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DeviantArt

About 12 pages (3,564 words)

DeviantArt


URL	http://www.deviantart.com/
Commercial?	Yes
Type of site	Artistic community
Registration	Yes
Owner	DeviantArt, Inc.
Created by	Scott Jarkoff, Angelo Sotira and Matthew Stephens, amongst others
Launched	August 7th, 2000
Current status	Active

DeviantArt (official typeset "deviantART") is an international online artistic community. It was first launched on August 7, 2000 by Scott Jarkoff, Matthew Stephens and Angelo Sotira, amongst others. DeviantArt aims to provide a place for any visual artist to exhibit and discuss his or her works. It also provides a community of like-minded individuals and is visited by 1.5 million individuals per day who view approximately 35 million pages. As of January 2008 the site consists of over 6 million users and over 48 million submissions, and receives around 60,000+ submissions per day.^[1] DeviantArt features many forms of creative expression, organized in a comprehensive category structure. The artwork on display includes photography, digital art, traditional art, literature, Flash, filmmaking and skins for applications. The site also has extensive downloadable resources for use by creators such as tutorials and stock photography.

Origins

A plushie of DeviantArt's mascot "Fella".^[2]

This image has an uncertain copyright status and is pending deletion. You can comment on the removal.

DeviantArt was originally created as a part of a larger network of music related websites called the Dmusic Network. The site flourished largely because of its unique offering and the contributions of its core member base and a team of volunteers after its launch,^[3] but was officially incorporated in 2001 about 8 months after launch. DeviantArt was loosely inspired by projects like Winamp facelift, customize.org, deskmod.com, screenphuck.com and skinz.org; all application skin based websites. DeviantArt was founded by Angelo Sotira, Scott Jarkoff, and Matt Stephens. Sotira entrusted all public aspects of the project to Scott Jarkoff as an engineer and visionary to launch the early program. All three co-founders shared backgrounds in the application skinning community, but it was Matt Stephens whose major contribution to DeviantArt was the suggestion to take the concept further than skinning and more toward an "art community." Many of the individuals involved with the initial development and promotion of DeviantArt still hold positions with the project, from administrators to volunteers serving as gallery directors and Message Network Administration. Angelo Sotira currently serves as the CEO of DeviantArt, Inc.^[4] "Fella," a small, robotic, devil character, was chosen as the official DeviantArt mascot.

Terminology

The site uses unorthodox capitalization in its title ("deviantART") as a way of emphasizing its deviance, and other aspects of the site reflect this attitude as well. As such, the following terms are used throughout the site:

dA: A common abbreviation for the site's name (also known less commonly as "devART", and as "dART", pronounced as "dart")
Deviant: A user of DeviantArt
Deviation: A piece of artwork submitted by a user, fully polished and in a state for exhibition
Scrap: An unfinished work, not exhibited prominently.
dAmn: The DeviantArt Messaging Network.^[5]
Notes: Private messages between users
Pasties: User generated HTML code that can be added to a user's website or blog to display recent updates, favorites, or prints.^[6]
Daily Deviation: A submission deemed by a staff member to be impressive or otherwise interesting enough be brought to the attention of the community-at-large. A Daily Deviation, or DD is considered to be a great honor within the community.^[7]

Features

Several forums and a shoutbox exist within DeviantArt. Users can enter their longitude and latitude, and locate other deviants living nearby.

User pages

Every user has a personal page at the URL http://username.deviantart.com, where username is replaced by their username. This page may list the user's interests, mood, hobbies and so forth. It also exhibits the deviant's four most recent works and his or her 'Favourites'. Deviants may also select and display their most prized work as a 'Featured Deviation'. Each deviant can edit their own public journal. The journal is similar to a blog in that a deviant may write an entry and it will be displayed on their user page.

Gallery

The DeviantArt gallery is a grouping of art categories. Each category of the DeviantArt gallery has specific submission requirements which individual DeviantArt users should use to determine into which category they should post their work.

Favourites

Any user may add another user's deviation to their favourites. This will place the deviation on that user's personal page, giving the original artist extra exposure. Users may choose to display the most recent two favourites, or randomly display two of their selected favourites on their userpage.

DeviantWatch

Users can add any user to a watchlist called DeviantWatch (or DevWatch), unless the watcher has been blocked by the user selected to be watched. Doing so will cause the watcher to be notified every time anyone on their watch list submits a new piece of art, submits a new journal entry, or, more recently, submits a News article; one can also select to be notified of the submission of scraps. These notifications may be toggled in the 'Friends List', where deviants are also allowed to group or remove watched deviants.^[8]

AdCast

There is also an AdCast program, for advertising art and community-related products/pages at a discounted rate.^[9]

Subscription

DeviantArt offers a subscription based service with extra features and privileges.^[10] Subscribed Deviant features include the ability to browse the site with no advertisements, greater customization of a user's personal page, including the ability to upload the user's own Cascading Style Sheets for use in their journal. deviantMOBILE is a feature that allows most deviations to be downloaded onto one's mobile phone, though this won't work on all phones or all carriers. There are private forums and a beta testing feature for those with subscriptions. The ability to search artwork on the site with up to 120 images per page is also enabled.^[10] A subscriber "portfolio page" service is currently in development, with the competition for the creation of the portfolio page template already over. The portfolio page is intended to provide artists with a display page that appears more professional than the standard gallery. Users may use this to show potential employers their artwork.^[10] Subscriptions can be purchased in three month and one year lengths. However, some members, predominantly the staff and former staff, attain a subscription that continues "Until Hell Freezes Over", meaning that their subscription never ends.

DeviantArt Shop

Using DeviantArt Shop, users can sell their artwork for a profit.

This feature was originally DeviantArt Prints. Users who have bought a prints account for an annual fee of $24.95 USD (originally it was a one-time fee) may sell their work, printed onto a variety of media such as mugs, jigsaw puzzles, canvases, calendars, mouse pads, coasters, postcards, and magnets. Users earn 50% of the profits above a pre-set "base cost."^[11] For example, the base price for a 4x6 inch print is $0.32. If a user sells it for $2.00, he would get $0.84. A user who does not has a standard prints account would get $0.33, the pre-set price for 4x6s. The Prints account is a one time fee, will not expire, and is non-transferable. Prints II, the newest remake of the system, will be launched in stages, the first having already taken place in November 2006. New features include a basic print account for all members (paying print account owners with added features), new products available such as T-Shirts, and an annual fee instead of the original one-time fee.^[12]

DeviantArt Messaging Network

The DeviantArt Messaging Network (or "dAmn") is the real-time chat system implemented on DeviantArt version 4 on August 7, 2004. ^[13] Through dAmn users can join one of many existing channels and also create their own. It is based on a proprietary protocol and chat server application, and is not compatible with other chat systems. The client end is either a Flash or Java application, or Mozilla extension for server communication, coupled with a JavaScript backend to handle the messages. Only hours after the release dAmn, the protocol had been reverse engineered and publicized. The same night, a first working Perl client was made available.^[14] Today users have a choice of clients for various operating systems, written in different languages, and with more or improved features over the official client. The official client, while flash/java based, has limited crossbrowser support. Very few Opera users, for example, report any success in using it. Firefox is seemingly the most compatible browser for viewing the site. Chat rooms on dAmn are referred to with a number sign before their name. Some channels host events and have live interviews with artists. There are official chat rooms on the DeviantArt messaging network, some of which include #devart and #help. "#devart" is the name of the official channel of the site, and as a direct result tends to contain the greatest user volume. The number of channels has increased significantly since then. #help is the official DeviantArt assistance channel. It is meant to act as an instant form of DeviantArt's Help Desk, providing users with various forms of site-related aid instead of using email. #help is known for being operated by volunteers from the site itself.^[5]

RSS feeds and Pasties

DeviantArt is becoming more integrable with blogs through the use of RSS feeds and "Pasties." These features allow a user to post content on their blog(s) that will update as they submit new deviations to DeviantArt. Pasties can be modified to show a user's favourites, recent submissions, a particular category of artwork, and more. RSS also allows anyone to subscribe to gallery feeds so they can be notified when their favorite artists submit new deviations.^[6]

Growth

On November 14, 2006, DeviantArt has given its users the option to submit their works under a Creative Commons licenses giving the artists the right to choose how their works can be used.^[15] On September 30, 2007, a film category was added to DeviantArt, allowing artists to upload videos. An artist and other viewers can add annotations to sections of the film, giving comments or critiques to the artist about a particular moment in the film.^[16]

Versions

DeviantArt has been revising the site in versions, releasing multiple features at once. After version 2, versions were released on the date of site's birthday, August 7. Version 2, released on February 5, 2002. In version 2, browsing was made easier.^[17] Version 3, released on August 7, 2003.^[18] Version 4, released on August 7, 2004. In version 4, the chat client called dAmn was added to the site.^[13] Version 5 was released on August 7, 2006.^[19] In version 5, each deviant has a Prints account, through which they may sell their works for money, receiving 10% of the profits. Users can also obtain Premium Prints Account offering 50% of the profits and an immediate check of material submitted for sales. Before version 5 of DeviantArt, users did not have by default access to this service and it had to be obtained separately. By paying for a subscription, a deviant could also sell their work for 50% of each sale. Upgrades are planned regularly on v5 due to the large number of bugs reported in the forums. There are no official plans or projections for when v6 will be released.

User Symbols

All deviants on DeviantArt are referred to by their given nickname, which is preceded by a user symbol. The symbols are listed below. (Note that some of the symbols listed below are no longer in use.)^[20]

Symbol	Type of User	Description
~	Member	A registered user
*	Subscriber	A user who has paid a subscription
=	Official Beta Tester	A subscriber who participates in the beta testing program
`	Senior Member	A member recognized by staff as a positive contributor to the DeviantArt community, awarded with some, but not all subscriber privileges. Senior membership may be revoked, reassigning the member to a normal member or subscriber, depending on the last paid subscription. Also, former staff typically retain senior membership.
°	Alumni Staff	Former Core Staff member
#	Art Group Member	No longer in use, except for a few inactive accounts. The "#" symbol now refers to a channel (chatroom) in the DeviantArt Messaging Network.
£	"Minister" of DeviantArt	The summitgroup, dAPresents, and deviantWEAR accounts are the only current Ministers. This symbol was introduced as part of the 2004 April Fool's Day joke, which claimed that British staff members took over DeviantArt, resulting many Non-British staff members bearing a "Banned Member" symbol next to their name, while British staff members received the £ symbol.^[21]
@	Message Network Administrator	Administrators of the DeviantArt Message Network (dAmn); Also moderates the forums
©	Copyright & Etiquette Administration Staff	Responsible for banning users and removing art
%	DeviantArt Prints Staff	Responsible for quality control when users submit prints and other shop specific duties
+	General Volunteer	Has been used for various positions, including News Administrator; Also encompasses some programming/coding staff
¢	Creative Staff	Responsible for creation of artistic assets for the site; some users are considered consultants.
^	Gallery Director	Volunteer staff members responsible for overseeing a particular sub-gallery or category of DeviantArt (e.g. photography, fan art, anime); have the privilege of selecting the Daily Deviation awards for their category; must ensure that uploaded images are classified correctly; serve for a one year term in any particular gallery; and are often awarded seniorship upon the end of their term.
$	Core Administrator	Long-term employees of DeviantArt; also responsible for banning users and removing art
!	Banned or Closed Account	Either the account has been banned for more than month (bans under one month in length are called 'suspensions' and do not affect the user symbol); user page is replaced by a ban notice. Banned users can log in and read their messages. A user can request a manual account closure, which is currently implemented as a permanent ban of the account.

DeviantArt Summit

The Hollywood Palladium while hosting the first annual DeviantArt Summit.

On June 17 and June 18, 2005, DeviantArt held their first convention, the DeviantArt Summit, at the Palladium in Hollywood, California. The summit consisted of several exhibitions by numerous artists, including artscene groups old and new at approximately 200 different booths. Giant projection screens displayed artwork as it was being submitted live to DeviantArt, which receives 50,000 new images daily. The summit also hosted various art-related workshops and seminars.^[22] Leaders of DeviantArt had hoped to hold a new summit each year; however, no plans were ever made for a 2006 Summit. This may be due to lack of interest, money, or inability to find a location. It should be noted that despite a big turn out, only a tiny percentage of the DeviantArt population actually attended the summit. No official plans regarding future summits have been announced yet.

Criticism

DeviantArt has been subject to numerous criticisms within its community.

Copyright and trademark issues

Due to the impractical nature of researching the copyright status of every artwork submission, there are many copyright violations that remain unnoticed until a user has reported it as a policy violation. Administrative work regarding policy violations is often viewed as one-sided and unconcerned; this is because some users are not aware of the copyright policies, and claim to be falsely or mistakenly accused.

Termination of Scott Jarkoff

On July 29, 2005, co-founder Scott Jarkoff was terminated from DeviantArt staff, causing an uproar within the community. Various statements by DeviantArt regarding the issue have portrayed his termination as necessary, but many users reject this assertion. With Matthew Stephens' resignation in 2003, supporters of Scott Jarkoff assert that now neither of the founders remain in DeviantArt's administration. In contrast, Sotira insists he was a founder, and also the first full time working staff member of the DeviantArt administration. The DeviantArt administration has been generally tight-lipped throughout the incident, citing legal restraints. Various campaigns have sprung up in support of Scott Jarkoff, including the "Bring Back The Community" campaign, "Save The Alien", and "Yellow Day" (because Jarkoff was known as the "yellow alien"; Jarkoff's mascot) which was carried out by many of Scott Jarkoff's supporters.^[23] On July 31, 2005, Sotira posted an official response to explain the situation.^[24] The response to this entry was mixed. Jarkoff also posted an explanation on his personal website.^[25]

Angelo Sotira Speaks Out

Two years later, on October 7, 2007, Jarkoff wrote a journal in which he ranted about his video getting deleted due to a copyright violation.^[26] On October 13, 2007, Sotira broke in and finally gave the full story.^[27] He claims that Jarkoff lied about his role in DeviantArt's development and that Jarkoff did nothing on the site in the beginning and that he was the one who fired Matthew Stephens in 2003. Sotira also proves that he was the first full-time working DeviantArt staff. He accuses Jarkoff of hypocrisy by saying that Jarkoff still owns shares of DeviantArt stock. Jarkoff claimed he needed money to sue Sotira for wrongful termination, and even went so far as to set up a fund for it, but Sotira claims that in reality, he had more than enough money to cover any legal costs for any lawsuits. Sotira implies that Jarkoff defrauded people through his legal fund and that he fired Jarkoff in the first place because he didn't do a sufficient enough job as chief software engineer.^[28] The reaction to this news was very supportive and in favor of Sotira, even though some people say that Sotira waited too long to speak out. Jarkoff has yet to post a reaction.