u/nyanprincess

Hi all, I gathered your thoughts on this previous post, and it's time for a change. r/ThumbnailArtists is officially pivoting into its intended purpose, which is a niche community for illustration based thumbnail artists. If this change upsets you, please read the following notes before commenting:

1. There are already plenty of other subreddits for all styles of thumbnails (including generative AI) such as r/Thumbnails, r/CreatorServices, or our friends over at r/YouTubeThumbnailHub. This will be a space for those making or looking for illustrated thumbnails to have discussions, network, and collaborate.
2. It was never my intention to make a massive subreddit and grow out a large mod team to support it. While I'm incredibly grateful to the response this subreddit has gotten over the past 2 years (wow!), it's slowly becoming something outside of my interests and specialties. If someone else wants to take up the reins and create a new subreddit for general thumbnails without the use of generative AI, you have my full support.

To clarify what "illustrated thumbnails" are, we will be accepting thumbnails where the primary subject matter OR majority is hand-drawn. This will usually be a character, but allows for some wiggle room for non-character focused work. So text, icons, and game backgrounds can still be included, as long as the main focus or majority of the thumbnail is illustrated by you. Artists can still link portfolios that contain a mix of edited and illustrated work, but any samples posted directly here should be illustrated.

There will be more changes rolled out over the next couple of months, but this is the first big one. Some other changes will take a bit more work on the back end to bring to fruition, here's my plans so far:

• Create an Artist flair that users can get via Google Form application. Only those with an Artist flair will be able to make Looking for Work posts, or comment on Hiring posts.
• Create a pinned Hiring master post that Artists can drop their information on (and update as they see fit) so that prospective clients can see and reach out to Artists in one place, even before posting.
• Create a new post flair for free offers, where verified Artists can offer free thumbnails to build out their portfolio. (Free work requests will still not be allowed from hirers, but I'm less concerned about spam or low quality posts undercutting our artists when the whole group is vetted)
• More auto-responses and better documentation of the rules.

Again, thank you so much for being here. I hope to make this subreddit the best that it can be, I just want to nudge it in a direction that I find sustainable. I will be slowly removing previous non-illustrated posts to support the future of the subreddit.

TLDR: r/ThumbnailArtists is pivoting to accept illustrated thumbnails only. More changes to support this on the way.

Hey guys, just want to pop through and discuss my thoughts on the state of this subreddit and get the community’s thoughts as well.

I originally made this subreddit to create a place for hand-drawn thumbnail artists to share their creations/experiences, network, and maybe get gigs too! It was radio silence for a while as I asked artists to share their work here. Once a few Hiring posts were made though, the Looking for Work posts increased steadily. Photoshop artists started sharing their work here, so I kept letting them through to keep the subreddit more active.

r/ThumbnailArtists has always been an anti-AI community. But, as more and more thumbnail creators are using AI in their workflows, it’s increasingly difficult for me as a solo moderator to identify generative AI usage and remove it from the subreddit. When these creators are banned from the community, I end up arguing with them in Modmail to justify my own community’s rules.

I don’t want to moderate a community that accepts AI work. I would sooner delete the subreddit than allow generative AI work. My question is though, should the subreddit remain as is, or should it be steered back in the direction of hand-drawn thumbnails? Should that definition be expanded to allow 3D rendered thumbnails for niches like Brawlstars and Minecraft?

I’d love some opinions from the community before making a final decision. I don’t know that this current moderation process is sustainable, so if the subreddit remains as is, I may need to add to the mod team.