diogenese19348 posted at 2:56AM Sun, 19 August 2018 - #4334949

Now that raises an interesting issue. I work with an art contest site, and we are running into exactly the same issue - our members are getting old, and we are having problems attracting new members. I'm about tearing what's left of my hair out trying to figure out what younger artists are doing these days. And I'm talking all the branches - illustration, photo manipulation, photography (which appears to be the one bright spot), comics. So a reasonable question is what are they doing, where do they congregate, and how do you get them engaged in anything? Yes, I think the Poser community is getting older and smaller. I'm not sure DAZ is fairing any better there. I am seeing larger activity in some of the tablet apps. And I am talking people doing art for recreation, not people trying to make a living off it. Any thoughts?

I think as other have already mentioned is correct. But also the general behavior on the internet plays a role, things have to go fast which I think is very important and forums are not really fast :). Looking at my own way of learning things or when I need information about a 3D issue. 80% of the time I will find a youtube video showing me exactly how to do it or something very close, watch that and move on. Rest I find in text form.

Since we don't really know what site you are referring to, its difficult to comment on what could be done, because I think there is more to it, than simply figuring out where the "young" people are hiding, it could be a lot of things, the website itself might be a reason.

It might not even be worth spending time worrying about the "young" people, but rather look at what would make the site interesting to a particular group of people such as artists for example. What would attract them? As an example lets take people that are interested in comics, what would attract them? Maybe it could be good tutorials and information for making comics, how to draw, how to design pages, storytelling and so on. Maybe make the website very optimized and well designed for quickly sharing and reading comics or make it so they can publish them and get feedback on them like a gallery and so on in a cool way. Lets use Renderosity as an example, its not very well designed for sharing comics as no effort have been made towards making it work well for that, which is perfectly fine as its not really what they are about. However it not unrealistic to assume that some people that makes comics might come here on a regular basis to pick up some stuff for projects, which they then post on more comic friendly sites.

So maybe that's a better way of thinking about it. So rather than focusing on a specific age group, focus on their interest. We all try to find the very best information whenever we seek them, regardless of age and those sites which contain the best information will also over time be those that makes it and the rest will vanish. I don't really think its a lot difference than comparing it to doing a search on Google or Bing and we assume that every time you search on Bing you get poor search result, but google find it all the time . It will only take a very few experiences like that before you will never use Bing again and its the same with information on a website. If you have had good experience and found good information on a website you will go there.