There is not sense of community on ArtStation despite functionality for it... Should it be like it?
polycounter lvl 3
As many, i was a hobbyist who grew up with DeviantArt since ~2007. I remember getting into dA not because "sonic fanart" or something like that, but - if i remember correctly - because several famous photographs (inluding artistic nudes ones) used it. Regardless whatever was happening to dA in terms of "quality" or something, there were things that always were possible on it. One - amazingly functional site layout with many useful possibilities (sadly, plenty of that was cut down over the years, like custom code fields to web-design personalize your pages. Though even today site engine is still more functional than, say, Pixiv.). Two - sense of community, especially among specific dedicated circles (like, idk, darkside bodyhorror photography, or ball jointed dolls makers).
Today, for this or that reason i had to came to Artstation. At the moment - to look for inspirations, follow all those incredible artists etc. etc. Maybe will put up my own works there as well in the future, who knows. I'm less than half of year as registered user at ArtStation and already made ~1500 favorites (yes, spent DAYS browsing people there. So much outstanding works! though it's a freaking PAIN to browse your favs as there is no pagination, like on dA where you can go through first 40 pages today and other 20 pages tomorrow. I blame modern society of smarphones-first web design) and there was a thing i noticed...
It feels SO DEAD. I mean, even on amazingly amazing top industry works, you see, at best, less then douzen of comments. And usually those comments are some simplified "nice work, dude" without any interesting discussion or artists sharing knowledge. In comparison, on dA similar works would have, like, 150-200 comments on them and very often you get some interesting replies from artist, whether it's technical discussion or some side story.
Also doesn't help that, even in ArtStation TOS, they highly recommend you NOT to contact anyone unless it's job contract proposal or similar business. So............... this seems to be the "root of evil". Looks like, overall, Artstation still IS mainly "job thing" place? Despite 1) what artstation site team tells you about making website more open to people of different levels and hobbyists 2) not only "industry veterans" or "job seekers with fresh portfolio" are using it, but also straight up amateurs (well, hopefully not as amateurs as weakest from dA, haha) and also "i do art for my own pleasure only" kind of folks, to whom i have my deepest respect as they continue to do it despite being exhausted on their main job or family situatuons. Yes, after spending weeks of browsing art, i'm sure.
So, anyone else shares similar feelings as me? I kinda, now decided to come here as i hope this place is a bit more... heartwarming, with people interaction - not only feedback on works in w.i.p. threads, but also camaraderie of creators. Or you really think that only on deviantArt creators were able to become friends? haha
Today, for this or that reason i had to came to Artstation. At the moment - to look for inspirations, follow all those incredible artists etc. etc. Maybe will put up my own works there as well in the future, who knows. I'm less than half of year as registered user at ArtStation and already made ~1500 favorites (yes, spent DAYS browsing people there. So much outstanding works! though it's a freaking PAIN to browse your favs as there is no pagination, like on dA where you can go through first 40 pages today and other 20 pages tomorrow. I blame modern society of smarphones-first web design) and there was a thing i noticed...
It feels SO DEAD. I mean, even on amazingly amazing top industry works, you see, at best, less then douzen of comments. And usually those comments are some simplified "nice work, dude" without any interesting discussion or artists sharing knowledge. In comparison, on dA similar works would have, like, 150-200 comments on them and very often you get some interesting replies from artist, whether it's technical discussion or some side story.
Also doesn't help that, even in ArtStation TOS, they highly recommend you NOT to contact anyone unless it's job contract proposal or similar business. So............... this seems to be the "root of evil". Looks like, overall, Artstation still IS mainly "job thing" place? Despite 1) what artstation site team tells you about making website more open to people of different levels and hobbyists 2) not only "industry veterans" or "job seekers with fresh portfolio" are using it, but also straight up amateurs (well, hopefully not as amateurs as weakest from dA, haha) and also "i do art for my own pleasure only" kind of folks, to whom i have my deepest respect as they continue to do it despite being exhausted on their main job or family situatuons. Yes, after spending weeks of browsing art, i'm sure.
So, anyone else shares similar feelings as me? I kinda, now decided to come here as i hope this place is a bit more... heartwarming, with people interaction - not only feedback on works in w.i.p. threads, but also camaraderie of creators. Or you really think that only on deviantArt creators were able to become friends? haha
Replies
Everybody is talking at each other, nobody is talking to each other. It is dead, soulless, selfish tool for selfish pursuits. It's just a tool and tools don't create themselves. It is output of culture that values selfishness and greed. Nothing good can come from it.
Nobody can just follow their own intuition and be themselves. Everything is strategic, everybody trying to figure out the pattern and follow it. Basically the opposite of art. I guess it has utility for job seekers, but that's not the sort of job I'd like to do - fighting for a scrap like a shark feeding frenzy. That just doesn't seem like a good use of my days on earth as a human being.
We decided to switch off because modern social media advocate a particular way of being connected to – the way that we do not want to support anymore. We think that modern social networking platforms are not used for real communicating – it’s just a channel of creating data, which is ultimately fed back to data brokers and marketers. We don’t want to be locked in endless exchanges of trivial information, and we are exhausted with the necessity to sustain continuous flow of superficial thoughts, feelings and sensations in search of false “likes” from false “friends”. However, switching off is not the same as missing out, and we are far from being “anti-social”. We just share a deep belief in, and attachment to, a different way of socializing – the way that is focused on free expression and live intellect, as well as on human friendships and relationships, when we take charge of when and where to connect with people. Given the angst-ridden nature of frenetic social networking, we could all benefit from slowing down and taking stock more often!
Seems like it can really be like this, huh. "Social media" are, in fact, asocial.
Sounds similar to so-called "META" (term used in fighting game theory).
Yeah I think there is nothing social about social media. It is just another trick to farm domesticated people.
I understand situations when somebody delete their older works from "portfolio" to only show your current '"he best" - that's from author's side. But what i mean, is from audience/viewer point of view. Do majority of people only ever browse "feed" on main page, and don't really look into artist's page?
Personally, if artist interest me, i always browse the whole page. Life taught me many times (especially with musicians) that very often early works can be more interesting than more recent ones, even if objectively "weaker".
I would also blame modern social media as they push people to "only current moment matters" mindset, which is also evident by how popular platforms (like instagram or twitter) are treating UI/UX - without providing good means for older content to be reachable and useable. One of reasons i prefer forums over discord is how well structured information here and can be easily found years later (and threads can live for years!).
P.S.
As for ArtStation. I might be wrong, but it feels like disparity between popular and "unknown" profiles is much more extreme than on other places. Though they try to fix it with their discovery algorhythms.
Also it's a much more professional looking website than any other one I've seen so works really well as a portfolio.
It's not about dA as much as about what AS lacks. And if we consider dA being irrelevant due to problems that dA never fixed, there is a problem that there is no actual better alternative.
a lot of the communities have moved to discord servers where its much more designed around communication and community. even here on polycount its a bit of a ghost town compared back to what it was in the early 2000's
artstation does have a community in it however, look at AS learning, the blogs section and other areas outside of just profiles which people mainly use for their portfolios.
Tons of stuff also goes down in the DM where professionals can have private convos about stuff they cant share publicly etc. Almost all my recent job offers or networking has been in the artstation DM's.
Though it's perfect for "spontaneous chat" scenario.
A shame that polycount forum is not as active as before. I truely believe that forum format is still superior for most cases. And certain communities still prove it (like modwiggler for synthesizer enthusiasts where one can easily access useful info from 10 years ago. or something like resetera if we speak gaming).
I can't understand how a lot of tool makers have their main channel for communications with customers on discord. They must answer the same questions five thousand times a day...
I like FORUM community driven challenges and contests, rather then some quick twit/insta post and go. I never gravitated to socials other than here and artstation, had a utube but after the whole, shadow banning circus i dipped out.
A lot of times i am always trying to "connect", but pretty much gave up - with other "issues", surrounding that kind of stuff.
I want to be more active in like everyone's threads, its just repeating one's self becomes tiresome if i had to say anything about the lack of community engagements. (Then the mindset of i could be working on something new instead of typing a book online probably the Op of the thread won't read or care for.)
Echo Op, its been said a lot lately. Artstation is an icecold box here the he-art used to be.
More like replies to replies that you have on Reddit or Facebook.
Now, if they replaced the whole channel with such "threads", it would be closer. But no, it's more like chats within chats you can summon.
How do you figure only people from "certain walks of life" are promoted on ArtStation? Like, do you think they have an algorithm that... checks... I dunno what the criteria you're imaging here, but checks whatever that is? Favorite color, favorite ice cream flavor or some shit?
Favorite user sections, i got tired of always seeing masons(as an example, i don't care to say it out loud.) artworks that i felt that only a select few are highlighted. You have a stake in artstation? aren't you on polycount idk #feelsweirdman. Do you even know what your owl avatar represents ? i do.
Ancient times and all that, maybe you do maybe you do not but i think you do.
Also tell me what my owl avatar represents, now I gotta know.
As to AS, what's shown is based on an algorithm that determines popularity, primarily based on views and likes. They don't do manual curation anymore (Picks was killed a while back), because too many people complained that what they were featuring didn't match their personal tastes, and, well, it's a massive website with way too much artwork to curate.
Probably a religious (the scary word) conversation that i hear on certain sites we should not be involved in, wasn't it a rule here once? lets just say it represents the wrong side. Symbolism does matter its all over everything and if it didn't mean anything why would they plaster it literally Everywhere.
I am fine if you do not believe but you did ask why i mentioned it.
So that ( i ) do not disrupt the thread with non-topic stuff, i'll agree with the algorithm answer since i can't prove otherwise. So you are right.
Just to add a bit, yes its a big website but i scan view all images posted daily, (roughly) and if someone does work there i do not see it being a very big deal to do just that, curate the site. I do the latest every morning (till i come to the previous day's "ending" pieces)(so i see it the day before get to the end)(next day i see the new stuff get to what i saw last the previous day and repeat) to get "fired up", but yea i don't do the trending too much. I also find it odd that OLDER trending pieces are showing up, maybe its a bug but then again if it is not... then i am right.
I imagine that's become more and more apparent to people over the years, and that's part of why you have smaller FB groups or discord channels popping up. Ultimately you've gotta weed out the bullshit, isolate some people whose opinions you trust and whose feedback you wouldn't mind having.
Also I came for the "Artstation is social media" but I stayed for that owl talk.
Is the owl responsible for the over-abundance of anime tiddies and depressingly similar looking substance material balls?
But anyway, I'll tell you about the owl photo. I was playing with a new lens and some lighting equipment a few years back. My wife took a photo of me holding a stuffed owl. And then a good friend of mine edited it so that my head was on the owl, and vice versa, as part of a set of silly photoshops she has done of me. That's it.
I am still genuinely curious to know what sort of... whatever it even is, that you think the owl relates to or references.
There's no need to speculate, you can read what the ArtStation devs have written about these algorithms in the past - the gist is that they use a popularity (views/likes) heuristic that is weighted by account (artists with more followers etc have more sway in the results of the algorithm).
Here's what they've said about Picks. To quote:
"The picks wall is essentially staff picking artwork at our discretion. This is something that is not scalable and we never meant it to feel like it was an award. To us, in some respects, it was not fair to many great artists who never had the chance to be picked, because there was just too much art to look through.
For that reason, we have decided to retire the Picks Wall. In doing so, we hope to remove some bias and give more curating power to the community."
Alternatively, you could simply contact them if you want to know how it works. They're a small team of friendly Canadians.
...owls are certainly an amenable bunch of critters.
Speak plainly, son, the cryptids can't hear us here
Owl stuff was about:
[spoiler]Queen of Heaven and sacrificing of babies.[/spoiler]
To make this very short, thanks for the info E.Q. however maybe now you can see my confusion ^.
Small owl in front of you as if a baby. Images and text can be read differently when viewed from online, i do appreciate the info and seemed totally harmless. I did read your linked articles, i'll just say, its not mine so i have to deal with what happens.
//off-topic: Also it was good to read and see the ol ' polycount responses, alive and well, whew had me nervous there for a second, i missed it so much, i'll try to embrace it.
Not sure why it's shorthanded that way, but Linkedin is absolutely a good thing to have. It's one of those things that may not pay off immediately, but as you gain experience it gets more and more useful. Recruiters live on Linkedin, I have my current job because a recruiter from my current studio reached out to me over Linkedin.
Wanna read something wild about owls, check out "The Messengers" by Mike Clelland... It's pretty woo, but also pretty interesting, if only from a psychological perspective.
As for artstation, it is what it is. It's not what I want it to be, but as stated above, not many things usually are. I do like the functionality to use your page essentially as a replacement for a more traditional portfolio. Made ugly websites way less common (or at least less necessary to see), and made the process so much simpler.
If you ignore the social aspect, it's pretty fine. Heck, if you embrace the social aspects for what they are, it's probably fine too. It has its problems, and boy does nudity and suggestive content rise to the top, but..... the people want what they want.
Anyway, here's a photo of an own's earflap being folded forward, showing the back of the eye within. It's a living owl, and this is a harmless action, like folding your earlobe. Still, quite creepy.
joopson,
That is crazy about the eyes thing, i'll look into the other bits. Just to be clear i do think owls are cool and interesting.