Thread by @paperbeatstweet

hi its me, your dad, and im here with a thread for you:

All Artists Should Be Working Out of Dropbox (or an equivalent)

come with me

i constantly see posts like this: "my hard drive crashed, and i lost all my stuff :(" or "haha lmao merged my sketch and lineart layers again lmao lmao".

friends, it doesnt have to be like this

im going to use dropbox as an example here because thats what i use, but you can use any file syncing service. its honestly crazy to me that - unless for whatever reason you CANT do it - every artist isnt already doing this

first, what is dropbox? basic yes, but i think this is a barrier for some people. they dont get what it is so they just dont use it. dropbox is basically a folder on your comp that copies any files you add to it to the cloud. thats it

without any explaining any other advantages, right off the bat this means that as soon as you hit save on that art piece youre working so hard on and it uploads, you have a copy of that file stored somewhere thats NOT your computers hard drive or your 2009 wd external

now i know what you might be saying: "i cant store my big phat philes online AND on my computer!!! i dont have the room!!"

which brings us to the first big advantage: selective sync

with dropbox at least, you can choose which files youve uploaded that stay on your computer and which ones dont. that means you can create a folder that is ONLY online and move files there when theyre ready to be archived which in turn removes them from your computer

for example: i have an _ARCHIVE folder that i have set to NOT sync to my computer. when i have old files i dont need anymore, i go to the web view and move those files to the _ARCHIVE folder. once that happens, the file is gone from your comp, but available for download any time

advantage number two: FILE VERSIONING. dropbox saves EVERY SINGLE VERSION of any files you save for the past 30 days. did you just realize that 2 weeks ago you merged your lineart and sketch layers? you can go to the web view and revert back to your last save

i cant even tell you the number of times this featured has pulled my grits out of the fire.

advantage 3: dropbox basic and google drive are totally free. granted, you only get around 1gb of storage but its a good option for at least storing active files

but honestly dropbox pro - which gives you 1 terabyte of storage - is like... the cost of a netflix subscription. again, i understand that not everyone can swing that, BUT if you can afford to do like... 1 extra $10 commission a month it is definitely worth it

im sure there are many other options available out there too, like icloud - heck if youre a coder you could even use github. but whatever you use, if youre tired of losing months of hard work to hd crashes or dumb mistakes i HIGHLY recommend using some kind of sync service

good talk son, now go get em slugger