>>8712859
Christ that new logo still makes me shake my head. It doesn't make sense no matter how I look at it.

Ever since they re-branded the site its really gone downhill. The price for premium membership has gone up drastically and unless you want your page to look like arse you better be ready to fork out the dough for it.

FB and other stuff is more relevant but I always preferred DA over them since you can present everything nice, clean and organized without all the bs ads and junk that comes with FB and other platforms.

tl;dr

ubersgunpla.deviantart.com

Not really a big fan of the updated site and logo and as >>8712957 mentioned, that premium membership price increase is rather off-putting. I used to use and renew regularly but now, hell no.

As you observed, most of the community has shifted to other sources and likely brought their following with them. I used to like having a way to create folders and rearrange/organize costumes individually or by source but since letting my premium membership expire and seeing the kinds of shit that groups were allowing in (and as a mod for a few groups - seeing the shit people wanted to submit and then fight about it when their stuff didn't get accepted), yeaaa. I generally left and didn't look back. No one needs to see 5 horrible photos of your dark/grainy selfie of your wig fresh out of the bag or your duck-faced makeup test that doesn't look like anything.

I think the reason FB is a big draw now is because so many people are already on their for their personal accounts and it's easy to just click a few times to get to someone's cosplay page on there as opposed to going on DA to look for updates.

I quit deviantart after they changed their policy so that they basically own all the rights to your pictures as long as you hold them on your site. So if they wanted to make money with your prints, they could. You agreed to the terms.

The community was shit too and attracted furries and fetishists so I gave up.

Left somewhere in the early 10's after realizing they didn't give a shit about their userbase (following the "childporn!!!'" debate, I think). Never posted cosplay on there, but it was what got me into it to begin with. Right now I'm on tumblr and IG, but not Facebook. I kind of want to get a blog or something to post photosets, tutorials etc, and use IG and tumblr to promote those with smaller photos. Instagrams reach is pretty decent, tumblrs is better, but tumblr needs to get their shit in order because if I had a good option I'd probably move alltogether.

dA is dead man and has been for years. I'm an oldfag so I remember the downfall very well. I have a couple thousand followers on there with a lot of pageviews but even I haven't uploaded there in years because the admins are awful.
It started when they allowed tracing and decided it was fine to upload it there... on an art website. It was previously against the rules but there was this very popular "vector" artist who was on the front page all the time and people were very angry because it was literally just traces of anime screenshots. dA was overwhelmed by reports of this so they decided that instead of deal with these problems to just allow it.
Then, they stopped checking reports. The community was very committed to reporting art theft and things like pics of anime screen shots to maintain the quality of the site. The admins usually responded to reports within 1-2 days. But then all of a sudden they stopped checking reports. One of the staff came out and said because they hadn't checked the report system in so long that they were literally a year behind. So the solution? They don't check reports. They will only check reports of the person who made the picture in question reports it.
Essentially, this flooded the site with traces and anime screenshots because it was very profitable to have all these young kids make accounts because ads/premium memberships.
This is what killed it initially, everyone started to leave after this because everywhere you looked it was stolen art. Other things came later (points, rebranding, membership price hike etc) which made it worse again. I don't see dA ever coming back from this.
The sad thing is that I don't like tumblr very much either so I'm waiting for the next big art site to happen. I'd prefer a dedicated art site to blogging.

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I remember seeing a while back that DA actually stole their logo idea from a Russian train website

>>8713609
>allows tracing
I mean, I trace a little. When doing portraits of people or fanart I put it in a bottom layer in photoshop then change the opacity, and use it as a guide to what their features are shaped like but I draw them in my style (big anime-like eyes, small mouths and noses, etc.) And if I use someone else's image I always give them credit as a ref.

But yeah, I hate the new layout, especially the home page, and I'm starting to get tired of all the fetishists stealing images of other people and inflating their boobs/bellies in photoshop. The fact that that's allowed now is really fucking stupid.

Btw - since you're talking about an art blog, have you considered registering a domain and making your own website? I plan to do that after I finish my web design class. There are many ways to attract views too.

>>8713660
That's probably why they stopped caring about art theft. They're guilty of it themselves.

>>8713704
Anon there's a difference between tracing real life for reference and straight out stealing art. First anon is talking about tracing over someone else's drawing, i.e. anime screenshots, and claiming it's all your work.

I have really the feel the most cosplayers leave many sites and use now facebook and tumblr only. What is about cosplay.com? This site is dead, right?

>>8713831
Yeah, coscom pretty much died long ago. I've occasionally seen forum posts show up on Google from like 2013, but most of the cosplayers who used it have abandoned it, and new cosplayers tend to go straight to Tumblr.

I never liked coscom. It shrunk images and the layout of the site was pretty medicore. That's why I skipped making an account there and went to deviant art instead.

>>8713842
I still have my cosplay.com account but my last photo was from 2013. I am since 2005 (10 years!) a member of this site. Sometimes I think about to delete my account. A mix because the site is dead and also I am no longer a big cosplayer. I see me now as a part-time cosplayer.

Allowing "tracing" and not giving a shit about people basically using DA as a photodump for screencaps and other people's artworks is what ended it for me. It was basically becoming Photobucket or similar. I registered in 04' and pretty much stopped using it by 11' because of shit policies.

I was a pretty prominent artist on there but ragequit after trying to report art theft of my work. The worst one was when some kid took one of my drawings, used horrible "word art" font and wrote their own name, added a few cutesy things like flower petals, and uploaded that image as their own. My name was still on the drawing too. Their response was that tracing was allowed and that's how newbies learn to draw. Moreover, it was "their interpretation of my original piece"... by adding shit font and flower petals.

>>8712957
do you seriously not see the "d A" ?

>>8714646
the "deviated A" concept is shit and you're shit for liking it

>haven't use dA since 2012
>logo looks dumb
>dA filled with elitist pricks

It's easy actually, cosplayers wanted to migrate to facebook since they could reach a wider audience through facebook.

I loved dA and still love dA. I'm still salty since I build up a pretty big following and finally reached my goal of 500+ faves pro picture... and then everyone was like "nope, we're leaving". Now I'm getting, like, 50-80 faves at best. Yep, still salty, not even hiding it.

What I liked about dA was the front page. You could see awesome cosplays other people were posting. Facebook, instagram and Tumblr don't have any front pages. Meh.

>>8720733
Same. All my pics got 1,000+ favs and I had a strong fanbase. Now it's really dead.
I liked the front page too but it's redesign killed it. I don't know about anyone else but getting to the front page was a huge goal for me when I was a newbie... Trying to improve and get better so one day you could be one of the talented people in the popular section, it was such great motivation for me. Now there's no point in uploading to dA, really. The front page is gone now, what's the point?
Of course it shouldn't be your only motivation but it was a great inspiration for me to practice, improve and "catch up". I still don't get why they got rid of it.
I checked dA today and the DD's were on the front page... one had just 1 comment and 30 favourites. At it's peak DD's guaranteed you several hundred comments, 1,000+ favs and 1 to a couple thousand followers. It really hit me just how much of a zombie site it is nowadays. But I guess that's what the admins get for being so bad to their userbase, they should have seen this coming.

I pretty much gave up on the site when it became flooded with Donut Steel OC's, the worse of it being, naturally, from the Sonic fanbase.

It was such a kick in the balls as an artist too. Something you put a lot of hard work and hours into, only for it to be on the frontpage for like a second and get, at best, one fav, while the asshole who did a bad sonic recolor in MSpaint gets at least a thousand. Little wonder that everyone jumped ship over on to facebook and tumblr. Don't know why I still even have an account there anymore.

>>8720787
At least the donuts steels on the frontpage were drawn by the artists though. When the traces were allowed the site really kicked the bucket imo.
I think when the pony art came and flooded the site it really helped finalize it's last moments.

>>8720769
Internet hug. I know that feel. And I know exactly what you're meaning. I got several times to the front page and got several DD's over the course of years, and damn, it was a HUGE motivation! I love cosplay and it's been a major hobby of mine for the past few years. Just sewing and taking photos gave me a great satisfaction, but it was so nice to see that people liked what I was doing, too. The good thing about front page was that we had a few different ones (the major one, 24 hours cosplay, 8 hours cosplay) and you just had a chance for your stuff to be seen. That's what I want now, too. I hate facebook blocking the views and tumblr is not ideal too (people see you or they don't. My stuff got between 5 notes and 7000 notes, so yeah).

But most of all, people abandoned it, too. I checked 24 hours cosplay front page recently and all I saw was just "sexy" bad quality stuff you can find anywhere on facebook.

And DD's... yeah, it's just sad. Getting a DD in 2010 was such a deal! And now it's 2015 and it's just a sad sight.

I just wish we had something similar to dA now.

dA is the reason why I ended up on 4chan. Not sure if anyone here remembers the butthurt brigade group, but I have them to thank for ending up here. dA has been shit for a long time, I stopped using it around 2011-2012.

>>8720903
Same. Tumblr is just not the same as dA was, it's far too messy a platform to use for art imho. I tried getting in to it but I just can't... Plus the only way to be seen is to draw fan art. I rarely see original art get reblogged. With dA the same was sort of true but I feel like there was still a huge interest for original content, too... Plus fan bases would grow to like your original stuff. I've seen so many artists on tumblr get loads of reblogs on fan arts but very few on original art, even if they have a load of followers.
Tumblr just isn't interested in that stuff I feel while on dA there somewhat was because it was a site filled with people who loved to draw and create, not only just fan art of their ships.
I stick to pixiv nowadays myself but even pixiv is dying, everyone is moving to Twitter... I don't know man! I just want a dedicated art site again! I know there's been some over the years but they never seem to stick for some reason.

>>8721516
It's because tumblr is a fandom site, not an art site. Some people may be on there for art, but it's the same reason mediocre cosplays might get huge amounts of notes, because they're interested in the character and face and not the cosplay.

>>8721516
I have the same feelings about tumblr. I don't believe however that there will ever be a lasting art site anymore, especially after that whole anipan debacle. I think the era of dedicated art sites has passed, so I clutch to dA despite hating what it has become.

I was pretty prolific back in the good old days of dA (early 00s) and have over 100k views. It was a really awesome place until they started allowing all that shit to happen. I still upload when I actually do art but I rarely get any feedback anymore because literally everyone has left, which is sad. I miss a lot of people from there and I have no idea where they all are now.

If Deviant Art and Tumblr suck for cosplay then where should a noob go?

>>8714666
I don't see it either anon. Its okay.

I use dA and tumblr/twitter for separate goals. The latter ones are for all my sketches and drawings in general.

Deviantart I use for commissions and adoptables. It's not a great art community anymore, but the 'kawaii' community loves shelling out money for cute art so I'm there to deliver it.

I've also started using instagram but I feel mixed on it. The huge follower counts some people I know have are incredibly tempting though, since marketing is everything in today's art world.

>>8713585
'childporn!' debate?

>>8713609
>They will only check reports of the person who made the picture in question reports it.

And that's a good thing because there were a lot of people making fake art theft reports out of spite.

>>8720769
>The front page is gone now, what's the point?
I have the DA app and my "front page" is always set to the Undiscovered art. I think it's way better than seeing the Popular page, because that's full of the bullshit that people always complain about.

>wahhh cosplayers in bikinis
>wahhhh flavor of the month

Although, there's still a lot of stupid female nudity photography in Undiscovered. Heavy shadows over the female form is such a tired technique, and we all know its just guys looking to get a wank.

Some anons in this thread complained that DA was full of stolen art, but honestly, tumblrinas steal art all the time and post it right on their own blog. I've seen them shoddily crop/blank out watermarks, too. At least you used to be able to successfully report it on DA, but on tumblr, whaddya gonna do, ~signal boost~ and whine until it gets taken down?

>>8729946
Please don't pretend that was ever an issue because it wasn't. Admins checked the reports so if you were doing something wrong it got removed, if you weren't then it wasn't. Are you forgetting that you also had to include evidence and links to the original art while making a report? And having to deal with false reports very rarely is better than the current state of the site which is flooded with art theft now? Stop talking about this because you have no idea what you are saying.

>>8729952
I disagree on the undiscovered page, actually. I find the quality to be bad and rarely found good artists to follow. I know there was some shit on the popular page too, don't get me wrong. However there was also a lot of exceptional art there too which I've never found on the undiscovered page desu.
Yeah, that's another reason I don't like tumblr too. But as another anon said, it's not an art site. That's really why I don't like using it because it just feels unsuitable as a platform to use for art. I'm waiting for a new site to come along but maybe the anon above is right and art sites are dead.

Out of curiosity I checked up on sheezyart after I read this thread.
They said they were gonna relaunch their site a couple of years ago, they officially pulled the plug this month and admitted they lost all the data.
Does anyone else remember mangabullet too? I never liked anipan so I was sad when it croaked.

>>8730106
Mangabullet and Anipan both weren't fantastic.

Anipan was just desperate and horrible though. Really sad it never became what they promised.

>>8730113
I kinda liked the layout of mangabullet, it's was dA 2.0 but in a good way. Anipan though was a disaster... I heard the guy who made it is tying to make a new art site called inkr? Not holding out hopes with 2 dead art sites in the past...

>>8730117
Everyone is waiting for 'the next great art site' but it never comes.

The places with the biggest ratio of followers seems to be Instagram, followed by twitter and tumblr.
Social media is preferred these days anyway since the only way you're going to make money of art these days is by marketing the shit out of yourself.

>>8730123
Speaking of which, does anyone else remember the commission forums on dA (PREpoints implementation)? I got a lot of work from there in the past, man its bumming me out there's no recent platform for that, either (I know there's Patreon and kickstarter but it's not the same).

I guess I don't mind Instagram but I really liked dA because you could toss up doodles/concepts/journals and people could give you real discussion and feedback, not to mention it's somewhere where you could organise all your projects and look back on them. Right now I'm developing a game and don't even know where to throw some stuff up for feedback since I stopped using dA.
I'm not objecting to change, I just wish that change had a bit of a better layout lmao

>>8730134
Oh yeah I agree. I still get commission work because the kawaii community is still alive and with more money then ever.

But yeah since these days everything has to be fast updates and everything social media really took over the will of anyone even attempting to create a suitable art platform.
For your game I could say that a tumblr blog might be decent. I know several game projects that use tumblr as their platform and that way people can give feedback through asks at least and you can get more people interested in your project.

I gave up dA back in 2014 so it's only been a year.
I couldn't stand the redesign since I hate the automatic scroll page feature and that's also the reason why I avoid Tumblr. That I can't stand the interface and feedback system on Tumbr. Also there were personal reasons for quitting dA.

But I did have a lot of fun with dA. It really was the only good site to post art and cosplay and I do miss some of the heartfelt notes I would get or someone praising my work.

I've tried SheezyArt but it was just too small and filled with too many RPers only interested in the art from whatever series they're RPing from (for example, last time I was there, Megaman was really popular at the time)
It just didn't have the activity like dA and having a "down-vote" option was just a terrible idea.

I've tried Facebook but it was too difficult to start fresh without being able to redirect a huge fanbase from dA or Tumblr to check it out. It's also just too much of a personal social web site where it's for people who know each other from real life to talk online or share photos rather than for browsing art.

Myspace would probably be the better choice but hardly anyone uses that site anymore.

So like some of the other anons, I'm just waiting for another new user-friendly art-site to pop up and replace dA. The only time I get to share art now is just by being a drawfag here on 4chan.

>>8730106
So what's the big deal about copyright claims needed to be done by the artist himself? It's not like it will differ if the person instead of contacting admins about infrigment contacts the artist himself to make a report.

Kinda don't get the whole crap around DA turning into big boys league of copyright claiming.

Only use DA to find artists to get commissions from (no R-18 or dirty pictures just random things like comic books stuff.) I used to draw there and lurk around for Sherlock/Doctor Who/Hannibal stuff but don't do it. Tumblr/Pixiv are my go to now.

>>8731532
I don't think you are understanding that it wasn't just artwork belonging to people on dA. A ton of it was people who didn't have a dA account (and couldn't report it themselves without making an account), or they spoke a different language so it was difficult to contact them and explain, or it was sprites ripped from a game studio, or it was screenshots of an anime etc... I could go on. Basically most of the stuff COULD NOT be reported by the original artist. The staff enforced this rule on purpose because they knew most of the original artists would not report it. They didn't want to deal with reports and kiddies uploading stolen work/making accounts brought in money and ad revenue.
It's a big deal because it brought the quality of the website down. You had to wade through all of this shit to find an actual artist, it made the website bad to browse. Not to mention there is no place for that stuff on a website that's supposed to be for original art. This is why people got upset and left, it made it not feel like a dedicated art site anymore. How are you not understanding that?

>>8732993
Guess you're somewhat right about that here.

>>8712859
Considering social media are complete pricks when it comes to their algorithms, sometimes I wonder why I even bother. For FB, your posts barely reach even 10% of your audience, and when you pay to boost, once you stop paying it penalises you even more than before to the point you might as well start a new page to get rid of the penalty. Tumblr's also shit because of their layout, and it's a haven for SJ idiots who don't even cosplay to decide you're their next "problematic" target for whatever issue is sticking up their craw that week. The staff do nothing if you start getting death threats and harassment. Promoting yourself on tumblr is messy as fuck too since only one of your posts might become popular and the rest of your blog is ignored as it gets passed on. As for twitter, it's just like the others where you easily get lost amongst the crowd. The compression quality isn't all that fantastic either.

At the very least dA is consistent where if you're following someone it'll always show their uploads in your watcher notifications... Kind of. Their redesign really hasn't helped, especially on their mobile app which is just various shades of shit at this point.

>>8733805
>tumblr deciding you're their next target

Yeah, that's what keeps me away from there to be honest. Even if you apologise they don't stop bothering you and the original post hating on you keeps circulating and bringing in new bullies.

>was a pretty popular artist back in the day
>lose passion, stopped drawing and abandon my account, fade in to obscurity
>drew literally for the first time in about a year yesterday, upload picture to dA on newly made account because am actually enjoying drawing for the first time in years
>40 favs in a day

wew man it made me feel nostalgic. sort of makes me wanna pick art back up again, idk I just feel really encouraged.

>tfw premium membership is $50 now

what the actual fuck dA? I remember it being like $20ish last time I bought one?

>>8736223
I usually only buy at Christmas since you got the two for one, but my friend I usually buy it for doesn't really use dA at all any longer. Considering the price (and the conversation rate from AU to US), kinda makes me wish I'd just saved up and gotten a til hell freezes over one back years ago.

Does anyone remember fanart-central or wysp(I think that's what it was called)? Wysp seemed promising at first but idk haven't been back there in a while.

I remember I made my first dA when I was like 11 and I bragged about my age and got banned lmao. Served me right but dang do I miss dA.

>>8733805
>Promoting yourself on tumblr is messy as fuck too since only one of your posts might become popular and the rest of your blog is ignored as it gets passed on
This so much.
I don't want to be efamous but I put a lot of effort into my work and whilst it's nice that a couple of posts have gone viral it's frustrating that nobody checks the rest of my blog after reblogging or liking those viral posts. I don't even get comments or messages in the tags on the popular posts so I've just blocked any activity from them because it gets my hopes up that I might actually get to communicate with someone with the same interests. It feels like people are only liking them because some efamous people have, and not because they actually like the content, the rest of my blog is the same quality but completely ignored.

>>8736652
I have had a few of my cosplays get upwards of 25k notes on tumblr and I only have 800 followers on my now abandoned 5 year old blog

I left my dA account like years ago and I want to get back to posting art. Would you guys suggest using tumblr over dA? I haven't used tumblr before though so I'm not sure how to get exposed and everything. I'd appreciate any advice!

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>>8713711
>That's probably why they stopped caring about art theft. They're guilty of it themselves.
Exactly why I stopped using them. They can fuck themselves in the ass with a cactus. The site already had a rampant issue with dickheads stealing other people's art & photos without even bothering to credit the actual content creator. They have an entire thread on the discussion with people telling them how fucking shit it is of them to no longer bother policing the site for stolen art. The thread is fucking pages and pages of pissed off people.

This coupled with a horrifically bad way to upload images... one at a time... caused me to never really bother using them much anyway. I think premium members got a way to upload more than one at a time though? I'm a photographer who goes to cons, I literally have over 1000, and frequently even more, images to post. DA thinks I am doing that shit one at a time? Fuck that noise.

>>8737562
Tumblr's just as bad though, I find. It's even more difficult to track stolen art on there though.

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Popularity is a really fickle thing (it has always been) and sometimes I just wonder why certain artists got so popular.
Getting followers is pretty much a science on it's own these days and let's get real, if you ever want to start making money from your art you'd better start delving into that science.

I mean look at pic related, the chick has almost 300k followers on instagram and 99% of what she posts is drawings of generic looking girls and honestly after seeing 5 of her drawings you've seen all of it.
But if you look more into her posts, you'll realize she does a tremendous amount of promotion posts where if you promote her you essentially enter a lottery to get your art promoted to her hundreds of thousands of followers. The more followers you have the more effective this is which is probably how she got to that amount.

Also what do you guys think about Patreon? I think it's a nice way to support artists you like into being abel to create even more art.

>>8724671

What happened to aniPan? I remember it opening but I don't know what happen to it

>>8738058
Oh god Cyarin is so annoying. Ever looked at her twitter? The only thing she tweets about is how the internet is so mean to her and that all her whiteknights should go after art thiefs and such because she's a victim of the mean interwebs. I get that art thieves are annoying but she's really milking out the victim thing.

Oh and constructive critism is always bullying to her because she doesn't want to change ~*muh style*~
The only reason she keeps milking the generic instagram art thing is because she knows deep inside that she doesn't have the dignity to become a real artist anymore.

>>8737691
Tumblr isn't a dedicated art site though, people just use it for art since there is no other alternative. Most artists don't actually like using it.

>>8738066
The opening of the site had a bunch of issues, and after a week or 2 people realized the owners weren't responding at all and everyone realized they were fucked and the project was a mess.

>>8738072
Sounds really annoying. I'm personally just annoyed at that she NEVER draws anything interesting. It's all the same generic looking girl in some boring clothes with hands hidden away as much as possible.

Oh and if you follow her instagram you'll be sure to know she's in a relationship since she mentions it every single fucking post.

I kinda miss DA... it was so much fun back in my weeb days and I made a lot of friends there. But now it isn't much of a community anymore. People won't even talk back to you anymore.

Can anyone recommend a place to go if you're just starting out cosplay since dA obviously went to shit? I'm a long-time lurker here but I haven't cosplayed yet

I still use dA because I can search for specific characters and more importantly, download HQ photos. These days I just end up following a lot of Russian cosplayers.

>>8712859
dA is full of furry fags what else is new

>>8747369
Stick with DA. It's still an active site, even if if's shitty.

I tried Tumblr myself but couldn't avoid the SJWs. Like somehow me cosplaying Katara without painting my skin was racist.