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Story Submission Icons by Levi
I'm curious.
What do people think makes the most effective or interesting submission icon for written work? Currently, I'm using a tweaked version of my site avatar, which I intend to keep doing, but would you say it's maybe a little, well, lacking when it comes to detail or attention-getting?
The default thumbnail is kind of boring. I won't lie. And some of the ones I see, where you see a gigantic list of tags/fetishes on the thumbnail, are ugly. So that takes care of the extremes. The ones I prefer have a simple picture with a word or two categorizing the work. It's harder for us as writers, since it isn't always easy to get a teaser of the story in visual form. Visual artists have that advantage over writers and musicians.
The thing is, I don't click on story submissions based on how they look. I sort of mouse over them and try to get a summary of the work to appear (for sites and layouts that support this), and don't pay as much attention to the icon itself. Who else acts this way?
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Yeah, a popup would be very helpful. I use it on FA to decide if I want to click on it or not. It's especially useful for mature/adult submissions because sometimes artists miscategorize and I really don't want to click on something that'll make me reach for the eye bleach.
As a general rule, I get no hits that count here. Or on FA, for that matter, so it's not something I'll directly blame Weasyl for although there is definitely room for improvement to make it better for writers. Almost certainly, my dearth of (what I think are real, meaningful) views has something to do with a lack of exposure and uninteresting thumbnails/visible hooks. And possibly the matter of most of my submissions so far all being related to a novel that takes serious dedication to keep up with, if you so choose.
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I wonder if there is an easy way to generate a scrolling text GIF to use as the icon, containing some of the story?
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If you have serialized work, make a same icon for all chapters of the story. You might include a nickname for the story and chapter numbers in the thumbnail. Having many different thumbnails helps the reader to navigate around. Short stories and one-off projects need a different picture than serialized work.
What you're doing here (basically just stamping STORY over your avatar) makes all the stories blend together like spaghetti. Think of your gallery like an antiquities shop. When a customer enters a bookstore, there's only about 5 to 15 seconds to get him interested. Images are processed faster than text, so make sure every story has it's own.*
This guy has an awesome way of managing thumbnails: https://www.furaffinity.net/gallery/ceeb/
Basically, everything you need to know is on the 100x100px thumbnail.Also, check out this gallery: https://www.furaffinity.net/gallery/tonin/
It has a simple marking system: one kind of thumbnail for poetry, other for serialized work, and a unique thumbnail for stand-alone stories.(*Haha, this is a very bad pun on the artists' saying "every picture has it's story".)
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As it happens, the example you gave of an awesome way of managing thumbnails is precisely what I wish to avoid. It's ugly, cluttered, and the last thing I want to be associated with.
Tonin has a good method though, I'll say that.
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Link
Tonin
I'll sometimes check out a written submission just because it has a toxically cute icon, but mostly I'm more interested in the description (wish Weasyl supported popup info like FA >.>" ).
I've noticed that my submissions that have a strongly emotive thumbnail tend to get more hits than the neutral one based on my avatar. So someone looking very happy or sad seems effective.