Pixel Art awarded a DD at dA

[Fry]

I hope that deviantart does attract pixel artists, and I hope that those who are serious about pixel art end up here.  Deviantart is a good place to display your work (as I found out today).  However those who are genuinely interested in learning pixel art and want to improve should head here.  Any place that discourages criticism (even if only by the community and not DA itself) will not be helpful in the long run.

But all in all... I won't jump on the Deviantart bashing bandwagon.  I post my work there, so obviously I don't dislike it that much.  It's pretty much the myspace or facebook for the general online art community.   

-Fry

[Panda]

Pixel art is about to happen big time at dA....please yourself if you want to have an infuence there or not.....

Why will it happen big time? Any especific reason?
As far as I know, dA hasn't changed at all for the last couple of years (well, except their retarded user unfriendly designs every year). Why now?

[Skull]

I'm impressed that dA have finally stepped Pixel Art up a notch.

For as long as I've been there, I can only ever recall a handfull of DD that were given to Pixel Art.. and it's a real shame..

I cry each time I browse their 'PA Gallery'

[miascugh]

I haven't checked that site for a nice while, but from what I recall there was a fair amount of Pixel Art DDs on quite a regular basis. It's up to the 'departmental' moderators (and also any member) to pick/suggest DDs, so even if Pixel Art suffered from a general lack of recognition at dA, it wouldn't make much of a difference (since the people who put it up at the frontpage would have to trust in the Pixel Art-responsible's expertise. And I believe they try/tried to have as many different media as possible represented in the features).

From what I can tell though, Pixel Art HAS had its high at dA and has been experiencing a decline over last couple of years.

[Helm]

Pixel art is about to happen big time at dA....please yourself if you want to have an influence there or not.....

Wishful thinking I say. And why would this board want to have any influence outside this board?

[Stwelin]

Sure I do, but that's not why I make stuff. If you look at my gallery in pixeljoint, you'll see I do odd artwork that isn't usually easy to love. If I wanted to be adored I'd draw big-breasted women and cool hip samurai robots in snes-pastel palettes exclusively. Pixelation doesn't pressure people to make the same style of art because we don't rate, we don't have favourites, we don't have the watch mechanism. We don't reward art with anything other than good critique and honest opinions.

Well, pixel joint has a 'favorites system,' but i don't think that the interfacing or structure has much to do with it being so different from Deviant Art.

Since we focus on a single medium, there becomes a more tightly-knit group of artists, plus, the mods here as well as at pixel joint are muuuuch more prominent and 'part of the community' at dA. Since our userbase is so small compared to dA, we can handle each thread with care, but at dA, even good artist's pieces can get lost in the shuffle.

Also, their commenting system just doesn't make for an easy way to gain critique. A lot of people don't want to go through the hassle of re-uploading their image, because only the latest one shows, whereas here was can see a progression, and generally our users are more accepting of critique.

[shonegold]

Wishful thinking I say.

No, not wishful thinking.


 

And why would this board want to have any influence outside this board?

Because there is a high degree of ethics involved in genuine pixel art, a pride in a job well done, mostly only known by the artist but appreciated by a few very experienced, discerning artists.....and where are those very experienced discerning artists? Here, hiding away while the sh!t piles up higher and higher in the all but abandoned hallways of the p a section at dA.

Instead of siphoning people away from dA it would be far better to create a better knowledge of what pixel art is exactly and let the artform grow there, who knows how many amazing artists are out there who know nothing about  real pixel art and may never know, if all they see are ripped sprites, decorated doll bases and poorly shaded isos.

I know there is a tendency there to be "OMG WOW! THIS IS SOOOO WUUUUNDERFUL!", it is irritating but because of the bulk of numbers viewing, it will always be a fact of life. This sort of comment probably can't be overcome so easily but I do concede it is a real negative about dA.

There is a pm system there...nothing to stop people from writing to a contributor and saying, hey pal we can see you are a bullsh!t artist, you are doing this, this and this, which isn't pixel art and all the real deal pixel artists will pick you as a fake and ignore you big time. So please stop it....

.....and don't forget to add that obligatory smiley grin to your comments....NOT!

Panda....because it is time.

Thanks for all your other comments, read and appreciated....

[Feron]

Pixel-art will never be good  on Da.  I dont really know why you're here - seems like you want to revolutionise DA, well tbh i don't think anyone here could care less about deviant-art.

anyone with decent abilites would only have to type 'pixel-art' into google and they would eaily find this site or one that links to it.  Pixeljoint is pretty high in the google search, and as far as pixel-art resources go pixeljoint is the best archive around.

I'm not really sure about the purpose of this thread and i can only see it ending in being locked.

Lol, its time WTF are you on about...

[snake]

DeviantArt is a good way do display your artwork and get a lot of people to see it. Giving critics is more or less useless as you're just another member, and the general quota is that you just leave good or bad comment, so most fall in under that banner. There are small communeties that are centered around critique, but as you can imagine, they're mostly for people that are part of that group. Like here, you have to have a closer social network for that to work. If you just go pointing out faults for people you don't know, they'll most likely take it offensively.

I am not interested in going on missionary duty on DA, spreading the "correct way" of pixel and critique. Most use use the site as a portfolio page or to cause attention and trying to convert it into a critique site is a shot in the dark. If I know the individual, I might be able to talk more casually about it. PMing people about their appairant blasphemy is none of my business and I'll leave that to the more extreme. If someone wanted to improve, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't use DA to do it, and if so, they're probably not doing it through the comment system.

So congrants to Fry, thousands of people will now know what you do. (I reckon this is what the topic was about in the first place.)

[Panda]

This is not a hideout for pixel artists. We are all aware of dA's existance, and if some of us are not participating there, it must be for a reason.
Most of the stuff you "featured" on your journal entry was done by members from pixelation and pixeljoint.
If you are trying to "evangelize" pixelart there, I think you are blindly walking towards a wall.

First of all, people won't care much about what you are doing. Why? Because you are a no-one in dA without tons of pageviews, without some high rank/status, without tons of devwatchers, without featured art. For some reason there is this invisible rank thing going on, involving what I said. No matter how good your intentions or art are, you won't make a revolution in dA if you lack those.
Second, most of the people go to dA for showing their stuff and for the whole community and popularity thing, not for learning (and if they do, it is probably because they haven't heard of better places yet). People that are experienced only expect those ass kissing comments there. Those that want to get better through critique have already moved somewhere else (even if they still upload their stuff). And those that are "not that experienced" are those commenters that go like "OMG SO COOL! + FAV!!!". But pretty much everything revolves around popularity there.

What has dA done to us so we would make another "pixelation" there? Why would we want to lend a hand to a huge, chaotic and self destructing community? Why aim there when we have this here?
Also you mention that more emoticonists (heh) are getting interested in pixel art in your notes, why not point them here instead of waiting for your revolution?
We already have what they need, all they lack is pointers here.

It is time you look at the whole thing from a different perspective.