#I love putting art in galleries

[chacusha]

One year of my Quark-x-Odo dA art group

It's been just over a year now since I created a fanart group on DeviantArt, so I wanted to give an update on how it's been going.

So one thing about trying to run an art group on dA is that, if you want to add other people's art to your galleries, you basically need to send a request for every piece of art every two weeks, because requests expire and become non-actionable after two weeks have passed... Not only that, but it seems like after some unknown longer amount of time, dA actually removes the expired request from an artist's notifications entirely, so a user may not even be aware that a group has asked in the past to add their art to its galleries. dA sends no email notifications for gallery add requests, so as you might expect, most people don't realize they have requests that need their attention and often have no ability to even follow up either. I'm... really not sure why dA makes you jump through so many hoops for what is essentially just free publicity/a fancy labeled hyperlink that doesn't actually affect the artist or original art in any way, but... well, that's just how dA is.

Anyway, so I've been resending these requests every two weeks, and sometimes people accept, occasionally someone rejects, most just don't respond either way. The result of this regular renewal of requests has been that gradually people add their art to our galleries. To give you an indication, this was our status after about 3 months of the group running:

Right now, having run for a full year, those numbers are: Total works: 134. Total artists: 69 (nice). Total pieces requested to be added: 328 (note: these numbers don't include rejected pieces). Response rate: 41%. By folder: Quodo: 46%. Quark: 44%. Odo: 35%. Ensemble: 39%. Fiction: n/a. Miscellaneous: 0%.

As you can see, the longer I keep these requests active, the more likely it is the artist will eventually respond accepting the request.

However, without going into too many unimportant details, dA has recently updated their groups functionality so that it is no longer practical for me to tell when someone has rejected an add request. So rather than risk pestering artists who might have rejected add requests, I think the best thing to do here is for me to just stop doing this thing where I renew requests. It's been a year anyway -- it's a good timeframe to decide that if an artist hasn't responded by now, they're probably not going to show up. So from now on, I will only send out a request to add a piece of art once, and if it expires, it expires.

It is a shame, though, as it means that I have much less ability to showcase older art that still exists on dA, especially since dA also removed the ability to have group favorite galleries (which are ALSO basically just fancy labeled hyperlinks, just ones that DON'T require artist permission for groups to curate art in galleries -- what's the difference, you ask, and why wouldn't you just keep the favorites functionality over the gallery functionality then? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯). But I guess this is fine -- the focus of this group will just have to pivot from trying to archive all the Quodo art that exists on dA to highlighting the art of artists who are at least somewhat active on the site. So far, I've been getting a decent amount of response to my requests to add newer art, so maybe in ten years' time, this group will actually function as an archive of older art! But for now, I will just focus on making it a place that encourages artists to make Quark/Odo art and provides them a place to showcase it.

On the plus side, the update to groups did make our front page snazzier and more customizable. Here's what our group page looks like now after I've fiddled with some of the options:

It's not bad, and I'm able to highlight important information easier. Also, I can actually randomize which art appears on the main page, which is something that just wasn't possible before! (Because... dA has always been kind of broken...)

As you can tell, the main thing missing from the page is a cover/banner image at the top. I would like to use that space to highlight either some fanart or screencaps from the show. If anyone has art they would be fine with me using (preferably in a darker color palette to match the general dark mode of the page), I would love to use it!

Anyway, happy 1st birthday to this community! Even though I feel like not many people really appreciate using DeviantArt as a fanart platform, this group has kind of been my baby for the past year, and I've been enjoying maintaining the galleries and regularly updating the group despite dA's efforts to thwart me at every turn. It's been nice having a little space I can putter around in. This dA group almost feels like having a Neocities page(?) but with simpler functionality and easier to use.

(Sometimes maintaining a Tumblr blog feels a bit to me like a rat race, like I collect all these shinies and then they're gone and I never see or think about them again, and you go away from the site too long and you've missed so many shinies, and I don't know why I'm doing this. But this dA group has felt more like having a little virtual house that I gradually decorate and add more things to each time I visit to make it feel a bit more welcoming, which is very satisfying. And maintaining a Dreamwidth comm feels a bit like editing a wiki: fairly easy to do, SO much writing involved, results in an incredibly organized set of resources afterward.)

[the-meme-monarch]

look that tumblr ad had nice colors and i wanted to do something w it but i couldn’t think of a proper Illustration to do it with. so here’s just a bunch of deltarune characters just standing there (last two are my little ideas of ut frisk being the strange someone and dr chara being the knight)

if you ship scc and/or kr/alsei go away

[o--milo--o]

take the stage, roll the dice. what could go wrong? [ @gravitysketches @z3r0luvsu ]

[mr-laveau]

"Let him feel the pain that his mother felt and rot."

Listen, do I know that I'm supposed to want Odysseus freed? Yes, I do know this but also! She kinda ate with that.

[stoneshipper]

Happy Halloween! ♡

Halloween with my two dcst loves!! I wanted cute matching Halloween costumes with both of them, and I'm absolutely in love with these~!

commission by kylilah! ๋࣭ ⭑ dividers by strangergraphics!

taglist~!

@kynibyou | @kits-ships | @self-ship-haven | @tothemoon-ships | @over--heaven

@dmclr | @espresso-ships | @kylilah | @sunflawyer

(click here to join!)

[teddybeartoji]

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE:3333333333333

LOOK AT THIS LITTLE GOOBER HE'S SOO FUCKING CUTEE I LOVE HIMMM SOOOOOOOOOOOO MUCHH WAHH EVERYBODY SAY THANK YOU @itssummerok WE LOVE YOU @itssummerok<33333333333

[widowshill]

— But it's almost midnight. — Oh, that's the point! At the stroke of twelve, he turns into Dracula. C'mon, Vicki – he won't bite.

pose ref.

[averageclawcodeenjoyer]

"My cat won't let me get anything done"

And then it's just a picture of Ganke sleeping on Miles's chest while he's struggling to use him as a table for his sketchbook.

^^^

[drudolart]

Andrew Wimble

The man who drew the soop

[gatewaygallery]

if mareep jamie has one fan i am he if it has no fans i am dead

(hi @werefeathers)

[brown-little-robin]

where's that "I don't want to, I simply don't want to" wolf meme when I need it

[the-meme-monarch]

hey you may remember these posts from recent. these were originally just coincidental and separate unrelated drawings but i was asked this and resolved to find a third doll outfit for cap’n and afterward i was suggested this vinyl scratch figurine by gracebeth3604 and i liked it :] you may also remember that last linked post where i said i didn’t know where the skirt that i used for sweet’s outfit came from and well good and bad news I found out what it was. if you know you know I don’t want to go into in on a post like this. divorced from that context i think it’s fun that 2/3 of them turned out to have outfits from unicorn characters. and that I was sure it was a skirt like on a human shaped doll but it was in fact a dress and that’s how I drew it on them. anyway

if you ship scc go away from me please 👍

[golden-dart]

Some people will say things like “did a quick practice sketch UwU” and then hand you some of the best artwork you’ve ever seen in your life.

[k33ncriptid]

A painting I did while studying the techniques of In the Garden Room by Joan Gillespie. It's not exact because I was studying, not copying. Anyways I really like how it came out and I would love to post more of my paintings here!

[stoneshipper]

Listen to my heart, can you hear it sing? Telling me to give you everything ~☆

commission from @/art.does.art on instagram!!

[kirbyddd]

while im ranting about rpg stuff

there are some dudes with a really cool rpg monster-design book who have absolutely botched their kickstarter and are scrambling to crawl over the finish line before the campaign time runs out

today it was like "Friday! That means blog post day!" like guys you have been making blog posts every single day desperately trying to scrabble together a few more supporters

i get those emails cause i supported it, it's a really cool project I'd like to see succeed, but man theyve really dropped the ball. one of the guys is an 80k youtuber and they thought that would just be enough i guess?

also theyre asking for 75,000 BIG ONES like guys i have seen fully illustrated book kickstarters before. yours is UNDER 100 PAGES. there are entire original rulebooks and box sets funding for a fraction of that right now. i kindaaaa think theyre trying to squeeze out a bit of pocket money on that baseline funding goal.

honestly yeah theyre reaaally gettin a bit overconfident askin $75k for a glorified 80pg tables book in the indie rpg scene, especially for a book that's already complete?? i fully support trying to earn back your sacrifices and turn a profir on a project you had to make for free before you could sell it, but....

$75k..? 84 pages..? already written and illustrated? in the tabletop homebrew market, the most frugal "build it yourself" audience in all of gaming? ...really?