Our Ongoing Battle Against Malicious Ads Tweet Our Ongoing Battle Against Malicious AdsToward the end of April, deviantART released a community-wide news article that outlined and reaffirmed our stance against advertisements that auto-play audio, contain pop-ups or redirects, and promote virus or malware activity. Three months later, we'd like to provide an update on our efforts to block malicious advertising from running on the site.We're taking these concerns seriouslyDeviantART takes all concerns on this topic very seriously and immediately implemented a number of changes to reduce the chance those type of ads would get served by our ad partners. These initial steps w
The Reality of Mainstream Creator-Owned ComicsA lot of people have asked me about how they go about creating and selling their own comics. There are many different ways to do that, but most people I talk to want to see their books for sale in comic shops alongside mainstream superhero/big publisher titles.I put together a pretty extensive blogpost outlining the financial realities of how mainstream comic distribution works and the profit margins involved for independent creators. If you want an eye-opening look at the business, please give it a read.
Attention Seeking Whores!We're all here for attention. For some it helps us earn a living and people's attention means cash. Others are still working their way towards turning pro and seek support on their journey. And some just seem addicted to the idea of gaining watchers and llama's in some imagined popularity contest.Hell, if updating your ID picture on a daily basis fulfils some need within, then carry on having fun. But you may want to stop reading here because the whores I'm addressing have an artistic purpose behind their attention seeking...So, you're here because you want get your art out there in order to better yourselves, make a living, and enjoy the community.And how's that going?Whatever your answer to that question is, I bet the majority of you are feeling like a small fish in a very big pond. I'm also sure most of you feel quite humbled by the awesome art on DA. You probably believe there is way more artistic talent around here than yours. Ironically, it's often those artists - who's talen
Women Need IronWomen need iron. Not the vitamin. The barbell.We are trained by the world around us to have fucked up ideas about our bodies; iron unfucks them.We are supposed to be as thin as possible, as small as possible, perhaps until we disappear; iron teaches us to take up space.We are taught that the only good direction for the scale to go is down, and to agonize ritualistically when it goes up. Iron teaches us the power of gaining weight for strength and gives us another weight to care about – the weight we are lifting.We are taught to eat small amounts daintily and treat food as sin and pleasure. Iron teaches us to eat heartily, to see food as fuel for life, and to seek out nutritious food rather than avoiding sinful food.We are taught to think of our bodies as decorative, an object to be looked at; iron teaches us to think of our bodies as functional, our own active selves, not passive objects for another’s regard.Whole industries exist to profit by removing from us
E3 Thoughts Day 2Killer Instinct... not free to playWell, technically it will be... except that only ONE character will be free and all the rest you have to pay for. Wow... way to be a douche, Microsoft. Free to play gaming works on handhelds and casual games, but I don't really think it's appropriate to do it to a console fighting game. Part of the fighting game experience is trying out various players and getting to know which character you identify best at playing with, with additional characters on the side as bonuses to unlock. Locking ALL the characters up from the start and making you pay for them individually? Kinda shitty move, dude. Imagine if Smash Bros did that...ugh.Price PointsThe PS4 will be $400, undercutting the XboxOne's price point of $500. Even if Sony takes a loss on that, it was a very good move on their part, though still hella expensive.Sony isn't JesusWhomever is working for Sony's PR department knows how to get the crowd going. They came up on stage a
Objectification vs Sexuality?That Tropes vs Women in Gaming Part 2 video sure has brought on a lot of serious discussions hasn't it? I don't mean to keep wading deeper into all this, but one question begs another and this is something I'm really curious about: What's the difference between objectification... and just being sexy?For me this is a really tough question to answer. Speaking as a heterosexual male it's a bit of a double standard. On the one hand, objectification of women and the constant sexualization of women in the majority of media around us is, I think, overwhelmingly bad for us as a society (and I've talked at great length about this subject in the past). But on the other hand there's absolutely nothing wrong with being attracted to women or finding them sexy. Speaking from a male perspective of course, this concept can be applied to how both men and women see things.I think our tendency to over simplify things is why so many people don't take feminists seriously, because the
The Used Game ParadigmOver the course of this past generation I've been watching the video game market react to the way it's been forced to deal with increasing changes. I've come out against used game sales and even written a journal about boycotting GameStop because (like most people at the time) I believed they were the root cause of all the problems the video game industry has. But that's something I don't believe now as intently as i did then. From where I sit, piracy and used games sales are a problem, but not in the way game companies want us to believe that they are.Used games are a good thing for consumers. We get to try games out, and if we don't like what we see or finish it early, we trade it in and try another title instead. It's a very good system for us since video game rentals are much harder to come by. Most video rental stores in America have gone extinct and outside specific Red Box Kiosks there aren't a lot of places for consumers to rent video games. The exception, of course, being thr
A word for artists. Resources and moreFirst of all, I've been hella active lately and I hope you guys enjoy it, because there's more coming, lol. The reason is while I've always taken my career seriously, I committed too many mistakes in my path, may you learn from it and avoid it. After I got out art school, I started teaching myself digital art and eventually freelancing, don't be fooled for a second, while you can arrange your own schedule, learn at your own pace and there's a lot of flexibility, it's incredibly hard, because there's no guidance, there's no one pushing you to reach the next level, everything comes from your own will to improve, thus you can slack like a motherfucker and simply get stuck.I've come to realize that's exactly one of my main issues.I've tried to get formal education, not fine art bullshit, where you will learn little useful techniques to actually work in the field (I already did that), but my particular circumstances preclude me to do so, specifically living in a country where you're
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