A few people have been telling me that I should post a few pages of my comics over at DeviantArt, and I'm just wondering: Is it a good idea?
I remember someone saying somethign about DeviantAArt earlier to me, but I cannot remember whether it was a good or bad thing.
Anyone have any comments on the whole DeviantArt idea?
or about DeviantArt in particular?

Deviantart is good for putting single pieces of art as well as showing off comic pages you think you did a good job on, but as far as chronological reading is concerned, it's not recommended.

I generally use DA as a dumping ground for any art I have that I feel like putting online. It's not good for comic pages though--it's cumbersome to go from thumbnail to full-view if you are going through a large archive, although it has gotten a lot better--and if you want people to actually read your pages in order, you'll have to manually put in the links to previous and next pages.

Also, do not expect to gain any readership from DA. The place is almost impossible to get recognized at. You will have to do a lot of commenting on other people's art and journals, and maybe even stop by the forum once and a while to even get a smidgen of "watchers."

Basically I am saying that DA is a horrible place for comics, but a good place for stashing other art.

DA SUCKS. Well at least for dumping comics.

Don't put them there. Put a few highlights, and that's about all.

It takes too much time to go through the pages to actually read comics on DA

DA = not worth it for posting comics (if it means anything, that's coming from a former DA staff member, lol). They have no paging system, so if you want people to be able to read your comics in order, you need to manually put links to previous/next pages on every single page you put up, which is a giant pain in the ass. I post pages up there mostly for people to just look at but I don't expect to gain a readership from the site because of the lack of organization.

They're right you know Rad... It's not a comic site in any way, more like a giant forum really.

well, i knew it would be bad for comics.
I should have specified: I wouldn't be posting my comic, just (as they said, even) some of the highlights, as well as maybe some of the stand-alone art and pages.

just wondering what everyone's thoughts on DA were, though.

I use DA to host my stand alone illustrations, and it works pretty well for that. I wouldn't usually post comics on there unless I: a) have a page I'm particularly proud of b) I have something in progress I want feedback on from friends (and this only works if you already have people who you can ask for critique, random DA people are generally not helpful) or c) the comic is a gag that can stand completely on its own.

The DA "community" is 99% cesspool but you can have a gallery there without really participating in it.

Radec
just wondering what everyone's thoughts on DA were, though.

It's a massive art forum :p
I don't like the gallery set-up, it's extremely clumsy -so many clicks to look at peoples stuff!
Art submission was recently streamlined because it used to take AGES... It's fast now, but can still take a while if you want to make changes.

Here is the thread where people listed their DA gallery.

DA is nice for hosting pictures and having a place to point people toward when they want to see your stuff, if you're like me and can't set up your own website for beans. A couple of years ago, I would have said "and the community is great", but not so much anymore. It's become like a myspace for art, and like someone above mentioned, it's really hard to get noticed because there are just so many people posting stuff there.

Do yourself a favor if you decide to post there and avoid the forums, since that seems to be where 99% of the jerks hang out. =p

deviantART is hardly an art equivalent of Myspace. The only thing they share is a large community. In fact, Myspace isn't even a good comparison.

Unlike Myspace, dA's community is actually useful, because you're more likely to get comments that are helpful (if not the normal "that's cool" and "nice stuff" fare) AND there will always be someone that will have inspiring art. I swear, dA is one of the best, if not THE best, places on the net to get artist feedback of any skill level. If someone is getting next to no feedback, they have no reason to complain because there is plenty artwork to examine to jog his/her brain to improve and correct mistakes. dA is one of the best places on the net to see original artwork of ANY type, and it's a blessing that it's so easy-to-navigate because there is a lot of art types out there.


In order to actually get something out of deviantART, post only artwork you have put your full effort into, because works in progress will only make you that much more self-conscious if you get underwhelming feedback. At least if you put your entire effort into the submission, you can be certain that you have improved, or need to improve. One main reason why people complain about this kind of thing is because they don't even KNOW the limits of their own skill...because if they did know, they'd either quit dA a long time ago, or stop blaming others.
With each new submission, monitor how much feedback you get from it. Count the comments, if any, and even the amount of full views. Each number means it caught someone's attention. DON'T take other people's number of hits seriously, however, because other users could have real-life dA friends that frequent their pages, or they may have postwhored their art in dA thumbshare message boards, or have linked it to friends on AIM or something, or are under other various conditions that make their art viewed for reasons beyond the art itself. Just strive to get those numbers honorably...as in with as little to do with shoving a link to it in people's faces via message boards and/or other methods as possible. This way, you know your feedback is because of the art itself, so when you have a piece of art with more numbers than the last, it ensures that you're doing something right.
Also, do not be so self-absorbed as to not comment other's works. One essential aspect of art is that a person won't even know about, or how to approach, certain ideas and perspectives that may help them out in the long run if they don't see them executed in different types of artwork. It forces an alternate way of thinking that may be the only way for you to understand certain things.
This is why dA members hate seeing galleries with almost nothing but anime, not because "omg it's all anime so it sux", but because there's hardly anything else. It implies an unwillingness to explore other methods that would otherwise inspire them to make art according to what they find appealing, and not what a HUGE mainstream thinks is appealing. The former motive always generates better artwork and a better gallery.

dA isn't bad at all. But it can be seen as such if approached in the wrong way...because yeah, we all wanna be like that great dA artist #32426.
Anyway, if it weren't for deviantART, I wouldn't be anywhere near the skill level that I managed to get to now.

EDIT: For anyone still wondering, dA IS a crappy place to go to for making an account for a comic.

last time i checked DA was still slow as hell. i can't stand sites like that

Not for me. dA is among the faster of sites that load for me.

Deviant art is ok i guess :s It's not the best, but its good for putting up galleries and stuff :3

I personally really like deviantart. If you're willing to put in the effort to communicate with people you can get some really nice feedback and lots of tips on how to improve your artwork as well as meeting some cool people. As the above posters stated; it's not one for comics, but a nice place to show off stand alone drawings. However, the best way to get feedback is to give it. A lot of times it's difficult to get people to notice your work amongst all the other things on there, but if you comment to other people and be social, more people will come to notice your stuff as well. I think it ends up being one of those 'you get out of it what you put in' types of things.

Was never a big fan of devART myself. I have an account that i rarely update (as i find the upload process to be long and unnecessary) and i know few that do. It's just another place to back up your work, but is not worth the time and effort to maintain.

DA's is pretty useless unless you want to actually take the time to get involved in their crazy, complex community. Otherwise, most people pretty much ignore you and it's a bitch to categorize art before you upload it.

kytri
The DA "community" is 99% cesspool but you can have a gallery there without really participating in it.

There are a lot of REALLY talented people on DA, however. Such as Ryan Ottaley (wya.deviantart.com) and many others. A lot of my favorite artists have DeviantART accounts.

The only reason I made a DA gallery was so I could comment on a few friends galleries that were there. I upload work occasionally, but I don't really care for the place, it's just yet another internet gallery to put work up. What really matters to me is seeing the work of other people that I know from elsewhere and being able to leave comments on their stuff.

Good things about it:
*It has all types are artwork, not just representational 2D illustrative stuff.
*you can fave people's work and so show them off a bit better.
*you have a list that notifies you when people you've "friended" have put up new art pieces.

Bad things:
*requires multiple clicks to see people's work- even from direct links you still often need to click yet again to see it full size! not to mention getting into see someone's gallery is extremely unintuitive. Oh wait, I just did!
*time outs and slowdowns happen more frequently at DA than DD at its worst in the past and always have, even though overall the site works fast and smooth these days.
*the comments take up more space than the actual artwork; they really need to be reduced in size!

In short, the programmers obviously had a lot more control and input than the interface designers and the graphic designers were just working around that awful programmer led work, so that's why it's as clumsy as it is. Still the main strength of DA is its size: you will know people there, you will find work that you like.

Since i've used DA for about 2 years now, i decided to post my first 10 pages there in order to let others know what i'm doing, and to give DD some publicity. After i've uploaded my 10th page, however, i'm going to stop. Most comic artist on DA have their own site or are apart of a hosted network like us. So my answer would be that a few pages to give readers a taste wouldn't be a bad idea, but don't post your whole series there.

I think for the responses your looking for DA is the place to go, your far more likely to get helpful tips on how to improve your art there, plus there are alot of really good tutorials you might wanna browse through. As you can tell im a big big fan of DA.

Just get your ass in there! .\/.
So we can make a party.