I first heard about Art Fight in the summer of 2024 while using Mastodon on the Fediverse and thought it was a great idea, but I didn’t have the art skills to join in. At the end of June 2025 I signed up as an spectator so I could live vicariously though the art of others. However, the fear of missing out was eating me and I was reading a book that found just the right moment to tell me not to live in fear, and although the rest of the book didn’t really serve me, that simple statement did.
Art Fight has been such a positive experience and I have learned so much that I wanted to share it in case it’s interesting or helpful for others. I am aware that everyone’s experience is personal to them, and what is helpful for one, is not always helpful for another, and you should only do what works for you.
The first barrier I had was my lack of drawing skills, I draw, but for fun and I’ve still a lot to improve and learn. Nevertheless, Art Fight has so many people participating that it has all art levels, styles and tastes and even includes animation and 3D modelling. Art Fight has something for everyone, it meets you where you are, expert, novice and everything in between. You get to choose what you create and how often, this means you can go the easy and safe route if you wish, or you can challenge yourself. As no-one knows you are going to attack, you get to try things without any pressure to share if it doesn’t work out as hoped.
Being able to browse through such a large and diverse catalogue of characters means that you can see how people draw, create and develop their characters, and you can create something with that character if you want. The practical hands on approach means getting to see what it feels like to walk a little distance in that artist’s shoes, and as you honour their creation you find out things about you and your own characters and art.
I found myself with many points to consider, an unexpected but important area was: where is the boundary of personal style and when is it changing a character too much? What is my style, and what is me leaning on that to avoid doing something that I can’t do? I found myself asking why I avoid things, and questioning if it was time to explore trying to do it or not. I was well and truly out of my comfort zone, but not in a stressful way, I was challenged to find my own way through each attack, and grew as a result.
Seeing my characters with another’s eyes was a huge learning curve. I became aware that my characters had fallen out of my favour because they were hard to draw, I find imaginative drawing really difficult. I also realised that two of them were just different skins to the same personality, which was probably the source of my disinterest. On a positive note, I found a hidden gem, Chupi was a creature I created when trying to draw a Chupacabra and had forgotten about, but plan to do more with it in the future.
Faced with what permissions to give for each character was something I hadn’t thought about much before Art Fight. I was raised in an online creative group that maintained that original characters belong to their creator and are not drawn without special permission, and even then it was not the norm. As much as I don’t feel comfortable with sharing my characters with others I decided that I’d give it a try as Art Fight is structured for a limited time and with the ability to state what is permitted or not with each character. Plus, it’s only fair to add my characters to the melting pot in order to be able to explore the designs of others, and I’ve not regretted it. The other players have treated my characters much better than I do myself, taking them to the beach, giving them lollipops, and Chupi has even gained a few kilos, which looks cute!
In my experience, everyone on Art Fight has been so positive and kind. Being delighted with their art gifts, even though I know I had unintentionally butchered their character. It might just be because they are being polite. Nonetheless, the responses give encouragement and express delight. Not everyone has commented on every attack, but those who do nearly always say more than just thank you.
Being attacked or revenged is special, of course you should never do Art Fight in the hope of being attacked, nor expect revenge when you attack, doing so is a fast road to disapointment. Nevertheless, whenever I have been attacked or revenged I have completely lost my cool with excitement as it has always been unexpected and the art work has been awesome.
I am still at the point of articulating what I like about someone’s art, as I can easily info dump and ruin the positivity and excitement I am trying to share. What I have learnt is don’t just say someone’s work is lovely, or good, or a short thanks.
It feels more sincere if you can give a reason why you like it, or what you notice. Don’t give criticism unless you know the person well, and even then only if you know it is wanted, plus paired with positive feedback too.
My Art Fight experience has been without the Discord chat, a personal preference, and being my first year and without any algorithms to push content, I’ve had to be pro-active finding others to attack. I realised that Art Fight is like the Fedi and Mastodon, you get out what you put in.
I aimed for twenty attacks with a wide diversity of characters. I looked for people who had a high attack to defence ratio to make sure they were playing, as many people sign up, post characters and never join in. Also, a high attack ratio means that they are keeping up with everything as I didn’t want to stress anyone by attacking them while they were drowning under attacks.
The majority of the first two weeks felt like I was in my own bubble as I was attacking most days and not getting many attacks or revenge in return. It was later explained to me that a lot of players use the strategy of focusing on attacks for the first half of the month and then focus on revenge for the second half. This made perfect sense, plus I suddenly started receiving revenge at the halfway point of the month.
As I write this I can say I’ve also decided that I’m not attacking for the final week so I can focus on other things. For real-life reasons, July is both a good and bad month for intense drawing challenges. Plus I don’t want to hit people with an unexpected attack without sufficient time to respond with revenge, should they chose to do so. I know there are always people who slide things under the door as it is closing, but I feel Art Fight is not the place to do that.
These are the strategies that worked for me as I became familiar with the platform and activity:
Follow the people you know from other places, and actively look for people and characters. They can be found looking through the follower lists of those you follow, by searching for keywords on characters and using the browse and search functions on Art Fight.
The same parameters of the search functions are your key to being visible. Attack often and you will appear in the recent attacks, keep your attack stats above 60 per cent and you will also appear in the high statistics list, and make sure you hashtag your characters so they show up in searches.
Art Fight is in the last week now and as mentioned, I have switched to the last stage where I can sit back and watch the fun as others metaphorically slap each other with art.
If you are thinking about doing it next year, go for it! Eleven months is both a long and short time, long in having to wait, but short as in working out what characters to create, further develop or tweak. Don’t overthink it though, Art Fight is a learning process, and most of it happens by doing, not planning.
I’m not sure if I’ll be taking part next year, as who knows what can happen in a year, however if I do, I hope to see you there.
Link to the Art Fight website:Art Fight