Hot take: showing your process shots matters way more than the final piece

I was chatting with a curator named Jen at the Denver Digital Art Fair last month, and she straight up said she scrolls past finished works without a single WIP image. She told me she gets hundreds of submissions a day, and the ones with 3-4 progress shots get 80% more clicks from her. It hit different because I used to only post polished final renders, but now I feel like I'm just feeding the algorithm wrong. Has anyone else noticed their engagement jump after sharing rough sketches or layer breakdowns?

2 comments

2 Comments

christopher71311d ago

Wait, you mean I've been wasting time on perfect lighting and texture work when I should just be posting my ugly sketch layers? Because that's exactly what happened to me - I threw up a quick timelapse of my color blocking and it got triple the likes of my final polished piece. The algorithm is weird like that, man.

hugo_nelson11d ago

Ha, nah but think about it from their side though! The polished piece is basically the finished product, everyone knows what that looks like. But the raw sketch layer stuff? That's like getting a backstage pass to someone's process. People love feeling like they're seeing the "real" messy creative side, it makes them feel more connected to the artist.