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Communities are great for creatives. You get to mingle with people who have the same interests as you, learn from each other, collaborate and it might even lead to opportunities. Another strong point of being on a community is that you’re getting yourself “out there”. Your exposing your work and yourself. This will lead to a stronger brand or name and you’ll start getting traffic to your site.

However great online communities are, they do have one downside. It’s costs a lot of time! You have to get an account set up, customize it, upload work, write your info, get and manage your contacts and so on. To put all this time into a community only to later find out it’s not what you hoped for would be a terrible waste of time. To make sure this doesn’t happen to you I’ve compiled this list of communities and added info on what you can expect if you decide to make a profile there. So have a read and get out there!

The Behance network is a community primarily focused on showcasing your portfolio. You have full customization of how your profile and portfolio pages looks without having to modify any coding. Behance has all the usual features for making, notifying and maintaining friends and groups. Read more about Behance and it’s features in this article I did a while ago.

Useful for
Designers, illustrators and web designers. If you’re one of these and only join one community I’d say make it Behance since this is the one that is most likely to net you useful contacts and if you’re lucky even a lead or two.

Mojizu calls itself a contemporary character design community and that’s exactly what it is. I learned about Mojizu through Scott Jackson when I interviewed him and I must say it’s an excellent community site. Mojizu is well designed, has all the bells and whistles one expects of a community site these days and has a focused community. One feature I absolutely love is the Moji war where characters are pitted against each other and the creators can win prize money and exposure for their piece. Very fresh!

Usefull for
If you’re a character illustrator get yourself on Mojizu…now! It’s the only place that is 100% dedicated to character art so this should be a well of inspiration and like minded souls for you.

Coroflot is a good looking community that has the same approach as Behance in that it’s very much portfolio based. Where Behance is much more of a mixture between showcasing your portfolio and keeping in touch with fellow creatives corofloat pushes the social aspect to the back and focuses on job opportunities more. How usefull the opportunities on Coroflot are I can’t say since I have little experience with that.

Usefull for
Coroflot caters a lot to the same audience as Behance. I feel Behance is stronger as a community and also offers more expression options for your portfolio pieces (also larger images). Have a good look at the type of jobs that are posted and the location of those jobs. If this is what you need consider Coroflot, if not I’d say Behance is the better choice.

Deviant art is a community which has been around for ages. Small updates to the site have kept it up to date feature wise even though it’s not very impressive to look at. Deviant art has a huge community and some very robust options as far as socializing goes. You can also sell prints and other items with your work on them through Deviant art with reasonable rates.

Usefull for
Deviant art is rich with great talent, but richer in anime loving kids who are just starting out. This isn’t necessarily bad, but might be a turn off if you’re looking to interact with peers who are at a professional level. Consider Deviant art if your craft is digital painting or photography and you’d like to sell prints. If you’re on the design side of things I’d say look elsewhere where the community is a bit more mature and more focused.

Shadowness is a community that looks great even though I fear it’s usability suffers slightly because of this. Profiles on Shadowness are customizable so you can really put your mark on them. The size of the community however is relatively small unfortunately. Shadowness has some great artists on the site but also some very mediocre work posted. You might compare Shadowness to a better looking deviant art with less users.

Usefull for
Shadowness is mostly about digital painting and illustration. Consider Shadowness if that’s your thing and you like the very different and highly customizable layout. If you don’t care so much about customization and the way the site looks I’d advise Deviant art over Shadowness because of the difference in community size.

Flickr is a photo sharing community I’m sure most of you are aware of. While Flickr is used by some people simply as an image host it also has a lively community. It’s not just the new Photobucket. The benefit for creatives is that Flickr has a lot of social possibilities but is image minded.

Usefull for
Flickr is in essence a photo sharing community. There are a bunch of designers and illustrators with an active account but my main recommendation still goes out to photographers.

CG portfolio is part of the CG society, a place where digital artist gather for news, portfolios and the popular forum CG talk. I’m not very impressed with the look and feel of CG portfolio and from a usability standpoint it’s not great either. It’s in the list simply because if you want to get into the game industry CG portfolio should definitely be considered.

Usefull for
CG society has strong ties to the gaming and movie industry so if you’re looking for an entry point into those fields it’s definitely worth a look. Good place to hang out for game artists (both 2d and 3d), concept artists and sci-fi or fantasy artists. A strong user interface designer might be able to use CG portfolio as an entry point into the game industry.

Buzznet is a social community focused very much on the alternative music culture. There’s a lot of teenagers on the site and at first glace you’d definitely say that a serious creative has no reason to be on Buzznet. If you’re looking to get into working for artists and bands however, Buzznet might very well be a place where you can make an easy kick start.

Usefull for
Creatives looking to work with artists and bands. If you are already established in this field then you can most likely safely pass up Buzznet, if you’re trying to make a name for yourself however consider giving it a try. If this is what you’re after you can also consider Trig.

Twitter isn’t tailored to creatives at all but I discovered recently that there are a lot of bloggers and web professionals who use the service actively. Twitter is different from regular social communities in the fact that it’s built to send across small messages called “twits” telling people what you’re doing or thinking about.

Usefull for
Bloggers and web professionals looking to network and don’t mind trying this different type of communication method. Graphic designers and illustrators looking to network with like minded creatives had best look on, since these generally aren’t the type to try a totally new social concept like twitter the community for them is rather small.

Myspace is in the list? A daring move I know! It’s here for a simple reason though, every creative (and their mothers!) are on myspace. Yes, it’s ugly, outdated and has a horrible user interface, but it does deserve a mention as a recourse. Myspace has a lot of features for maintaining friends and is actually pretty decent as far as notifying others of new work you’ve put up. Since nearly everyone is on it it’s pretty good for getting into contact with other creatives.

Usefull for
Creatives that would like to network with others for collaboration (If you’re an illustrator wanting to work with fashion photo’s Myspace is a good place to find the right photographers). Do keep in mind you have to be able to stomach horrible page layouts and lots of spam…

Honorable mentions
Below are some other communities that didn’t make the cut either because I’m not sure how useful they’d be to creatives or because I feel the community might be too small for me to recommend them.

• Virb
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• GFXartist
• trig

Good luck deciding where to network and post your work! As always, opinions and suggestions are most welcome.