I started drawing in January of this year, and finally finished up my first piece in early February. Since then I’ve been trying to improve on it, and I decided to look back to see if there were any real metrics that could show I made decent progress.

The most obvious first step was to take a look at the upvotes I’d gotten:

Also, NSFW stats:

And, overall, it’s a mixed bag. Lemmy definitely has a longer running time for keeping posts alive (it helps that there’s fewer posts here), and Reddit has the issue that if your post isn’t noticed inside 2 hours, it won’t be picked up at all. There’s no real sign of definite progress on Reddit, though Lemmy does seem to see at least some uptick in this metric, though that could be attributed to c/furry growing.

So, there’s the next obvious metric, upvote percentage:

Reddit drops these metrics after 40 days, so I have no idea what it’s like for the majority of my posts. Generally though, the response is more positive on Lemmy than Reddit, but it might be a bit too early to tell if the percentages are actually meaningful, or if the community doesn’t downvote good content just because it’s not their type, and upvotes are a more meaningful metric.

And, finally, FurAffinity:

There’s not a lot of items there, either. If I post something good, I might get a fav. If I post something really good, I might get 2. Like Reddit, if it’s not noticed inside a short window, it appears to get buried. The one exception appears to be this piece, which has gotten fav’d repeatedly over time. Watches, on the other hand, appear to be entirely random–or it could be my work’s just not good enough to get people wanting me on their feed.

So, just some lessons from my time over the last year:

• Memes are faster and lower-effort to draw, but get a lot bigger response (yes, I know, groundbreaking statement of the year).
• Time and effort spent don’t equate to response. I know, it’s another obvious statement, but until you’ve spent weeks on something for nothing, it doesn’t quite sink in.
• Either a) I’ve not become a better artist, or b) these metrics aren’t the full picture, and I also suck at promoting myself. I’m hoping it’s the latter.

Regardless, it’s been a big journey, and I hope it’s only the start. I came to Lemmy from Reddit after the API changes, and overall, c/furry’s been an open, welcoming, and most importantly positive place. I love it here, and I’m really looking forward to seeing it continue to grow.