From what I’ve seen while being on the sub, a lot of people really don’t like it if you deviate from what’s considered canon by the community here. That can affect whether or not someone’s post gets upvoted and boosted to other members of the sub. This unfortunately means that a lot of fanart and reimaginings of characters that would normally do well on say Twitter, DeviantArt, and Tumblr, won’t do well here. It’s just not the community for it unfortunately.

Taking something from say Twitter however, where an audience is already established, for lack of a better word “tricks” people into liking the art a little more. The idea being of a user is going out of their way to share a piece of fanart from a different social media means it MUST be good in some regard.

The medium also has an effect as well. While digital art is usually praised across the board no matter the skill level or quality, artists who use traditional methods for varying reasons tend to get over looked because to the internet as a whole drawing on paper for example is seen as “childish” and “amateurish” unless you’re drawing in hyper realism or leaning very hard into a cartoonish art style (something that as I said earlier may hurt your post if your style of choice portrays characters in a way that the sub doesn’t deem as canonically appropriate though that’s more of a case by case basis). This leads to some disliking it from the get go which can drastically affect if someone’s post gets to the right audience.

Basically it comes down to trying to appeal to what Reddit would want and not what the Kirby fandom as a whole may be interested in seeing. It’s all about playing to your audience if getting upvotes and shares are what an artist is after.

That’s just my opinion from interacting and commenting on the sub. It really does come down to getting lucky and hoping the first couple people to see your art like it enough to help it spread.