Digital Artefact – Making

My DA has been going smoothly and I have been posting regularly. One change that I made was to change my Instagram account to a business/creator account. Although I probably should have been doing this from the beginning, I completely forgot about this feature and I installed it on the 14 of October, just after my Prototyping was due. Since then, it has been interesting to view metrics and what kind of people watch me, with definitive answers and stats.

The most interesting metrics are posted below-

This stat shows me the top locations and age range that I am followed in. It’s no surprise that Sydney and Wollongong are at the top of the list, but it was interesting to see San Diego and Singapore there. Sydney is still the most popular by far, so I think interacting with my peers at Uni and friends have done the bulk of the work.

As for age range, I’m not surprised that my most popular demographic is 18-24 yr. olds. Most young artists and followers are that age too, plus I also fit into that demographic as well. I do find it surprising that the 13-17 yr. old demographic is not higher. After that, the age ranges seem unsurprising to me, and its good to see it in a concrete form, rather than guessing about it.

This graph shows my growth over a week, which is only 3 followers, but better than nothing! It’s cool to see the growth and when people joined.

Apparently lots of people saw my account on Friday, which was when the second issue of the PineZine went live, and the creator tagged me in stories and as a result I got a bit of traffic from that. I also hope to get more traffic on the 24th due to the recently released “Artist Interview” with Chae Magazine, where my name was also posted in the story. It’s cool to see how far my reach and impresson is, but to me it just seems like a blur of numbers, so I don’t put too much stock into those.

For ease of access I also added some highlights so that people could view my artwork faster, as well as a place for all of my Inktober drawings to go.

Alright, now for even more stats to wrap up the “Making” portion of my DA-

I have posted a total of 28 drawings on Instagram since 29th of July, when the semester ‘officially’ started. Including the recently archived 7 posts of Inktober (That are now in my highlight) and others, the total adds up to 35 total posts over the entire semester. That also doesn’t include the ‘Meme of the Week’ Drawings that I did for #bcm114 on Twitter, which was 7 drawings in total as well as the two comics I created.

It was a fun experience over the course of BCM114 to make content for both Instagram and Twitter. This subject helped me to analyse my social media accounts more, and focus on why I’m doing things, and not just randomly try to please everyone that likes art. You need to find a niche, and keep growing in that niche, if possible. My tutor, Peter Goderie, specifically, asked some very good questions that basically amount to ‘why are you doing this, why did you start in the first place, what keeps you going?’ All seem like simple questions on the surface, but are a lot deeper and tangled than they seem. Once in assignment feedback he asked why I feel the way I do about monetization and do I feel that I would like to make money by making art, but I feel like I’m not a “professional” artist? Which were some good questions that resonated with me.

They’re all questions that need to be explored now, or in the future, and are part of roadblocks on my journey to being more confident with my artwork on a digital platform. Here are some of my favourite artworks I’ve created over this semester!

After the Prototyping stage, I realized that I was putting a bit too much on my plate in terms of content, and there are some aspects that I didn’t enjoy about my DA. The weekly meme post was one of them, and although it was cool at the start, it was just a way to fill my tweets, and copying a meme isn’t exactly creative so I dropped it. I also stopped trying to ‘please’ the Uni crowd, as it’s clear that they are not my intended audience (They tend to like mental health, relaxation, makeup, healthy food /coffee etc. more than artworks), but I still appreciate every person that liked and commented on them, so I just cross-posted from Instagram.

The Making stage was short, but I enjoyed creating each and every one of my artworks, as it sits there as a reminder of what I have accomplished.