Hey folks! I'm Marcelo, one of the co-founders. Sywork is a live streaming platform for illustrators and digital artists. It’s like Twitch but for artists. It’s a place created especially for them.

We've just released our beta. We'd love to hear your feedback and answer any questions!

Does this require Adobe Flash? I'm getting a "Error loading player: No playable sources found" message using Firefox on Linux. I don't have Flash installed but sites usually fall back to HTML5 video or tell me to install Flash. Neither happened here.

This looks really interesting though, so good luck with it and I hope to get it working soon.

EDIT: It's only the the live streams I'm having trouble with, the pre-recorded works fine.

We had some problems with Firefox but we are already working on it : )

What advantages do artists get for using Sywork instead of Twitch?

Sywork is a place created especially for artists. Next week the streamers will be able to setup rewards to their fans. In Twitch they have a small channel for creative people. But the audience is not the same, in Twitch they're into games. In Sywork they're into games, comics, movies and art in general.

Twitch is gaming-only, and users can only stream gaming-related subjects.

Twitch actually has an entire section titled Creative[0] where people paint, do graphic design, sculpt, etc. Right now there are 2,000+ viewers. They also have sections for Music and Game Development / Programming.

[0] http://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Creative

They don't seem to be very strict about it. I've watched poker, piano playing, and drawing on there before.

Are you considering adding identity, web and GUI work too?

I would be really interested in that, too. I'm more of a backend guy, not an artist, and I think I would benefit from watching designers do their thing. Not so I could be a designer, but just to know their tools and workflow.

That's great idea! I think we can do that.

It's worth noting that Sywork is (YC S15), which may be why this submission is receiving a lot of upvotes: http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/05/watching-people-do-stuff-is...

EDIT: Was later added to title.

It's also worth noting that the YC S15 batch has another livestreaming startup, Livecoding: http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/29/yc-backed-livecoding-tv-is-...

This is very exciting to me, especially because visual art doesn't get as much public attention compared to the performing arts. It's perhaps not surprising as we only see the finished products, assuming we even know where to look. Would music get as much hype if there were no live performances, and only straight-to-download albums? The analogy isn't perfect, but lending a live production element to visual art might just make audiences feel more involved.

Yep! That's what we think. And you can only see how hard it is to create visual art if you see the process.

Sywork stands for "Show Your Work". Cool!

Are you guys going to introduce software based filter in the future?

You're saying something like a content-control software?

I think they mean "only watch Illustrator" or "only Photoshop".

Yes, this is what I meant.

SUCH a great idea. Is the platform also open to broader art and craft forms (beyond traditional "art") - say quiltmakers or knitters/other fiber artists?