Ever since last September I noticed a spike in traffic to Blood of Kittens from a unusual source. This source was consistent which is hard to find when running a blog. Usually people stick to the latest posts and fail to dig deeper. Once you have people reading it is relatively easy to get them to stay. What is hard is getting them to look back or find you in the first place. The source of this traffic spike in particular came from a series of articles that did not burn up the comment section, but got extraordinarily high pageviews.

For a good five weeks Blood of Kittens ran a series of articles call Art of Warhmmer 40k. In them we took art that everyone has seen in rule books and codices and gave a face to their creators. Here is a link to the original posts…

https://bloodofkittens.com/blog/category/art-of-warhammer-40k/

Anyway I thought they were fun, but somewhat time-consuming so eventually I got distracted. As time went on though I noticed when looking at Blood of Kittens site stats a high number kept on appearing from people discovering these articles. So this got me thinking why? People certainly like the art that brings our hobby to life, so I searched around the Internet. I discovered many sites showcasing warhammer art, but none (unless I missed something) brought everything together in a coherent or complete fashion. Even with Google image searches you would often find misinformation or unrelated junk.

So slowly an idea began to percolate in my mind about designing a site that would bring art in one place. Then I realized there was a few big problems with such an undertaking.

• Time consuming
• Site Layout
• Giving Artist Credit

At first I thought why not make a wiki page where everyone loads up art– creating database. The problem with a wiki is anyone could potentiality post anything and force into quality control on such a project would be mind numbing. The obstacle of time sinkage and site layout became one in the same. If you don’t have an easy website to upload and showcase pictures you might as well give up. This did not stop me from tryin, at the very least I started downloading all the art I could find that gave credit to the original illustrator. This is where I discovered just how hard (adding to time consumption) it was to determine exactly who had done what. In the meantime I waited patiently searching for a good website designs that I could take or copy. So around Christmas time I started looking at Photoblogs taking ideas and thinking about what I truly wanted from this project. The priorities I wanted: something simple– showcasing the art above all else. A site that stripped away all the gadgets, bells, whistles and was just about the art.

It was not until last week that I finally discovered a layout I was elated with. It was simple, but expandable if the site grows. It had a unique way of displaying the art that would keep viewers interest. On the backend it was amazingly simple: just upload the art and slap on a title– no organizing needed. Finally I could get this off the ground! Take a look at what I hope is the beginning of a great resource…

Art of Warhammer

Expect everyday to see new art uploaded. The only thing I would like from the viewers is some help. So send in art links of stuff I have missing. The only rule is it has to be Warhammer and certain who the original artist is. As well if you see a mistake let me know! Everything is really easy to fix just make sure the correction is accurate.

In addition there will be a rotating artist of the week and an attempt to bring back Art of Warhammer posts back to Blood of Kittens. It will start with a reposting (with some changes) of the original posts that spawned this idea in the first place.

Just either leave links here or email BoK at https://bloodofkittens.com/contact-bok-master/

I hope this also gives some insight into the thought processes that goes around head when I think of ways to expand Blood of Kittens. Expect this as just one of similar projects coming to Blood of Kittens so stayed tuned!