Checking out the Forums!

Alright! Over the past two days I've done some research on critiquing websites and I wanted to share my findings.

On the list we will review

• Conceptart.org
• Polycount
• Reddit

Conceptart.org:

At first glance I thought the site looked great. That experience changed upon my very first click. Let me try to paint the picture that is the typical user experience: Click on register, go to a page with a list of LevelUp subscriptions that have no description. You now have two branches: Click pricing at the bottom of the page which takes you to a page that finally describes the service (which is basically throw your money at some guy who might look at your work...by the way you can't find that guy's portfolio...). The second branch is you hit sign up...which leads to failure! This doesn't register you to Conceptart.org, it registers you to LevelUp (and that's if it even recognizes your registration). You actually have to choose door number three which is Forums on the upper left banner THEN hit register. A few days after registering you should get access to post on the site. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten that far yet.

• Polycount:

This was a more organized experience. I got on the site, registered, added a post to the new member forum to get activated, and I was good to go. That said I have yet to receive feedback on my first forum post. This might just be due to my formatting or needing to wait a few extra days for comments. Aside from that I love the site. There is so much great information on proper technique, it is definitely worth checking out.

• Reddit:

I found Reddit to be a great resource. I posted a drawing to the  /r/LearnArt page and within 2 hours I had a response. The response was good, I was given some feedback on correcting perspective but was told my shading looked good. For my first time posting on that page I was happy with the result. I will say, however, that trying to understand the posting/flair process made me feel like old man trying to figure out social media for the first time.

To wrap things up I would suggest checking out https://conceptartempire.com/gathering-online-art-critiques/. I found the resources on the page to be incredibly useful (especially what pages to check out in the conceptart.org forums).