I did artfight two years before the full TikTok-ification of it, and man I did realize changes in the overall feel in the game. I had people get angry at me for not drawing their characters and a sense of inferiority making it feel more like a higherarchy thing instead of just artists gathering together to share their passions to others happy.
this is what i saw alot of people who participated in art fight complain about. they felt beginner artists where gettin quietly pushed aside and shunned
@@MohammedAgbadi oh definitely, it was a shame really. I saw many accounts with so many defenses (plus 100) but like 2 attacks they did themselves , then I saw the profile comments and it’s all these people saying that they love this popular artists and whatnot from TikTok (I have no idea who they are since I don’t use TikTok) It kinda felt sad since many people were degrading themselves in the comments to someone who would’ve never even responded to them.
Yeah, they're taking it as an opportunity to get free fanart/commissions rather than acc having fun which is why they always get mad when someone's attack doesn't live up to their standards 😭
Oh hey I recognize you! You drew one of my characters. :) I'm malade_sain, I'm happy you feel the same way about Artfight. I joined Artfight when Tik Tok began to popularize it but slowly realized that the community turned more and more oppressive...People feel forced to revenge, some people receive much more defenses than others leaving small artists behind, some people don't respect certain rules, some people don't care about character's permissions, global permissions or the character's description ect...A lot of people attack just for the sake of getting a revenge/accumulate points, it's hard to admit but a lot of people on this site (who began as a fun and friendly site) are selfish. They participate just to get something out of it, wether it'd be a drawing or fame, so respect is clearly dying
lol I did art fight this year for the first time, completely detached from all the tiktok stuff (don‘t use it). Drew some art, got some art; a beginner artist said my oc was so cool it was the first attack they ever did, which was very cool to hear. It was a pretty good time overall. tldr tiktok and and its competition culture continue to be a plague lmao
For me, I was too burnt out to draw, I took the energy to make my characters which is 1 and then I was to burned out to draw others OCs and more OCs for my art fight I have next year 😢
The tl;dr is completely different from the actual comment An actual tl;dr to your comment would be: tl;dr did artfight for the first time, my oc got a compliment. I had a good time.
As someone who did artfight this year, I find it SO annoying, how TikTok ruins everything and takes everything. Before you know it, everyone starts calling artfight, “the TikTok art game.”
I find art fight on TikTok, and I read all the rules, and I make sure I try to draw everyone OC perfectly and try to find stickers in my collection to put on the page that fit the page, I felt bad because I’m traditional artist, I’m so sorry that people were annoying
@@Zickeyo As someone who started playing artfight before that label, this breaks my heart bro how could anyone call it the TIKTOK ART GAME??? IM GONNA SOB BRO ITS BEEN HERE SINCE 2015 ITS BEEN A DECADE YAALLLL
i did artfight this year, and i cant believe so many people were so like, stressed about it? i did like, on or two attacks, because it's really not that serious, you know? it's just something where you can make fanart of people's characters and get fanart of your own. it's supposed to be a stress-free, fun thing to do
True, as a first timer I was really stressed until doing the actual artfight. It was so much fun, my last attacks were much better drawn since I was very relaxed working on them, not like the first weren't good but I worked on backgrounds
for real ! So many people said ”oh that sounds so stressful” whenever I told them about ArtFight, which is really not the vibe ArtFight is supposed to achieve ! You shouldn’t feel pressured to do revenge art, unless you straight up state that you will 100% do revenges (I don’t understand why anyone would put that amount of pressure on themselves) The event is a great opportunity to get inspired and beat art block by doing art you WANT to do. The points part and CHANCE of getting attacked back is just a plus in my opinion !
It really sucks how this went from, "Give Art To Others" to "Please Give To Me This Year" because I would have loved art fight had it remained the way it was before-
It's still "Give art to others", the "Please give to me this year" is only a small part of the participants. There's tons of people who still play it as an art gifting game, which is what it's supposed to be. Actually it's the vast majority that plays like that. The greedy fighters are just louder about it and get picked up more in the tt and yt algorithms: Don't let that influence your view! You can still play it as a gifting game trust me! :)
@@Catsgirl32 I did a few attacks this year (not as many as I was planning as I got sick), and I just clicked through the newest/random characters until stuff got my creative juices flowing. I didn't care if I got any art myself (though the one person who DID draw my OC made me happy cry) because artfight is about giving! I completely missed the tiktoxic stuff, because I was just enjoying doing little pics and doodles of people's OCs. The artfight 'drama' (that I'm only just learning about now, lol) is just one more reason I refuse to go on tiktok. Between the toxic communities and the highly invasive data-collection you'd have to PAY me (and I mean a LOT) to go on tt
@@Rosetintedwater Yess! This was my 5th year, I promise the vast majority plays to gift art and playing like that yourself is the most important thing anyways! Just use the site to find targets instead of choosing beggars and it will be a gift-giving-game :3 If you avoid tiktok and the discord server you probably won't see much begging, if any. But the server is really nice to find targets if you don't like the target searching options the site offers so I actually do recommend joining the server (probably just avoid the general chats cause that's where most of the complaining happens lol)
I will never get how anyone could look at a drawing made for them of their OC that the artist genuinely put love and effort into and call it ugly. I would break down and cry if someone gave me even just a little drawing of my OCs
Absolutely! And beginner artists are often still building their confidence, so in some ways it means more to me when beginner artists like my oc so much that they brush off their anxiety and draw anyway! That may be some projection of my own start to art though.
@@sarahno2319 Exactly. Like people need to be grateful that someone liked their OC or their style enough to brush off the stress and post their drawings anyway. Why decide to be a jerk to beginners when you could take like 2 seconds to show at the very least some gratitude for their work?
I have been doing Art Fight for 4 years. Every years I jump into it without any expectation, I get my OC drawn? Cool! Barely get anything? Fine as well. I just enjoy be able to draw other people OCs without feeling like I'm annoying or feel shy (I'm always embarassed to draw people OCs otherwise lol) I suppose not being on Tiktok make it that I just enjoy my fight instead of draining myself to please the others. It's supposed to be fun, not an actually fight/war! On a side note; I often try to attack OCs who have barely to no attack on them ❤️ often try to give a chance to newcomers/beginners.
Ooh another 4 hi! And same! I love drawing other people's characters when I've got art block but I feel awkward so I never end up doing/sending it to them so Art Fight is perfect for me.
Yess, 5th year for me and same here! It's just so much fun to gift art to others :3 And it's SUPER SICK to get art of my oc's back as a fun little bonus
@@Cardinal_clawme too 4 years here joined for something to do in the pandemic, I didn't really know what was going on with the tiktok stuff and just drew cool characters as usual ❤️
I didn't even know art fight was a thing. I might give it a go next year because it looks really fun, but I have no OCs so I would have to spend some time designing characters I can put to my name lol
As a French art twt member, I was super confused because on our side, art fight generally means we both make a page with our OCs defeating each other and folks vote for the better one. 💀
tiktok fr forgetting that the point of artfight is to get art from others, not winning the competition (as a matter of fact the teams mean nearly nothing except to make it more fun)
Just tiktok being tiktok. Artfight in its spirit is pretty much like christmas for artists and for some reason there are still people who try to make it competitive and toxic
Honestly? The team aspect makes it LESS fun. (At least, when one team has 10,000 more players than the other like this year...) Concept: Everyone's on one team and there's some kind of foe (can change every year) they have to defeat by getting a certain amount of total points. No competition or pressure to only pick people from the other team to avoid friendly fire or whatever, just teamwork. The theme can be based on what the foe is too, ik some people love there being a theme. Also the point IS NOT to get art from others, and treating it as a way to get free art will 9 times out of 10 lead to disappointment. You can make a piece every day and still end up with no more art of your characters. The point is to MAKE art for others. Make someone's day while improving your skills.
@fillername6996 having just one theme sounds not so fun. I like how it is, getting to choose. If I don't like a theme I can pick the other one. The friendly fire thing also makes it easier to choose who you want to attack that year out of the vast options imo. It can be as simple a fix as a score multiplier for the smaller team until it evens out (which it always does since the algorithm favours placing people in the smaller team). There's no reason to completely change the way it works :/
everyone be forgetting that artfight isn’t some competitive thing and is just there for fun edit: yes im aware that children exist you can stop reminding me now
@@nmr7203 Tbh, before I joined this year, I thought it was something competitive, too. But just told myself to get over it and joined and was pleasantly surprised
Same! I barely even use tiktok and ever so rarely post on it so I was really confused about this piece of pick me please crap going on in tik-braindead-tok
Let me tell you, people are SO much nicer in the feral oc part of artfight. I draw dragons and have only two ocs, but everybody is so nice when they comment on my art it really makes my day. I havent gotten too many attacks sent my way, but when i do, it makes me unreasonably happy! (my first year, team stardust!)
Same here but with anthro characters (I suck at drawing humans but I do have a few of em). I was also on Team Stardust, was able to send in 13 attacks for my first year and gotten so many happy comments
Same that side of art fight is so much nicer (didnt really go on the other side), I also draw dragons and I only got 3 defences but they were so nice, I did about 15 attacks over the month, I definitely recommend art fight for any artist of any skill level! 😁
I'm honestly convinced the actual amount of toxic fighters is way smaller than the discourse makes it seem. So I'm willing to bet this goes for almost all parts of artfight :') So glad you had a good time! ^^ (I kinda wanna see your oc's now, what's your user? :3)
i did art fight for the first time this year and had a great time!! i think part of it was because i stayed off of tiktok and most social media, i honestly wasnt even aware of all the drama that was happening until it ended. i just did my thing, attacked mostly mutuals but also a few artists i admire, and even got a few revenges! my ratio is really high bc i did twice as many attacks than i got in return but thats ok, i realized pretty quickly that stressing about the numbers was sucking the enjoyment out of it for me. will definitely be participating again next year :)
4th year, and yeah I've gone through that. I'm fairly slow so I don't give or get much, so I've had to readjust my expectations but it's still fun. Great time to experiment and explore new techniques and character concepts!
same here!! as someone who doesn’t use tiktok, and only pinterest, i was unaware of the existence of this drama, and i enjoyed myself. crazy how peaceful it seemed on artfight 😭
@@Cardinal_claw yeah i think your expectations have a huge impact on your experience!! as soon as i stopped worrying about the stats and focused more on experimenting with my art i was immediately having so much more fun
So glad you had a good time!! :D Ignoring the drama is definitely the best thing to do, I'm pretty sure it's all blown way out of proportion anyways at this point
I got attacked by 58 amazing artists this art fight. Well... it was almost 59, I saw someone uploaded an attack while I was out of the house and deleted it in 3 hours, demanding that I attack them back in the description. (Which, please don't do this, my personal goal is that I attack everyone back but sometimes that's not possible!) I try to attack everyone who attacks me, and with 52 total attacks done, but 17 people I missed attacking back, I'm so sad I missed out on so many amazing characters. But that just means I have 17 wonderful people to attack back in the next year of Artfight! I hope people eventually chill out about AF and enjoy it, it's a fun time and you can make some casual AF friends along the way! I love all the pieces I've gotten and, hopefully, have been able to make people happy with my own art pieces. Happy AF 2024, cheers to the next one!
I had three people demand me to attack them this year, NEVER BEFORE had I experience this but it's really disappointing that they're in it just for the free art 😭
@crayonzii you don't have to draw 40+ pieces lol, there's actually a lot of artists that only do 2 to 5 pieces and call it a year, we're just competitive 😭😭
My main reason for doing ArtFight is I love being able to see a visual representation of how my art has improved over the years and I also love seeing the excited replies to the art I make for others. It's never been about the free art or points for me. So it was definitely disappointing to see so many super competitive people this year that don't really understand what ArtFight is all about. Also it was really sad seeing half the art that I spent so much time to make not even get a comment from the person that received it...
When I did artfight last year I didn't always get notified or see pieces people made of my characters and I just didn't join this year for various reasons including the website kinda sucks
Yeah samee it's such a fun way to track your improvement! ^^ The lack of comments is relatable though, I hope we can educate newbies better next year so that is avoided :')
I only did a few attacks this year, and I think only one got a response. I wasn't super disheartened though, because the person who responded not only left a comment on my fanart of their OC, but they also revenge attacked me! It was my first year doing this that I got art. I'm not IN it for getting art (since it's like Art Christmas, and the fun is meant to be in the giving), but I definitely happy cried getting art of my lil guy. Honestly I'm glad I don't follow most TT stuff (this channel is the only real exception) because the way tt was treating ArtFight sounds so stressful. It kinda makes me feel bad for these kids (though not the toxic ones). Like, art trades and gift art and art giveaways for me were always about the FUN and the love of the craft, and seeing how my style changed/improved and how well I can draw all these unique and diverse character types! Not about free art or points, you're right! Making it into a 'my team (or me in my group of friends/mutuals) has to win or I'll have a mental breakdown' sort of competitive thing is just.. sad. Kinda pathetic tbh.
Hi!! I've been participating in artfight since 2016 and to be honest, the website crashes were a lot better this year. They used to be soooo bad in years past. I feel like TikTok discovering artfight was a mistake in the fact that they brought sooo much more drama to it. TikTok also brought a ton of "competition" to the game... and by that I mean bragging about how many attacks people did or received. I miss when it was just a low key fun game with little to no pressure. now people from TikTok will "cancel" you just for not having the time or not wanting to attack someone back
Fr i feel like most veteran players just dont even bother with the site for the first 48 hours. If I remember, artfight 2020 had the site down for many days from traffic.
Yeahh I was genuinely so amazed that the site was back up within a day??? Last year it was down for like 3 days I think lmao, 2 ish days for the years before :'))
@@Catsgirl32 tbh yeah, though this year was not without its random issues (the submit attack button breaking for more privacy-focused browsers like Safari, Firefox and Brave for like 3 days)
Last year nobody I knew had any clue what Artfight was and now it’s all over the internet!! I’m so glad more people are coming in, but that also means it’s about to get toxic as hell 😭🙏
Honestly the new owners handled the crashes so well!!! I saved my references before the fight and wasn't gonna bother for the first few days, but they handled it on a day and I was amazed. Honestly the programmer of the site is a saint 😭 I remember last year she was pretty much every day on the discord server announcing that she was fixing things, and this year she just had to do it a few times. i'm really happy for her
Funnily enough me and a friend ended up quitting artfight this year because we kept getting mass attacks that didnt take effort to ensure our characters design was correct and even getting mass attacks where it was just like an arm/shoulder of the character. It was really disheartening because we didn't mind the style/quality just the utter lack of care for our ocs.
I think you could report those attacks maybe? Cause then the rating probably was wrong too. So sorry y'all had a bad experience though! I hope you do come back next year, I promise it will be better! Just play to gift art to others and you'll likely get non-mass-attacks back as a little bonus! Trust me when I say that that is not how every year goes - I do hope you'll try again!
It can be reported and staff will correct the points once artfight is over. They (artists) mess around, they get consequences. Like how its going now, theres still no announcement of the winner cause staff is still going through all the reports.
Had this problem too where I even went so far as to put global permissions that said "DO NOT INCLUDE ME IN MASS ATTACKS." Lo and behold, one of my characters still wound up in one and not only was she drawn tiny and incorrectly (they gave her a nose like Pearl from Steven Universe even though she's Southeast Asian???) but they also drew her very ooc acting like a shy woobie girlie girl and sheepishly kissing some rando's oc????? Like... it's not that hard to read the very short description I put up for the character.
@@joosoo I did that too, i had it in bold red everywhere, profile global and character permissions and then ppl started telling me they couldnt read my permissions cause idk why; they said it was white text on white bg but my default is dark mode and text automatically goes to white so I was just over it by that point. Some even saying the missed it??? when its big bold red everywhere Dx
I participated in artfight in the past 3 years!! I’m by all means pretty late to the game but i seriously noticed a flood of new artists joining artfight this year specifically. I had an amazing time & got the most art i’ve ever gotten but there was definitely a lot of intense people 😓 (mostly minors who just didnt know how to act-)
I might be wrong but from the looks of it, it feels a lot like it's a disguised occasion for these children to "ask" (or beg / demand idk) for fanarts... Or straight up make themselves art critics. (Note that I'm not from that community so take this as an outsider question.)
I joined this year along with a friend who is a minor/beginner artist. I did 13 attacks and got 13 defenses (2 of which were from the friend and another friend of mine who been on artfight for a few years) And I had a blast, and everyone loved my drawings which makes me happy. My friend gotten 3 defenses while sending in 1 attack of his own. He was still figuring art programs out and dealing with motivation, so he wasn't able to do much attack wise but tried his best. Me and Him been lucky to not encounter anyone toxic and had a good time. Meanwhile I been seeing folks bashing artfight on tiktok and twitter, thinking that people on the site *HAVE* to give them something. You can't control people, if your new then follow artist you like, comment on their ocs, basically make yourself known so folks know you exist on there as their are so many users on the site and even more ocs to pick from
@@lil_mis_smiles I'm so glad to hear y'all had a good time!! ^w^ I personally think there are way less toxic people than what all the discourse has made it seem. The negative discourse just gets picked up more in algorithms. All while the majority of players are actually the most lovely people I've interacted with online! This was my 5th year and I have yet to actually encounter a toxic participant during the fight. So please don't worry about that too much and I hope you'll have fun again next year!!! :D
@@hiroshi7025 Nah art fight is for everybody. It's been around for years. It's not catered to minors, and if a minor acts wrong or impolite, that's entirely their fault. The site encourages everybody to have fun and express themselves artistically, that's it.
I was in this year's artfight. I recieved an attack of my snake- like oc. It was made traditionally, it was wonky and uncolored. But, you could see the erasure marks of them trying so hard to get it as best as they could, you could see the huge effort that was put behind it. They apologised to me for their bad art as they were a baginner. I thanked them profusely, showed them how much I appriciated and did a revenge. It's easy. Let's be kind, because a long time ago we were in their same shoes
As an AF Veteran (Pre Covid User who followed alongside AF since before it was an internet thing) I Loved every single AF piece I got and even having stuff from friends helped me realize it really isn't about the skill, It's 1000000000000000000000000000000% the fact that they chose me to attack and I loved every single piece I got and I will always support beginner artists!!! SO I hope Tiktok doesn't ruin it next year and I hope people learn their lesson to use the website or the Discord to find people to attack instead of TT, IG or X
Great vid! I've been doing art fight since Coffee Vs Tea. I only to traditional art, and I barely have any 'reference image' style images, just fully rendered art that I've made of my characters. I have a 60+% battle ratio and love to keep it high. The 'cool kids' on AF are a small group of people who you revenge chain with, built over the years of fighting. I've made mistakes drawing and colouring characters before, and guess what: people are nice about it and will give you basically infinite chances to fix it. If someone gets your character wrong, just ask nicely: colouring pencil pigments can rub off and lighting can wash out colours, so if you just ask, they'll touch the drawing back up, sort out the lighting, and generally get it fixed with zero drama. There is no scarcity of people to attack: the site has a tag search feature so you can find characters easily. Cool people on art fight don't bully people over styles. Beginers are adorable, and I love receiving art from them: seeing someone finding their footing is so cute! Skill level is no object on this battlefield. Mass attacks are awesome! Sure some small details may be lost, but that happens in dynamic scenes. This year was almost as fun as the others (having a job was the only dampener), and I was surprised that I cranked out 50+ attacks again.
Yesss, it was my 5th year and I totally agree with everything you said!! I always put in the private description that I can do touch-ups if need be when I notice I have made a mistake or the light messes with the colours when it's a traditional piece. So far no one has taken me up on that offer and everyone has been so absolutely lovely! Gosh I love Art Fight so much
Eyyyy fellow AF vet 💚I love so much that I’ve discovered so many cool artists thru it and I always love when the friends I made there are on the opposite team cuz it means we both get full points >:3
"beginners are adorable" F YEAH THEY ARE!! This wasn't through AF, but through a similar event on a now defunct website called elfwood back in 2004, I received fanart from a beginner artists and it's still one of my favorites pieces of art I've ever received. ❤
This year was my first art fight and I did one attack and received two attacks. I wasn’t able to attack more due to grieving my late pet 😢 but I was happy to have gotten one out and getting attacked. I hope people just remember this is for fun ❤
I've been playing for around 5 years and my stats were the same this year & I had less excuses! Don't be too hard on yourself! You still got to bless one artist out in the world with your beautiful rendition of their OC.
People should stop acting entitled when it comes to getting good art in artfight. It’s not about you, nor should it be. It’s about the community. If you wanna be like that, pay for commissions or reach out to someone who does requests. Don’t expect every art piece to be “good.” They don’t realize that this entitled attitude can lessen the chances of being “attacked,” making them more angry and act entitled, rinse and repeat.
I like it a lot, the algorythm is good if you know what youre looking for, but i can't stop myself from getting into fights with people in the comments. Thats awful for anyone's mental health.
@@geministrial950 the content is fine. it's just the people there that really piss me off. a wise person would tell you that if you know you can't stop yourself from getting into fights, then stay away from it as a whole. that- or train yourself to not look into the comment section. but either way tiktok is such a degenerate app.
Ive been doing artfight for 4 years and tbh I didn't really feel a change online other than tiktok, all the bad stuff about is mostly just a few ppl being loud. I still had fun and was able to do a 100 charcter mass attack animation :3
Yuupp, my 5th year and I 100% agree, it's just the loud negative people being picked up by the algorithms and all the response also getting picked up. It's such a bummer how people's views of AF are influenced by that :( Just wish everyone ignored the loud ones and focussed on gifting art instead :')) Also you're insane for doing a 100 oc mass attack ANIMATION??? Awesome work yeesh
@@Catsgirl32 yea…I’m worried that cuz of this year and ppl amplifying all the stuff that happened that artists won’t wanna participate and scare others into not participating either
@@lucasdrawsstuff lolll yea I worked on it for half a month and miraculously finished it just in time before the event ended lol I was a bit stressed but I’m happy. It was like… a 2 and a half minute vid too.
I'm into artfight about 4-5 years and for me artfight is a place where i can just draw any characters just because it's fun and i can cheer up someone. Don't care if they're young or pfo artist, I'm just very happy to see if art that I made is giving a little smile or even a good day. I hope artfight will stay a good place and young artists will live and draw in peace ୧(＾ 〰 ＾)୨
I'm so very tempted to join Art Fight the more and more I hear about it. It looks fun. When it comes to receiving fanart, I myself don't mind the skill set the person is at, as long as they are honest with their work and didn't resort to tracing someone else's art. You could produce a doodle with very little shape defining of my character and I would love you for it.
I just had my first time at artfight this year and I really did not regret it! It got me really motivated to draw 💯and I drew SO much more then the amount I did in the 3 months before lol Is also made me feel more creative. I made my sona and some of my oc designs after so long of not doing it and I feel so happy now that I have those Oc's up! and the few bits of art I got of my Oc's just made it even better 😭😭
This was my fourth year doing art fight and it was interesting seeing everyone on tiktok learn about the event. Art fight just takes some time getting used to, I had fun this time around though!!
this year was my 8th year doing art fight... i'd say the culture has certainly.. changed. the amount of entitlement compared to previous years is maddening, many of the new participants do not understand the spirit of art fight and that it is an art GIFTING event, NOT an art trade event. despite it being a "competition", we're here to lift each other up as artists and have fun, not have a popularity contest. support beginners, lift up your fellow artist, challenge yourself and get out there, have fun! its not that serious.
The amount of people not reading permissions often ruins the fun, but this year I was able to relax. Just.. if someone has ''i dont feel comfortable seeing my ocs in group/mass attacks'' on top of their perms, maybe don't..? ;w;
I wonder how many people remember that Art Fight started on Furry-Paws almost 15 years ago, but outsiders wanted to join as they started seeing everyone share their pieces on deviantArt back in the day. Ever since it became public it got more confusing and then evolved into whatever this is. 😭 It was so chill way back when--I remember the excitement from getting art of my OCs from other artists of all skill levels.
Lol. Even remembering the DA days made me feel old. Don't remind me DA stole it too. XD But even DA didn't ruin it this badly. Which is surprising because when DA users did it the point system was already there.
@@iamaunicorn1232 Haha, that's exactly how I felt when I saw the date in the file info of my old attacks...like, there is no way that Art Fight and peak DA era were +/- HALF my lifespan ago. 😭
I remember when It was an IRL community thing and not an internet thing, It was started in a small town that had a facebook page and now it has it's own (please fix it) website!!! I miss those days HOWEVER, thankfully because of the internet it opened it up to more talents and more great artists of all varieties!!!
I've been doing art fight for 3-4 years now and I've never had any issues. People that get wrapped up in the competition need to remember that it's art for the sake of it. :D I love getting art from people, no matter the skill-set. It means the world to me that someone took the time to look at my ocs and read their backgrounds :D
I missed all the TikTok discourse about Artfight since I do not use it much, but I had a fun first year! I went in not expecting to get anything, I just wanted to have fun drawing, so when I got art from others I cherished each and every piece. Like said in the video ArtFight is about giving not receiving.
I have been doing art fight for 7 years now. On my first year I went in blind and on the last day of that art fight in fact and had already got the gist of it. I have forgotten small features of characters I drew before and the artists were fine with that. I would even draw characters that would be out of my comfort zone, even the artists I attack would revenge me draws my characters that wouldn’t be in their comfort zone and I really appreciate that. For example, this year I drew an artist’s character, knowing they stated they mainly like to draw women and me having mostly male characters present on my profile, but then I never expected for them to revenge with one of my male characters.
As someone who drew 87 attacks this artfight, it's just a really fun time-sponge to keep your brain from seizing up with artblock. Tiktok just ruins anything it touches
Yet another day I am glad I never touched tiktok. I've been participating in artfight since 2014 and had my most active year yet this year on it! Its a blast experimenting with new art styles, brushes, programs, and methods each year and finding genuinely cool designs to draw and play with. The comments and art I got in return are just icing on the cake.
This year was my first artfight and I will say it is so fun you just have to ignore all the toxic people being weird about it, I do think the biggest thing to remember is that artfgiht is about MAKING ART for others not about getting art, don't attack ppl bc you want a revenge just draw characters you like and you will have a great time ^^
This year was my first one: I loved it sm, it was really fun. It’s so beautiful drawing people’s OCs and especially seeing how excited they are about it, I really like making people happy from such a small thing (drawing their lil fellas) and I absolutely love when I get a revenge or an attack of every level. I believe that if you get mad at beginners for attacking, you are a CLOWN and a SHITTY PERSON, you want “good” art? COMMISSION ARTISTS OR DO ART TRADES don’t come to artfight and ruin other’s people’s experience because you are an ass! Every art (if it’s respectful) should be cherished, because that artist took some of their time to draw YOUR OC.
I joined artfight a few years ago and it was amazing! I love the concept and it's a great way for practice while giftig each other art of your OCs. Honestly a win-win. That was until the second year where I dropped out because not only did I wittness the tocixity on the discord, they tried to drag me into it. On the discord I saw users openly complain about art they recieved. One, who apperently had a following and was receiving a lot of art for a specific character, even went into a rage because a small scar next to the characters eye was missing a lot. It baffled me. Sometimes we forget to draw some details. It happens. But the one point where I straight up left the discord was when an artist said they received a drawing from a skilled artist and weren't sure if they were good enough to give something back in return. I don't remember the excat words to try to encourage, it must have been something like "if you get good art you should try. I'm sure they'd love to get something in return.". And while it's possible that the words I choose weren't the best, someone straight up followed with "unless it's bad." Quit the discord right there. I'm not going to take shit from randos when I'm just here trying to encoured someone. Fvck off and go back to bullying children on tik-tok. But in all seriousness, artfight is fun and I still do it if I have the time and if my friends participate or the people are chill. There is one small artist, who started the same year as me and drew child like drawings with crayons on paper, which I still visit every year and watch him growing as an artist. It's a joy. I can recommend it as long as you avoid the discord. Bring a friend if you can so you can smack each other. Like a pillow fight but it's drawings of you OCs. And don't worry about doing it wrong. You can't do it wrong. There are no buttons on that site that let you do it wrong. Why are people so scared of that? What happened to 'trying out'?
I’ve never had TikTok, didn’t even know there was toxic stuff going on, and I had a wonderful time during my first Art fight! I think it depends a lot on who/what you surround yourself with. Though, I feel sorry for people who’ve had bad interactions w other artists. It’s okay to just have fun no matter your skill level!!
ayo i was not expecting an artfight video!! tbh there were already these sort of complaints in the past but I think the tiktokification of everything just made it sooo much worse, especially now when the userbase is like, at least double or even triple the amount that it was 4 years ago
Im so happy i missed the TikTok side of it, cuz i had a good time however my worst fear was the corruption of art fight via an influx of "free art farming" users so im still sad about it... Art Fight generally is much more fun when you go in with the mentality of giving rather than receiving. If your goal is to give happiness and joy and art and not worry about receiving any I promise it's a much better time. My first year I was in the "taking" mentality and i was distraught because i didn't get any attacks. (Then i missed a few years for unrelated reasons.) This year i came back with the sole intention to experiment, get better, try new stuff, and make someone's day. If i got anything that was just a bonus. I had an amazing time! And most importantly, remember it's a FREE art competition. There's a fine line between preserving an OCs dignity and being a jerk. If someone is going to be a jerk about art style or skill level and act entitled, then dont draw for them again. You did nothing wrong. Block them, blacklist them, and thrive 🎉
I only recently got into Art Fight from a friend last year, and generally it pretty fun as I just simply read the content rules and just mostly draw my friends characters because I feel a bit too awkward drawing other people's characters because I don't draw seriously and just draw whenever i feel *MOTIVATED*
I dont have tiktok so I was unaware of all those things. I joined this year as a second attempt since the first time (2y ago) i couldn't do much. I have a 12h job but managed to attack 10 times, both people better than me and people who were clearly beginner artists. Nothing gives me more joy than drawing others characters, but Im always worried they wont like it... Cant never know if I never try tho so I just do it
I did artfight once and recieving all the art was amazing, but I overworked myself and my chronic illness actually got me hospitalized, so I'm avoiding it for the forseeable future. Love it, but I'd rather not work myself to death again lol
I actually skipped artfight this year since I had some sour aftertaste from some admin issues last year. I've been doing it for years skipping a year here and there. Might come back next year. I didn't realize how tiktoked the event had gotten. I'm an old crone(26) so I'm not really looped in on the young artists are fussing about, kinda reminds me of the same drama I saw young artists on youtube going on about 10 years ago. I've never cared much for getting attacked, so I find it way more exciting to find new artists with few defences and translate their characters to my own style. Please don't be intimidated to attack artists of different skill levels. All art is appreciated because we know you spent time on something for us, which is precious. And please, if you only participate in artfight for free art, don't bother. You will not enjoy yourself fully unless you get into the spirit of creation without strings attached. It's an artist game after all
This was my 3rd year participating in artfight and while I had a good time and enjoyed myself, I did hear things about the overall change of environment artifight had this year. From what I've heard, it did give me a very highschool "cliquey" vibe I have an inkling it's the youths (under 16 specifically) who don't quite understand that not everyone will have the time or energy to draw every single day for 31 days straight for many reasons like work, uni, school, medical reasons, etc. As well as they just don't have proper online ettiquite in general A lot of artists as well expressed frustration not getting so many attacks when they themselves have not put the effort to attack anyone else that isn't their mutual, friend or their fav artist. The point of the game is to give art to as many people as possible. You can draw for your friends and mutuals any other time during the year The bullying just never stops (bullying should never be happening in the first place yet here we are) and I think tiktok has really amplified that this year with a lot of it's users having very little to no online social ettiquite or tact for that matter. Even more ironic bc it's not even that hard to not be a prick online. Tldr for future artists who wants to join artfight next year, stay far, far away from tiktok and you'll have a much more pleasant time. There are so many resources online that isn't from tiktok that holds your hand and guides you through artfight
ive been doing artfight for a few years now and im glad that i didn't encounter any toxic tiktok users so id say most of the toxic part of it is contained on tiktok (from what i see). I do see other people saying they have though. So id advise anybody who wants to join to have their artistic friends join along with them. That's what I did for my first year and that's probably the reason why there has been no issues for me. People tend to put their friends' links on their profile so you can also raise your chances of being attacked. ALSO if you want to attack "big name" artists (eg. featured members or mods), don't expect an revenge (or even a comment) because they're usually overloaded with other people attacking them. If you want revenges, try going for people who have a 60% or higher battle ratio . Either way, you arent entitled to any art and complaining about it on tiktok is probably going to drive people away from drawing your characters.
This was the first year I partook in ArtFight simply because I was unemployed, and each year before was working 40+ hours a week so had no time for it. I LOVED it. I had so much fun drawing people's OC's and just having a great time. I especially love finding young or inexperienced artists and giving them artwork. I'm excited for next year!
Art fight was a big deal last month, I've seen many Art fight live streams on UA-cam and it was pretty interesting. Thank you for making a video regarding this.
I’ve been participating in Art Fight for 3 or 4 years now and I don’t use tiktok at all so the only change I noticed was an increase in Mass Attacks (3+ characters drawn in one image). Mass attacks themselves I don’t have any issue with (my children have been in some phenomenal ones) but most of the attacks I received this year were of my goofy simple doodle characters. There was a stark difference between the artists who enjoyed the character and the ones that used them just because it was easy. It was a bit personally upsetting that with only one exception, people only seemed to be interested in my most simplistic and shallow characters but ultimately, no one on Art Fight is obligated to do more than what they want or can and also follow the rules. I don’t like when other artists say you NEED to do one thing or another, like fill out an artist sheet because those aren’t necessary for being in the community; you can post character art or just talk about your characters and BE part of the community and achieve the same effect. The perceived general tiktok attitude to AF feels commodified for what is supposed to be a celebration
Art fights always been just a fun and welcoming event to all skill sets/levels of artist. Its sad when people come in making others feel less than or bad about participating.
Hope this drama doesn't discourage artists from trying art fight. It really is fun if you follow the spirit of it, which is giving art to others. Not demanding it in return. I tried for the first time this year, and had a blast. I'm a competitive person, and wanted to push myself to see how much art I could get out. In the end, a ton of friends AND total strangers attacked me, and I had a blast trying to revenge every single one. For those not getting many attacks, that's your chance to attack everyone in sight, and really chase the thrill of seeing your battle ratio go higher and higher.
I’ve been in Artfight since 2017 (when it was Sun vs Moon) and I’ve always been so happy to get art attacks from artists of all skill levels! I like to see the effort they put into the attack, and it’s just straight up flattering to receive an attack period! I’m always grateful for each attack I get🙏 Artfight is supposed to be fun for everyone, and it’s disappointing to even hear that people actually complain about getting attacks from beginning artists :( If you want a drawing of your oc’s that is “good” (ie not drawn by a beginner or specific style) you should probably commission someone instead of being picky/rude. All artists start somewhere, and it’s discouraging for beginner artists to be pushed out for “bad” artwork.
Well artfight is supposed to be a fun challenge to do. I couldn't participate this year (and of course it's when i got attacked the most) , but the years before i had a blast drawing other people characters and making them happy! I always love to see people draw my oc no matter there level of skills. This years i got four attacks, two from what look like begginners but i still find my oc in there style cute. I can't wait for next year so i can participate.
I had played in art fight before and again for a little bit this year, I just generally hate the website with how weirdly layed out and having the TikTok screaming of art style hate and oc hate isn’t helping it. In the entirety of what I’ve played I’ve only gotten 5 attacks at me, which sucks to have only big creators getting tons and tons of art while people who are just doing art fight for fun are only getting 5 (more or less) attacks. I feel like the whole thing could be run way better but it just isn’t. Until then I just won’t be playing in art fight ever again and will just do art trades or little art fights with my friend groups. It’s really sad to see a concept as cool as fighting with art be displayed like this and have poor sportsmanship and, in my opinion, a hard to navigate and use website.
I was on the defensive pretty much the entirety of artfight, which was insane to me since I'm not a large artist by any means. I revenged as much as I was able and I had a few people tell me I was their first target to attack! It made me so happy that they chose me of all artists to attack first :) The only problem I had with new artists was that when I went to revenge them, they only had one or few character(s) with a low quality or hard to make out reference (I did try my best to revenge them though!!). But overall artfight was a fantastic year for me. In past years I was always on the offense, so being on the defense this year was a wonderful and shocking change of pace lol
I have been curious about art fight for the last couple years, but I’ve had a hard time fully understanding how it works. I appreciate the simplification Fan art is one of the most incredible things you can get or gift someone. I have cherished every piece I have ever received, no matter the skill or style. The fact that someone liked an idea of mine so much that they were moved put pen to paper means so much to me!! The funnest interaction I’ve had was when, several years ago, my sister and I made a series of illustrated Lovecraft books called Littlest Lovecraft. Someone loved them so much, they made real versions of a clay relief I drew and sent it to us. I was so excited, I sent them a message about how it was the coolest thing I’ve ever gotten, how amazing they were, and how humbled I was by their gift. They replied back with how much they loved my art and how excited they were that I was even talking to them! Just two artists nerding out on each other!! It was a magical time 😂
I was seeing art fights all over Instagram, and was so confused. I thought it was just a bunch of ‘draw this in your styles’, and didn’t understand why they were calling it a fight. This really clears things up.
It was only my second year doing art fight, but I did notice it was quite diferent from usual, I didn't get attacked by people I didn't know, when last year it was all artists I've never heard about that found me randomly. That's the fun of it in my opinion, discovering cool artists that happen to see your oc and find them cool enough to draw them. I do attack friends during art fight, but also the random character option is such a fun way to discover ocs! But I still had fun either way, and got to draw cool poses!
i mostly stuck around with my friends this year so i managed to avoid any drama etc 😭i loved getting any art from others though!! “quality” of the art didn’t matter- its like cake! im happy to get cake, even if its not fancy or made by a professional, cake is tasty so im happy ^_^
I joined artfight just this year and bc i dont have tiktok i didnt know about the tiktok-fication until july ended. I attacked some mutuals, some other strangers, received some attacks, i got multiple of my new oc’s which i saw super excited about because i never felt so seen tbh. I was scared as f because i am a beginner artist and still struggle with alot of things. I made an attack on one of my fav artists, who was wayy more skilled than me, and they said in the comments they are happy to see me on artfight and love the drawing. I was kicking my feet and giggling for HOURS. honestly one of the best things ever. Yes some of my other artists didn’t answer, or didn’t even join artfight, but getting to see and draw some of those wonderful and creative characters is absolutely amazing. And the fact that I have an “excuse” to draw it makes it even better, bc it feels like im not gonna be bullied since its just an attack in a game. And seeing my characters in different artstyles is so cool and just amazing, like your oc is going through different universes and omfg its so fun :)
This just makes me glad once again that I don't use TikTok or most other Social Media Apps and just had fun drawing all the different OCs. After all, ArtFight should not just be about getting free art, but about the joy of giving and the exitement when you get something back.
This past year was my first time (I don't use TikTok), and it was such a fun experience! It was a little discouraging getting less attacks than defenses, but it's all worth it for that heart-drop-happy-for-the-whole-weekend feeling when someone really brings your character to life. Looking forward to next year!
I love art fight and don't let tiktok ruin it for you. Just have fun. Also I love it when people who are super talented draw for people who are just beginning. I did a lot of that this year and honestly it's the most fun I've ever had with art fight. And I saw a ton of people doing the same thing. Honestly, I wish people would get off of tiktok and live in the real world. I promise you things are better when you actually see not everyone is toxic and mean.
i never participated in artfights because i'm often pretty burned out from drawing. i really thought all the attacks you got you had to reply to. knowing that i can defend and attack at my own pace definitely makes me more interested in joining next time :D
Some artists need to be reminded that we are all "beginners" at some point in our lives, and that the only way to improve is to keep going! Encouragement and community does so, so much more for learning than tearing people down. I really do weep for the emerging new artists who have been ostracised and bullied by these individuals, I know from experience that these encounters instill mindsets that are EXTREMELY difficult to get out of... The entire point of Artfight is not the score or even getting art of your own characters - what it IS about to me is the celebration and uplifting of other artists' creativity and ideas, and expanding your own comfort zone and experience!
I can never understand not wanting beginner artists to draw your OCs like???? You're actively refusing free fanart. In my two years of participating I've had a bunch of attacks from beginner artists and as a smaller artist you always appreciate that; regardless of skill level. I always saw Art Fight as nothing more than a casual community event; where you give to other artists and draw some cool OCs, it was never a competition and really, it isn't that deep. I don't know what that app does to artist's brains to make them so drama fuelled and entitled all the time. Thank god I dont use tiktok and ESPECIALLY that i'm not on art tiktok.
I had a blast with art fight. I only did 6 attacks, but I did get 4 defenses. I made sure to comment on all of them and show that I appreciated people drawing my OCs. Something I love about art is that anyone can do it. We shouldn’t be talking down to young artists just because they haven’t had as many years to practice as you. All of us had crappy art when we were younger, only difference is that younger kids these days have more places to show their art. We should be encouraging and supporting them, not tearing them down before they even get a fair chance to start.
I made an account on artfight but I didn't participate, I was so scared that people on there either wouldn't like my art style or how I drew their characters, I also simply didn't have the time to churn out art or make a spreadsheet of any of my characters for it, but, I'm definitely going to prepare for next year, it does seem like a lot of fun and I'll feel awful if I don't partake in it and get some practice in for drawing new character designs. My goal for next year is to try and do an entire piece at least once a day. That might be difficult with my current schedule, but, I think I could do it.
As someone who used to have a passion of trying to learn to draw and eventually gave up due to mental issues that developed from it {Perfectionism and such} as well as people straight up only wanting to help improve the talented starters it saddens me to watch new starting artists get shamed and I can only hope they don't give up like I did. They deserve to find that passion and hold onto it without entitled artists causing them to be anxious over their art being shown.
I get excited about all attacks I receive on Art Fight. It feels so amazing knowing that ppl liked my OCs enough to go out of their way to draw them. I hope it’s a little better next year bc beginner artists deserve to have just as much fun as everyone else
This video came across my fyp just a little while after I was wondering what art fight was lol I’m working on improving my art so I’ll be ready for the next art fight tho since I missed this one!!
Oohh that's fun! I hope you will join next yearr :DD Definitely keep in mind that any 'level' of art is welcome, so if by next july you feel like you haven't 'improved' enough I do hope you will still join and use Art fight to improve further!! Tons of people use it to practise, actually, so don't worry too much and have fun!! :>
I’ve been doing artfight for seven years, when I started my first year I got amazing art from so many people and it made me so happy! As I grew I’ve made more black and/or fat characters, TikTok isn’t exactly friendly to that so I was definitely worried it would make my artfight experience bad. It wasn’t though! It was just like any other year and I still got amazing pieces of art and I made an attack almost everyday! There was only one bad interaction I had, it ended up souring my experience just a bit but I’m over it now!!
I did ArtFight this year and I had a very good time! I really enjoyed getting to draw characters and learn new things. I feel TikTok over exaggerated a lot of ArtFights issues. Like though it’s good to give criticism to the ArtFight devs and you’re aloud to be mad, at the end of the day it’s a game. It’s for fun. It’s not meant to be taken seriously. I know that a lot of people, including myself, can take it a bit too seriously, at the end of the day, it’s just a game.
I joined for the first time this year, and I honestly had a great time! I took it as an opportunity to test out different features of my drawing tablet and to push myself to use different techniques. I don't use TikTok, but I absolutely use Instagram, and the types of comments talked about in regards to beginners just trying their best and weirdly entitled people are totally still there, but I've gotta say that the experience can still be really positive! You don't need to be attacked by the best of the best to still be kicking your feet and giggling over every comment and every drawing. Draw what makes you happy, engage with what you see in ways that uplift the community. Personally, I hardly realized that the controversies were this widely felt, and I hope that goes for a good portion of users.
I didn't know there's a whole drama surrounding Art Fights because I only see the Mass Attacks here on YT because my friends do it. They invite me to join but I'm just really busy, and I genuinely thought that the purpose of Art Fight is that you pick someone else's OC and then have them and your own OC beat up each other or something 😭😭 lmaooooo
I wasn’t aware of the TikTok drama, but I really enjoyed Artfight this year! I loved making attacks and was so excited seeing the attacks I got, one of them was a mass attack and I thought it was incredible!! I was surprised to hear people saying mass attacks are bad when they clearly take more effort to make than regular attacks… any art I get of my ocs makes me so happy tbh
i had a lot of fun this year! i only made minecraft 3D models and even a minecraft mod for someone DBHAJWSHJBA i didnt get to revenge everyone but im planning on doing a mass attack minecraft mod for people to play on next year!! i didnt even realize there was drama at all, i was just doing what i wanted to do and enjoying peoples happy responses if they responded! this is my second year and i got like,, 5 times the amount of attacks than i did last year!! (around 40 whole attacks this year) and im really happy about it!!
this was my 4th year of art fight! I don't have tiktok, never have, and I definitely feel that was a good decision! I always knew art fight was about fun, it's about getting you to draw for others!! the point of art fight is giving, not receiving. every year for me has been absolutely wonderful! it's gotten me to draw so much more than I used to! :) I'm honestly shocked by how many people are afraid to join art fight. If you enjoy drawing, you will love art fight. Even if you only draw little doodles. Even if you only draw one or two things. It's still wonderful
i've been doing artfight for years and i'm slowly considering not participating anymore. i rarely receive any attacks or revenges for the artwork i send, and it's starting to make me feel like my art just isn't desired by anybody. i'm not a beginner, and i tend to attack/follow artists i feel are around my skill level because i feel like a trade there would be seen as more "fair," but i also definitely consider and attack artists further below my skill level as well. if i like the art style, and i think i can reasonably draw their characters, i add them. i also accept attacks from anyone, skill level or team notwithstanding. i'm happy to receive artwork from almost anyone. the problem is it doesn't feel like anyone wants to receive it from me, and it's been incredibly discouraging. i know the whole point isn't about "receiving" it's about giving, but when it starts to feel like all you do is give, it also starts to feel like nobody wants you there. the only ones i DON'T like to receive are low effort pieces that i think were created rapidly in order to farm artwork from higher level artists... and i can tell which ones those are. you go to their profile and they have hundreds if not thousands of attacks and basically everyone they attack is very high level in skill when their own artwork looks like they slapped it together in paint in 15 minutes. i'm not against beginners. i've received artwork from novices and beginners and i cherish it. the clear difference between a beginner and the rapid fire farmers is effort. beginners don't have to be "good" to clearly show effort and thought in their work. i can tell when the artist took time to read the descriptions of the characters, put thought into the posing, the colors, the outfits, the dialogue/background/props/shading (if any). that's what i appreciate. idgaf if they've figured out hands yet. if i added in the description that my character doesn't smile or they love dogs, and you drew them all serious or with some random dog, that's important to me. i received a piece this year where they CLEARLY read what i wrote and put so much thought and care into what they drew for me, and it is easily one of my favorite pieces i have ever received. i hope tiktok doesn't ruin it like it ruins everything else. i don't use tiktok so i didn't notice there was any "drama" or whatever. i played like i always do and while this was definitely my slowest year personally, it was also the year i received one of my most favorite artfight attacks ever, so i'm glad i played.
As someone who has done artfight, and especially dedicated myself to it this year, it was so rewarding just to draw other people's ocs and for them to be happy and comment how much they were excited someone drew their oc. It's wonderful when you receive art back, but it shouldn't be expected. And drawing art for beginner artists are particularly rewarding to me since I know when I started it would have been so amazing to get art of my oc like that from someone.
artfight is fun when you don't have a tiktok user in your ear being toxic about it
😭😭😭
Art community was toxic, but it got more toxic after TikTok. I'm aware that I have bias, so take it with little pinch of salt 😂
omg is that othello in your pfp :O
@@toomuchtimemf yes :3
Ya ive never had any problem with artfight probly because I not on tiktok
I did artfight two years before the full TikTok-ification of it, and man I did realize changes in the overall feel in the game. I had people get angry at me for not drawing their characters and a sense of inferiority making it feel more like a higherarchy thing instead of just artists gathering together to share their passions to others happy.
*to make others happy*
this is what i saw alot of people who participated in art fight complain about. they felt beginner artists where gettin quietly pushed aside and shunned
@@MohammedAgbadi oh definitely, it was a shame really. I saw many accounts with so many defenses (plus 100) but like 2 attacks they did themselves , then I saw the profile comments and it’s all these people saying that they love this popular artists and whatnot from TikTok (I have no idea who they are since I don’t use TikTok)
It kinda felt sad since many people were degrading themselves in the comments to someone who would’ve never even responded to them.
Yeah, they're taking it as an opportunity to get free fanart/commissions rather than acc having fun which is why they always get mad when someone's attack doesn't live up to their standards 😭
Oh hey I recognize you! You drew one of my characters. :) I'm malade_sain, I'm happy you feel the same way about Artfight. I joined Artfight when Tik Tok began to popularize it but slowly realized that the community turned more and more oppressive...People feel forced to revenge, some people receive much more defenses than others leaving small artists behind, some people don't respect certain rules, some people don't care about character's permissions, global permissions or the character's description ect...A lot of people attack just for the sake of getting a revenge/accumulate points, it's hard to admit but a lot of people on this site (who began as a fun and friendly site) are selfish. They participate just to get something out of it, wether it'd be a drawing or fame, so respect is clearly dying
lol I did art fight this year for the first time, completely detached from all the tiktok stuff (don‘t use it). Drew some art, got some art; a beginner artist said my oc was so cool it was the first attack they ever did, which was very cool to hear. It was a pretty good time overall.
tldr tiktok and and its competition culture continue to be a plague lmao
For me, I was too burnt out to draw, I took the energy to make my characters which is 1 and then I was to burned out to draw others OCs and more OCs for my art fight
I have next year 😢
The tl;dr is completely different from the actual comment
An actual tl;dr to your comment would be:
tl;dr did artfight for the first time, my oc got a compliment. I had a good time.
I had a pretty similar experience. Tbh I stay far away from TikTok and Twitter so I don't deal with all that.
Same here!! So glad that the toxicity seems to be largely contained on TikTok and hasn’t spread to the entirety of Artfight itself.
Same
As someone who did artfight this year, I find it SO annoying, how TikTok ruins everything and takes everything. Before you know it, everyone starts calling artfight, “the TikTok art game.”
😭😭😭😭 bro tiktok art game is wild
I find art fight on TikTok, and I read all the rules, and I make sure I try to draw everyone OC perfectly and try to find stickers in my collection to put on the page that fit the page, I felt bad because I’m traditional artist, I’m so sorry that people were annoying
@@Zickeyo As someone who started playing artfight before that label, this breaks my heart bro how could anyone call it the TIKTOK ART GAME??? IM GONNA SOB BRO ITS BEEN HERE SINCE 2015 ITS BEEN A DECADE YAALLLL
@gunweizard125 off topic but I literally gotta remind myself that 2015 isn't 2 years ago 😭
TIKTOK ART GAME???
i did artfight this year, and i cant believe so many people were so like, stressed about it? i did like, on or two attacks, because it's really not that serious, you know? it's just something where you can make fanart of people's characters and get fanart of your own. it's supposed to be a stress-free, fun thing to do
Fr fr
True, as a first timer I was really stressed until doing the actual artfight. It was so much fun, my last attacks were much better drawn since I was very relaxed working on them, not like the first weren't good but I worked on backgrounds
I can sympathise with them since I know an artist that got over 80 defences and somehow attacked almost all of them with great quality
for real ! So many people said ”oh that sounds so stressful” whenever I told them about ArtFight, which is really not the vibe ArtFight is supposed to achieve ! You shouldn’t feel pressured to do revenge art, unless you straight up state that you will 100% do revenges (I don’t understand why anyone would put that amount of pressure on themselves)
The event is a great opportunity to get inspired and beat art block by doing art you WANT to do.
The points part and CHANCE of getting attacked back is just a plus in my opinion !
A person that l know did more than 200 complete artworks for this, I thought I was just lazy
It really sucks how this went from, "Give Art To Others" to "Please Give To Me This Year" because I would have loved art fight had it remained the way it was before-
It's still "Give art to others", the "Please give to me this year" is only a small part of the participants. There's tons of people who still play it as an art gifting game, which is what it's supposed to be. Actually it's the vast majority that plays like that. The greedy fighters are just louder about it and get picked up more in the tt and yt algorithms: Don't let that influence your view! You can still play it as a gifting game trust me! :)
THIS!!
@@Catsgirl32 I did a few attacks this year (not as many as I was planning as I got sick), and I just clicked through the newest/random characters until stuff got my creative juices flowing. I didn't care if I got any art myself (though the one person who DID draw my OC made me happy cry) because artfight is about giving! I completely missed the tiktoxic stuff, because I was just enjoying doing little pics and doodles of people's OCs.
The artfight 'drama' (that I'm only just learning about now, lol) is just one more reason I refuse to go on tiktok. Between the toxic communities and the highly invasive data-collection you'd have to PAY me (and I mean a LOT) to go on tt
@@Catsgirl32is that so? I'd love to participate next year then!
@@Rosetintedwater Yess! This was my 5th year, I promise the vast majority plays to gift art and playing like that yourself is the most important thing anyways! Just use the site to find targets instead of choosing beggars and it will be a gift-giving-game :3
If you avoid tiktok and the discord server you probably won't see much begging, if any. But the server is really nice to find targets if you don't like the target searching options the site offers so I actually do recommend joining the server (probably just avoid the general chats cause that's where most of the complaining happens lol)
I will never get how anyone could look at a drawing made for them of their OC that the artist genuinely put love and effort into and call it ugly. I would break down and cry if someone gave me even just a little drawing of my OCs
Same
It baffled me since beginning person or not, they took their time to draw something cool
Same!People beed to be more gratefull!
Especially since it’s free
Absolutely! And beginner artists are often still building their confidence, so in some ways it means more to me when beginner artists like my oc so much that they brush off their anxiety and draw anyway! That may be some projection of my own start to art though.
@@sarahno2319 Exactly. Like people need to be grateful that someone liked their OC or their style enough to brush off the stress and post their drawings anyway. Why decide to be a jerk to beginners when you could take like 2 seconds to show at the very least some gratitude for their work?
I have been doing Art Fight for 4 years. Every years I jump into it without any expectation, I get my OC drawn? Cool! Barely get anything? Fine as well. I just enjoy be able to draw other people OCs without feeling like I'm annoying or feel shy (I'm always embarassed to draw people OCs otherwise lol) I suppose not being on Tiktok make it that I just enjoy my fight instead of draining myself to please the others. It's supposed to be fun, not an actually fight/war!
On a side note; I often try to attack OCs who have barely to no attack on them ❤️ often try to give a chance to newcomers/beginners.
Ooh another 4 hi! And same! I love drawing other people's characters when I've got art block but I feel awkward so I never end up doing/sending it to them so Art Fight is perfect for me.
Yess, 5th year for me and same here! It's just so much fun to gift art to others :3 And it's SUPER SICK to get art of my oc's back as a fun little bonus
You over think way too much.
@@Cardinal_clawme too 4 years here joined for something to do in the pandemic, I didn't really know what was going on with the tiktok stuff and just drew cool characters as usual ❤️
I didn't even know art fight was a thing. I might give it a go next year because it looks really fun, but I have no OCs so I would have to spend some time designing characters I can put to my name lol
As a French art twt member, I was super confused because on our side, art fight generally means we both make a page with our OCs defeating each other and folks vote for the better one. 💀
Really? French here too and I never heard of that trend/challenge, just regular artfight stuff (I've been participating in it for few years now)
@@KirielSoka I wonder how it is in French twitter
That’s honestly what I thought it was too…because the actual thing sounds…stressful.
That sounds so much more fun lol
that sounds like an OCT ^^ it stands for "original character tournament"
tiktok fr forgetting that the point of artfight is to get art from others, not winning the competition (as a matter of fact the teams mean nearly nothing except to make it more fun)
give art to others more importantly!!
Just tiktok being tiktok. Artfight in its spirit is pretty much like christmas for artists and for some reason there are still people who try to make it competitive and toxic
Honestly? The team aspect makes it LESS fun. (At least, when one team has 10,000 more players than the other like this year...)
Concept: Everyone's on one team and there's some kind of foe (can change every year) they have to defeat by getting a certain amount of total points. No competition or pressure to only pick people from the other team to avoid friendly fire or whatever, just teamwork. The theme can be based on what the foe is too, ik some people love there being a theme.
Also the point IS NOT to get art from others, and treating it as a way to get free art will 9 times out of 10 lead to disappointment. You can make a piece every day and still end up with no more art of your characters. The point is to MAKE art for others. Make someone's day while improving your skills.
@fillername6996 having just one theme sounds not so fun. I like how it is, getting to choose. If I don't like a theme I can pick the other one. The friendly fire thing also makes it easier to choose who you want to attack that year out of the vast options imo. It can be as simple a fix as a score multiplier for the smaller team until it evens out (which it always does since the algorithm favours placing people in the smaller team). There's no reason to completely change the way it works :/
I do feel friendly fire is ridiculously nerfed this year though. It was less than half the points iirc.
everyone be forgetting that artfight isn’t some competitive thing and is just there for fun
edit: yes im aware that children exist you can stop reminding me now
like bruhhhhh let people just have fun
Tiktok Children, brother. Either kids or people who didn't grow out of it. 🗿
I don't even know how you can make a competition out of that
FR
@@nmr7203 Tbh, before I joined this year, I thought it was something competitive, too. But just told myself to get over it and joined and was pleasantly surprised
seeing artfight being referred to as a Tiktok challenge hurt my soul deeply
Luckily if someone doesn't have tiktok it is very hard to know ANYTHING bad happened.
I barerly even knew there was any drama about it
same lol i was just now recommended this and got confused
Same! I barely even use tiktok and ever so rarely post on it so I was really confused about this piece of pick me please crap going on in tik-braindead-tok
Same 😭i only use insta and i felt like artfight went great, never saw anything toxic or bad whatsoever
From tiktok all i heard was that it existed and some people loved drawing others OCs. Not anything bad tbh
I mostly just noticed more “Art Fight Tips” videos in my (UA-cam) recommended this year.
Let me tell you, people are SO much nicer in the feral oc part of artfight. I draw dragons and have only two ocs, but everybody is so nice when they comment on my art it really makes my day. I havent gotten too many attacks sent my way, but when i do, it makes me unreasonably happy!
(my first year, team stardust!)
Same here but with anthro characters (I suck at drawing humans but I do have a few of em).
I was also on Team Stardust, was able to send in 13 attacks for my first year and gotten so many happy comments
Same that side of art fight is so much nicer (didnt really go on the other side), I also draw dragons and I only got 3 defences but they were so nice, I did about 15 attacks over the month, I definitely recommend art fight for any artist of any skill level! 😁
I'm honestly convinced the actual amount of toxic fighters is way smaller than the discourse makes it seem. So I'm willing to bet this goes for almost all parts of artfight :') So glad you had a good time! ^^ (I kinda wanna see your oc's now, what's your user? :3)
@@Catsgirl32 Me? Or the other person?
Also fandom OCs. I feel like anytime I (or anyone else) gets their fandom OC drawn they're like FUCK YEAH!! YOU LIKE THAT THING TOO??
i did art fight for the first time this year and had a great time!! i think part of it was because i stayed off of tiktok and most social media, i honestly wasnt even aware of all the drama that was happening until it ended. i just did my thing, attacked mostly mutuals but also a few artists i admire, and even got a few revenges! my ratio is really high bc i did twice as many attacks than i got in return but thats ok, i realized pretty quickly that stressing about the numbers was sucking the enjoyment out of it for me. will definitely be participating again next year :)
I got off of TikTok, I haven't done art fight cause of burnout but I feel like next year will be better 😭
4th year, and yeah I've gone through that. I'm fairly slow so I don't give or get much, so I've had to readjust my expectations but it's still fun. Great time to experiment and explore new techniques and character concepts!
same here!! as someone who doesn’t use tiktok, and only pinterest, i was unaware of the existence of this drama, and i enjoyed myself. crazy how peaceful it seemed on artfight 😭
@@Cardinal_claw yeah i think your expectations have a huge impact on your experience!! as soon as i stopped worrying about the stats and focused more on experimenting with my art i was immediately having so much more fun
So glad you had a good time!! :D Ignoring the drama is definitely the best thing to do, I'm pretty sure it's all blown way out of proportion anyways at this point
Every time you post a video, I'm like "WTF is going on tiktok"
🤫🤫🤫🤫 'tis the meta😅
I got attacked by 58 amazing artists this art fight. Well... it was almost 59, I saw someone uploaded an attack while I was out of the house and deleted it in 3 hours, demanding that I attack them back in the description. (Which, please don't do this, my personal goal is that I attack everyone back but sometimes that's not possible!)
I try to attack everyone who attacks me, and with 52 total attacks done, but 17 people I missed attacking back, I'm so sad I missed out on so many amazing characters. But that just means I have 17 wonderful people to attack back in the next year of Artfight!
I hope people eventually chill out about AF and enjoy it, it's a fun time and you can make some casual AF friends along the way! I love all the pieces I've gotten and, hopefully, have been able to make people happy with my own art pieces.
Happy AF 2024, cheers to the next one!
I had three people demand me to attack them this year, NEVER BEFORE had I experience this but it's really disappointing that they're in it just for the free art 😭
I think demanding people attack you back is against the rules
Having to do 40+ pieces in one month must be exhausting 🫠 That’s why I don’t join AF. I don’t think I will be be able to draw every day.
@crayonzii you don't have to draw 40+ pieces lol, there's actually a lot of artists that only do 2 to 5 pieces and call it a year, we're just competitive 😭😭
My main reason for doing ArtFight is I love being able to see a visual representation of how my art has improved over the years and I also love seeing the excited replies to the art I make for others. It's never been about the free art or points for me. So it was definitely disappointing to see so many super competitive people this year that don't really understand what ArtFight is all about. Also it was really sad seeing half the art that I spent so much time to make not even get a comment from the person that received it...
The problem is it’s too complicated I think. So many people don’t understand, or they have conflicting concepts of it
When I did artfight last year I didn't always get notified or see pieces people made of my characters and I just didn't join this year for various reasons including the website kinda sucks
Yeah samee it's such a fun way to track your improvement! ^^
The lack of comments is relatable though, I hope we can educate newbies better next year so that is avoided :')
@@scarletsletter4466 it really is not complicated...
I only did a few attacks this year, and I think only one got a response. I wasn't super disheartened though, because the person who responded not only left a comment on my fanart of their OC, but they also revenge attacked me! It was my first year doing this that I got art. I'm not IN it for getting art (since it's like Art Christmas, and the fun is meant to be in the giving), but I definitely happy cried getting art of my lil guy.
Honestly I'm glad I don't follow most TT stuff (this channel is the only real exception) because the way tt was treating ArtFight sounds so stressful. It kinda makes me feel bad for these kids (though not the toxic ones). Like, art trades and gift art and art giveaways for me were always about the FUN and the love of the craft, and seeing how my style changed/improved and how well I can draw all these unique and diverse character types! Not about free art or points, you're right! Making it into a 'my team (or me in my group of friends/mutuals) has to win or I'll have a mental breakdown' sort of competitive thing is just.. sad. Kinda pathetic tbh.
I kinda forgot art fight existed lol, thanks for covering this!
you're welcome!
Hi!! I've been participating in artfight since 2016 and to be honest, the website crashes were a lot better this year. They used to be soooo bad in years past. I feel like TikTok discovering artfight was a mistake in the fact that they brought sooo much more drama to it. TikTok also brought a ton of "competition" to the game... and by that I mean bragging about how many attacks people did or received. I miss when it was just a low key fun game with little to no pressure. now people from TikTok will "cancel" you just for not having the time or not wanting to attack someone back
Fr i feel like most veteran players just dont even bother with the site for the first 48 hours. If I remember, artfight 2020 had the site down for many days from traffic.
Yeahh I was genuinely so amazed that the site was back up within a day??? Last year it was down for like 3 days I think lmao, 2 ish days for the years before :'))
@@Catsgirl32 tbh yeah, though this year was not without its random issues (the submit attack button breaking for more privacy-focused browsers like Safari, Firefox and Brave for like 3 days)
Last year nobody I knew had any clue what Artfight was and now it’s all over the internet!! I’m so glad more people are coming in, but that also means it’s about to get toxic as hell 😭🙏
Honestly the new owners handled the crashes so well!!! I saved my references before the fight and wasn't gonna bother for the first few days, but they handled it on a day and I was amazed. Honestly the programmer of the site is a saint 😭 I remember last year she was pretty much every day on the discord server announcing that she was fixing things, and this year she just had to do it a few times. i'm really happy for her
Funnily enough me and a friend ended up quitting artfight this year because we kept getting mass attacks that didnt take effort to ensure our characters design was correct and even getting mass attacks where it was just like an arm/shoulder of the character. It was really disheartening because we didn't mind the style/quality just the utter lack of care for our ocs.
I think you could report those attacks maybe? Cause then the rating probably was wrong too.
So sorry y'all had a bad experience though! I hope you do come back next year, I promise it will be better! Just play to gift art to others and you'll likely get non-mass-attacks back as a little bonus!
Trust me when I say that that is not how every year goes - I do hope you'll try again!
It can be reported and staff will correct the points once artfight is over. They (artists) mess around, they get consequences. Like how its going now, theres still no announcement of the winner cause staff is still going through all the reports.
Had this problem too where I even went so far as to put global permissions that said "DO NOT INCLUDE ME IN MASS ATTACKS."
Lo and behold, one of my characters still wound up in one and not only was she drawn tiny and incorrectly (they gave her a nose like Pearl from Steven Universe even though she's Southeast Asian???) but they also drew her very ooc acting like a shy woobie girlie girl and sheepishly kissing some rando's oc????? Like... it's not that hard to read the very short description I put up for the character.
@@joosoo I did that too, i had it in bold red everywhere, profile global and character permissions and then ppl started telling me they couldnt read my permissions cause idk why; they said it was white text on white bg but my default is dark mode and text automatically goes to white so I was just over it by that point. Some even saying the missed it??? when its big bold red everywhere Dx
Just an arm? How does that even work ｡ﾟ(ﾟ´Д｀ﾟ)ﾟ｡
I participated in artfight in the past 3 years!! I’m by all means pretty late to the game but i seriously noticed a flood of new artists joining artfight this year specifically. I had an amazing time & got the most art i’ve ever gotten but there was definitely a lot of intense people 😓 (mostly minors who just didnt know how to act-)
I might be wrong but from the looks of it, it feels a lot like it's a disguised occasion for these children to "ask" (or beg / demand idk) for fanarts... Or straight up make themselves art critics. (Note that I'm not from that community so take this as an outsider question.)
@@hiroshi7025 Some people take it like that. But artfight is about giving to OTHERS! Its more of an art giving game than an art trading game.
I joined this year along with a friend who is a minor/beginner artist. I did 13 attacks and got 13 defenses (2 of which were from the friend and another friend of mine who been on artfight for a few years)
And I had a blast, and everyone loved my drawings which makes me happy. My friend gotten 3 defenses while sending in 1 attack of his own. He was still figuring art programs out and dealing with motivation, so he wasn't able to do much attack wise but tried his best.
Me and Him been lucky to not encounter anyone toxic and had a good time. Meanwhile I been seeing folks bashing artfight on tiktok and twitter, thinking that people on the site *HAVE* to give them something. You can't control people, if your new then follow artist you like, comment on their ocs, basically make yourself known so folks know you exist on there as their are so many users on the site and even more ocs to pick from
@@lil_mis_smiles I'm so glad to hear y'all had a good time!! ^w^ I personally think there are way less toxic people than what all the discourse has made it seem. The negative discourse just gets picked up more in algorithms. All while the majority of players are actually the most lovely people I've interacted with online! This was my 5th year and I have yet to actually encounter a toxic participant during the fight. So please don't worry about that too much and I hope you'll have fun again next year!!! :D
@@hiroshi7025 Nah art fight is for everybody. It's been around for years. It's not catered to minors, and if a minor acts wrong or impolite, that's entirely their fault.
The site encourages everybody to have fun and express themselves artistically, that's it.
I was in this year's artfight. I recieved an attack of my snake- like oc. It was made traditionally, it was wonky and uncolored. But, you could see the erasure marks of them trying so hard to get it as best as they could, you could see the huge effort that was put behind it. They apologised to me for their bad art as they were a baginner. I thanked them profusely, showed them how much I appriciated and did a revenge. It's easy. Let's be kind, because a long time ago we were in their same shoes
beginner*
As an AF Veteran (Pre Covid User who followed alongside AF since before it was an internet thing) I Loved every single AF piece I got and even having stuff from friends helped me realize it really isn't about the skill, It's 1000000000000000000000000000000% the fact that they chose me to attack and I loved every single piece I got and I will always support beginner artists!!! SO I hope Tiktok doesn't ruin it next year and I hope people learn their lesson to use the website or the Discord to find people to attack instead of TT, IG or X
Great vid!
I've been doing art fight since Coffee Vs Tea. I only to traditional art, and I barely have any 'reference image' style images, just fully rendered art that I've made of my characters. I have a 60+% battle ratio and love to keep it high. The 'cool kids' on AF are a small group of people who you revenge chain with, built over the years of fighting.
I've made mistakes drawing and colouring characters before, and guess what: people are nice about it and will give you basically infinite chances to fix it. If someone gets your character wrong, just ask nicely: colouring pencil pigments can rub off and lighting can wash out colours, so if you just ask, they'll touch the drawing back up, sort out the lighting, and generally get it fixed with zero drama.
There is no scarcity of people to attack: the site has a tag search feature so you can find characters easily.
Cool people on art fight don't bully people over styles. Beginers are adorable, and I love receiving art from them: seeing someone finding their footing is so cute! Skill level is no object on this battlefield.
Mass attacks are awesome! Sure some small details may be lost, but that happens in dynamic scenes.
This year was almost as fun as the others (having a job was the only dampener), and I was surprised that I cranked out 50+ attacks again.
Yesss, it was my 5th year and I totally agree with everything you said!! I always put in the private description that I can do touch-ups if need be when I notice I have made a mistake or the light messes with the colours when it's a traditional piece. So far no one has taken me up on that offer and everyone has been so absolutely lovely!
Gosh I love Art Fight so much
Eyyyy fellow AF vet 💚I love so much that I’ve discovered so many cool artists thru it and I always love when the friends I made there are on the opposite team cuz it means we both get full points >:3
"beginners are adorable" F YEAH THEY ARE!! This wasn't through AF, but through a similar event on a now defunct website called elfwood back in 2004, I received fanart from a beginner artists and it's still one of my favorites pieces of art I've ever received. ❤
@@caniusdirus This is the sweetest thing awee
This year was my first art fight and I did one attack and received two attacks. I wasn’t able to attack more due to grieving my late pet 😢 but I was happy to have gotten one out and getting attacked. I hope people just remember this is for fun ❤
I've been playing for around 5 years and my stats were the same this year & I had less excuses! Don't be too hard on yourself! You still got to bless one artist out in the world with your beautiful rendition of their OC.
Ah my condolences :( Glad you still had fun though! Don't worry about stats, all that matters is having fun indeed! ^^
People should stop acting entitled when it comes to getting good art in artfight. It’s not about you, nor should it be. It’s about the community. If you wanna be like that, pay for commissions or reach out to someone who does requests. Don’t expect every art piece to be “good.” They don’t realize that this entitled attitude can lessen the chances of being “attacked,” making them more angry and act entitled, rinse and repeat.
proud to never have used tiktok like. ever in my life. hated it when it gained popularity, hated it even now.
I like it a lot, the algorythm is good if you know what youre looking for, but i can't stop myself from getting into fights with people in the comments. Thats awful for anyone's mental health.
@@geministrial950 the content is fine. it's just the people there that really piss me off. a wise person would tell you that if you know you can't stop yourself from getting into fights, then stay away from it as a whole. that- or train yourself to not look into the comment section. but either way tiktok is such a degenerate app.
Ive been doing artfight for 4 years and tbh I didn't really feel a change online other than tiktok, all the bad stuff about is mostly just a few ppl being loud. I still had fun and was able to do a 100 charcter mass attack animation :3
ANIMATING 100 CHARACTERS?????? bro i wish I had your attention span and perseverance, the longest animation ive ever made was just five seconds 💀
Yuupp, my 5th year and I 100% agree, it's just the loud negative people being picked up by the algorithms and all the response also getting picked up. It's such a bummer how people's views of AF are influenced by that :( Just wish everyone ignored the loud ones and focussed on gifting art instead :'))
Also you're insane for doing a 100 oc mass attack ANIMATION??? Awesome work yeesh
@@Catsgirl32 yea…I’m worried that cuz of this year and ppl amplifying all the stuff that happened that artists won’t wanna participate and scare others into not participating either
@@lucasdrawsstuff lolll yea I worked on it for half a month and miraculously finished it just in time before the event ended lol I was a bit stressed but I’m happy. It was like… a 2 and a half minute vid too.
A hundred?? Animated???? It took me two weeks to do a single image with 18!! Your power... it's blinding.....
I'm into artfight about 4-5 years and for me artfight is a place where i can just draw any characters just because it's fun and i can cheer up someone. Don't care if they're young or pfo artist, I'm just very happy to see if art that I made is giving a little smile or even a good day.
I hope artfight will stay a good place and young artists will live and draw in peace ୧(＾ 〰 ＾)୨
I'm so very tempted to join Art Fight the more and more I hear about it. It looks fun. When it comes to receiving fanart, I myself don't mind the skill set the person is at, as long as they are honest with their work and didn't resort to tracing someone else's art. You could produce a doodle with very little shape defining of my character and I would love you for it.
you should join next year!! it’s super fun and 90% of users are chill asf!!
I second that! I’ve been doing it 5 years now, and it’s wonderful! Most people are great.
I just had my first time at artfight this year and I really did not regret it! It got me really motivated to draw 💯and I drew SO much more then the amount I did in the 3 months before lol
Is also made me feel more creative. I made my sona and some of my oc designs after so long of not doing it and I feel so happy now that I have those Oc's up! and the few bits of art I got of my Oc's just made it even better 😭😭
(10:28) THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR FEATURING ME IN THE VIDEO I watch you a lot so it was a huge surprise to see that, love your content
This was my fourth year doing art fight and it was interesting seeing everyone on tiktok learn about the event. Art fight just takes some time getting used to, I had fun this time around though!!
this year was my 8th year doing art fight... i'd say the culture has certainly.. changed.
the amount of entitlement compared to previous years is maddening, many of the new participants do not understand the spirit of art fight and that it is an art GIFTING event, NOT an art trade event. despite it being a "competition", we're here to lift each other up as artists and have fun, not have a popularity contest. support beginners, lift up your fellow artist, challenge yourself and get out there, have fun! its not that serious.
The amount of people not reading permissions often ruins the fun, but this year I was able to relax.
Just.. if someone has ''i dont feel comfortable seeing my ocs in group/mass attacks'' on top of their perms, maybe don't..? ;w;
Yea, it's not hard to read character RULES. Like they're here for a reason, and it's really disrespectful to blatantly ignore those.
I wonder how many people remember that Art Fight started on Furry-Paws almost 15 years ago, but outsiders wanted to join as they started seeing everyone share their pieces on deviantArt back in the day. Ever since it became public it got more confusing and then evolved into whatever this is. 😭 It was so chill way back when--I remember the excitement from getting art of my OCs from other artists of all skill levels.
i kinda do, all ive been told back then was that it originally started on a petsite. but they never named the site cuh
Lol. Even remembering the DA days made me feel old. Don't remind me DA stole it too. XD
But even DA didn't ruin it this badly. Which is surprising because when DA users did it the point system was already there.
@@iamaunicorn1232 Haha, that's exactly how I felt when I saw the date in the file info of my old attacks...like, there is no way that Art Fight and peak DA era were +/- HALF my lifespan ago. 😭
I remember when It was an IRL community thing and not an internet thing, It was started in a small town that had a facebook page and now it has it's own (please fix it) website!!! I miss those days HOWEVER, thankfully because of the internet it opened it up to more talents and more great artists of all varieties!!!
I haven’t heard of furry paws in ages holy moly
Aww tik tok the place where trends go to die.
😭😭😭😭
I miss the Dabloon Cat trend lol
I remember when art FIGHT used to be able having fund drawing ocs. Yah know, FIGHTING. 😛
I've been doing art fight for 3-4 years now and I've never had any issues. People that get wrapped up in the competition need to remember that it's art for the sake of it. :D I love getting art from people, no matter the skill-set. It means the world to me that someone took the time to look at my ocs and read their backgrounds :D
I missed all the TikTok discourse about Artfight since I do not use it much, but I had a fun first year! I went in not expecting to get anything, I just wanted to have fun drawing, so when I got art from others I cherished each and every piece. Like said in the video ArtFight is about giving not receiving.
So glad you had a good time!! ^^
7:39 feels like im getting scolded by a teacher lmao😭
I have been doing art fight for 7 years now. On my first year I went in blind and on the last day of that art fight in fact and had already got the gist of it. I have forgotten small features of characters I drew before and the artists were fine with that.
I would even draw characters that would be out of my comfort zone, even the artists I attack would revenge me draws my characters that wouldn’t be in their comfort zone and I really appreciate that. For example, this year I drew an artist’s character, knowing they stated they mainly like to draw women and me having mostly male characters present on my profile, but then I never expected for them to revenge with one of my male characters.
As someone who drew 87 attacks this artfight, it's just a really fun time-sponge to keep your brain from seizing up with artblock. Tiktok just ruins anything it touches
Yet another day I am glad I never touched tiktok. I've been participating in artfight since 2014 and had my most active year yet this year on it! Its a blast experimenting with new art styles, brushes, programs, and methods each year and finding genuinely cool designs to draw and play with. The comments and art I got in return are just icing on the cake.
This year was my first artfight and I will say it is so fun you just have to ignore all the toxic people being weird about it, I do think the biggest thing to remember is that artfgiht is about MAKING ART for others not about getting art, don't attack ppl bc you want a revenge just draw characters you like and you will have a great time ^^
This year was my first one: I loved it sm, it was really fun. It’s so beautiful drawing people’s OCs and especially seeing how excited they are about it, I really like making people happy from such a small thing (drawing their lil fellas) and I absolutely love when I get a revenge or an attack of every level. I believe that if you get mad at beginners for attacking, you are a CLOWN and a SHITTY PERSON, you want “good” art? COMMISSION ARTISTS OR DO ART TRADES don’t come to artfight and ruin other’s people’s experience because you are an ass! Every art (if it’s respectful) should be cherished, because that artist took some of their time to draw YOUR OC.
I swear dude you are a super relaxing dude to play in the background, I can't stop binge watching your channel after I saw a video of yours days ago.
I joined artfight a few years ago and it was amazing! I love the concept and it's a great way for practice while giftig each other art of your OCs. Honestly a win-win. That was until the second year where I dropped out because not only did I wittness the tocixity on the discord, they tried to drag me into it.
On the discord I saw users openly complain about art they recieved. One, who apperently had a following and was receiving a lot of art for a specific character, even went into a rage because a small scar next to the characters eye was missing a lot. It baffled me. Sometimes we forget to draw some details. It happens. But the one point where I straight up left the discord was when an artist said they received a drawing from a skilled artist and weren't sure if they were good enough to give something back in return. I don't remember the excat words to try to encourage, it must have been something like "if you get good art you should try. I'm sure they'd love to get something in return.". And while it's possible that the words I choose weren't the best, someone straight up followed with "unless it's bad." Quit the discord right there. I'm not going to take shit from randos when I'm just here trying to encoured someone. Fvck off and go back to bullying children on tik-tok.
But in all seriousness, artfight is fun and I still do it if I have the time and if my friends participate or the people are chill. There is one small artist, who started the same year as me and drew child like drawings with crayons on paper, which I still visit every year and watch him growing as an artist. It's a joy.
I can recommend it as long as you avoid the discord. Bring a friend if you can so you can smack each other. Like a pillow fight but it's drawings of you OCs. And don't worry about doing it wrong. You can't do it wrong. There are no buttons on that site that let you do it wrong. Why are people so scared of that? What happened to 'trying out'?
I’ve never had TikTok, didn’t even know there was toxic stuff going on, and I had a wonderful time during my first Art fight! I think it depends a lot on who/what you surround yourself with. Though, I feel sorry for people who’ve had bad interactions w other artists.
It’s okay to just have fun no matter your skill level!!
ayo i was not expecting an artfight video!! tbh there were already these sort of complaints in the past but I think the tiktokification of everything just made it sooo much worse, especially now when the userbase is like, at least double or even triple the amount that it was 4 years ago
Im so happy i missed the TikTok side of it, cuz i had a good time however my worst fear was the corruption of art fight via an influx of "free art farming" users so im still sad about it...
Art Fight generally is much more fun when you go in with the mentality of giving rather than receiving. If your goal is to give happiness and joy and art and not worry about receiving any I promise it's a much better time. My first year I was in the "taking" mentality and i was distraught because i didn't get any attacks. (Then i missed a few years for unrelated reasons.) This year i came back with the sole intention to experiment, get better, try new stuff, and make someone's day. If i got anything that was just a bonus.
I had an amazing time!
And most importantly, remember it's a FREE art competition. There's a fine line between preserving an OCs dignity and being a jerk. If someone is going to be a jerk about art style or skill level and act entitled, then dont draw for them again. You did nothing wrong. Block them, blacklist them, and thrive 🎉
I only recently got into Art Fight from a friend last year, and generally it pretty fun as I just simply read the content rules and just mostly draw my friends characters because I feel a bit too awkward drawing other people's characters because I don't draw seriously and just draw whenever i feel *MOTIVATED*
I dont have tiktok so I was unaware of all those things. I joined this year as a second attempt since the first time (2y ago) i couldn't do much. I have a 12h job but managed to attack 10 times, both people better than me and people who were clearly beginner artists. Nothing gives me more joy than drawing others characters, but Im always worried they wont like it... Cant never know if I never try tho so I just do it
Ooohh good job on the 10 attacks!! Impressive :>
I always say "It's free art, there is no reason to not like it" ;)
I did artfight once and recieving all the art was amazing, but I overworked myself and my chronic illness actually got me hospitalized, so I'm avoiding it for the forseeable future. Love it, but I'd rather not work myself to death again lol
I actually skipped artfight this year since I had some sour aftertaste from some admin issues last year. I've been doing it for years skipping a year here and there. Might come back next year. I didn't realize how tiktoked the event had gotten. I'm an old crone(26) so I'm not really looped in on the young artists are fussing about, kinda reminds me of the same drama I saw young artists on youtube going on about 10 years ago.
I've never cared much for getting attacked, so I find it way more exciting to find new artists with few defences and translate their characters to my own style. Please don't be intimidated to attack artists of different skill levels. All art is appreciated because we know you spent time on something for us, which is precious.
And please, if you only participate in artfight for free art, don't bother. You will not enjoy yourself fully unless you get into the spirit of creation without strings attached. It's an artist game after all
I just want to say, buddy you are not old, you’re in your 20s 😭🙏
@@angel_animefriends7320 I'm going by TikTok age. I don't consider myself old, but kids sure do
@@angel_animefriends7320 Kids on here be calling 18 year olds "old" man we're really out here fighting for our lives
This was my 3rd year participating in artfight and while I had a good time and enjoyed myself, I did hear things about the overall change of environment artifight had this year. From what I've heard, it did give me a very highschool "cliquey" vibe
I have an inkling it's the youths (under 16 specifically) who don't quite understand that not everyone will have the time or energy to draw every single day for 31 days straight for many reasons like work, uni, school, medical reasons, etc. As well as they just don't have proper online ettiquite in general
A lot of artists as well expressed frustration not getting so many attacks when they themselves have not put the effort to attack anyone else that isn't their mutual, friend or their fav artist. The point of the game is to give art to as many people as possible. You can draw for your friends and mutuals any other time during the year
The bullying just never stops (bullying should never be happening in the first place yet here we are) and I think tiktok has really amplified that this year with a lot of it's users having very little to no online social ettiquite or tact for that matter. Even more ironic bc it's not even that hard to not be a prick online.
Tldr for future artists who wants to join artfight next year, stay far, far away from tiktok and you'll have a much more pleasant time. There are so many resources online that isn't from tiktok that holds your hand and guides you through artfight
ive been doing artfight for a few years now and im glad that i didn't encounter any toxic tiktok users so id say most of the toxic part of it is contained on tiktok (from what i see). I do see other people saying they have though. So id advise anybody who wants to join to have their artistic friends join along with them. That's what I did for my first year and that's probably the reason why there has been no issues for me. People tend to put their friends' links on their profile so you can also raise your chances of being attacked.
ALSO
if you want to attack "big name" artists (eg. featured members or mods), don't expect an revenge (or even a comment) because they're usually overloaded with other people attacking them. If you want revenges, try going for people who have a 60% or higher battle ratio . Either way, you arent entitled to any art and complaining about it on tiktok is probably going to drive people away from drawing your characters.
This was the first year I partook in ArtFight simply because I was unemployed, and each year before was working 40+ hours a week so had no time for it. I LOVED it. I had so much fun drawing people's OC's and just having a great time. I especially love finding young or inexperienced artists and giving them artwork. I'm excited for next year!
Art fight was a big deal last month, I've seen many Art fight live streams on UA-cam and it was pretty interesting. Thank you for making a video regarding this.
I feel like the website should tell you who to attack, either a random user button or a random assignment.
I’ve been participating in Art Fight for 3 or 4 years now and I don’t use tiktok at all so the only change I noticed was an increase in Mass Attacks (3+ characters drawn in one image). Mass attacks themselves I don’t have any issue with (my children have been in some phenomenal ones) but most of the attacks I received this year were of my goofy simple doodle characters. There was a stark difference between the artists who enjoyed the character and the ones that used them just because it was easy. It was a bit personally upsetting that with only one exception, people only seemed to be interested in my most simplistic and shallow characters but ultimately, no one on Art Fight is obligated to do more than what they want or can and also follow the rules.
I don’t like when other artists say you NEED to do one thing or another, like fill out an artist sheet because those aren’t necessary for being in the community; you can post character art or just talk about your characters and BE part of the community and achieve the same effect. The perceived general tiktok attitude to AF feels commodified for what is supposed to be a celebration
Art fights always been just a fun and welcoming event to all skill sets/levels of artist. Its sad when people come in making others feel less than or bad about participating.
Hope this drama doesn't discourage artists from trying art fight. It really is fun if you follow the spirit of it, which is giving art to others. Not demanding it in return. I tried for the first time this year, and had a blast.
I'm a competitive person, and wanted to push myself to see how much art I could get out. In the end, a ton of friends AND total strangers attacked me, and I had a blast trying to revenge every single one.
For those not getting many attacks, that's your chance to attack everyone in sight, and really chase the thrill of seeing your battle ratio go higher and higher.
I’ve been in Artfight since 2017 (when it was Sun vs Moon) and I’ve always been so happy to get art attacks from artists of all skill levels! I like to see the effort they put into the attack, and it’s just straight up flattering to receive an attack period! I’m always grateful for each attack I get🙏
Artfight is supposed to be fun for everyone, and it’s disappointing to even hear that people actually complain about getting attacks from beginning artists :(
If you want a drawing of your oc’s that is “good” (ie not drawn by a beginner or specific style) you should probably commission someone instead of being picky/rude. All artists start somewhere, and it’s discouraging for beginner artists to be pushed out for “bad” artwork.
Well artfight is supposed to be a fun challenge to do. I couldn't participate this year (and of course it's when i got attacked the most) , but the years before i had a blast drawing other people characters and making them happy! I always love to see people draw my oc no matter there level of skills. This years i got four attacks, two from what look like begginners but i still find my oc in there style cute.
I can't wait for next year so i can participate.
I had played in art fight before and again for a little bit this year, I just generally hate the website with how weirdly layed out and having the TikTok screaming of art style hate and oc hate isn’t helping it. In the entirety of what I’ve played I’ve only gotten 5 attacks at me, which sucks to have only big creators getting tons and tons of art while people who are just doing art fight for fun are only getting 5 (more or less) attacks. I feel like the whole thing could be run way better but it just isn’t. Until then I just won’t be playing in art fight ever again and will just do art trades or little art fights with my friend groups. It’s really sad to see a concept as cool as fighting with art be displayed like this and have poor sportsmanship and, in my opinion, a hard to navigate and use website.
I was on the defensive pretty much the entirety of artfight, which was insane to me since I'm not a large artist by any means. I revenged as much as I was able and I had a few people tell me I was their first target to attack! It made me so happy that they chose me of all artists to attack first :) The only problem I had with new artists was that when I went to revenge them, they only had one or few character(s) with a low quality or hard to make out reference (I did try my best to revenge them though!!). But overall artfight was a fantastic year for me. In past years I was always on the offense, so being on the defense this year was a wonderful and shocking change of pace lol
I've never really heard about it until you brought it up. Its cool that this is bringing people to draw!
I have been curious about art fight for the last couple years, but I’ve had a hard time fully understanding how it works. I appreciate the simplification
Fan art is one of the most incredible things you can get or gift someone. I have cherished every piece I have ever received, no matter the skill or style. The fact that someone liked an idea of mine so much that they were moved put pen to paper means so much to me!!
The funnest interaction I’ve had was when, several years ago, my sister and I made a series of illustrated Lovecraft books called Littlest Lovecraft. Someone loved them so much, they made real versions of a clay relief I drew and sent it to us. I was so excited, I sent them a message about how it was the coolest thing I’ve ever gotten, how amazing they were, and how humbled I was by their gift. They replied back with how much they loved my art and how excited they were that I was even talking to them! Just two artists nerding out on each other!! It was a magical time 😂
Oh yeah definitely sounds like you'd enjoy Art fight! I hope you will be able to join next yearr!!
I was seeing art fights all over Instagram, and was so confused. I thought it was just a bunch of ‘draw this in your styles’, and didn’t understand why they were calling it a fight. This really clears things up.
I love you please don’t die ❤
Why would he die lmao
😭😭😭i'll try my best
not if i cant help it 👹👹👹
@@MohammedAgbadi 😔😔😔😔
I love you please don’t commit manslaughter on march 18th 2025 and create a massive cover-up story involving 5 other art youtubers
It was only my second year doing art fight, but I did notice it was quite diferent from usual, I didn't get attacked by people I didn't know, when last year it was all artists I've never heard about that found me randomly. That's the fun of it in my opinion, discovering cool artists that happen to see your oc and find them cool enough to draw them. I do attack friends during art fight, but also the random character option is such a fun way to discover ocs!
But I still had fun either way, and got to draw cool poses!
i mostly stuck around with my friends this year so i managed to avoid any drama etc 😭i loved getting any art from others though!! “quality” of the art didn’t matter- its like cake! im happy to get cake, even if its not fancy or made by a professional, cake is tasty so im happy ^_^
glad im on the supportive small creators but almost everyone is friends with everyone side of tiktok and not whatever that is1!!
I didn't know art fight was a thing, hope I can join next year :D
Oohh yess hope you do!! You can already set up an account beforehand btw :>
@@Catsgirl32 Imma set a reminder on my calendar 3 days before it'll start next year and set up my account right now
I joined artfight just this year and bc i dont have tiktok i didnt know about the tiktok-fication until july ended. I attacked some mutuals, some other strangers, received some attacks, i got multiple of my new oc’s which i saw super excited about because i never felt so seen tbh.
I was scared as f because i am a beginner artist and still struggle with alot of things. I made an attack on one of my fav artists, who was wayy more skilled than me, and they said in the comments they are happy to see me on artfight and love the drawing. I was kicking my feet and giggling for HOURS. honestly one of the best things ever.
Yes some of my other artists didn’t answer, or didn’t even join artfight, but getting to see and draw some of those wonderful and creative characters is absolutely amazing. And the fact that I have an “excuse” to draw it makes it even better, bc it feels like im not gonna be bullied since its just an attack in a game. And seeing my characters in different artstyles is so cool and just amazing, like your oc is going through different universes and omfg its so fun :)
This just makes me glad once again that I don't use TikTok or most other Social Media Apps and just had fun drawing all the different OCs.
After all, ArtFight should not just be about getting free art, but about the joy of giving and the exitement when you get something back.
This past year was my first time (I don't use TikTok), and it was such a fun experience! It was a little discouraging getting less attacks than defenses, but it's all worth it for that heart-drop-happy-for-the-whole-weekend feeling when someone really brings your character to life. Looking forward to next year!
I love art fight and don't let tiktok ruin it for you. Just have fun. Also I love it when people who are super talented draw for people who are just beginning. I did a lot of that this year and honestly it's the most fun I've ever had with art fight. And I saw a ton of people doing the same thing. Honestly, I wish people would get off of tiktok and live in the real world. I promise you things are better when you actually see not everyone is toxic and mean.
i never participated in artfights because i'm often pretty burned out from drawing. i really thought all the attacks you got you had to reply to. knowing that i can defend and attack at my own pace definitely makes me more interested in joining next time :D
NEWGENS 😭😭😭 artfight is not a tiktok art trend it’s been around since THE MID 2010S YALL 😭😭😭
Some artists need to be reminded that we are all "beginners" at some point in our lives, and that the only way to improve is to keep going! Encouragement and community does so, so much more for learning than tearing people down. I really do weep for the emerging new artists who have been ostracised and bullied by these individuals, I know from experience that these encounters instill mindsets that are EXTREMELY difficult to get out of...
The entire point of Artfight is not the score or even getting art of your own characters - what it IS about to me is the celebration and uplifting of other artists' creativity and ideas, and expanding your own comfort zone and experience!
I’m so joining Art fight next year!!!!!
W! love to see it
Yaayyy love that for you!! :DD (Fyi you can already set up an account beforehand ^^ Might help to make joining next year easier hehe)
@@Catsgirl32 for real? Let me go do that now
same I didn't even know this was a thing. It looks very fun!
you should i played for the first time this year it was rlly fun :D
This sounds like a lot of fun, thank you for sharing.
I can never understand not wanting beginner artists to draw your OCs like???? You're actively refusing free fanart. In my two years of participating I've had a bunch of attacks from beginner artists and as a smaller artist you always appreciate that; regardless of skill level.
I always saw Art Fight as nothing more than a casual community event; where you give to other artists and draw some cool OCs, it was never a competition and really, it isn't that deep. I don't know what that app does to artist's brains to make them so drama fuelled and entitled all the time.
Thank god I dont use tiktok and ESPECIALLY that i'm not on art tiktok.
I had a blast with art fight. I only did 6 attacks, but I did get 4 defenses. I made sure to comment on all of them and show that I appreciated people drawing my OCs. Something I love about art is that anyone can do it. We shouldn’t be talking down to young artists just because they haven’t had as many years to practice as you.
All of us had crappy art when we were younger, only difference is that younger kids these days have more places to show their art. We should be encouraging and supporting them, not tearing them down before they even get a fair chance to start.
I made an account on artfight but I didn't participate, I was so scared that people on there either wouldn't like my art style or how I drew their characters, I also simply didn't have the time to churn out art or make a spreadsheet of any of my characters for it, but, I'm definitely going to prepare for next year, it does seem like a lot of fun and I'll feel awful if I don't partake in it and get some practice in for drawing new character designs. My goal for next year is to try and do an entire piece at least once a day. That might be difficult with my current schedule, but, I think I could do it.
As someone who used to have a passion of trying to learn to draw and eventually gave up due to mental issues that developed from it {Perfectionism and such} as well as people straight up only wanting to help improve the talented starters it saddens me to watch new starting artists get shamed and I can only hope they don't give up like I did. They deserve to find that passion and hold onto it without entitled artists causing them to be anxious over their art being shown.
Off topic BUT IS THAT THE KND INTRO SONG FROM 0:15
Yes!!!!!
YEAHHH!!!!
It will forever be a bop, that and the ben10 intro.
I get excited about all attacks I receive on Art Fight. It feels so amazing knowing that ppl liked my OCs enough to go out of their way to draw them. I hope it’s a little better next year bc beginner artists deserve to have just as much fun as everyone else
This video came across my fyp just a little while after I was wondering what art fight was lol I’m working on improving my art so I’ll be ready for the next art fight tho since I missed this one!!
Oohh that's fun! I hope you will join next yearr :DD Definitely keep in mind that any 'level' of art is welcome, so if by next july you feel like you haven't 'improved' enough I do hope you will still join and use Art fight to improve further!! Tons of people use it to practise, actually, so don't worry too much and have fun!! :>
I’ve been doing artfight for seven years, when I started my first year I got amazing art from so many people and it made me so happy! As I grew I’ve made more black and/or fat characters, TikTok isn’t exactly friendly to that so I was definitely worried it would make my artfight experience bad.
It wasn’t though! It was just like any other year and I still got amazing pieces of art and I made an attack almost everyday!
There was only one bad interaction I had, it ended up souring my experience just a bit but I’m over it now!!
I did ArtFight this year and I had a very good time! I really enjoyed getting to draw characters and learn new things. I feel TikTok over exaggerated a lot of ArtFights issues. Like though it’s good to give criticism to the ArtFight devs and you’re aloud to be mad, at the end of the day it’s a game. It’s for fun. It’s not meant to be taken seriously. I know that a lot of people, including myself, can take it a bit too seriously, at the end of the day, it’s just a game.
I joined for the first time this year, and I honestly had a great time! I took it as an opportunity to test out different features of my drawing tablet and to push myself to use different techniques. I don't use TikTok, but I absolutely use Instagram, and the types of comments talked about in regards to beginners just trying their best and weirdly entitled people are totally still there, but I've gotta say that the experience can still be really positive!
You don't need to be attacked by the best of the best to still be kicking your feet and giggling over every comment and every drawing. Draw what makes you happy, engage with what you see in ways that uplift the community.
Personally, I hardly realized that the controversies were this widely felt, and I hope that goes for a good portion of users.
I didn't know there's a whole drama surrounding Art Fights because I only see the Mass Attacks here on YT because my friends do it.
They invite me to join but I'm just really busy, and I genuinely thought that the purpose of Art Fight is that you pick someone else's OC and then have them and your own OC beat up each other or something 😭😭 lmaooooo
I wasn’t aware of the TikTok drama, but I really enjoyed Artfight this year! I loved making attacks and was so excited seeing the attacks I got, one of them was a mass attack and I thought it was incredible!! I was surprised to hear people saying mass attacks are bad when they clearly take more effort to make than regular attacks… any art I get of my ocs makes me so happy tbh
i had a lot of fun this year! i only made minecraft 3D models and even a minecraft mod for someone DBHAJWSHJBA i didnt get to revenge everyone but im planning on doing a mass attack minecraft mod for people to play on next year!! i didnt even realize there was drama at all, i was just doing what i wanted to do and enjoying peoples happy responses if they responded! this is my second year and i got like,, 5 times the amount of attacks than i did last year!! (around 40 whole attacks this year) and im really happy about it!!
this was my 4th year of art fight! I don't have tiktok, never have, and I definitely feel that was a good decision! I always knew art fight was about fun, it's about getting you to draw for others!! the point of art fight is giving, not receiving. every year for me has been absolutely wonderful! it's gotten me to draw so much more than I used to! :)
I'm honestly shocked by how many people are afraid to join art fight. If you enjoy drawing, you will love art fight. Even if you only draw little doodles. Even if you only draw one or two things. It's still wonderful
i've been doing artfight for years and i'm slowly considering not participating anymore. i rarely receive any attacks or revenges for the artwork i send, and it's starting to make me feel like my art just isn't desired by anybody. i'm not a beginner, and i tend to attack/follow artists i feel are around my skill level because i feel like a trade there would be seen as more "fair," but i also definitely consider and attack artists further below my skill level as well. if i like the art style, and i think i can reasonably draw their characters, i add them. i also accept attacks from anyone, skill level or team notwithstanding. i'm happy to receive artwork from almost anyone. the problem is it doesn't feel like anyone wants to receive it from me, and it's been incredibly discouraging. i know the whole point isn't about "receiving" it's about giving, but when it starts to feel like all you do is give, it also starts to feel like nobody wants you there.
the only ones i DON'T like to receive are low effort pieces that i think were created rapidly in order to farm artwork from higher level artists... and i can tell which ones those are. you go to their profile and they have hundreds if not thousands of attacks and basically everyone they attack is very high level in skill when their own artwork looks like they slapped it together in paint in 15 minutes. i'm not against beginners. i've received artwork from novices and beginners and i cherish it. the clear difference between a beginner and the rapid fire farmers is effort. beginners don't have to be "good" to clearly show effort and thought in their work. i can tell when the artist took time to read the descriptions of the characters, put thought into the posing, the colors, the outfits, the dialogue/background/props/shading (if any). that's what i appreciate. idgaf if they've figured out hands yet. if i added in the description that my character doesn't smile or they love dogs, and you drew them all serious or with some random dog, that's important to me. i received a piece this year where they CLEARLY read what i wrote and put so much thought and care into what they drew for me, and it is easily one of my favorite pieces i have ever received. i hope tiktok doesn't ruin it like it ruins everything else. i don't use tiktok so i didn't notice there was any "drama" or whatever. i played like i always do and while this was definitely my slowest year personally, it was also the year i received one of my most favorite artfight attacks ever, so i'm glad i played.
As someone who has done artfight, and especially dedicated myself to it this year, it was so rewarding just to draw other people's ocs and for them to be happy and comment how much they were excited someone drew their oc. It's wonderful when you receive art back, but it shouldn't be expected. And drawing art for beginner artists are particularly rewarding to me since I know when I started it would have been so amazing to get art of my oc like that from someone.
so glad that I'm blissfully ignorant of tiktok's existence most the time, enjoyed this year's artfight