2y ago

Is Lemmy a good place to share personal projects and art?

I noticed that a lot of the posts on Lemmy are news, memes, and interesting discussions. I like the regular flow of content we have, and I find a lot of it engaging.

However, maybe it's just me, but I haven't seen a lot of people sharing projects that they personally worked on, be it art, games, programs, music, etc. I've been working on a programming project for a year now, and I've thought about sharing it on Lemmy to see what people think of it, but the lack of projects from other people deters me. My imposter syndrome also kicks into high gear and tells me that my creations just aren't good enough to be on Lemmy, and I shouldn't taint people's feeds with my mediocre endeavors; after all, I and plenty of other people are enjoying the content here as-is.

So, I'm interested to hear about others' perspectives: Would you like to see more user-created projects and art, or would you prefer to primarily see more news and focused discussions instead?

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The idea of something being "not good enough for Lemmy" kinda amuses me a little bit. I mean, I get we're trying to do some decent stuff around here, but look around. This place is still pretty roughshod.
- We had a post about not pooping for 3 days as one of the main things to happen here. Any art project is good enough for lemmy lol
  
  Nothing is good enough for Lemmy. Anything you post will inevitably be downvoted. Because users here care more about making sure the world knows they don't personally like something than about encouraging original content.

The lack of project-based content is just due to size and a lack of engagement. Try engaging and see if anyone else joins in 😜

I think the main reason lemmy is mostly news, memes and discussion atm is that thats something everyone can do/ participate in. And since there arent that many users right now, thats what most content is.
Though I for one would be very happy to see such projects: self-made art, music, crafting, cooking, whatever else people are up to. And I dont think im alone in that
- !knitting@lemmy.world
  !crochet@lemmy.ca
  !sewing@lemmy.world
  !lemmy_stitch@sh.itjust.works
  !artshare@lemmy.world
  !gamedev@lemmy.blahaj.zone
  !origami@normalcity.life (and more recently !origami@feddit.de)
  !woodworking@lemmy.ca
  !printmaking@lemmy.ml
  !tabletopminis@lemmy.world
  etc etc

Can't speak for everyone, but I'd love to see more personal projects done by others posted on Lemmy--whether it's something god-teir or mediocre (because well, what you may call mediocre, some might call pretty good. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder and all that).
- Maybe we should grow c/imadethis Edit: trying a proper way to link… !imadethis@lemmy.world
  
  Interface is telling me you have two replies but won't let me see them so if this is a repeat, apologies! But !imadethis@lemm.ee is already an active thing, probably don't need two :D
  Also see my other comment in this thread for an off-the-top-of-my-head list of creative project type communities.
  
  Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !imadethis@lemmy.world
- Tldr: I say POST AWAY! I WANNA SEE YOUR PROJECTS!
  As I've progressed in skill in some hobbies, I see people posting "Incredible work! I love ______!" on something that, to be honest, is mediocre at best.
  But guess what! It is incredible work, because someone put their time and skill into it, and every new thing they make is advancing their skill. Whether you personally have surpassed that level, or not, is irrelevant.
  I love seeing people post their rough drafts, their works in progress, the thing they JUST got into last week and this is their first attempt.
  Every master craftsman started out with their first project. And it probably wasn't very good. But who cares, it's their passion, and they stuck with it.
  I make knives and swords as a hobby, and sell some on occasion. I actually still have my very first knife sitting on my bench. I use it every time I make a new one. My second knife was bought by a friend for $40, and he still has it. Won't sell it back to me even though I've offered more recent ones in trade plus the original 40. Because I made it, and even though more recent stuff may look fancier, and probably much higher quality, it was important to me, and therefore to him. I don't think he realizes how much hearing that meant to me.
  So sure, a couple people might go in pointing out flaws and calling it bad, but you made it, you put time and effort into it, it's worthy of my screen time. I'm excited to see what you change or improve on next time!

Definitely. There is a small but growing community at !watercolor@lemmy.ml for example. There are many creative communities here.
- Thanks for sharing that, and to add on, so far I've found:
  !art@lemmy.ml
  !drawing@lemmy.world
  Both of which specialise in members sharing their own work.
  
  Brilliant

My imposter syndrome also kicks into high gear and tells me that my creations just aren’t good enough to be on Lemmy, and I shouldn’t taint people’s feeds with my mediocre endeavors; after all, I and plenty of other people are enjoying the content here as-is.
A cool thing with Lemmy (or the fedi) is that it's not yet full of professional artists trying to get sponsor and sell you stuff. So even if you're an amateur please share. We need to see more "sloppy content" done with "real finger", during the 2 hour free you had between work and cooking/eating dinner.
- slop is an aesthetic ive recently got into. everyone should post their garbagecore creations, its cool.

Yes please share.

I've shared my "MS Paint"-like sockpuppet parody impressions over at !sockpuppetsociety as well as my own twists on memes and anime screenshot comics and such in !animepics, !animemes, etc. If I can post this and this and this and this, you can post something you made too.
Just find the right community for your art and maybe some people will enjoy it.
Don't be surprised if people blow raspberries at your work though; that's just kind of what people do with art. :p
- Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !sockpuppetsociety@lemmy.ca, !animepics@reddthat.com, !animemes@ani.social

Honestly, I'm a bit bored by all the news articles. I'd love to hear about other people's personal projects, lifestyle, qualitative information, stories and perspectives.
I'm subscribed to several communities about my hobbies. Microcontrollers, Linux, Programming and other non-computer stuff. But you're right. We're mainly posting the news here. And sometimes it feels more like a regular's table discussing politics than anything of substance that would touch me.
If it were to me, I think I'd rather read about what keeps you up at night or makes you happy, than discussing the n-th news article about world politics and which country is right and who is wrong. Same for tech-news. We can have both (and I think we should). But I think we could balance it a bit with more intimate and personal perspectives. Even if it's not professionally written or a completed project.
Edit: I forgot memes

Not mentioned yet, but !artshare@lemmy.world is a good place to share art specifically.
- I second this. I've seen some great stuff there.

this is the reason there are 50,000 instances across the fediverse. there are absolutely instances meant for personal project content like crafting.
the searching across instances is still stupid, i know there are a few projects out there attempting to build cross-fediverse content searching.
so it really depends on your project, and how specific a community you want to post it in

Feel free! Probably !programming@programming.dev could be a good place to do this?
You can also try !imadethis@lemm.ee

Yes, it's a great place. I would suggest trying to find a community here relating to your stuff.

I've been working on something for the Kirby community, but it's taking me time. I'd say the art and personal projects are what takes the community to the next level

I’ve been working on a graphic novel and have toyed with the idea of creating an instance and posting it here, chapter by chapter as I finish them, but sequential gallery-like image hosting is pretty bad and clunky, iirc. Does anyone know if there are any improvements slated in that regard, or if there are any solutions or workarounds to that effect?
- It probably makes more sense to host your novel somewhere else and post links to it chapter by chapter.
  I'd suggest doing one of the following:
  Host the images on a site that already supports image galleries and link to that. Most image hosts are kind of annoying, but this is an understandable way to do it if you don't want to run a website. (Maybe someone can chime in with a suggestion for whatever they think is the least annoying image gallery host in 2023.)
  Host the images yourself on a simple website. Webcomic artists have been doing that for many years, so there are lots of examples to draw from. (e.g. Gunnerkrigg Court)
  Zip the images up chapter by chapter and either self-host the zip or toss it on a file host like catbox.moe. If you structure it as a .cbz (i.e. zip up a folder with the images named in order like 1.jpg, 2.jpg, 3.jpg, ... and just change the extension from .zip to .cbz) then a number of document viewers (like evince) can be used to view the image sequence -- or people can just unpack the images and use their favorite image viewer on their computer.
  
  Thanks for the detailed reply! It’s a lot to think about, but I’ll definitely be mulling over the options! :)

Just go ahead. I've only posted a couple of photos of one of my cats and someone even asked me to post photos of my 6x1000-pieces puzzle table that shows one corner in one of the photos. I honestly haven't found the time to take photos of the table, there's always something on it or the glass covering the puzzles makes it hard to find a suitable angle, etc. Anyway, you see my point.

There are tons of creative / art / project focused communities here, you just don't tend to see them in the All feed for obvious reasons. Find one where your project fits, post it, worst that can happen is nobody sees it which isn't exactly the end of the world.
If you're struggling to figure out where it would fit, let us know vaguely what it is and maybe we can help! Also like someone else suggested !imadethis@lemm.ee is a good general catch-all.

I posted the end tables I made this month to !woodworking!woodworking@lemmy.ca

Be the change you want to see in Lemmy.

I have a community for my music project, but in my experience most project sharing on the Fediverse occurs on Mastodon. There are a few Lemmy communities for production-related discussions but they don't get much traffic or visibility.
Mastodon facilitates producer talk very well. From what I've seen, it also works well for visual artists. If you don't have an account then it might be worth signing up and checking it out.
At the same time, it would be great to have more sharing and discussion occur here on Lemmy. I'm always happy to see others' work, even if they are just beginners.

I mean fuck around and find out. Most people on lemmy are pretty chill and otherwise you will notice it soon enough if people don't like it. ¯(ツ)/¯

You've got nothing to lose, why not?

Yeah, why not?

only one way to find out, nerd

Tbh there are too many memes it's polluting this. Lemmy should filter them and give more space to criative communities

I like art and stuff, I just don't find it much. Over at !13thfloor (@13thfloor) the original creator was encouraging it so I did write an OC text using cut-up method and the lyrics that had been posted there and posted it.
Few days later I got someone contacting me asking to use it for some kind of art magik performance. So that was nice.
Not sure how to get that stuff happening more though.

I rarely even look at the sublemmy or whatever we are calling it. I have it on All and just browse new, top, etc. Whatever.
I'm surprised it hasn't devolved into 4chan yet tbh.
- Community. We call it a community.
  
  Thanks. That... Makes sense.

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