Director of Artist Relations


Hello!

The purpose of Artist Relations is to strengthen the community spirit as well as network with fellow artists so that we may bring outside opportunities to you, and help you to hone your skills. The Gallery Directors are the first people you should go to regarding your galleries. They are the people you need to make gallery suggestions to, and ask questions about your specific genre, or seek knowledge from. They also act as your lifeline to the administration. They are here to support and listen, and I can tell you we've got incredibly talented, devoted and passionate people on this team, so get to know them!


Due to personal reasons, `lady-atropos has been returned to her former senior status. We thank her for her contributions and wish her well in her future endeavors. ^serpentinekiss will continue to monitor the Fetish Photography Gallery.

The issue we have had with new categories not being browsable for weeks on end has been resolved! Yay IT! There was also a bug for users logged in that left gallery browse pages blank if sorted by ‘newest’. This issue has also been resolved.

Please note the smashing new AR logo designed by our own ^zilla774 shiny new duds for an awesome team 

I would like to personally bring your attention to *2envision This is a group to get to know. Once the group is up and running, we will be running bi-weekly updates in the AR newsletter so you can get involved in the excitement. This is a good direction to go in and *Davenit is a star for pursuing it. This is what I love about this community.

The moving of deviations into the new categories in the resources gallery is still underway and will be time consuming.

Any issues, concerns, complaints, suggestions, accolades etc. about contests should be directed to me. You can note me or email me at moonbeam13@deviantart.com

Do not scream and yell all over a news article about a contest, it’s getting quite tiring only to clarify a situation and have a person feel silly for having made the comment in the first place. I’ve given you your contact information and I implore you to use it. I would like to bring new and interesting contests to deviantART with fun and exciting prizes, so please, work with me.


There was a dataloss a few years ago that caused deviations to go missing. I am working on getting these recovered and my team is helping to compile a list of missing deviations. If yours was one of the deviations missing, please note your gallery director or myself and we will add it to the list.


Want to see previous AR newsletters? Go to my journal and check the journal module to the left.

Looking for contests? Find a list of all AR sponsored contests here




The Key System
As you can see at the very bottom there is now a Key System. The way this will work is simple. If you have a specific inquiry or suggestion for a specific department, begin your comment with the appropriate Key Code, that way we can search the page and compile them and address them. Neat, huh?



Photography

Hallowe'en is this week, followed closely by the Mexican Day of the Dead celebrations. It's a good opportunity to be inspired by the season and fill up that Horror and Macabre photography gallery. And here's a great news item to help you get started. Happy Hallowe'en!



Fetish Photography

`lady-atropos has decided to finish helping out with the Fetish Gallery due to personal reasons, and we wish her well in her future adventures. She will remain a senior member of the site, but will not be a Gallery Director any longer. I won't need to replace her due to awesome new features within the new version 5 that make my life run very smoothly, so please continue to direct all fetish DD suggestions to myself.



Photojournalism

Just a couple of things this time around:

You only have a little over a week to get your submissions in for the Be Afraid Contest. We want to see what you fiendish folk can come up with that will either scare the living bejeesus out of us, or really capture the Halloween spirit. This is a great opportunity to work out all your most dastardly and creepy desires on film (or digital camera, lol), so get out there snap a few frames to win some awesome prizes. Read more about the contest here.

Secondly, we have just added a new subcategory to the Photojournalism Gallery. After much debate and a fair bit of browsing, we've added a Wedding sub category.



Digital Art

I was asked to help judge the Non-Existent–An ASCII/ANSI contest and I was excited to take part in this because text art contests are far from common. From what I've seen so far being posted to the ANSI and ASCII galleries, people are really bring out some great art as they practice their skills for this. If you haven't tried text art before, I definitely recommend you check this out.

On the digital front, I am in the process of getting some gallery adjustments taken care of. Some of the suggestions seem a little old in the making but the timing seemed better right now than when the new version of DeviantArt was taking place. Add to that, some of the digital sections were moved to their own place making the digital galleries exist in a totally new way.

Making adjustments is tricky because you are basically telling people where and how to post their art. When I first started making changes
based upon suggestions, I made some rookie mistakes. Now that I'm a bit older as a gallery director, I'm moving a bit slower but with much more forethought on how changes work out. Now that I have a much deeper understanding of how things are done, all the suggestions that I received are going to get attention. I will be posting progress points, as well as getting feedback through my journals before making any large changes. Drop me a note or leave me a comment if you have any questions or concerns.



Anime

Hello, we are ^guruubii and ^aeterne, the new Manga/Anime Gallery Directors! If you don't know us yet, you might be interested in our Monthly Newsletter which will arrive on the 31st this month. For now, we just ask you to do one thing: send us DD suggestions!! Right now we're getting very few of them, so if you know someone who should be featured, read our DD guidelines and send us suggestions!

See you on the 31st!



Comics and Cartoons

Hi guys!
Nothin' much to report this time around. The gallery is moving along just fine. Keep in mind that you need to categorize your deviations properly please! A photo of you and your buddies at the mall doesn't belong in Comics and Cartoons because you think the look on Whosit's face is "funny". Please read the category descriptions and put your deviations where they belong! And remember, when in doubt it doesn't hurt to ask. Speaking of which, i'm goin' to be workin' on the C&C descriptions. Even without them they're pretty easy to follow so please be sure you're putting your deviations in the right spot. Thaaaanks.


I would also love to run a Comics and Cartoons contest this winter so any ideas you might have please send me or ^delya a note! Keep those DD suggestions comin'!

Gallery Features:
Interview with vert-is-ninja
Thumbnail Smorgasbord #5
Thumbnail Smorgasbord #6



Wallpaper

Only a day or so left on the Halloween Wallpaper Contest, so if you are planning on submitting to it then now is your last chance! The winners will be announced on the 31st October, so keep 'em peeled.

I am taking time out in the next few weeks to take a look at the structuring of the wallpaper gallery. Since dAv5 has been launched and is settling in nicely it seems the time is right to have a look at which categories need updating and what new categories need adding (if any). This is something I do periodically with the gallery and helps identify problem areas.

If you have any thoughts or ideas regarding what you would like to see happening to the Wallpaper Gallery, then please note me. I am always looking to the wallpaper community to help lead any changes. I am not changing anything for the sake of change, but will be updating anything
that the community feels strongly about.



Skins and Themes

Well, the S&T contests haven't seen very good responses of late. In light of this, I've decided to shift our focus over to a new initiative - =Skinning. The group is headed by skinners of repute and experience, as well as several knowledgeable enthusiasts, and aims to promote skinning at Deviantart. For now, we're working on projects that will help designers and artists get into skinning, by offering tutorials and resources. As such, if you'd like to help out or see what we have to offer, please visit the group page - =Skinning. Also, =ipholio and I are teaming up to showcase some great skins, themes and icons as bi-weekly features. We're already on it!



Icons

The Autumn Grand Master Icons Contest is now over and the winners have been announced in this news article. I was impressed with the effort the entrants put into their submissions, so well done to everyone who took part and especially to the winners. Some people mentioned that 5 icons was a lot, so the next contest will take that into account and I'll make sure that you can take part with small or large submissions. Any suggestions people have for contests they'd like to see can of course be sent to me in a note.

Icons are difficult things to make so to help out the community I'd love to see some well thought out tutorials being made. From now until whenever, if you make an decent OS Icons tutorial and send me the link then I'll give you a subscription, or if it's really good then a print might be your reward.



Visualizations


Whenever there's a visualization featured or even awarded with a daily deviation, people wonder what it's all about. Ignorance is bliss, but I don't give up on you that easily.

Visualizations are rendered dynamically to music, most popular would be G-Force (also found in iTunes) or Tripex. However, these cannot be modified as easily as Milkdrop or AVS, which come with an editor including a library of effects. Custom effects or combination of effects can be saved as presets, which you can download - for instance in DeviantArt's Visualization Gallery.

This month I recommend the following presets to download:

Bside by *dRRew
Dynamic Movement 5 by ~dynamicduo



Literature

Hello, dA.

With the two big contests coming to a close it's time for everyone to get to reading. There were plenty of entries for both contests (In The End and The Butler Did It!) so get to reading. With The Butler Did It!, you can actually win more prizes by guessing whodunit. Read the article for more information.

In The End entries

The Butler Did It! entries

Literature Gallery Update #7 was released last week, and the next will be coming soon, as well, so make sure you read that and keep looking out for more for all your lit news.

Stay tuned.


Thanks for reading this update. We look forward to reading your feedback and to answering your comments and suggestions in our next update.



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To direct your comments towards the right gallery director, optionally prefix your comments with the following acronyms:

PREFIX LEGEND

AR: for Artist Relations
PH: for Photography
AN: for Artistic Nude Photography
FP: for Fetish Photography
PJ: for Photojournalism
SP: for Stock Photography
DA: for Digital Art
3D: for 3-Dimensional Art
AA: for Anthro Art
PM: for Photomanipulation
PA: for Pixel Art
ANI: for Anime
AC: for Artisan Crafts
COM: for Comics and Cartooons
CON: for Contests
DI: for Designs & Interfaces
FL: for Flash
ICN: for Icons
LIT: for Literature
POE: for Poetry
PRO: for Prose
ST: for Skins & Themes
TA: for Traditional Art
VP: for Visualization Presets
WP: for Wallpaper
RES: for Resources
FR: for Fractal Art