Monday, April 5, 2010

Airbrush Forums: A Directory of Sorts

As a busy artist, I don't really get much time for human interaction. If I'm lucky, I'll get a chance to watch some TV with my wife before heading to bed. So, how do I interact with other airbrush artists? Why, I go to the forums! Which is handy, since that what this post is about. Below I talk about the different airbrush related forums I have been to, and the ones I keep going back to. Keep in mind, these are airbrush forums, but for the most part they lean towards custom paint.

This is the forum page to the informative Airbrush Tricks website that Tony D spear heads. I found this forum while watching some of the videos he's put on YouTube and haven't looked back. I frequent this one the most as it seems to have the largest group of active members and has a real sense of community. Tony D is off in Afghanistan but the forum is in good hands with SgtM, Jason Jones, and Primo Customs.
Sign up is free and the site offers some gallery space. It's hosted by vBulletin and offers easy to use coding. The admin's are fair and the people are great. Almost instant feedback to all new artists. They also have airbrush contests!

This forum doesn't really come up with the searches and was another one I found on accident. It has some talent in there, if they show up. Another site that uses vBulletin, it's only real failing is that it doesn't seem to have many active members. I guess they come and go in waves. Free sign up, easy to use, decent admin's, and a weekly artshow.

This site has a really odd way of signing you up. It takes you to a separate portal that can be a bit confusing. After the initial set up, the site is semi-easy to use. Because it has a different forum hosting, those that are used to vBulletin might have some trouble here. Also, the main admin is very exact in how things should be posted and those that are new should definitely follow the rules for new users. I think that the picky admin may be hurting the site because it also has a lack of active members. They also have contests though and are worth checking out.

Not to be confused with the Airbrush Tech above, this forum is the baby of Don Johnson who runs Airbrush Technique magazine. I've only had the chance to take a look at a few issues of the magazine and found it to be a decent rag (with a lot, LOT, less ads than Airbrush Action). The forum is great, if it can stay on the same website (there is another forum that is similar called How To Airbrush which is their sister site and offers articles and tutorials not seen on the Airbrush Technique site) and there is a lot of information on there. I have had some problems logging in and at one point they mentioned only being able to use the site if you subscribe to the magazine, but I just logged in and posted, so this much not be the case. They offer contests, but more than that, they offer artists the chance to enter work into either their online or physical magazine.

This was the first forum I heard about before I heard about anything airbrush related on the web. It's Craig Farser's little baby and offers a great group of pro artists. I felt that as a new comer to the website, I was sort of left in the dust. I go back once in a while, and have found that it has a huge selection of active members, but there is just something off to me. I went into a post about starting a custom shop and ran into some political rants that I really didn't need. For the most part though, folks are welcome and again, the site uses the vBulletin system that seems to be the most popular way of running a forum.

The new guys on the block, this site is put together by Daniel Powers with the help of some other incredible artists such as Dennis Mathewson and Mike Lavallee. This is a two part site, with the main part focusing on gallery submissions and videos. Gallery inclusion is difficult because you can only include one, resized photo at a time, but these photos go into a pool you can then use in any project (what actually gets posted for the world to see). These projects are super easy to navigate and look great though. The forum side is the same as any vBulletin forum and though there aren't many people populating it as of now, it is really very new. There is a lot of potential for the site to really take off.

This site is similar to Airbrush Hub in that it is mostly a gallery posting with user interface, it also has a forum. The forum is pretty well dead (I saw some postings that were from 2008 on the main page of the thread), but the gallery seems to have some serious life. One of my photo postings got 387 views in about a month. It's an interesting site with little life, but a good place to get your name added to search optimization.

I have been on this forum site only a few times and found that there was a lot petty drama on it. That could explain why it got the nickname Airbrush.comedy. BearAir, however, is a great company to order products from and I can say I have never had a problem with their service.

I have just discovered this site and it seems that it is mostly devoted to paint, rather than straight airbrushing. Though there seems to be room for airbrushing in there, it is not a focus of the site.

So that's my list. There might be some other forums out there, but these seem to be the ones that show up the most. If you have questions, there be the places that you might find the answers. If you have answers, don't be a douche - share that knowledge! More than that, get your name out there. There are some great people to be met and some great people to give you honest feedback on your stuff.

Paint the planet, one forum at a time.

Today's Video of the Post comes from Tuff City Styles

1 comment:

  1. Once I thought about things like: why such information is for free here? Because when you write a book then at least on selling a book you get a percentage. Thank you and good luck on informing people more about it!
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