Artist Community: Initial Interviews Report

The following report covers initial qualitative interviews with members of an art-focused Discord community. All interviewee names have been anonymized. The goal was to understand member motivations, pain points, and engagement patterns to inform community development priorities.

I'm excited that all of these artists Carl suggested I interview are at different stages of their journey in the discord, and all have different needs and wants out of it. There are lots of common themes that they all bring up, but in some ways we can view them as different buyer profiles. We would have to do more research to make sure they are representative, of course, but the things they say track with what different artists would want at different stages of the consumer's journey in the community ecosystem.

I think everyone reading knows this, but Carl is his own best asset. The amount of devotion that Clare and Joe have for Carl is remarkable. All three of these community members, in one way or another, are here because Carl reached out to them and made some personal connection, either through a video or a private discord message. Carl has made them feel seen, identified the insecurities and problems they have felt, and made them feel that he can help them overcome the difficulties they are facing in becoming a professional artist. More importantly, he has delivered on these promises, and now they are inspired to pass this on. I get the feeling these artists view Carl as a role model and mentor, and seem to seek to emulate him in some ways, particularly in how they interact with newer artists. There are the seeds here for a great community that really feels invested in each other's professional and artistic development.

Interviewee Profiles

Let's look at each of these artists and talk about where they are in relation to the community, starting with Bob.

Bob

Bob doesn't completely fit into the profile of "newcomer". He was introduced to Carl back in 2017 and has started his career to some success. In his early years of exploring art as a career, he devoured any content of Carl's he could find. These courses made an impression on him; he seems excited to have recently found a larger community based around Carl. He is interested in taking more of Carl's content and also appears to be role-seeking: he wants in some ways to be part of the alumni. He is drawn to the channel largely because of the peer feedback channel and interactions with Carl, and left because the peer feedback channel was a bit unwieldy and not useful to him. He seems really excited about the possibility of it becoming cleaned up and useful. He also sees a lot of value in interacting with the alumni, seeing them as more established and knowledgeable about the field. He really enjoys helping newer artists, finding that in helping them, he reminds himself of fundamental techniques.

Key observations and recommendations:

• ·Bob's journey suggests utility in keeping high-quality, useful content on various platforms like Skillshare and Udemy at affordable rates. Having Carl give content and help people exploring professional art classes on various platforms feels like it might have high conversion rates into both the discord and his flagship courses.
• ·The possibility of interacting with Carl on the discord is a significant draw for him.
• ·He prefers discord to other community platforms.
• ·Ease of finding things and usability of the discord is a pain point for Bob. Breaking apart the most used channels: separating challenges from the #inspiration channel; separating work people just want to show off (#work-showcase) from #peer-feedback; and maybe having a portfolio channel separate from #intros.
• ·The ability and ease to interact with people both more and less advanced is of large utility to Bob. It's important to remember that people don't just want to come to learn from people more advanced than them, and we need to facilitate newcomers' interactions in both directions in the community.
• ·The idea of organized events was exciting to him, particularly organized interactions and classes with alumni.
• ·The discord appears to be a good repository of information for him, and he would like a way to organize and store that information, either through pinned threads, an FAQ channel, or something else.

Clare

Clare, while in a comparable position career-wise (or even earlier in her career) to Bob, has completed one of Carl's courses and seems to be at a more advanced stage in the ecosystem. Her main utility of the community seems to be professional development and keeping in touch with alumni in her class. She seems slightly introverted, and while she appreciates the challenges, there was less interest from her in the community aspects and more in sharing professional resources and networking. She loves the idea of an alumni course series.

Key observations and recommendations:

• ·Professional development is a significant draw of this ecosystem, perhaps in a different way than other art ecosystems. People see Carl as a career fulcrum, and expect his community to be one as well.
• ·Not all users of the community are using it for community: some are using it for networking and professional development. We should encourage and support this.
• ·Clare is driven to take classes by those whose art and career she wants to emulate. For example, she is taking a class by an artist who has illustrated cards for Magic the Gathering, simply because she wants to illustrate magic cards in her career. Presenting Carl as someone whose career is emulatable is an important messaging consideration.
• ·She would find useful a section of the discord specifically for professional development. Suggested channels: articles to read; war stories from working artists; job listings.

Joe

Joe is an established artist. While he states he "owes his career as a professional artist to Carl", he clearly has a lot of networking ability and understanding of the system. He has successfully acquired a lot of work as an artist and is at an advanced stage of his journey in the community. He appears more extroverted than Clare. He belongs to multiple artistic communities and appears to use each of them for different reasons.

It is my belief that we should encourage our members to explore and find other ecosystems, for the following reasons: Joe reports that he speaks very highly of the community when junior members of other ecosystems ask him for career advice. Joe's knowledge of these other ecosystems is very useful for us: it allows us to take the parts of these ecosystems that are draws and make sense for us, and integrate them into our community. In general, Carl's approach as far as I can tell is about building bridges, not walls. We aren't doing hard sells, we are not pressuring people to take classes or be part of the ecosystem. Rather, we are simply empowering people. By doing this, even by empowering them to find other communities, we create a place where people are excited to be.

Key observations and recommendations:

• ·We should consider ways to help enable alumni to spread how useful Carl's classes were to them. A token discount code would allow students to feel like they were being altruistic and helping other artists find their path to becoming professional artists.
• ·Once we are fully moderated, we need to let people upload files to the server. This is needed for letting students upload brush palettes, etc.
• ·Joe finds a lot of utility in Carl's rendering libraries. Extra rendering libraries could be a potential upsell, something to advertise about project kits, or part of a funnel to bring students into the ecosystem.
• ·Gave a detailed list of channels from a comparable community, which we can mine for ideas: General; Work Showcase; Work Feedback; Study; Paintovers; Inspiration; Photo Reference; Resources/Links; Job Postings; Monthly Challenges; Challenge Submissions.
• ·He found a lot of utility in voice channels open 24/7 on other discords. Once moderated we should consider having these channels open to the larger community. Suggested channel types: Silent work; Homework/serious work; Just for fun; Grind sessions (50-minute Pomodoro with bot); 5-minute studies.
• ·Like everyone else, he loves the idea of alumni having some sort of periodic class, talk, or AMA.
• ·Suggests veteran mixer channels and events, maybe by profession. He also suggests splitting informal mentorship channels by specialty, though he notes he has never seen this on another discord.
• ·Helping other people the way Carl helped him appears to be a major motivation for his continued participation.
• ·Further down the road, channels where artists can just relax with other artists (play games, etc.) seems desirable.

Overall Recommendations

Immediate (This Week)

• ·At the next challenge, separate the challenge from the inspiration channel into a #monthly-challenge channel and a #challenge-submissions channel.
• ·Separate work that people do not want feedback on from work that people do want feedback on, in different channels.
• ·Identify and approach alumni who can hold classes with questions from everyone. Figure out if we should hold them weekly, biweekly, etc.
• ·Finalize compensation for moderators.
• ·Begin a professional development chat category, with two channels: #general and #jobs.

Next Month

• ·Have a team of moderators trained and active.
• ·Slowly increase the number of channels, based on the needs of the community.

Future State

• ·Allow file uploads.
• ·Create general use chat channels for interested people to work in, 24/7.