Deviantart: Officially Uncool?

[Oddysseus]

Yeah, I joined deviantart.com back when it was a (relatively) cool place to be, but lately it seems the whole site has been taken over by 14-year-old emo-addicted Naruto slash ficition writing spazoids.

I mean, those people have always formed a portion of the site's population, but now it seems they are the majority.  And all the "serious" artists seem to be leaving this sinking ship for the "next big thing."

Am I totally offbase on this, or is deviantart really getting as bad as I think?  And if all the artists are leaving, what site are they going to?

[Mr Flibble]

DeviantArt has about as many real artists as MySpace has people who aren't attention whores.

I don't know where they all went, maybe they were just marginalised by all the emos and fanbrats and can't be found any more. Or perhaps they left for their own blogs or somesuch.

[Nikolas]

Well...

If you think about deviant is pretty much the same as myspace and soundclick and acidplanet and facebook and the rest...

Communities, each one to their own (soundclick= music, deviant=art, etc)...

It's bound to happen...

I always stay away from such places. Prefer very much the good old forums and the such...

[Disco]

I used to check DeviantArt pages of friends (the homogenised subjects and themes keeping me from venturing further into the community), but I have altogether stopped for much of the same reasons Odysseus.

Now I use such sites as search engines to find artists I like, and I link to their websites or blogs. If you are interested mostly in illustration like I am, you might try the Flight forums and poke around. I also like bullalog and just recently stumbled upon DrawerGeeks!, which is a neat, themed illustration jam every Friday.

[space boy]

I frequently visit www.epilogue.net

[deadsuperhero]

I usually go there for wallpapers, and uploading my own stuff.
That's about it, though.

[Vel]

Is there a "next best thing" art community network?
As I don't draw, I only go there to admire art, and if you're looking for something specific, DA most probably won't let you down(just try searching for Prague, for instance). However, there are too many emo scraps, that's true. But one just lives with it.

[Evil]

Personal websites are the next best things. Artists are realizing that their work is more professional when it's not on a website over run with teeny-boppers.

Sooner or later there will be another Deviant or something, but not until amateur photography and anime become unpopular.

[Nikolas]

Exactly my thought!

I mean, why go the same way as another 3,000,000 + people, and not make your own individual site? It proves that you care enough to chase it!

[CoffeeBob]

It's kind of like Photobucket. I joined it back in the day when it was relatively small, and while it is basically the same now in terms of how the upload system works and all, the new look of the site just screams "attention-whores, cometh here!" or something like that.. Also, one of the most popular search words is "emo"? Man, I thought that breed of disgraceworthy teens was dying out judging from how few of them walk around the cities these days, but it seems not.

All community sites become real awful places as they get more popular, that's why I stick with what I'm currently being a member on.

[lo_res_man]

Elfwood ain't bad, but they recently removed the rules test, so know i'm sure even more ' i doodled on my school book, lets upload!" will join. But it has a lot of beutiful work,

[Andail]

Deviantart is arguably the worst community when it comes to teenage emo/manga doodles with no skills but a gazillion comments - just because they themselves have given out a gazillion comments and such sites are all about returning favours.
If an artwork on Deviantart has twohundred comments which all say "wow OMFg that's phantastic1" that means absolutely nothing, which in the end makes the commenting service useless in an artistic point of view.
To offer c&c that is constructive but in any way sincere (or god forbid, harsh) is totally out of the question.

Elfwood used to have some sort of quality control (although rather rudimentary - there's sooo much crap on that site), but was also all about writing comments till your fingers bleed in hope that people would return the comments. Generally the level of quality isn't good nowadays.

Gfxartist is fairly good because people can rate pictures, and the even the most obstinate fan-boys can't push their best friends' pictures above pictures that are actually good. Also, how high score you can give depends on how much "credit" you have on the site (membership history, size of gallery, etc).
There's still alot of crap here, but you can at least filter it thanks to the ratings.

Epilogue is good because of the quality control, and you'll mostly find "good" art here. It's also less of a fan-community, and the commenting isn't as central as on other sites.

CGsociety is perhaps my favourite site, mostly because the amount of high-quality art, but also because of the competitions with "mile-stone" WiP threads and other pedagogical features. Also, I like how threads are created automatically when a picture is added (after having undergone quality control) and that these threads can't be bumped; instead they're in the order they were started in.

Of course there are so many other communities out there, but these are the ones I've got personal experience with or uploaded art to.

[Sale]

Once an eighth grader told me my (pencil) art looks like the stuff on Deviant art, completely meaning it as a compliment because she didn't know any better, yet it somehow sounded extremely degrading.  It's because of DA that idiots lump all anime/manga artists in the same heaping pile of garbage, claiming that it isn't a valid art style just because so many tactless amateurs are doing it.

[Eigen]

I've never been much of a visitor in Deviantart, but over the time I've come to the realization that indeed, it isn't what it used to be but there is still great art to found. And then there's is not so great art. I mean, there's even a picture of ME playing some show taken with a cell phone ... I mean ME .. gosh, that's no art.

A new community for artists would make sense when there's some control over the content. But of course, more users means it takes more time to get approval on a picture. But oh well .. what can you do when MySpace isn't enough.

[Ghost]

I am a member of DA and seem to have landed there shortly after that "downfall" began. But I still say there are some poeple in the community who take c&c- and their art- seriously. If you browse a little and don't mind scrolling through a lot of not-so-good stuff, you can find people who know what they do: Who produce great art and speak up, too. I've found some good friends and a lot of quality artwork at DA. There are "cool" people there. It's just that they seem to be a minority.

What nags me is the zeal some of the kids can show- in the few month I've been a DA member I saw three artists banned because a "club" (a few fellow members who share a logo) took offence on a picture of a cartoon squirrel. That was naked. In a purely artistical way. And a cartoon, too.
DA also has some pretty foggy copyright rules, and I somehow object if I'm told that I'm free to practise my art in a community, but "Big Brother" (theirs, not ours) is allowed to remove it should he think it's not appropriate.
So if your saying can be extended to "Is the DA system uncool", I'd sign that.

StormArtists has become a quite attractive refugee point, too. Seems a decent site, though I've just browsed the aforementioned three former DA artists there...

[Brad Newsom]

Conceptart.org

best art place EVER!

Also DeviantArt isn't really like Myspace. Its only as bad as you want it to be. I know a huge amount of artists who arent emo attention whores like you proclaimed. DeviantArt is still the same, just stop looking in the wrong places.

[Redwall]

The same could be said of MySpace.

(Also, I'm not sure you have a lot of a room to talk regarding emos... )

[Brad Newsom]

So basically what everyone is saying is that emotional photography is not an art? A foundation of most photography. Basically your all saying in order for DeviantArt to be a place of art, a certain group of people cannot be involved in the place.

Second, i'm not emo. People who think modeling with makeup is emo is a completely retarded insult to anything art itself. I in no wait show hatred for my self. I'm a narcissist, thats all.

None of my photos except personal pics, show anything relate to emo. My themes are strictly based on Cyber Punk, Post-Apocalyptic, and Beauty....oh and humor.

People like you think everything art is emo. If you looked at art back during the renaissance, everything was dark and morbid. That has never changed through time, but only people's ignorant lifestyles change the face of true art. People like you only think crap artwork of Sonic is non-emo art. http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/61593534/?qo=4&qh=special%3Anewest

NOTE: For those that think its hard to find the real art, then you fail at the internet. On the main page there are listings for Daily Deviations, here the best of the best artists latest artwork showup here.
http://today.deviantart.com/dds/

[Ghost]

Amen to that, Brad. The "emo" tag has already been twisted beyond meaning by careless generalisation. Happens to a lot of words, though, which is a shame.
DA really is, and that's the sole truth, as good as you like it to be, as is any sort of community that crops up in the worldwide web. But sometimes its your own fault if things go screw, sometimes it's the fault of the makers. And more often than not it's a combines effort...

[Brad Newsom]

Yes, agreed! Also a little feature that makes life better at DA is while search for a specific category, lets say 'Digital Art > Paintings & Airbrushing > Sci-Fi', you can click the 'Popular' button, and all of the very best artwork pieces from that category show from the best to pretty good. Its easy, and dare I say, nothing like myspace. lol

EDIT: Oh and after you click Popular, you get more buttons that allow you to define for how long the deviations have been popular. Ex: click 'all time' and you get the best art pieces of all time.

Here are a list of deviations that come up on the very front page after doing this.
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/35710689/
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/43032339/
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/3006638/
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/4016224/
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/3287278/
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/43792300/
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/36125936/
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/42972394/

Lets break down the barriers and become a united world where feelings, emotions, and ideas are accept for what they are. I'm not fighting for the emo's, specifically people who hate themselves and use the word like its nothing, mainly because they truly are annoying. Art is life!


Oh and for some comic relief, here is a crappy deviation I did a while ago. Is it pretty...no, but its a concept I want to continue!
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/50501322/