Making Art Friends is hard.

I get it so much! I'm so awkward and bad at making new close friends eck

This and the gatekeeper friends. Me and my VERY small friend group of artists absolutely love bouncing ideas off of each other, and saying "Hey, I wanna do that" with absolutely no problem. But then there's the ones that believe everyone is copying them, everyone WANTS to copy them, and they absolutely have to protect their precious oc with no exception. To the point they nitpick at every possible chance they see a similarity with their oc and someone COMPLETELY different's oc. Super tiring, super annoying.

I have a ton of artist friends online but theres one that was more than a bit questionable. She was really fun for awhile, and was super passionate about her ocs and art. After a few months she moved to another platform for the most part, okay cool whatever. A lot of my friends started using that platform at the time. I think it was around that time that she introduced me to her friend, who I later found out was her partner. After awhile she started to post more fandom stuff than her own, which i didnt think much of. She started to shift to yet another platform, which I kind of ignored for awhile. There was one point where i jokingly made a comment about marrying her oc (said oc had a boyfriend) and she said she didnt care about her ocs. THAT is when i realized how much she changed. Just a few months before we made gcs so we could talk about our ocs, mostly hers, because she loved making and talking about her ocs so much. Eventually i got a little annoyed that she kept ignoring everyone that wasnt her new friends on the platform she mostly moved to so I mentioned the idea of me getting that platform to her. She was fine with it but when I tried to find her account i found her simping account for another user. She panicked and gave me the link to her normal account. Unfortunately, i already looked at it and it was a bunch of her and this other user saying VERY sexual stuff about each other. keep in mind, she was younger than me (I'm in early teens) and at the time I didnt know she was dating the friend she introduced me to earlier. I said something about the simping account to a few friends and thats when one of them pointed out age concerns, because we had no clue how old this person was. i decided to ask the person who I thought was just her best friend to see if they knew what was happening and uh, I still feel a bit guilty about that since thats how they found out she was cheating on them. She hasnt been online for months, but im still in touch with her ex and now that theyre in a healthier relationship theyre realizing that she was never really a good girlfriend in the first place. Im not going to share the stuff theyve told me because thats not my place but its killed the idea of me ever wanting to be her friend again if she ever comes online. She wasnt great to the rest of us either now that i think about it. One of our friends wasnt able to get other platforms than the one we originally met on because of her parents, and commented how little this friend ever even tried to talk to her anymore. She also had a joke marriage with my other friend, before just suddenly telling him that theyre going to divorce without giving any reason (this is a normal thing for my friend group, but normal its all silly and jokes so this seemed really sudden, especially with how serious she was about it.) I'll stop rambling now, sorry if this was hard to follow. I've had other... interesting experiences with people online as well, though this was probably the largest and was the only one where it had to do with art and was actually someone i considered a friend.

I'm not in the channel demographic(I'm getting near to 40 over here) but the topic of art friends has been on my mind a little bit because of Artfight. I've never done Artfight before but decided to dip a toe into it this year, and it gives a really clear cross-section of what types of people are making character art, especially what they talk about in the Discord, which becomes a firehose during the event. And yes, it's all of those types of artist, plus the people that are really there for free art, so when they see something nicely rendered they all-caps "OMG YOU'RE SO GOOD, FOLLOWED". I'm more of a storyteller than an illustrator - I can draw, but drawing is instrumental to making comics and cartoons, and I'm also approaching it as a hobby and can't really be bothered polishing or following trends - so of course none of the designs I have posted have gotten any exuberant response like that. But I already have a friend circle, and they are on the same wavelength and get my jokes and know the boundaries - benefits of age. The thing about being able to tell stories is that so much of what motivates the character art is within the story, and being a young demographic, they don't have story worked out yet(it's very hard to do without at least some life experiences), so most of what people post as character art is empty doll OCs. In some ways it can be beautiful to see all those OCs and the spectrum of what they represent. Philosopher Heather Marsh would describe these characters as "endo-ideals" - something that the artist is "reflecting", assigning credit to and reassigning blame away from to a "negative image", as a kind of defensive mechanism. She has written a few books exploring aspects of this, which really did a lot to explain the whole artist and fan-ship dynamic to me and why it occurs, even though she never discusses that as an example. When I look at celebrities, the only ones that seem capable of keeping their head on straight are the ones who are consistent about saying, "no, it's just a job", and maybe they do have to withdraw into privacy to do that. omg you're so good, followed /jk

i get this honestly, even as an artist with a kind of not really large amount of followers, ive never made any art friends in real life nor online 😭 im too socially awkward and i have no idea how to slip into someones dms and say "heyy wanna be friends" or something similar, and continue on the conversation and form a bond 😭

I never been in art friends group before, I do have a few art friends but I don't really talk to them because of some reasons and some of them are busy, I wish I could be in this friends group and want to experience what is it feel like, at the same time it's scared me to interact with them, I'm not surprised if these people act this way, we just need to be careful who we be friends with especially on social media :))

I mostly struggle with making friends on the online side, But I promise reaching out just a little bit is all you really need :3 Good luck! (Beautiful content by the way)

Cliques never go away. They are more common when ur a kid, but college and beyond still have it t. College graduate

This video was great!! 🎉 :)

OMG THIS IS SO REAL 😭 I wanna make friends with more artists (or like any artist) but some people are just so judgy and see everyone else as competition to the point it is lowkey scary to even imagine it

Thank you for the types honestly, personally I thought I would list myself as one of them but uhh. I don't know Back then I used to make a crap ton of online friends(I literally had at least 4 or more groups) but I decided to ghost them all up fearfully because a lot has changed and I was extremely immature for the past 7+ years of my whole life. Nowadays I just usually hide most of my art 24/7 on both online AND in real life, and that I usually keep my things online in less noticeable and forgettable places. But hey, what's better than having no specific friends at all?

i really like your art style!!! :D

Ur art is so coolllll:0

Your arts cool as hell

I’ve been wanting art friends but I have social anxiety, it’s so hard to make friends. I haven’t made any friends for years because I get too scared and ghost them 😭 I have my best friend and my boyfriend and that’s it. I tried joining a art discord server but it was too overwhelming.

I should note that you are not entitled a response from creators, no matter the size of following. It doesn't say anything about them as a person or their character if they don't respond to DMs, even if they talk in discord servers. I personally don't really like talking to people I don't know outside of public settings like a discord server. Even with a tiny tiny little following I have some really bad experiences with DMs where responding to a question quickly turned into getting roped into an uncomfortable conversation with someone who's really parasocial. I also have someone whos been stalking me for 8+ years who often pretends to be a "fan" to try and message or befriend me, only to do something like set their pfp to images of me pre transition. You can get some really scary people in your DMs sometimes and it can be a little nerve-wracking to respond to them because of this. Some people genuinely forget that I am not a "micro celeberty" I am a real person with boundaries who happens to share my work online. If someone has the boundary "dont message me", even if youre messaging them on another platform, you shouldn't take it personally if they dont respond. There is a huuuge difference between messages in a public comment section or discord server, and messages in private. This video overall was really nice but the last section kind of rubbed me the wrong way.

Haven't seen the entire video yet, tho I like the vibes. I have this really talented art friend who loved her fandoms and her OC's and recently she just, stopped, making art. Her other friends were bullying her and saying awful things about her art that eventually she just gave up. which is so sad to see since she's like my closest art friend ever even compared to my irl art friend (dont ever tell them I said that). She LOVED making art and she loved sharing it with her friends. The others and I were trying to convince her to continue art if it truly makes her happy, which it did, hopefully she can come back to it soon.

I'm also an artist, I have a few artist friends. But it is hard to make friends. I'd love to make more art friends :)

Awesome video! I'm a quite person just cuz social interaction do be hard. Keep making cool videos

omg what i'd do to have artist friends...