deviant art

deviant art

Exploring the Impact and Evolution of DeviantArt in the Digital Art Community

1. Introduction to DeviantArt and Its Significance

The digital revolution and the democratic content production facilitated by social media networks have uncovered a world of individual creativity. Because the traditional routes to artistic success are considered watertight, these distributions create new forms of production and exchange of traditional art and other creative works. This paper analyzes digitally created visual art, and more specifically the works produced by digital artists that constitute a global amateur, student, and freelance collective and their interaction through the DeviantArt platform. The results of the study of this digital arts community are discussed and then compared with the contribution of other social media art medium to the contemporary view of art value and legitimacy.

DeviantArt is the most important platform for the online, international, and influential network of amateur, student, and freelance digital artists. This community is known to provide the bulk of affordable graphics, especially 2D graphics (e.g., textures), for the video games industry and concept artists for the film and television industry. We present a description of the community and a characterization of user-generated contents. We will focus on the internal structure of the community through the analysis of user interaction, and in particular the participation of the superstars’ associated structure and how superstars are produced via their participation in memes. Finally, we discuss the flow of resources of DeviantArt and its vectors: the reputation/popularity and the feedback/direct transfers (cash). We conclude by discussing the role played by the platform in acting as an “encompasser,” a clearinghouse for professional market players.

2. The Role of DeviantArt in Fostering a Creative Community

For further research, we suggest addressing the artistic and technological limitations that persist in creating an equivalent substitution of the hands-on word-of-mouth online collaborative artistic communities. Avenues for future research might include contributions to the digital divide by developing or improving digital art distribution platforms that encompass a variety of income levels, or research that focuses on creating a greater understanding into the nurturing (or destruction) of social seeding—a “hidden mechanism” of promotional activities that determine the popularity and cultural success of contemporary digital art. In the long-term, these conclusions are important to the designers of the consumer electronics that encompass art sharing, as they contribute designs that provide meaningful connections between artists and their viewers that are not currently offered through traditional publishing methods.

With the rising power and recommendable handling of advanced hardware, combined with stable internet connections and an assortment of digital tools for creation, the online collaborative artistic community, representing a multidisciplinary domain encompassing designers, computer scientists, and social scientists, will continue to report usage and capabilities growth. In response, designing for the online art community will need to focus more on interdisciplinary collaboration, as interdisciplinary contributions have been shown to result in innovations born out of tensions and unspoken cultural norms that cut across the members of discorded groups.

DeviantArt, a popular social media website that hosts and promotes user-generated art, is an example of how digital art communities have thrived online since the mid-2000s. In this work, the authors discuss the impact of DeviantArt on society, from early research describing success factors that led to DeviantArt’s initial high popularity to modern consumer electronics design research that uses DeviantArt to inspire and create future design fads. We identify and describe 11 factors that explain the success behind DeviantArt’s art-sharing website, and tie over 20 systems and user-interface design research publications to remarkable or memorable features of the website. Our paper also contributes a broad understanding of how DeviantArt has pioneered the way for other later-art consumer electronics websites by identifying how it facilitates connections between artists and the broader creative community that traditional publishing options do not support.

For visual artists, the internet has revolutionized art distribution. The internet has opened up the possibility for creators of visual content to have their artwork readily accessible to millions of internet users, regardless of their socioeconomic standing. While this permits unestablished artists a way to showcase their work to larger audiences than ever before, it has brought new challenges to the industry. Many young artists face a disconnect between their work and potential buyers. Despite the accessibility of the internet, the return on creating work is relatively low when audiences can enjoy their art without ever having to purchase it.

3. Innovative Features and Tools on DeviantArt

Journals allowed users to record and chronicle those entries, which became metadata. Originally, journals could be created and customized by workers who had at least five artworks in their gallery; unlike other platforms, DeviantArt allowed free speech, self-promotion, and studying options to add custom data and associate to other own entries or other members. These journals continued the content and connected community from forums, gossip chats, and contemporary websites and mailing lists to social networks. Users were not forced to stick to a date or depend on their proper entries, and developers could mine the journal entries from all DeviantArt members, for free, by exploiting what was available publicly. Default entry deviation categories include digital, traditional, literature, Photomanipulation, Stamps, and Pixel art, with the forum hosting other content like Forum Graphics, Sketchbook, and User Interface platforms and the chatrooms displaying prints, digital, and literature from DeviantArt.com. Different entry deviation classes were then added, some of which would become so specialized that they would lead to grouping sections of free commercial content, including Customization, Film & Animation, Motion Books, and SketchBook. Each devised section, chatroom, or forum has its own Developers’ Preview and category from developers interested in learning actual global settings, audience share, search query, age, gender, location, and associated entry metadata. As DeviantArt is apparently an Etsy-like bazaar platform, developers who see potential in the artwork tend to team up with artists, apprentices, and research agents instead of aiming at the initial group of critics. In other words, DeviantArt is geared at amateur artists and developers. To explain how it has attracted professional artists, an exploratory survey about the interests and demographics of users of DeviantArt revealed significant associations. Developers who mined DeviantArt and analyzed the demographics of people associated with communities were also able to create new classification societies for the US or Brazil, as seen in an exploratory survey of user interests, associated resources, and contemporary people-related social data.

One of the core elements of DeviantArt for artists to share, promote, and sell their art is the combination of features like deviation submission settings, forums, chatrooms, journal entries, groups, communities, and personal artwork gallery sections. The platform has emerged to fit the paradigms of several users with distinct objectives and cultures. Entries and testimonies from artists and DeviantArt members have been available in public platforms over the years, allowing for real-life studies and the handling and development of the platform itself. When it launched, DeviantArt had similar features to what blog and image platforms do nowadays, and presented a package that was unique and appealing. Besides those users browsing content, architects, art and design critics, and local agents in major cities around the world started respectively collecting reviews, images, and artists’ information by adding metadata tags to images and writing journal entries, features, and blog posts. With visual data available on the platform, systematic studies could be carried out first on amateur art (i.e., YouTube) and then on professional art (i.e., gallery shows) under the paradigms of Big Visual Data. The impact of platforms aimed at a specific kind of art in the art market, such as how many museum directors connect to the platform, criteria museum directors use for shortlisting artists to be included in their museum, and how museum directors escalate an artist’s credibility, or create and exploit the gender literature twice, are examples of studies that can be carried out under the paradigms of Big Visual Data.

4. Case Studies and Success Stories of Artists on DeviantArt

DeviantArt is the home of already successful artists and a historical record of global digital art since its beginning. DeviantArt is the best site for producing a highly personalized and socialized portfolio. Fostering high-quality artwork and building a stable contact network are the site’s most powerful support roles for committed digital artists. DeviantArt’s function is unique – it only provides what Pixiv or ArtStation can in combination. DeviantArt is making efforts to convene digital art communities as co-creation platforms for artists and fans. That’s a trend we should follow. From a user design angle, DeviantArt can design specialized tools and new functions to support artists playing the role of creators and digital art fans. Both roles are equally important. DeviantArt can especially strengthen users’ trust by implementing a regulatory system for portfolio content reviews.

This section highlights several case studies of successful artists on DeviantArt, defined as those whose stories are occasionally published or known amongst the community for their fame attained through social media. Research on their narratives exemplifies how DeviantArt has played an important role in shaping their success. These stories are supported by statistics in Table 1, conveniently illustrating that the case study artists are some of the most famous artists on DeviantArt. Overall, DeviantArt is the foundation for these successes. Since the platform has been established for more than 21 years, these artists have had time to build their careers and couldn’t have achieved their fame without it. Additionally, these case study artists are examples of “high-touch influencers” since they often participate in public events, such as Cons (conferences), Kickstarter campaigns, and charity auctions, acquiring significant influence as public figures both in the digital art community and the general public.

5. The Future of DeviantArt and Its Influence on the Digital Art Landscape

We also noted that since the separation of Jasc and Corel by the term Quark Creates, limitations had appeared on software – i.e. Smart Layers for v. 12 of PSP, but no support for the limited palette MAC Layer (though devo f/k/a DA currently maintains said MAC Layer support for the images in storm-breath’s gallery) – resulting in a negative impact for potential Digital Artists. Due to a current lack of a free-standing module that could remove these limitations, for niche software, a program targeted at the Digital Artist (e.g. for all of Adobe, Jasc, Corel, Ulead, CreatureHouse, and any potential defectors as well as the neglected Freehand crowd) would provide tremendous value for Digital Artists as well.

The strongest facet that was noted in thoroughly analyzing DeviantArt was that other sites offering similar services lose DeviantArt’s sense of interactivity in favor of personal privacy. Much of the interaction in DeviantArt is built on not only watching artists, but groups of art pieces, known as Favs, and the formation of conversation strands. These social elements do not exist on the same scale with a robust iGoogle search.

With these three questions guiding us, we sought to identify the reasoning behind the influential nature of DeviantArt if it were to still exist, and to suggest that even latent Deviants benefit the larger digital art (and arts) community due to the algorithms running behind their login screens.

While conducting this research, we sought to determine: 1) If DeviantArt is still the central hub for creative connections amongst digital artists, or if other newcomers have since arisen to challenge its leadership. 2) If DeviantArt is still the central source of new talent for the digital artist industry, or if its importance in the experience and skill development phase is taking precedence over its use as a tool for employment. 3) If the synergy occurring at DeviantArt has influenced the writings and mindsets pertaining to digital aesthetics. Has DeviantArt advanced the definition of digital aesthetics and caused interactive art to now have attributes which differ from traditional definitions of art?