We’re sure you all have seen it by now – PixelSquid.com is finally live! We’ve been working on this for a long time, so we’re very excited to users signing up and experimenting with the content. If you’ve been waiting for the release to start submitting content, the moment that you’ve been waiting for is finally here.
Before you start publishing, it’s worth spending some time getting more familiar with the stock 2D market. If you look at some of the major sites, you’ll probably see how many products are isolated objects on a white background. This obviously fits beautifully into what we’re offering with PixelSquid. Getting your models submitted as a Spinner is a great and easy way to get started.
Keep in mind that not everything needs to be a single, isolated model. If you’ve got a few items in your catalog that might work well together, combine those into a scene and submit that. (For example, a cup and saucer.)
As you’re researching some of the other sites, pay attention to the things that can be done really well in 3D. Stock sites have a lot of shots of things like people and sunsets. That won’t be our focus, at least initially. However, there is a huge amount of content featuring real-world objects that would be difficult to work on in 2D, and we think that’s where we can win customers. Imagine a user needing something like this chair as a stock image:
Most importantly, they’d have to hope for just the right angle on a stock photo site. Then, they’d have go through the tedious task of masking out all of those sections of the chair if they needed to make any color or lighting adjustments. On PixelSquid, all of the masking and adjustments can be done almost immediately within the PSD.
We’re already getting an incredibly positive reaction from designers who can imagine the impact this will have on their workflow. They’re just asking when we’ll have more content, so there’s a lot of opportunity for you– our artists–right now!
If you haven’t seen our Object Library, take some time to look through that as well. It’s an excellent way to quickly make some PixelSquid content, and we’ll be sharing some more tips on that very soon.