Deviant Art

440Hz

So I got a bit bored and signed up.... OMG the hassle involved. Everything on the site seems to be complicated, and Im no computer dummy... there are pages of things to read through and agree to, pages of options, been on the site for the past hour and still have not gotten to post anything yet!

I guess what Im asking is... is it worth the effort, or was I right when I thought I should just stick to Flickr!!

captain P

Stick to Flickr! Deviantart is good in some ways (like making you feel good about your pics.... ), but it is a big pain in the ass to use. only recently they added the "feature" - the ability to scroll through peoples galleries without exiting and going back in etc..... ooooooooooooooohh

PurpleFistMixer

I don't use Flickr, but I find deviantart to be fine.
When I first joined it was fairly confusing but I got used to it and it became perfectly easy.

Then they made things complicated by having the stupid new version, but I'm sure it won't take long to adjust to that either.

The slowness at the minute is a bit of an issue but hopefully they'll sort that out.
Also, as far as I know, flickr and deviantart attract different crowds? Can't really say, I've heard flickr described as a place for just throwing photographs, and deviantart for a more art oriented atmosphere.

Suppose it depends on who you know.

Ruu_Old

I'm in the process of chucking my deviantART account out the window. Lately a number of pictures haven't been uploading correctly for me and I don't really like the changes they have made.

Roen

Every time I'm on a page I don't know if it's that persons pictures, their contacts pictures or what the hell I'm looking at. And what a dog to load.

tba

plus the feedback... jesus christ its all "OMG THIS IS AWESOME!" even if its shiote

Morlar

440Hz wrote:

been on the site for the past hour and still have not gotten to post anything yet!

I guess what Im asking is... is it worth the effort, or was I right when I thought I should just stick to Flickr!!

Its really not difficult to submit a piece click on 'Submit Art' - then 'Deviation' (or print if its a print) - and Photography if its a photograph - then which kind.

Thats it - the reason for different categories is because its not a photo sharing site. It covers everything from 3d art to poetry to paintings, software resources, flash programs right down to photoshops videos and actions.

Its probably not as straightforward as flickr but you get a lot more out of it. So its not for everybody.

The categories you choose as you submit a piece mean that later on you can search and filter down to exactly what your looking for so there is a benefit to it for users.

As for gushing feedback - thats exactly the same as flickr. Its not all gushing if you look a bit closer but some of it is.

It depends on what kind of feedback the person is looking for, regular feedback or advanced critique - you get to choose which you prefer. Or you can turn it off completely.

Fajitas!

I don't like Deviant art...for reasons said above.

I can see it's appeal though.

elven

I thought that it was looking better with the new style, and also loading a bit quicker. But I don't have the inclination to join up, since flickr has the storage, contacts and group stuff that I'm happy with. But it does seem that although flickr has a huge amount of real talent, it also has an appeal to the standard p&s family/holiday snap person - dev art is slightly more 'underground' (excuse the cheesy term) and has a higher proportion of artists, of all kinds.

Plus, it's all dark and moody and would be more attractive to those angsty artistic teenagers that are obsessed with death and stuff like that

Morlar

elven wrote:

Plus, it's all dark and moody and would be more attractive to those angsty artistic teenagers that are obsessed with death and stuff like that

Oh noes rumbled !

Fionn

yeah - it's for artistes not the great unwashed plebs out there

the presentation can be appealing but the speed puts me off
could be a lot more user friendly

Zillah

I like DA. The recent upgrade is a bit buggy but aside from that I've never had any problems. The system works really well I find.

Then again I'm an angsty teenager obsessed with death

(Crap, I'm 22, I don't want to all grown up...)

sionnach

I find flickr much easier to use, especially once you've installed the uploading tools on your pc. I also prefer the userbase, 90% of it isn't made up of teenagers submitting terrible anime drawings.

Morlar

sionnach wrote:

I find flickr much easier to use, especially once you've installed the uploading tools on your pc. I also prefer the userbase, 90% of it isn't made up of teenagers submitting terrible anime drawings.

Hate to sound like a salesman but neither is devart. You dont need to install anything either.

I think flickr probably is easier to use - so it probably depends on what you want - I found d.a. a bit clunky to begin with once you know your way around it it has enough to keep you interested between the forums, chat areas and all sorts of people uploading all sorts of things from all over the planet. Plus you have all sorts of gallery stats, recent visitors blah blah. Nerd heaven if you ask me.

One big plus is an online prints store (unless you fork out for a print account you only get 5/10%) but if you pay the €20 for a dedicated print account it lasts forever and you get 50% split on profits over the base price. My print one is the freebie base one for now - with the proper print account you get all sorts of new options to play around with.

steveland?

I like deviantArt, not a huge fan of the new update but I still think it's a nice little community.

It was difficult enough, alright, to figure out at first but once you get going to can chuck pictures up really fast.

Some of the resources are excellent too

red_bairn

I think devArt is grand but I ahvent used Flickr so can't really compare. I find it a bit weird that I would only get a small response from my work compared to somebody who would stick in sh** all and get loads of response.


http://redbairn.deviantart.com/gallery/

PurpleFistMixer

On deviantart, popular people get positive feedback, basically. Like, of course, natural talent is evident, but essentially the more people know you, the more comments you'll get, and as people seem to prefer commenting with "omg nice!" more than anything else, you'll end up with a lot of "omg nice!".

One of the more annoying aspects of dA, I think. But with such a large userbase, it's fairly unavoidable.

Morlar

red_bairn wrote:

I think devArt is grand but I ahvent used Flickr so can't really compare. I find it a bit weird that I would only get a small response from my work compared to somebody who would stick in sh** all and get loads of response.


http://redbairn.deviantart.com/gallery/

I have had that as well - I think sometimes when you submit something it doesnt always go into the rotation - next time you do try browsing through the new submissions to make sure yours showed up in the list for others to find.

If the new work doesnt show in the rotation ping the helpdesk.

You could also try checking the thumbnail forums.

I think sometimes people with huge pagecounts and lots of watchers tend to get a better respose to a piece than people who dont have that. Sometimes people seem to think - 'well I know this person submitted that ace pic a while ago - so this one must be good too'. You probably get similair stuff on flickr too.

red_bairn

Aye aye. I think your right there. Although a lot of pics get added every minuter so It could be hard for people to spot my ****. I have been at the site for about a year and a half now and thought I'd be at about 1500-2000 page views by now. But I will check that out Morlar.

Thanks.

PurpleFistMixer

Well, I think the page views depend a lot on how much you put into deviantart.

Like, for a while after I registered originally, I barely used it at all so my page was empty and pageviewsless, but then I got all into it and they started going up. Commenting on other people and whatnot helps, talking in the chatrooms, that kind of thing.

mloc

flickr ftw tbh. DA just doesn't seem as nice and airy, I think it suits darker arty type stuff beter perhaps, but for showing photography as it is Flickr is better, methinks.

Also, the AJAX implementation on the site is pretty cool.

Zillah

Morlar wrote:

I think sometimes people with huge pagecounts and lots of watchers tend to get a better respose to a piece than people who dont have that. Sometimes people seem to think - 'well I know this person submitted that ace pic a while ago - so this one must be good too'. You probably get similair stuff on flickr too.

It gets kind of crazy once you're really popular. Some people post an image and even if its not all that good within an hour its got two thousand views and four hundred favourites.

Fenster

I was never a DA fan simply as everything takes so fecking long to load.

440Hz

Yeah I think im gonna stick to Flickr. Having to agree to four or five pages of T&C before you can post anything is just annoying, I dont have the time to read all that

elven

Just in case anyone reading this doesn't actually know both sites, there are groups, contacts, recently added, 'most interesting' (read: popular) and all that sort of gear in flickr as well. That's how I keep up to date with what Fajitas/440Hz/Brian/Joolsveer etc etc are posting - without having to go through all their galleries.

I also like to read the discussions in the C.A.F.E. and The Digital Darkroom groups, usually based around one particular image at a time, much more in-depth than the usual 'wow this is a BIG FAVE' comments

You can also keep up to date on comments that you've made on other pictures, so that if someone replies to your comment, you don't have to keep checking the image page to see it.

I think tbh they are probably fairly well matched in terms of features. I haven't signed up for DA so I don't know the rigmarole with that - but I did think that flickr was a bit confusing to start out with, too. Once you get used to it, it seems very simple and it's difficult to forget that I think.

But I really do like in particular the 'uploadr' which allows you to right click on images on your PC and choose 'send to flickr' which is about the easiest thing I've ever seen.

Still, good to see that my angsty goth teen (or whatever they are calling it now) comment went down well, hehe... if only you saw me in my black hair, pale skin and fangs at the weekends