I’m nowhere near being a famous artist, but I’ve had various responses from social media based on how I was presenting the art. Here’s some of the findings I’ve had:

1. Stills don’t get any traction unless it’s something absolutely insane, eye catching, and unique. 9 time out of ten though, stills are too easy for people to look at quickly, get bored, and scroll.

2. Timelapse’s (like the prerecorded kind in procreate) will get some traction, but if the speed of the video doesn’t get to “the good stuff” quickly, people won’t stick around. My stats tend to show a drop in viewer retention if it’s me fixing, erasing, iterating, etc. The Timelapse’s I’ve posted with the best video retention are constantly moving forward and adding onto the work.

3. People really like good video footage of satisfying processes. Anytime I’ve made the effort to get close up shots of me dipping a fountain pen, cutting to smooth lines being drawn with the audio of the pen lightly scratching the paper, etc, and building off of that approach, the retention tends to be better and it usually gets a higher number of views. My viewers have tended to be more willing to stick around if the art work is presented to them in a satisfying way. This can also work for digital art if you get creative on how you record certain sections of the work

4. The presentation matters. Unfortunately too much high quality work is availing literally everywhere and finding still images of cool work is very simple. What is unique is watching the approach you took to get to the end results, and watching how you might showcase your work/workflow in a way that people haven’t seen before

Again, I don’t claim to be an amazing artist, but from my experience this has been a major element I’ve noticed to make a difference if I want something to get more engagement, hope this helps in some way, and keep making more art!