Still it's very insulting to see people who actually believe there is less effort put into it than the average SFW material. I can't speak for everyone, but some of us put a lot of effort into improving our style, shading, lineart, pose variation, background, faces (some of us don't want to be stuck with the same-face syndromme), anatomy, etc.
There is this general consensus that when people praise your work you're less likely to evolve. I strongly disagree. I only started drawing more often and more concerned with whether or not I was improving after my work received more praise.
This is despite the fact only two people who watch me actually point out the problems as I ask them while everyone else is like "your work is already great dude!!!".
Technical criticism is important, but the praise is at least half the reason I feel motivated to give my all. Knowing there are people who like your work and the thought of surprising them with even better quality pieces.

If I offended anyone with anything I just wrote I apologize.
Personally I don't like being seem as part of the problem. Weasyl is clearly a lot less smutty than FA. I too want to be taken more seriously here so I hope in the near future I can start posting material that is less offensive and help cleanse this idea that smut only receives undeserved popularity.

[Metsys]

I clicked on this thread thinking it was somehow tangentially related to the thread I materialized for. Then I realized something that would probably help with this discussion. I'm not trying to defend fetish artwork, but because I believe a lot more in fairness and in trying to understand things I don't like, I wanted to provide some deeper insight on this.

As for the OP's original question, sorry, I'm not an authority on that.

For art to be successful it has to have merit, any kind of merit. It's not enough for art to be well executed. It's not enough to just be a good draftsman. There's tons of stories out there that are poorly written and derivative, but there's at least one thing that gives it merit. Maybe the story was written by a teenager, and despite its flaws it was not half bad for a 15-year-old. Boom. New York Times Bestseller. The age of the author gave it merit and made it worth talking about and buying. In other cases it's a unique premise, a niche market, or a ballsy 12-year filming schedule.

The reason why fetish artwork has enough merit to become popular fits in with a theory I have, and this is what I just realized while reading this thread.

Here's the theory: Everything that is worthwhile tells a good story. The best marketing, the best UX design, the best song, the best artwork, the best exhibit, all of that has a strong narrative. I believe that story is the foundation of human experience blah blah blah you get the idea; I'm a big story guy and I see everything through that lens. So here's what happens in someone's brain when they see fetish or erotic art. A story starts to happen in their head. It contains all of what makes stories interesting, the intrigue, the suspense, the climax, and a happy ending, all within a very short period of time. Our brains just love stories. The problem is that a lot of people really, really don't want that story playing in their head. So it's a very polarizing type of story being told in that artwork.

When an artist draws a clean non-sexualized character, it doesn't matter how well executed or how well designed it is, there's a good chance that the piece is not going to tell a compelling enough story in the viewer's head to keep them interested. Those mech designs that were posted above are very well done, but it just doesn't tell a compelling enough story in my head. I didn't come up with any stories about those mechs in my head. I didn't fantasize about those mechs, and so I move on until I find something else that tells a good story that I can daydream about throughout my day.

Another theory I have about story—and this is kind of a weird one, but it works—goes something like this: In order to create compelling characters, there has to be something about them that would make you fall in love with them, or at the very least have a strong platonic relationship with depending on your orientation. The process humans go through of getting to know someone and fall in love with them is the same process I write into my stories as the characters are revealed to the audience. In other words, I'm trying to get the audience to fall in love with my characters. You wouldn't think that's my process if you saw my work because it's PG and cerebral, and I should point out that it's not how I start writing my stories, but it is one of the tests I use to help improve and fine tune my characters because I know humans work and in turn I know how that creates hardcore fans. (I think this is why all of my characters, especially the villains are likable and have something attractive about them. I don't like writing 100% unappealing characters because then they become my own personal straw man, and that's not how the real world works anyway.) Of course the trick is to not give all your characters the same personality or physical traits that you find attractive. You have to know a lot of people, see a lot of relationships play out, and understand a lot about human psychology to create characters that people will find interesting and attractive. Then put them into situations and have them overcome their own core wounds so they will become even more attractive to your audience.

Character equals story. Stories equals eyeballs.

So there you go. The secret to why fetish artists are kicking ass in views. Story. The viewer is coming up with most of the story on their own, for sure, but it's still story. Once you understand how incredibly important story is, hopefully it won't be too upsetting as to why fetish and erotic work gets so many views, and why some extremely well illustrated clean artwork is not. It's just not telling a good enough story. I understand that the furry status quo is to create OC art ad nauseam, but artists that want to be clean artists for personal reasons or for mass appeal need to up their story game.

We are trained in art school to focus on art fundamentals, the construction drawings, the perspective, the lighting, and appealing shape design. We have those things tattooed into our heads as the primary metric of success during art school, and that carries over into our post-graduate lives. So when you see artists who are not even remotely near the top of that scale getting more views from people who are, it can be infuriating. It seems unfair, but in reality, it's not. Humans care more about story and fantasy than they care about draftsmanship. It's not even about sex. It's about the story.

So that's what artists who decide to create clean artwork have to do in order to compete with views. You need to tell a good story. If you can do that, you will be getting more views than any of the fetish or erotic artwork. OC artwork is not enough. Create stories, and you need to be able to do that in a single image.

[Sparkyopteryx]

I wouldn't know. So far I've only had one guy get upset with my frankly vanilla work and that's because he gets pissed whenever he see Krystal with boobies by -anyone-. But everyone else (how few they are) seem to enjoy my work and don't cry about it.

But, there is a facet to fetish work that annoys me. I genuinely feel that people with advanced skill deserve more of the spotlight over someone who does average work. For instance, on Tumblr. I find it sad that I can draw an incomplete sketch of a rabbit girl with a fat butt and get well over a thousand notes and the attention of pOpUlAr ArTiSts. Then my friend draws this, this, and this only for them all to be completely ignored. Despite how hard I and others try to push his work.

I understand why. No one needs to be sarcastic about it and explain to me like I don't know people will take something that makes them horny over something that's actually well made. But damn it really is not fair. There's some people who feel like eventually they'll have to sell out and start doing smut or something if they want to get anywhere.

It looks like you nailed my thoughts on this topic exactly, XoPachi. I do not have any problem with erotic art, pin-ups and the like although my personal tastes demand they still have some kind of tasteful class or visual appeal. However it does bother me about the popularity disparity. I'm hardly ignorant in saying that I know why that is, but as you said it isn't always fair.

Art should be held to a high standard, yes. But neither do I want to see an artist shamed by one demographic or another for what they do, on either side of the fence and in all capacities.

(Also your friend's art is top notch, going to check them out now for sure!)

[Pignog]

I post here for one reason and one reason only: A very pure love of MS Paint Sonic OCs and inflation art.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fGFjoeyc6I

[Zeitzbach]

Although people can draw whatever they want, something they still have to keep in mind that art WILL be divided into levels.

Porno and fetish arts are considered to be below normal arts when it come to business and quality term by the generals. The same comparison here would be someone comparing a good piece of work to an anime art and say they're of the same level.

"Lolnofuckyouyousimplisticpieceofshitgofuckyoursel fdegeneratedwhore"

Is the kind of response that will be given to such action.

So yeah, same case here when you compare normal pieces to fetish-only pieces. Don't forget that we artists have god complex by default.

[GlaringFeline]

This is an ancient thread but I want to put my two cents in here too.

I'm alright with suggestive and outright nsfw art, my problem is "exotic" fetishes; Diaperfurs, babyfurs, scat, and the like. Fetishizing diapers and babies is already borderline pedophilia, scat is just downright disgusting. Call it kinkshaming if you wish, but my disdain of diaper/baby fetishes has some justification.

There are fetishes that I have and there are some that I tolerate, but I drew that line in the sand on things that are borderline illegal.