Deviant Art

April 14, 2004 7:59 PM

Deviant Art is an incredibly rich resource of the profound, the visually impressive, amusing, and surreal.
posted by sourbrew (29 comments total)

Not to be negative, but this is like linking to CNN.com or Slashdot or something ;) It's a very well-known site. Now I'll get refuted by tons of people who never saw it, though, so you may be right.
posted by abcde at 8:00 PM on April 14, 2004

I know that deviant art has been included in links and other posts as a resource. However to my knowledge i could never find it as a feature post. Which are your favorites, there are thousands to choose from.
posted by sourbrew at 8:00 PM on April 14, 2004

Yeah i thought that it was a possibility but i have been on metafilter for about 3 years now and had never seen it until i discovered it by accident googeling today.
posted by sourbrew at 8:02 PM on April 14, 2004

i've never seen it before ; >

some good stuff, some shitty stuff.
posted by amberglow at 8:03 PM on April 14, 2004

this one's great (and it's cool that they take anyone's stuff, good or bad)
posted by amberglow at 8:06 PM on April 14, 2004

I linked to some more sites in this earlier thread.
posted by Gyan at 8:35 PM on April 14, 2004

Just some random advice, I've hung around deviantart and similar sites for a loooong time now. Deviantart is essentially a clearinghouse now. Somewhat like the central UPS sorting center. Some of the sites I and others linked to, in that thread, have a better signal-to-noise ratio.
posted by Gyan at 8:38 PM on April 14, 2004

(and it's cool that they take anyone's stuff, good or bad)

no it's not.
posted by luckyclone at 8:44 PM on April 14, 2004

Deviantart is essentially a clearinghouse now. Somewhat like the central UPS sorting center.

hello pot. this is the kettle calling. it's mefi.
posted by suprfli at 8:56 PM on April 14, 2004

very old site.

It annoys me to know that there are these gems out there that I may never know of. years pass of good times that I might never experience.

I spent my adolescence in a internet boom town so I feel acutely the time compression
posted by firestorm at 9:16 PM on April 14, 2004

Metafilter: Acute Time Compression
posted by shoepal at 9:33 PM on April 14, 2004

Wow. And all this time I thought it was about Devian Tarts. Aren't the Devians like cousins to the Vulcans or something like that?
posted by scarabic at 9:38 PM on April 14, 2004

I don't know what it is but I experience this strangely irrational annoyance when people post links to things (not just on MeFi) that I've known about for years, or months, or whatever.

And in thinking about it objectively, I don't know why I feel this annoyance and irritation.

It is a recurring theme, not just on MeFi. It goes a little something like this (sing along now!): "Hehe, check out these badgers!" "Dude, that's so three months ago! You're lame!"

Why? I don't feel the same annoyance when someone posts something I haven't seen before. Is it "Joneses, please keep up."?

I don't know. It's really complex and doesn't seem like it's within any sort of Western-culture-specific historical "norm" for the range of "normal" day to day experiences and emotions.

With the amount of information now on the net and constantly being generated 24 hours a day, how can we honestly expect the "the class" to "keep up"? Even with fairly well-known sites with a large and active userbase?

Yeah, I'm metathreadjacking* and making up lame words and I'm done.

Good post, sourbrew. Appropriately brief, linked to goodness, and I bet a few people saw it for the first time.

(*Spell checker recommends "meathead" for this. Owch.)
posted by loquacious at 9:47 PM on April 14, 2004

That first one in the main post is by Daniel Conway (Arcipello). A friend of mine, who recently published a fantasy novel set in a sort of alternate Imperial China, says it captures the mood she's shooting for in the sequel perfectly.

This is my favorite of his. This is also good.

Dude's twenty years old. Sigh.
posted by kindall at 9:49 PM on April 14, 2004

[this is good]
posted by y6y6y6 at 9:50 PM on April 14, 2004

And no, I'm not seeing DeviantArt for the first time -- I first found it a whole month ago, when I went to buy a print of "Her Silent Silhouette" for Alma. If not for a random link from DPReview, I probably still would not be aware of it. I get the feeling it's been around for a fair bit of time.
posted by kindall at 9:52 PM on April 14, 2004

Unfortunately some time ago DA disabled search for non-members, which to me severely limits its functionality (although I guess I should start using Google for it).

Other than that, it's spectacularly good. The total sum of talent represented is astounding.
posted by azazello at 10:09 PM on April 14, 2004

i've been using deviant art for a few years now, mostly for windowblinds & iconpackager themes, and i love it. but i have to agree it's become a clearinghouse. you have to wade thru' a lot of crap to find the gems.
posted by t r a c y at 10:20 PM on April 14, 2004

this one's kinda neat [via boing boing?] did a similar collage in an art class one time cutting up some national geographics on mars, yosemite, tropical fish and the honey hunters of nepal :D

also 'impressive' reminded me of this one by stephen martiniere!

re: the secrets of jin-shei
saw this on scitech daily recently! hopefully it is better than chung kuo :D
posted by kliuless at 10:21 PM on April 14, 2004

Actually, it *is* cool that they accept anyone's work however good it is. It encourages people to have a go, get feedback, keep trying and improve.

If anything annoys me about this thread it's luckyclone's attitude. Foolishly, I used to value intelligence as the prime human trait. Now I value endeavour - having a go yourself and encouraging others to do the same.

I know realise why the term "hater" exists.
posted by nthdegx at 1:06 AM on April 15, 2004

...now*
posted by nthdegx at 1:06 AM on April 15, 2004

nthdegx: it *is* cool that they accept anyone's work however good it is. It encourages people to have a go, get feedback, keep trying and improve.

That would be true, if you did get feedback. There are currently 4,916,172 "deviations". I bet not more than 5% of those have any meaningful feedback. And not more than 25% have any feedback.
posted by Gyan at 1:38 AM on April 15, 2004

I'd never heard of it. It deserves it's place in an FPP.
Nice call, sourbrew.
posted by Blue Stone at 7:49 AM on April 15, 2004

I posted some art I did there once (self-link, obviously), and I think I'd post there again if I wanted to use their DA Prints service, but otherwise it's just too large of a community for me.
posted by Jairus at 10:29 AM on April 15, 2004

Foolishly, I used to value intelligence as the prime human trait. Now I value endeavour - having a go yourself and encouraging others to do the same.

That only results in something worthwhile if you're intelligent, though.
posted by kindall at 2:07 PM on April 15, 2004

Thinking about it, DeviantArt certainly must qualify as "best of the web," even if everyone did know about it. I think this was an a-ok post.
posted by five fresh fish at 9:16 PM on April 15, 2004

Been using Deviant Art as a resource for my wallpaper rotation for as long as I can remember. Thought everyone knew about it, but apparently not. Definitely worth letting people know about it.
posted by swank6 at 10:21 PM on April 15, 2004

I signed up for my own account last year. It's a great place to share artwork (especially if you don't have bandwidth of your own), and people who's opinions I trust have bought prints and said that the deviantprints are very high quality. Without the search function, the community has (to me) kind of a small, grass roots feel. Meaning, I find out about other artists/art through links to friends, etc. And I can get notified whenever someone I'm 'watching' puts up new art. Since there's not a lot of art in the town where I live, this is a very good thing. :-)
posted by thunder at 10:22 AM on April 16, 2004

deviantprints are very high quality

I bought two that I had to send back because they were way too dark, in that Mac-graphic-displayed-on-a-PC way. YMMV.
posted by kindall at 11:43 AM on April 16, 2004