ForumsArt, Music, and WritingDeviantArt users...?

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paperxcrip
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paperxcrip
141 posts
Nomad

I wanna know what all of you create...spill your profile and what you specialize in!
paperxcrip.deviantart.com
Paint abominations, text pixel art, sketches, dreaming of a collaboration with someone in another field

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Zophia
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Zophia
9,435 posts
Scribe

I have three...
Zyarrihl.DeviantART.com - all sorts of random things, a lot of cute, a bunch of memes.
SolsticeDragon.DeviantART.com - dark drawings, bloodily or otherwise murderous images and poems.
Mazzelh.DeviantART.com - pictures and information about mazzelhs.
But after I joined FurAffinity.net I don't really use either of them any longer. It's too hard to get people to notice your art on DA.

Strop
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Strop
10,817 posts
Bard

DA and FA are pretty similar in a parallel sense but just have context-specific issues. Unless you're a super-active forumite or self-advertising lackey it's difficult to get people to notice you because everybody with a pen, paper and half-baked idea would like to give drawing a shot. The era of self-publication and the breakdown of critical appreciation makes merit and experience alone appallingly insufficient to get noticed in this world. I'd say that DA is simply so big that most artists just get reminded of their own insignificance, and the most significant traffic on FA (forgive me for making this generalisation) seems to gravitate towards the porn. /endrant

Anyway, I just got a new DA up because I'm cleaning house:

[url]http://strawpony.DeviantART.com[/url]

Zophia
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Zophia
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I'll agree with you on that rant, Strop, but FA is a smaller site (since it's mainly furries who are on it, and they are a limited group), so it is just all together easier to get noticed. When you submit something it may stay on the front page for a whole five minutes, where it is only a few seconds most of the time on DA.
I have a decent pile of underage watchers who have never seen the porn I draw, they watch me for the rest. Most of my watchers comment more on the stuff involving my characters or my cute things than my porn, which on the other hand gets a pile of comments from the random viewers~
Also, FA is much easier to upload things to. DA may offer better features (and their search bar actually work!), but with the ease and attention on FA~ Well yeah.
Of course there is the server downages and other bad stuff on FA... But anyway.

most artists just get reminded of their own insignificance

Happens on FA too. VampirePrincess007, Ahkahna, sixshades, maggock... Holy something, FA have awesome nonporn artists too.
That's how I learn~ *observes and tries to borrow skills*
Strop
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Strop
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Bard

I do feel a bit bad about that rant actually. When I was younger I didn't have any objections whatsoever *sings The Internet is for Porn* and I still find a great deal of amusement in Rule #34.

But as you can see I've made a bit of a transition and bowed to the pressure of having to look like an upstanding individual who actually respects and observes social norms...as this blue typeface attests to :P

Okay, that's not *really* the full story. Truth is that at some point in time I wandered on to Adam Wan's profile and had to make an emergency trip to the bathroom. That was when I discovered that at least as far as I was concerned, there was such a thing as too gratituous. Having a community be very open about certain things is a double-edged sword: I celebrate the fact the community can (or could, past-tense) engage in a certain honesty, but as the fandom grows it also fragments and factionates and fundamental laws of politics start applying to it and this honesty becomes tainted.

It was only more recently that I 'formally' (whatever this means) left the fandom, and there are many reasons, the sufficient one being that I don't have enough time to actually be present and engaging the community, which makes it more of a chore than a pleasure. Furthermore I'm the kind of person who likes to see my investment actually influence something and since my views seemed divergent from the general direction of the community (in my limited scope) it was better in my case to cut and run.

I could go on and on and on about this but this isn't really the place for that, I guess. The take home message in my case is that when I did leave, on the accounts I did maintain I took care to wipe out all traces of risque work, i.e. erotica that I had published online. Given that I have also done professional artwork that has been publicly distributed and I'm now working alongside (and soon within) a professional capacity I've got to think about what is traceable to me. Contrary to what some aspiring professional artists think, I don't believe being affiliated with furry itself precludes being taken seriously professionally to the extent that one should exclude all anthropomorphic material from their portfolio (unless you want to work exclusively within the fandom) but that people should be left with no doubts that you can at least respect that people generally expect certain things to stay within the bedroom.

It sounds ridiculous and I am somewhat saddened that I myself am making these admonitions. However I did note that you're considering going professional and while I have no idea whether or not you've considered the above, from what I know it would probably be wise to do so. Whether or not they should, cultural boundaries exist.

Zophia
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Zophia
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Ohkay, I won't bother trying to respond to -all- of that (and this topic aint for it anyway), but the last paragraph~
I do not intend to stop doing - erotica, and I won't explicitly try to hide the traces~ Cultural boundaries my *any inappropriate word here*. If someone bother searching for my stuff,they might as well see it all.
Also, furry art in a portfolio should not be bad in the artist field. After all a big part of popular characters are anthropomorphic.
But I'm leaving the explicit stuff out of there. Except for maybe a few bloody ones.

On the other hand, I wouldn't mind working within the fandom~ Could be - interesting~

Completely off topic, it's a shame with the prejudice furries are met with.

Strop
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Strop
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Bard

I'm with you on that: I believe in honesty (a difficult thing) so I wouldn't want anybody to stop drawing mature/risky material or making such expressions because it seems people don't want to see it. I held your specific attitude:

If someone bother searching for my stuff,they might as well see it all.


For a long time and wish I could still do the same. But employers do search, people do talk and word gets around. If you'd like to work exclusively within the fandom (logistically this is very difficult but I know a couple of people who have managed) then this is not a problem at all.

After a while, I actually stopped understanding why there was this apparent distinction between anthropomorphism in the mainstream and within the fandom and these days I think it's more to do with community politics. The prejudices is also a complex topic and probably the greatest single source of discussion in the meta-critical focus of the fandom, which can be interesting but easy to drown in. My preferred approach is to display an interest in anthropomorphism incidental to the rest of my being, which is harder to do in the young teen days of identity crises.

Subjectivity is a big part of it. I'm sure you could include 'sensual' and 'erotic' and it may be seen as 'edgy' within context (such as one particular pic you've posted here, which I consider wonderful and entirely acceptable, so plays to your advantage), but you might meet a different outcome with 'sexual' and 'explicit'. Your call.
Zophia
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Zophia
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Indeed. *just overall agrees with you on that*
Then again, if some potential future employer of mine really decides against me for something I've drawn not suiting his/her tastes - I'm not sure I'd wanna work there. I'm versatile and draw all sorts of things. If getting payed, I'll draw anything except "cub art", so... Yeah, if someone else won't let me use the 'freedom of art' when it has nothing to do with them, that's just... Bleh.
Plus, if they don't have a user on FA, they don't see all the dirty works.



What happened to the topic? Don't we have more than two DeviantART users on AG?

Strop
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Strop
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Then again, if some potential future employer of mine really decides against me for something I've drawn not suiting his/her tastes - I'm not sure I'd wanna work there.


I've considered this, and in general I agree. However, there is a subtlety to this: The order matters- first impressions are important and even though it can be BS, an employer's first impression of you often forms before you even meet them. Therefore I prefer not to make certain things publicly available, even though the end result is that people get to know me pretty thoroughly. This comes after a process of negotiation so that people don't learn about me through weird-tinted glasses. I find it handy to convey to people that I'm honestly non-threatening first, and then I can pretty much be as kinky as I like (within reason i.e. without conveying you're a liar) and you'll generally keep people happier that way.

We totally do have more than two DA users on AG. We also totally have more than three. But I think we (I) kinda hijacked the conversation.

There was another DA thread in the archives somewhere but, eh, that one seems to have died also :P Maybe we should try again later.
Zophia
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Zophia
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There's still the question on how they'll find the work, though. I intend to use my real name when I actually get into a career, and I think it's a bit hard to dig my adult art up based on that. My preferred nick on the other hand, very quickly brings up links to some pornstar......... >.>
You seem to know more about this, though, so how would you say employers search?
*yes, I hijack the conversation too*

Just to get back on topic: I know Cenere has a DA account somewhere~ I think. Well there's always the profile I share with my girlfriend, though we haven't done any collaborations lately: Zahirr.DeviantART.com

Strop
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Strop
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Using my real name tends to bring up some famous radio personality from Singapore who was voted most eligible bachelor of Singapore in 1998 or something? Either way it's pretty funny.

Employers probably do a Google and have a basic screening process. As long as you have some semblance of sensibility or your own personal screening a cursorary search should be unlikely to turn up some hair-raising stuff. For example porn on a account-access only site with mature age filters is less likely to cause trouble (unless you get ID hacked) than, say, leaving up photos of your drunken binge where you decided streaking nude across the lawn of the golf course with the coppers chasing after you was a good idea...on Facebook.

Unlikely doesn't mean impossible though and if you happen to have left something behind which the Google spiders have indexed, it just might pop up somewhere and if anybody at work hates you enough to want to dig up dirt, they may be a lot more determined than your employer was initially. And let's face it, in most professional working life, you're bound to make at least one enemy whether you know it or not.

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