Sharing your work: best venues?

Well first off, hello everyone. This is I believe my first post here, though I've been a member for quite some time now, and a fan of Karbo before that.

So let me get right to the crux of it. I'm a digital artist; painting and 3D work both, and more recently delving a bit into animation. Nothing Felarya related as of yet, but I'm a big fan of the setting, so some art or even animation on the subject is always possible. (my perfectionist nature doesn't want to let me try anything until I know as much about the lore as possible.)
The issue I've been running across is, where to share work? More specifically, works that are decidedly fetish-oriented (size and vore most notably, though they're not my main fetishes), and often borderline (or even explicitly) pornographic in nature. deviantART is of course one of my favorite sites, and mature content filters give you a good amount of freedom, but even that has limits on the nature of the work. YouTube or Dailymotion are great for videos and animation, but they're even stricter about sexual stuff (though vore is usually fine there, it seems genitalia is not, so be careful to leave the clothes on anyone you eat!).
There seems to be very little in way of middle ground for this sort of stuff, that I'm aware of; it's either content-restricted sites such as YouTube and deviantART, or all the way over into porn land (pornotube, etc).

So I figured I'd start by asking around here; Felarya is a nearly perfect balance in my eyes of serious storytelling, as well as the fetish-related content. I've not been involved in the community for much at all, but you all seem to be a near perfect balance as well; everyone's open to all sorts of ideas, and passionate about the themes here, and all without it just being an uncomfortable experience. (flattery, is it working?)

Do any of you folks have suggestions of good places to share your work (preferably ones open to sexual content)? For that matter, does anyone have particular places they like to use themselves, either as artists or appreciators?

Well, allow me to start off by formally welcoming you to the forum, and admitting that I'm probably not the smartest person here, but I'll give you my two cents anyway. ^_^

Most of us use DeviantArt, there's a group on the site dedicated to Felarya works (link here) that a lot of us, including myself, use. I think there's also some with Tumblr accounts, whatever that is, and I've also seen Karbo's work on a vore-centred site known as Eka's Portal. FYI, DeviantArt has relatively loose rules on what is considered pornography, as far as I can tell, and works concerning vore in general aren't viewed as such, though mature content filters are a good idea since it's still a fetish. I hope this helps. ^.^

Nyaha wrote:

Well, allow me to start off by formally welcoming you to the forum, and admitting that I'm probably not the smartest person here, but I'll give you my two cents anyway. ^_^

Most of us use DeviantArt, there's a group on the site dedicated to Felarya works (link here) that a lot of us, including myself, use. I think there's also some with Tumblr accounts, whatever that is, and I've also seen Karbo's work on a vore-centred site known as Eka's Portal. FYI, DeviantArt has relatively loose rules on what is considered pornography, as far as I can tell, and works concerning vore in general aren't viewed as such, though mature content filters are a good idea since it's still a fetish. I hope this helps. ^.^

Thanks for the welcome, as well as the suggestions. ^_^

deviantART is my favorite of any option I've seen so far, and will probably do just fine as my main gallery (as a matter of fact, I already have an account, and I both watch Karbo and am a member of the group there, which is part of what led me here, hah). Tumblr is something I've used before as well, though I hadn't really thought of using it for my works; that might be an option, since as far as I'm aware, they don't really put any restrictions on content, so long as you mark your blog as NSFW.
I've seen Eka's Portal before, but never joined up; perhaps I'll give that a try. Only issue there is, as far as I know, Eka's Portal is centered around vore, right? Not all my work is vore-related, so I don't know how well that works out (I might be wrong, I've only ever looked at a few galleries on there, so I don't know too much about the different sections they have).

I've seen quite a few artists make a blogspot ( blogger.com/ ) for the NSFW art and then post links there. From what I know, you can have practically anything that isn't restricted by law as long as you set your blog to have the mature warning. I'd say it's worth starting one up and just linking to it from places like dA, etc.

Welcome!

Saftkeur wrote:

Nothing Felarya related as of yet, but I'm a big fan of the setting, so some art or even animation on the subject is always possible. (my perfectionist nature doesn't want to let me try anything until I know as much about the lore as possible.)

Excellent; if you choose to contribute, I'll be very interested to see what you come up with.

Indeed, deviantArt is probably your best bet for anything that's erotic or includes nakedness without entering the realm of sexual explicitness.

On Eka's Portal, I think the general rule is that, if you want a gallery there, at least half your work must be vore. You do have a certain latitude to upload non-vore works.

The more the merrier, they say, so welcome to the bunch, Saftkeur.

I have to agree with dA being a good place for gaining some visibility, along with submitting your work to the Felarya group over there. Anyway, although it is true that dA is quite loosen when it comes to NSFW material, being able to mark if it has mature content, sometimes it might seem a bit risky... As French snack points out, as long as it isn't sexually explicit, you're free to go.

About Blogger, as AJ sais, you can set your blog NSFW and thus a page will pop up before entering, warning you of the content. If you don't have your own site, this seems like a good alternative for some of the most explicit works. I'd check it out too.

Now the problem with animations is a big one, but I think Dailymotion isn't as strict as YT in this aspect. What I've seen is that both are quite fond of deleting anything that might go against copyright, but I'm pretty sure in DM they won't mind anything Felarya-related. Can't be 100% sure, though, just saying based on what I know.

There's also the option of hosting animations yourself. (in a way).

Services like dropbox.com allow uploading of any file with option to make it public; this means that if you upload a swf file that loads a video clip (this is what Youtubes uses), you can embed that into your site for absolutely free with no content restrictions at all. I've hosted a few quick webpages with dropbox.

And yes, you can embed videos in blogger. So Blogger + dropbox (or googlecode or anything else that allows that sort of thing) allows complete freedom of uploaded content.

Anime-Junkie wrote:

There's also the option of hosting animations yourself. (in a way).

Services like dropbox.com allow uploading of any file with option to make it public; this means that if you upload a swf file that loads a video clip (this is what Youtubes uses), you can embed that into your site for absolutely free with no content restrictions at all. I've hosted a few quick webpages with dropbox.

And yes, you can embed videos in blogger. So Blogger + dropbox (or googlecode or anything else that allows that sort of thing) allows complete freedom of uploaded content.

Well that certainly is handy; blogger would definitely be a much easier way to go about it, the only issue would be the hosting, but I never thought of using a Dropbox account for it. I'll definitely have to mess around with that, since I do have at least one animation idea that I'm pretty sure Dailymotion wouldn't like (sexually explicit). Never tried Google code before, so I'll look at that, too. (never messed about with .swf files for that matter, but I'm fairly tech-savvy, so it seems like a fun challenge.)

My animation right now is 3D, so probably not any Felarya-related stuff on that end unless I figure out an easy way to recreate some of Felarya's scenery in 3D form. I'd definitely enjoy working on some 2D stuff though, so I'll see if I can't get something Felarya-related in the near future...
Agreed that deviantART is probably the best place to go for all the 2D work, so I'll stick with that, I think. And of course I can have a blogger account linked, that I can hold anything more explicit on.

Really appreciate all the feedback, you guys. (and the welcomes.)

I've seen sexually explicit stuff on dailymotion as well, there's a "family filter" button that pops up when something is too mature, but since I don't post anything there, I cant help you any further in that regard.

Oh, since your work is 3D I want to ask, I've been having some horrid issues with making custom textures without mudbox, I was wondering if you could share some of your textures?

Archmage_Bael wrote:

I've seen sexually explicit stuff on dailymotion as well, there's a "family filter" button that pops up when something is too mature, but since I don't post anything there, I cant help you any further in that regard.

Oh, since your work is 3D I want to ask, I've been having some horrid issues with making custom textures without mudbox, I was wondering if you could share some of your textures?

Yeah, Dailymotion has a filter as well as a "sexy" section, but the uploading guidelines also say that pornographic material is disallowed, so I'm not sure what the middle ground is. (though it's handy, being able to upload vore and whatnot with the filter on, I still don't think that means genitals and whatnot would be allowed, filter or no.) I'd love to be wrong on that though, the family filter option is part of what I like about Dailymotion. (all else fails, I can always censor stuff or just keep sexual themes low-key, and use Dailymotion for that.)

Anyhow, I do most of my 3D work in DAZ Studio (which is exactly like Poser except free, if you've heard of Poser), so my textures are mostly pre-made ones; the figure that comes with the software comes with textures as well, and you can buy tons more on sites like DAZ3D or Renderosity.
Because they're pre-made and copyrighted, I can't share 'em, but I can point you in the direction of one or two free ones if you happen to use DS or Poser (though depending on what you're using, you might find use for the textures in other programs too). I can also suggest a few of my favorites in the for-sale ones, if you're at all interested in that. Just send me a PM, I can dig up some links for you.
Aside from that though, I don't make any textures myself - yet - though I have had some luck with the newer 3D painting tools in Photoshop CS5, and I'd also recommend picking up Blender (which is free) and has some very nice 3D painting tools too.
You're giving me ideas now though, hah. If I do happen to make any textures sometime, I can put them up on deviantART for others to use.