DeviantArt

deviantART

File:Deviantart logo.png
The front page of deviantART
Type of site	Artistic community
Owner	deviantART, Inc.
Created by	Scott Jarkoff, Angelo Sotira and Matthew Stephens, amongst others
URL	http://www.deviantart.com/
Commercial	Yes
Registration	Yes

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 artist, photographer, writer, or Flash 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 December 2007 the site consists of over 6 million users and over 46.95 million submissions, and receives around 60,000+ submissions per day.

deviantART features many forms of creative expression organized in a comprehensive category structure. The artwork on display includes photography, digital art, traditional art, literature and skins for applications. The site also has extensive downloadable resources for use by creators such as tutorials and stock photography.

Origins

deviantART was loosely inspired by projects like winamp facelift, customize.org, deskmod.com, screenphuck.com and skinz.org, all application skin based websites. The developers of deviantART were Scott Jarkoff, Matt Stephens and Angelo Sotira. 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 (artist) whose major contribution to deviantART was the suggestion to take the concept further than skinning and more toward an "art community."

"Fella," a small devil-robotic character, was chosen as the official deviantART mascot; while a stylized "DA" was used as the logo.

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 serves as the CEO of deviantART, Inc.

deviantART Pages of dA Founders

• Scott Jarkoff a.k.a. jark
• Matt Stephens a.k.a. matteo
• Angelo Sotira a.k.a. spyed

Terminology

The site uses unorthodox capitalization in its title (deviantART) as a way of emphasizing its deviancy, 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 title (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 deviant, fully polished and in a state for exhibition.

Scrap

An unfinished work, not exhibited prominently.

dAmn

The deviantART Messaging Network.

Faves

A gallery of artwork created by a deviant. A deviant may add any deviation to his Faves by selecting the "Add To Favorites" option while viewing it. A deviant cannot add his own deviation to his faves.

Pasties

User generated HTML code that can be added to a user's website or blog to display recent updates, favorites, or prints.

Prints

Printed artwork available for purchase, often in a variety of sizes.

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.

Features

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. This should not be confused with a deviantART userpage gallery. Each category of the deviantART gallery and the criteria used to define what can be submitted to it is approved by deviantART staff and additional gallery categories can be suggested. Every deviant has his or her own personal page at the URL http://username.deviantart.com, where username is replaced by the username of the deviant in question. 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.

Favourites

Any deviant may select any other deviation, as long as it was created by another user, as one of their Favourites. This will place the deviation on that user's personal page, giving the original artist extra exposure. Deviants may choose to display only the most recent two favourites, or randomly display two of their selected favourites each time their userpage is viewed.

deviantWATCH

Any deviant may add any other deviant to a watchlist called deviantWATCH, 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.

Notes

Notes are private messages. Public messages can also be left on a user's home page. The ability to enter one's longitude and latitude, which can be used to locate other deviants living nearby, is a unique feature of Deviantart. As of 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.

Adcast

There is also an adCast program, for advertising art and community-related products/pages at a discounted rate. Several forums and a shoutbox exist within deviantART. A chat system called dAmn (deviantART Messaging Network) allows real-time communication between community members. The featuring of selected artists works in prominent places on the site, called Daily Deviations, exists to expose particularly talented artists to a larger audience.

Subscription

deviantART offers a subscription based service with extra features and privileges.

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 your own CSS for use in your 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. Private forums exist for those with a fee-based account, and beta testing is available only to those with subscriptions. The ability to search artwork on the site with up to 120 images per page is also enabled.

A subscriber "portfolio page" service is currently in the works, 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.

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

This service has been known as deviantART Prints, and before that, deviantPrints. Formerly a secondary website that acts as deviantART's store, it is now fully integrated with deviantART.com. Here, any user who has bought a Prints account ($24.99) may sell their deviations, printed onto a variety of media such as mugs or jigsaws, and earn 50% of the profits above a pre-set "base cost". 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: basic print account for all members (paying print account owners with added features), new products available such as T-Shirts, and an annual instead of lifetime fee.

dAmn (deviantART messaging network)

dAmn (deviantART messaging network) is the name of the real-time chat system implemented on deviantART version 4. 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 of dAv4 (deviantART version 4) and dAmn, the protocol had been reverse engineered and publicized. The same night, a first working Perl client was made available.

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. There are many official chat rooms on the deviantART messaging network some of which include #devart and #help.

1. "devart" is the name of the official channel of the site, and as a direct result tends to contain the greatest user volume. On the eve of dAmn, #devart was the only channel available to users wanting to test the new messaging network. The number of channels has increased significantly since then.
2. "help" is the official assistance channel of the site. It is meant to act as an instant form of deviantART's Help Desk feature, providing users with various forms of site-related aid without the delay of its mail-based counterpart. #help is known for being operated by volunteers from the site itself.

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 your favorites, 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.

Growth

The site is in a constant state of growth. There is a forum specifically focused on suggestions, and another for repairing known problems. In addition, devMAG, a monthly magazine, was produced, but this was discontinued.

deviantART's latest revision (deviantART v5), was released on August 7, 2006, (deviantART's sixth anniversary) . 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.)

Symbol	Type of User	Description
~	Member	The level a deviant achieves by registering
*	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, and often retain the "Until Hell Freezes Over" subscription status.
°	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 of deviantART. 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. This was merely a visual change though and was reverted on April 2,2004.
@	Message Network Administrator	Administrators of the deviantART Message Network (dAmn). Also moderates the Forums.
:	Premium Content Staff	currently defunct
©	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 art assets for the site. Some minor freelancers on deviantART also hold this symbol.
^	Gallery Director	Volunteer staff members responsible for overseeing a particular sub-gallery / category of DeviantArt (e.g. Photography, Fan Art, Anime). Gallery Directors 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	This symbol could mean one of two things. Usually, it means that 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.) Banned members cannot send notes, comment, update their journal, or submit artwork, and their 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

File:Das05-palladium-1-x768.jpg

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.com, which receives 50,000 new images daily. The summit also hosted various art-related workshops and seminars.

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.

deviantART as a corporation

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, but was officially incorporated in 2001 about 8 months after launch.

Over the years, the website has grown so much that several features available to non-subscribers have been removed. These removals have been explained as both an encouragement for members to subscribe (such as the ability to view artwork thumbnails in a user's message center) and due to cutbacks that had to be made to save bandwidth during the "bandwidth-crisis" that happened in deviantART's second year where providing a free service to so many users put a huge strain on the site resources.

Copyright and Trademark issues

Historically, there has been sporadic unease regarding deviantART's potential usage of uploaded art. Posting requires assent to dA's Submission Agreement, which grants deviantART the legal permissions to re-use and even modify any artwork posted on deviantART, as well as the right to sublicense any of that artwork to a third party at dA's sole discretion. However, it does also require deviantART to secure separate permission from the artist to sublicense the work by itself to a third party for commercial use outside of a deviantART-related compilation.

Critics have argued that those usage rights are too broad and far-reaching, that the legal language is unnecessarily complex and weighed in dA's favor, and that the difficulty of terminating the agreement means that "dA effectively owns your art". Defenders assert that deviantART needs the rights to legally offer its basic services, and to enable future services and business relationships that may become desirable.

On March 1, 2006, deviantART's administration issued the most dramatic revision to date in response to months of community initiative. The far-reaching usage rights remain intact, but matters of termination have been clarified, improved, and made more accessible, so that artists can reclaim their usage rights simply by removing their works from dA as they please. Though some remain concerned about the basic arrangement, many now feel reassured by the new "freedom to leave."

Outside the legal issues involved in posting art, the immense popularity of the site has made it an easy target for copyright violation, as a malicious user can easily re-use artwork displayed on deviantART (usually as clip art for websites) without the creator's knowledge. Also, many users either ignorant of the site's purpose or the site's submission agreement often submit art works they did not produce. Some may display art created by themselves, but which depicts a character registered as a trademark (for example, Mickey Mouse). Others attempt to use deviantART as a basic bulk photo-hosting site for their own needs, which is also strongly discouraged.

Due to the impractical nature of researching the copyright status of any art work reused in deviations, many copyright violations remain untouched until the violation has been proven. 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. This has led to many clashes between users and staff.

Recently, deviantART has given its users the option to submit their works under a creative commons license[1] giving the artists the right to choose how their works can be used.

Termination of Scott Jarkoff

On July 29, 2005, co-founder Scott Jarkoff (username: "Jark") 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 within the user base 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 sometimes known as the "Yellow Alien"; the alien was featured in Scott Jarkoff's avatar, and it had become a symbol of the earlier days of dA), which was carried out by many of Scott Jarkoff's supporters on deviantART's fifth anniversary, August 7, 2005, and the lesser publicised "Grey Day" (in honor of Matthew Stephens).

On July 31, 2005, Sotira posted an official response to explain the situation. The response to this entry was mixed. Jarkoff also posted an explanation on his personal website.

Angelo Sotira Speaks Out

Two years after the fact, on October 7, 2007, Jarkoff made this journal in which he ranted about his video getting deleted due to a copyright violation. On October 13, 2007, while Jarkoff was arguing with another user over fair use, Sotira broke in and finally gave the full story. [2] He claims that Jarkoff lied about his role in deviantART's development, and that, in reality, Jarkoff did nothing on the site in the beginning and was the one who fired Matthew Stephens in 2003. This contrasts to what Jarkoff claims; he said that deviantART was solely his work, that Sotira never worked on it in the beginning, and that Sotira fired Stephens. Sotira also proves that he was the first full-time working deviantART staffer. 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 "Save the Yellow Alien Legal Fund" for it, but Sotira claims that, in reality, he had more than enough money to cover any legal costs for any lawsuits. Sotira further goes on to imply that Jarkoff defrauded people through said legal fund. In the replies to Sotira's comment, another user agreed with this accusation, saying that Jarkoff let the statute of limitations for wrongful termination (one year) run out, but kept the legal fund. [3] Finally, he also implies that he fired Jarkoff in the first place because he didn't do a sufficient enough job as chief software engineer.

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.

Concerns over usage of deviantART

The photographic community on deviantART has expressed their complaints about the fact that the artistic photography galleries are being used to post inappropriate photos, or photos that do not support the general "art" intention of deviantART

For instance, some self portraits show the arm extended, holding the camera; these are often referred to as "MySpace shots" because this style is often used in user profiles on MySpace and other social networking websites.

Site functionality issues

Users can configure the main page to display the four most recent submissions in different categories of art, but many of these category previews experience days or weeks of time without being updated.

There are also some major usability problems, mostly concerning the submission pages not working well with MacOSX and growing increasingly worse instead of better with each new update to their site.

See also

• Worth 1000
• WinCustomize
• Elfwood
• Dmusic.com
• Gfxartist

Further reading

• "Deviants Descend on Tinseltown" by David Cohn, Wired News, June 21, 2005, retrieved June 22, 2006

Note: The summit was held Friday and Saturday, contrary to how the second paragraph of the Wired article reads.

• "Deviantart.com Cool 2 Know, DeviantArt.com" by Deidre Stein Greben, Newsday, March 1 2006, retrieved May 25, 2006. (Original archive of NewsDay article)

External links

• deviantART website
• A listing of dAmn chatrooms