Sunday, June 14, 2009

About Us

Hi Everyone!

It's time for a new blog direction. Again.

Some of you may know that when I first started The Fantasy Art Blog, the objective was to help promote my website, The Fantasy Art of Computer Games. However, it quickly became a place to promote all the non-computer-game art that I really liked, and soon the focus became "a new fantasy artist every day". This continued for a while, but I soon had second thoughts about it.

Fantasy art lovers undoubtedly know that there are a lot of art sites and art blogs, and a lot of "link farm" sites. How much could my blog possibly distinguish itself? And there was the question of how the artists benefit. Many artists do allow their work to be promoted by various sites, but who's visiting those sites? Who's buying their art? Or are visitors simply downloading a copy of the image presented?

Meanwhile, I continued to take screenshots of the many fantasy computer games I've played, and presented them not just on my website, but a few at a time in various blog posts on The Fantasy Art Blog. Almost all of them are older games that aren't much purchased anymore, if at all--Gaming moves so quickly that last year's game is largely forgotten. And I feel I'm not taking anything away from game companies, because seeing pictures is definitely not the same as playing the game. To fully experience the wonder and excitement, you've got to play the game.

So this is the present direction of The Fantasy Art Blog:
  • We'll present fantasy computer game art every day. Can't sit still on my website to flip through hundreds or thousands of pictures in slideshows? Visit this blog instead to get a nibble every day.
  • We will still promote fantasy artists. I have added a large blogroll section, including snippets and placed in a wide sidebar. Only artist blogs, and those that present art very regularly, will go in that blog.
  • We will still feature fantasy artists. The last of the artists I researched and prepared blog posts for will be presented around August 15th. Thereafter, it'll be fantasy computer game art drawn from my website. However, I am open to any fantasy artist who would like to be featured on this site.
    • For everyone's sake, I will have to vet the art as to whether it will probably get a good reception from blogh visitors. In the very beginning, I tried to be inclusive of everyone and to present readers with a wide variety of experiences, but this turned out to just weaken the focus of the blog and lose visitor confidence.
    • As well, from time to time, I may pull out an art feature, but rather than feature an artist, it will probably feature a theme (such as Sexy Octopusses).

So what does a featured artist get? Probably not a heck of a lot. If you are expecting massive traffic and art sales... uh, no. Maybe a bit of traffic and a few fans. And a place in the queue when I tweet art links from my Twitter @Art_Links profile.
If you have a blog, the RSS feed goes in a box on the sidebar for a couple of days. Thereafter, if it is a blog that frequently features art, it goes into the admittedly huge blogroll below.
Even if you've been featured before, if they'd like to be featured again, they can simply just ask and provide another selection of art.
It's probably a good idea of have some kind of link to your art store.

I can't promise that this will be the final change to this blog. We'll see, I guess.
And I don't know if I'll lose anyone from tweeting only computer game art. It can be a mixed bag, and unlike "regular" fantasy art, it won't feature hot buxom babes very regularly.
If some of my regular readers do depart, allow me to thank you for visiting my blog and following it for as long as you have!

Cheers, and enjoy.

2 comments:

Alan Halsted said...

Hi, some of us in Twitter have become concerned with the latest spammy tweets and as this is completely unlike your usual excellent entries, I thought I should bring it to your attention in case someone is up to no good with your twiiter acct!
Cheers
Alan Halsted
Ballistic Publishing
@alanhalsted

Simon said...

Hi Alan,

Thank you for your note! @theplasticage also mentioned it and I had a quick look-see.

After some confusion, I think what happened was that I'd let myself agree to too many RT requests (are *those* the tweets you're talking about?). I really need to learn how to say "no" more often.

Thank you again for your feedback.
I'll keep a closer eye on what ends up on my Twitter stream.

@Fantasy_Art

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