Pixelart Storefront Process+ Some Questions about making a Community
Hello guys! Today I have something a little different to share _ When I first saw various communities I got hyped and considered making one but didn't know where to begin. A few days ago on Discord Acidyo brought up communities and I considered it seriously. So, the following are some questions and my ideas if I were to create a Pixelart community.
Would you join a Pixelart community, or know anyone who would be interested to join?
The community would be only for original art, a lot like onchainart and alienarthive communities, just for Pixelart. If there isn't much interest now, I might ask again in a month or two ^^ So far I haven't seen any pixelart here, but I hope that will change. The biggest issues are visibility and audience, one way to challenge that is with contests.
Would you participate in a pixelart contest? (Only original art allowed)
My initial plan for the community is to make a weekly pixelart contest. The contest reward would be the post's total payout number paid in Hive, no calculating, no complicating. I've seen few other contests do it this way and it seems the easiest. We'd need at least a few entries to make the contest viable. Anyone at all could join with original pixel art of course. I'd create a contest template and simply change the theme weekly and announce winners in the same post.
A simple "me" comment is all I need to see how many are interested in participating :)
I would also post one pixelart tutorial per week, starting with some of my art that I haven't shared here yet. Then I could move on to more specific tutorials, maybe based on requests or the weekly contest themes.
I don't mind if someone does all this before me, as I expect it will take a lot of effort and time to keep the community alive. This is why I've shared my plan in so much detail, any additional ideas are welcome. I'm worried about spreading myself too thin between my various projects. The time I currently spend on my blog posts would be redirected into this "project",because I can't really dedicate extra time.
Moreover, many communities become inactive after only about a month, I really don't want to create a community prematurely. Doing the weekly pixelart tutorials and contests would be my way of trying to keep it alive and going. I might even make a prompt list for August- like Inktober but for Pixelart. However, I can't keep the community alive on my own for more than a month. Unfortunately motivation has a huge impact on my productivity and energy.
Not to forget, many big communities have Discord groups, so what makes a fun Discord group? I'm mostly a lurker myself, is a Discord group necessary?. :)
Overall, do you think all of this is a good idea?
Is there anything important that I should know?
About this art
I drew this for Pixel Dailies a Twitter group that posts a new theme daily. They regularly retweet participants who post within a day.
The theme was storefront and I gathered a few references before drawing. This is original art, but the references can be very handy to get inspired and to add specific details. I looked at several neon signs to figure out the brightness and lighting.
I chose to draw front view as it's easier and takes me less time. My main focus here was on making interesting color contrast. The colors are slightly inspired by the cyberpunk "movement".
I avoided using layer adjustments as much as possible, for a more traditional pixelart. Most of the time I kept the brush at 80-100% opacity. For the final glow animation I just used a low opacity overlay layer. The animation is just a little extra to make the drawing more eye catching.
I used this drawing to make a custom color palette that you can download here and use in your art. https://lospec.com/palette-list/teal-city
Feel free to request pixelart tutorial themes and I'll do what I can :)