In our very first artist interview, we spoke with EthanPpj on how NSFW artists can use Pixiv effectively, even if you don’t know any Japanese.

Ethan is a self-taught NSFW artist, drawing foot fetish content since 2018. Feel free to reach out to him if you have any questions, at Pixiv or Twitter @EthanPpj

Beats: So, let’s jump into it! Why should NSFW artists use Pixiv over or some other platform like Deviantart or Twitter?

Ethan: While NSFW art will never be 100% truly safe online, I feel like Pixiv is one of the safest places one could post them at the moment. I feel like Pixiv rewards hard work more than most other platforms, especially social media. Compared to Twitter (the only other platform I’m truly experienced with), there isn’t as big a need to build a following. If you publish high-quality work, you WILL get views. 

Of course, there’s always the Pixiv superstars that get 10k likes almost immediately when they publish a pic, but outside of these extreme cases I feel like everyone plays on the same level. It truly is a platform for artists, while Twitter wasn’t specifically created with it in mind, and I think it shows.

There’s also stuff like Analytic and Ranking reports, which are technically locked behind a paywall, but I feel are well worth it for an artist. I don’t really know how well it compares to the premium subscription on DeviantArt since I never used that website, but on its own, it’s relatively cheap and gives a lot of good options.

On the subject of DeviantArt, while it may be obvious to most people, I think it’s important to say that Pixiv’s main focus is on anime-style artworks. If you’re focusing on western-style NSFW art I feel like Deviantart would be a better option because you probably won’t get as many likes and followers on Pixiv. 

How can you say “you will get views” with such confidence?

Personal experience from both sides: posting art and browsing it. It’s technically possible to sort art by popularity but it’s also locked behind a paywall, which means most people won’t do it. Which in turn, means most people will browse by “new” and find your pic, as long as it’s recent enough.

Art is subjective of course, but I have yet to see good art from a beginner artist with only a few likes, the fewest I’ve seen is like 30-40, which might seem like it’s not a lot but it’s much more than you’ll ever get on Twitter if you have no following. If you have no following on Twitter… You get 0 likes. Or like, 2 or 3 at best. It can be hard when you’re just starting out.

That’s not the case on Pixiv, and the fact that it’s an artist-focused platform means it’s easier to find new artists just starting out too. There’s a ton of new NSFW artists I follow and see grow on Pixiv, while there’s almost none on Twitter because I virtually can’t find them (laughs).

Have you been able to capitalize off the growth you have on Pixiv? Comms, Fanbox/Patreon, sales, etc.

That’s… something I’ll admit I haven’t really dipped my toes into. I actually mostly draw as a hobby and while I did take some commissions on Twitter for a little while, I haven’t really set up anything of the sort on Pixiv.

However, it’s absolutely possible: a lot of artists take commissions directly from Pixiv with the built in feature or on Skeb, and there’s also Fanbox, which is basically Patreon but directly integrated into Pixiv.

Which is fantastic because again, Pixiv is absolutely ok with NSFW art. I don’t have a Patreon… but you do, and I’m gonna go on a hunch and say you probably were bullied a few times and had some posts deleted or something.

I could be wrong of course, but I see an absurdly high amount of NSFW artists being fed up with Patreon because it seems they’re always trying to suppress NSFW art in one way or another, while I literally never saw anyone complain about Fanbox. I’d say it’s probably a better platform than Patreon if you do hentai/NSFW anime stuff. But again, I have no experience with any of the two, so take it with a grain of salt.

Patreon has been nice to me, surprisingly! (laughs) But yeah it’s notorious with nsfw.

Well this is good news at least (laughs) Still, with Fanbox being directly baked into the website, I feel like it’s a decent option too.

They have good features. I tried building my fanbox but didn’t find much success. I don’t know if it was art-related or a language barrier, because generally, I don’t get a lot of comments either, compared to Twitter. Which is my main issue w/ Pixiv as a platform. But then again my art is pretty dependent on being relatable to the owner, not necessarily the ‘masses’

That’s probably one of the reasons I like it actually (laughs), but that is something to take into account, yeah. You’re not on Pixiv to make friends, you’re on Pixiv to drop lewd pics and disappear into the night.

True true!

Ultimately I think Pixiv is a very Japanese website, even going further than the anime style

Not knowing Japanese will penalize you to an extent, but again since it’s not a social media platform I feel like that’s negligible in the long run.

Jumping off not knowing Japanese, a lot of artists say they don’t use Pixiv because they don’t know how to tag their works properly, any thoughts on that?

That’s the big thing I was waiting to talk about yeah (laughs).

So, some advice for tagging your work on Pixiv: First of all, do not tag your stuff in English. Ever. You might think there’s a budding English community in Pixiv and it would probably be worth it to tag your stuff in English, but don’t be fooled:

It’s still a very Japanese-centric website and the thing is you only get 10 tags per pics, no more. If you could tag as much as you want I’d say go for it, but nah. Thankfully, Pixiv has a pretty decent built-in translator for tags, so it’s actually pretty easy to tag your stuff in Japanese using the search bar.

Oh really? I never used the search bar. I didn’t know you could do that.

Type whatever you want and you’ll get a Japanese translation recommended for you.

It’s important to note that Pixiv doesn’t “merge” tags. For example, if I tagged one of my pics “mature”, it will not be considered to be tagged “熟女” Which is why it’s important to tag in Japanese. 

Most English users will come to realize you’re supposed to be using Japanese tags and use the Japanese translation automatically suggested in the search bar.

Any advice on good tagging though? Whenever I tag, there’s always a variant of the tag, with some less popular than others.

Indeed, tagging is an art (laughs) But before moving onto that, there’s one last thing I’d like to show to prove English tagging isn’t really worth it. With Pixiv premium, you can see which tags the user searched to find your pictures. 

I’m a foot fetish artist, so my tops 3 tags are  

• 足裏(Soles)　
• 足コキ(Footjob) 
• 足フェチ(Foot fetish) 

All are in Japanese. (with a sneaky Genshin Impact thrown in there because it’s really popular!) For a while when I started to post my pics on Pixiv, I also tagged them in English.

This is the end of my list of tags. Which means all the same tags in English (Footjob, Foot fetish), were searched for less than 2 times in total and are therefore relegated to the “other” tab. It’s not even a contest. Tagging in English just isn’t worth it. Not that we have that out of the way, there’s the question of good tagging, which is thankfully pretty easily answered. 

You have two options: 

• Find a popular picture similar to the ones you do 
• And take a look at the tags used.

For example, not taking into account the characters tags and the like, we can see the tags “巨乳” “おっぱい” are a pretty good description of what you’d do.

However, Japanese language being how it is, the same word can be written multiple ways

Oppai (large breasts) for example can be written both “オッパイ” and “おっぱい”. I won’t go into Japanese grammar, but they’re both read the same way and mean the same things. With the pretty harsh limit of 10 tags per pic, you don’t have the luxury of using both. So which one should you use? Just put both tags in the search bar and see which one has the most results:

I believe we can see a clear winner here (laughs). Not every tag will be one sided like this, but this is a pretty foolproof method for figuring out which tag you should use.

It works too if you can’t decide between two different tags:

There are some slight differences between the two (yaoi is more effeminate while homo is more buff and muscular), but unless you really care about specific differences, I’d say use the tag that’s the most popular. If you have a premium account, you can see search results by tags, and it even works for specific pictures, an excellent way of figuring out which tag is the most popular. For my recent Genshin picture for example, I can see the game and the character are the more popular search results:

But of all the foot related tags, “足フェチ(foot fetish)” is the most popular, and therefore the most important going forward. Of course, older pictures with more views will yield better statistics but I think that’s a pretty good example. One last things I’d say about tags is that it’s common practice to tag your picture once they reach a goal of likes. My Genshin pic reached 1000 likes (or bookmarks on Pixiv) and I tagged it as such, which helps with the searches results.

You can also tag for less (250 bookmarks in this case for example).

Going from the stats I’m given, I’d say it helps a little bit, but isn’t mandatory. Some artists do it, some don’t, even ones with incredibly popular pics. Since it’s a bitch to figure out how to format the tag if you don’t understand Japanese, I’d say don’t lose sleep over it.

Yeah, I’ve had some of my works edited by other taggers (laughs)

Ah, yeah that’s another thing. As the owner of the account posting the picture, your tags cannot be removed, but if you have less than 10 tags, some more can be added by other users. I almost always use 10 tags for my pics, but sometimes I only use 9 and it doesn’t take long for someone to add a 10th tag I would never have thought of (laughs). It’s possible to remove this feature when posting the pic, but it doesn’t hurt to leave it in case you can’t think of 10 tags.

Anything else noteworthy to mention when it comes to tagging?

I mainly talked about the specific fetishes used in our pictures, but the most important remains the series and characters. If you draw a dragon ball character for example, tag appropriately or you’ll just lose views. As for which tag to choose, refer to the search method I mentioned earlier

Like in imageboards, some characters will have their series mentioned in the tag, and some… not. Always try both and see which one has the more results. 

If you draw OCs, tag your pics as such. They’re not as popular as on Twitter but they definitely have their audience on Pixiv.

I assume there’s an original character tag?

Yep, though in this case, the English tag “OC” is the more popular. As is the tag “original” for any non fanart pic. And with that, I do believe I’ve run out of things to say about tags. T’was quite the extensive subject.

(laughs) It’s a lot of good info. What else can we talk about?

Censorship. Pretty important I’d say.

It’s a pretty vague subject unfortunately, some people do it, some people don’t. It’s technically required, but a lot of big names artists don’t bother, or only censor the first (and therefore visible by everyone) pic of the bunch and they post uncensored variants.

Personally I censor my pics because I consider Pixiv my main platform and don’t want to take any chances. However, I never received any warning from Pixiv as of now, despite a lot of my earlier pictures being uncensored. Some people I talked to have, and some don’t. If you do receive a warning, your account will apparently be frozen until you censor the pictures, and there’s always the risk of being straight up banned. But I would still consider the risk to be minimal. 

If you do decide to censor your pics, you have several options to share them uncensored: publish them on another website simultaneously (which is what I do with twitter), offer them as a reward on websites like Patreon (so killing two birds with one stone basically), publish them on an image hosting website like imgur and share the links in the description of your post on Pixiv

Japanese artists aren’t playing by the same rules: the worst we risk is getting our account banned, the worst they risk is actual prison time, which is why you won’t see them being smartasses with censorship and publish their pics uncensored in any form

(unrelated; but it also applies to Patreon/Fanbox : while a lot of western artists offer uncensored versions of their pics on these websites as tier rewards, Japanese artists will not. Some of them actually get shit for it but it’s simply not worth the risk for them)

When it comes to censoring, you have two schools: 

• the “black bars of blue balls”

• And the “pixel art debauchery”

Now technically there’s some very specific censorship rules that apply depending of the type of work that you do and the way you publish it, but they’re ancient and I’m convinced most people in japan don’t even know about them, even the law enforcement (laughs). So basically choose whichever one you prefer, or both if you’re a madman. You can also play with fire and make it as subtle as possible, but I wouldn’t risk it.

As for what needs to be censored… genitals. that’s it. No need to censor the nipples or any other part of the body.

I didn’t know that. I thought it was fine to have stuff uncensored, though for Fnbox they’re stricter.

It’s actually not, since the website is based in japan. I wish we didn’t have to abide by these archaic censorship rules but in Rome do as the Romans do, I suppose.

Not exactly on the subject of censorship, but still related. When publishing your pic, you have 3 options:

• R-18G is gore stuff, which I’m not familiar with but I believe it includes real gory stuff, so not just light choking.
• R-18 is pretty self explanatory.
• and all ages is used when a pic doesn’t present any nipples or genitals, basically ecchi stuff.

When selecting R-18, you’re prompted with a variety of optional categories: make sure to select them if your pic includes them (hovering your mouse over them will give you a detailed definition).

When you select all ages, you’re still prompted to clarify if the pic contains adult content, weirdly enough.

Technically a lot of the foot fetish stuff I do isn’t suggestive but I still select yes because it’s clearly mean to be an erotic artwork and I don’t want that being seen by children. Basically, if you have to ask yourself if your pic has adult content or not, you select yes. Better safe than sorry.

On the subject of publishing, make sure to mark your pic as “original work” if it’s not a fanart of any existing ip, it always helps.

And with this, I believe I’m done talking about censorship. That… also was a lot of text, but I believe it’s important to familiarize yourself with the risks before starting to not be taken by surprise in case something happens.

Anything else we haven’t covered? I think that’s the extent of my own knowledge from using Pixiv.

I believe the only other thing we can talk about is ranking? They’re kinda out of your control as a creator but it’s always nice to know about the different options.

• The “rookie ranking” is most likely the first place your pics will end up in. You can consider it a lower tier ranking so to speak. Despite the name, it doesn’t have anything to do with your number of followers as far as I’m concerned, it simply means your picture isn’t in any other ranking at the moment. Rookie rankings do not include NSFW pics, so most NSFW artists probably won’t see it too often, but if you do ecchi pic as well, you’ll find yourself in them fairly often.
• Otherwise, there’s the Daily/Weekly/Monthly rankings, which do include NSFW.
• “popular with female/male users”, which seems independent of the other ones. 

If a pic you make ends up in the rankings, you’ll definitely see a boost in likes/followers which is nice, but I found it’s mainly random and doesn’t really have much to do with your drawing skills to an extent. It mainly depends on Pixiv’s latest darling series or characters; which you could absolutely use to your advantage of course, but otherwise I’d say don’t expect anything and be pleasantly surprised if your pic ends up in the rankings! Also, with the premium account you can see your total amount of pics in rankings, etc.

With that, I believe I said everything I had to say about Pixiv. Thanks again for giving me an opportunity to talk about the website! It definitely needs more western artists, but I can understand how the language barrier could turn some people off. Here’s hoping my experience could convince a few people to give it a try at the very least!

Premium does sound powerful.

It certainly is. If you’re an artist, otherwise it’s limited. Oh, not related to publishing your own pics but still very useful:

Pixiv’s very own “how to draw” page, with a ton of tutorials from various artists. If you have a premium account, you have access to professional courses in drawing, on top of discounts in art stores and more cool stuff. But strictly speaking it’s not related to publishing art and gaining a following, so I won’t go into too much detail. But it’s scrum diddly awesome.

Oh, Yes I’ve seen that one! Do you use it?

The tutorials? I used them a lot when I started out, not really anymore unless I’m unsure about a specific part of a drawing. It is pretty hard to look for stuff if you don’t speak Japanese. But with some effort and the help of an online dictionary I think it’s well worth the effort.

Any artist advice you wanna share?

Hum, nothing in particular comes to mind other than keep at it and improve, yo!

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Hey there! This is binglebang69, a writer and 3d NSFW artist. You may see me on here from time to time, helping edit or post some articles. You can follow me at https://twitter.com/binglebang69 for updates on my 3d persona comic series and other fun projects! I hope you enjoyed the interview and we’ll have more for ya soon! – binglebang69 (Beats also says hi. Thanks for reading!)