Lit Illustrations - New Feature, Feedback Needed

[Manu]

Hello Lit Artists!

For several years, we have been planning to launch a section of Literotica for creators of adult art to share their work with Lit readers. Unfortunately, this feature kept getting delayed due to other projects, hardware and software upgrades, technical issues (images use far more bandwidth than stories, so we have to be ready for that), etc. But, finally, I am very happy to announce that we are getting close to launching Literotica Illustrations.

I have been discussing this feature with THROBBS for a short time and he agreed that it might be a good idea to open a thread here in the forum to discuss it publicly. If you are an artist who is interested in helping to test out the feature, please PM me and I can give you access to an early version of the Illustrations submissions page. We already have a second version in the works, but getting feedback on the first version will still help us to improve the second version. We are hoping that we can launch the feature with the second version of the submission page, but there is always a chance that it might take a third version if there are too many issues with version 2.

Please PM me if you are interested in testing this feature, or feel free to post any suggestions you might have here in this thread. Please be aware up front that we will probably not be able to incorporate all of your suggestions into the first launch version of Literotica Illustrations. But, this is a very long term project, so even complex ideas/suggestions - those that might take a year or more to implement - are encouraged.

Thank you for your time and for your input and sorry to make a post without art in it here in your art forum.

 

[Manu]

This is a screen cap of a possible next version of the Lit Illustrations Submission Page. This is not a final version, but a mockup to show the new help elements. Each of the question marks is clickable - and when clicked they will shows on-page hints to give you more info on filling out that form field.

 

[Manu]

I guess I posted too big of an image for the forum. Here is another attempt.

 

[Dixiedevil67]

Everything looks great. The only thing I can suggest is additional categories. There is erotic art and comic art. Perhaps comic art, drawings and sketches, paintings, 3-D art, computer art, and photograhy. Glad to see the artists getting some recognition. Sometimes good illustrations bring a story to life. Thanks for your work.

 

[wet_special]

"Category" when it comes to illustrations is okay, and I think Dixiedevil summed up the categories well. There might be other categories, I can't think of any. My thrust is with the keywords.

I know we are only seeing the submission method here, and we are talking about the illustration of works. But we are also submitting art for art's sake, and right now the browsing method, of flipping through threads and so on, is a little primitive.

Consider the model of a keyword driven image site, Sankaku Complex for example. The image thumbnails are tagged with keywords (you see the keywords when you mouse over the thumbs) and they appear on the left of the page that the image loads as clickable links.

The artist appears in maroon, character names appear in green, titles of associated works appear in magenta, the rest in plain red. Thus each type of keyword is easily identifiable.

It may seem ambitious but keywords are a great way to sort and browse images. But only if the keyword system is fine tuned and integrated into the browsing experience.

That means an image-keyword moderator. As new images are submitted, keywords the artist uses to tag their image would be fine tuned and added to by a moderator, as needed. The artist is not required to be familiar with the hundreds of available keywords. A typical image would have five to twenty keywords.

The moderator would also identify keywords with multiple spellings, particularly for keywords with spaces, dashes, and for names (whether it be the first, last, or full name of a character). Keywords would not be case-sensitive, either.

That's just my two cents, I think that we should at minimum provide a check box that artists can check to give permission to moderators to change the keywords associated with their image. That alone is probably a big ask.

So, thanks for taking this project on Manu, I know it's a lot to ask and it may not even match your goal for how it should look. Please consider it though. Either way, this is a light-years improvement over the previous submission system.

 

[Ann Vremont]

Would viewers be able to leave comments and ratings on images?

See similar to renderotica.com galleries (hope it's ok to put that in there - basic galleries are free but other areas of the site are pay areas)

edited to add - galleries are under the forums - I'm strokefairy there
https://www.renderotica.com/gallery/browseimages.php?do=member&imageuser=29632

 

[THROBBS]

BTW This is an ANCIENT THREAD.




Coming along, singing a cowboy song.

s-l-o-w-l-y.

I do question allowing submissions of art work by "3rd parties".
I've seen a number of authors who are submitting artwork that is not their own. Many of those are giving credit to the artist, which should be the case, but...

Literotica does not post stories that are not written by LIT members. I feel the same should hold true for the visual arts.

Unless there is a separate venue.

This issue affects voting and favorites etc. — some folk are getting votes for what they have found or commissioned.

It's a bit like having a "second" in a duel.

******
At some point, having categories (like those for stories) would be helpful. Male, Female, MF, MM, FF, MFM, FFM, Group, fantasy/sci-fi... and tags searchability.

Also categories for techniques I understand there is Venn overlap — digital painting vs wire frame rigs being setup, dressed and lit. hand drawn, hand drawn with digital augmentation (and the reverse). It can get complicated, of course.

(I personally detest most of the DAZ/Poser works).

Thumbnails would be cool too, though I get that would likely be a bigger challenge to implement.

Something else that is worth pondering— A type of scoring/voting which is a bit like gymnastics (Risk, Originality, Virtuosity)... so 1-5 for subject matter, 1-5 execution/skill, 1-5 composition, 1-5 eroticism/hotness... or whatever.

 

[THROBBS]

1 step forward, 1 step back...?

Viewing in "classic" mode, at this time does not allow votes on art work to actually stick. In the new improved, sometimes called "beta" version, there are a few other issues. For example the "Recently viewed" column vs "most talked about"

Also, in the New version there is a column for popular "authors".
Yep, illustrators/artists are "authors" of visual works. On the other hand, not every author of written work is an illustrator, though one could call an author an artist of word craft.

ANYWAY...
In the classic version, Popular Authors, seems to refer to those who have submitted "popular" (I'm not quite sure what metric is used here — favorites, votes, views...a combo?)

Whereas in the NEW version/BETA it is a column called "TOP EROTIC ART ILLUSTRA AUTHORS"... and the list seems to be weighted by their stories. In many cases their "illustrations" are not highly rated.

 

[Starlust]

THROBBS is alive!!

 

[29wordsforsnow]

Awards for Artworks

Damn, almost missed that artworks now finally are in the monthly contest too...so we will have them in The 2021 Literotica Awards.

Looking forward to that

 

[THROBBS]

Damn, almost missed that artworks now finally are in the monthly contest too...so we will have them in The 2021 Literotica Awards.

Looking forward to that

I had no idea.

Alicemoon has some great work!



Takes 50 votes to get in. I only have one work (out of 60) with that many votes. And it seems like a weird aberration as it is almost ten times the number of the others. It does not have the highest view count (not in the top ten) *shrug* No idea how to motivate folk to vote. Or comment. or even look. I suppose better work and patience would help. I don't really have the patience (for either LOL)

 

[29wordsforsnow]

I had no idea.

Alicemoon has some great work!

yep!!