ratcreature | deviantArt?

I was in the mood to look at some fanart and decided to browse deviantArt, also wondering whether it might be good as another place to post my stuff. So I just went to the site, and previously I've always followed links to an artist or a picture, and I wasn't too thrilled with the site design then, but on that level it works okay. But how does anyone cope with this site design on a more general level? Or is it just me? It drives me crazy. Though I guess you get used to everything eventually, right?

Of course it could be worse. DA has at least general categories, and fanart is separate (though it would help if the individual fandoms were separated more as well but I guess it's because it's more general use, not just fandom), and there is a search engine, but I still find DA hard to use. For example I found out that the group accounts I have seen linked actually don't exist officially in the site's infrastructure. That I learned from the FAQ after I had been looking like for ten minutes or so to find a section for group galleries (I thought it might be easier to find fandoms that way), and was completely baffled. Apparently they exist unofficially through more than one person using an account somehow. At least that explains why these groups aren't more common. I expect it must be rather nightmarish from a maintenance and security standpoint for group owners to have to share the main password and not have different right levels or something like that.

Still, those of you more familiar with the site, do you recommend getting an account there? Is the function where you watch artists userfriendly? Does posting stuff there reach a different audience than LJ or is more of a wash? I mean, I'd cope with obnoxious interfaces for the potential of even a small amount of extra feedback. *g* Any opinions on the site?

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I've always followed links to an artist or a picture, and I wasn't too thrilled with the site design then, but on that level it works okay. But how does anyone cope with this site design on a more general level? Or is it just me? It drives me crazy.

It's not just you. I've followed links to really good art, and then attempted to simply look at the same artist's other work, in hopes of finding more good stuff, and even that is a pain. It should be easy! I'm already right there on one of their pages!

Same here. I have never been able to navigate that site. There's been some Avatar fanart posted there, and unless a direct link is posted, I can't figure out how to get to it.

okay, I'm glad it's not just me. I've always found navigating deviant art hard work. It's not like the set up on fanfiction.net or wraithbait where the format is hard on my eyes, it's a navigational nightmare. I, personally, probably wouldn't use Deviant art.

I've been trying the site out for two months (same username (http://astridv.deviantart.com/)) and so far I'm happy with it. The whole account creation and uploading process is intuitive and quick, and fanart gets steady hits even when not freshly uploaded. It's not a bad way to get some additional exposure to LJ. I've uploaded two original pieces to test the water there, and found that they did get viewed, but mainly right after uploading. Whereas I guess the fanart people find via the search engines.

As to navigation, I haven't really explored it yet... the site is overwhelming in its sheer frikking size. Mostly I've surfed artist's favorites to discover other artists, and checked out their galleries. Some fantastic stuff over there.

I'd recommend checking it out. Doesn't take long, it's free, and I think you reach a different audience from LJ, though there's some overlap of course.

I'm slowly getting used to it, but the navigation could be easier. Since they introduced the folder option in their artist galleries there is at least some sorting within those if the artist chooses that, but too many don't. Also, it took me quite a while to realize that you can limit your searches to categories.

It definitely takes some time to get used to it. At first I couldn't find anything, but after a few visits and some hours of browsing it is now easier, if not yet intuitive.

I'm glad it's not just me too. :) I think the goals as an art site that is original art too are just a bit different from a more specialized archive, and I had ages to get used to how fanfic archives work.

Yeah, there is some truly awesome art posted there. One reason I'm thinking about an account besides posting there is that I wanted to comment on cool art a couple of times now, so it would be good for that also. And I just checked, and there is no ratcreature at DA yet, so I take that as a sign...

The DA user interface is freakin impenetrable for me. I don't understand how to find anything and so I never try.

Heh, sorry. I didn't mean to sound all wet blankety. You've figured out more than I ever have.

I totally understand. To get even so far that I now know the basic stuff (I think) took me hours of poking around and wasting time there, and the wikipedia article about it for reference because I couldn't even figure out what to search for in the FAQ and you can't easily browse them. (That really was a breakthrough, because it explains the offered functionality, also what all the symbols before the names mean, which baffled me for the longest time.) Thefirst couple of times I visited I just didn't bother for that long.

However I figured that lots of sites I now use daily aren't the most intuitive (like LJ) at first, and yet I cope. That is especially true if they come with their own slang that differs from what I'm used to. Like at first I assumed the "friends" feature was your watchlist because it is like that in LJ, but no, they call the updates you want to get actually watching. I have no real idea yet what the friends thing over there does, but it's a good example how learning the idiosyncrasies of one site made another harder for me. And unlike some other sites DA so far hasn't crashed my browser, at least.

What I can recommend as tips if you should ever want to take another stab at it, is reading the part of the wiki article that explains all the major stuff in principle to find what's what and see which functions you want to use. Another thing that worked for me is to ignore most of the clutter and all the things I had no idea what they are at first (I still don't know half), and focus on the central functionality once I found it.

Like to either watch things and add them to your favorite gallery or to upload suff or change your settings, you don't need the row of buttons with "shop channel collections chat more" at all. Really, I think selective perception is key.

deviantArt?

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