For Staff Appreciation Day (Oct. 16th) I've done a series of Interviews that will be posted through-out the week. I hope you all enjoy!

Interview with $lolly.

1. How did you come up with your deviantART nickname?

Oddly enough my current nick came out of the community not knowing how to shorten or say `lllo0o0olll and it got morphed into a ton of variations like lllol or lllolmao etc and so on, but it was `helloitsjanet who was the first to refer to me as "lolly" in the middle of some forum thread and it was one of those things that just instantly stuck.
Then when I took over prints I officially switched over to it since `lllo0o0olll was proving a hindrance in getting emails back and forth heh.

2. What is your role on deviantART and what do you enjoy most about it?

I'm the Director of Community Development, which covers a lot of ground. I have three teams under my division, Help Desk, MN@ and CEA so between those we cover how people are helped, the systems behind that, revision of and enforcing of policy and then the chat network. All three are really fascinating areas as they are a combination of a certain rigidity that comes out of the necessity of their purpose, yet given the constant changing of the community they also need to be flexible and fluid and open to change.
Most people have the assumption that these teams are pretty set in stone and are staffed by people who are pretty inflexible, but the opposite is in fact true. At any given moment I may come up with some change and bounce it off them and say "okay the way we did it last week isn't working, here's the new way" and the speed at which they adapt and roll with it is pretty damn amazing. I've been working with everyone on this team for about two years solid and most days it doesn't feel like work. It just flows.
In addition to that I work directly at HQ in Los Angeles and speak to $spyed daily. In that capacity I'm directly involved with discussions and brain storming that affects the broad strokes of the site along with other department heads. It is a fascinating environment to be in most times and it's a trip to finish something and formalize it and go "wow this is going to affect every person on DA" and then commit to it. I'd like to think that we usually pull it off right and when we don't we do everything we can to make it right.

3. What drew you to dA in the first place?

I was a newb to digital art and had started my own message forum and I couldn't stand the stock graphics that came with it but didn't have clue one how to go about making anything on my own, which was doubly frustrating given the fact I've been painting and drawing my entire life. So I got Photoshop Elements and began making some clumsy attempts at buttons and banners and what not, and a friend, *uma , who posted on my board told me about DA. This was around October of 2001 and I began lurking and looking and reading guides and forums with tips and it helped massively, then I joined up in December and foisted my shoddy filter fests on the world lol

4. If you had to switch rolls with anyone on deviantART, who would it be and why?

Well, at this point I've been on prints customer service where I started, prints quality control, supervisor of QC, Director of Prints then Director of Comm Dev so it's almost more of a question of what haven't I done lol. But in all honesty, there isn't any other area I would rather be in. But if I had to, I'd say I'd swap with $Moonbeam13 and try my hand at Artist Relations. It's not a far cry from what I do now, but there are enough subtle complexities and differences that it would present a different sort of challenge. But lately we are working at bridging a lot of the gap between the two departments anyway, so I'm kind of cheating with this as my answer

5. Out of all dA’s achievements, which do you feel is the most important?

Lord, that's a rough one since daily something can come up. But I think the most long lasting one and single most important thing was working directly with the community itself with `justthorne being point man for the community representation to rewrite and rework the Submission Agreement. To a lot of people it's just that big wall of text they click "I Agree" to when they sign up and first submit a deviation, but it's possibly the most important document on the site since it directly applies to you, your art and its safety, and myself and the whole community had a hand in how it was worded, written and finalized.
I can't think of anywhere else on or offline that has ever done such a thing. Most companies, when it comes to the hardcore legal agreements pretty much say piss off and allow no outside input other than a lawyer to be involved in it, but with this we came up with what we wanted and told a lawyer what to do with it, and we got it.

6. What is your biggest pet peeve on dA? How about outside of dA?

On dA, it would be people that are just negative from the get go and react poorly to new things or new ideas. The ones who just assume something is going to suck or just assume that things we do will fail before they have even tried them. But I take a lot of satisfaction in seeing the same people time after time all happily using every single thing they said would suck within a few days without complaint
That and people who don't read past the first line in news articles! So many concerns are usually covered if someone just would read the whole thing lol.

Outside of dA, kind of the same thing. People that just assume the worst. It brings everyone down and is a waste of time.

7. What first drew you in to your chosen art form?

I don't really feel like I have a specific art form that I adhere to. I just like to create and that's always been the motivation behind it since I was a little kid. Although early on dinosaurs were a big deal for me and then comic books. Comic books were a massive influence on me and made me draw all the time.
These days though I guess if I do have a specific form it is pop art styled work which has steadily become one of my biggest sources of inspiration. People like Warhol, Lichtenstein, Basquiat, Keith Haring, that whole explosion of crazy ass avant garde pop art that came out of the late 70's and into the 80's just fascinates me.

8. What do you like best about your chosen art form? Is there anything you don’t like about it?

I like not being tied to any specific form or style since it allows me freedom and adaptability. I can jump from 3D to vector to photoshop to photography to painting to illustration or writing if the need is there.
On the flip side I spend so much time jumping from one thing to the other that I've not mastered any of them as much as I would like to.

9. What are your 3 favorite deviations and why?

and
I feel like these are two of my most complete pieces of work in 3D and captured what I was going for mood wise, symbolically, and aesthetically. I spent a month on them modeling, tweaking, playing with and making all my own textures, setting the lighting, shifting the camera angle around and so on. I felt like it and the other couple in the series were a breakthrough for me and where I abandoned a lot of the pretense of how people approach 3D work. While I was in school for it everyone would approach 3D in a very draftsman like way and when they were done their work looked very "3D", and while it was technically amazing and often times very cool modeling wise, it just seemed lifeless and kind of dull and devoid of any passion or art so it made me think of the 3D environment as just a more flexible canvas and I came at it like a painter instead of a draftsman.

In addition to my obsession with Paris Hilton which none of my friends really understand and most are unsure of whether its real or some elaborate meta joke, I like this one because I feel like I am actually hitting my stride in where I want to take my pop portrait type work. My earlier attempts at it were okay, but pretty filter heavy, then I went 180 and my later attempts were extremely clean vector images, and while I got some happy results in both styles, nothing quite clicked till this one and I feel like I'm finally on the right path with this style.

10. What have you struggled with most in your chosen art form?

These days, lack of time, plain and simple. If I could eliminate the need for sleep it would eliminate all my artistic frustrations.

11. What inspires you most and are there any deviations in particular that embody this inspiration?

Art that has a soul to it, some spark of life. That little something extra that makes something like a web interface go from graphic design to art. The thing that makes a painting something to ponder rather than an anatomy study. It's hard to define, but I think it is what sets things apart and makes something stand the test of time. That extra bit of sweat and passion someone puts into something.
Or people who just get it. Like =zombiebe10u and what he did with my tattoo design. No offense to the literally thousands of people who entered, but he just came in, read what I had to say, what I was looking for, and then did some serious homework on what I had done on this site and he just nailed the thing on all levels. Every single day I spend time just staring at it and still can't believe how well he pulled it off.
And then there are people here on dA that just blow me away with what they have achieved. =snapesnogger comes to mind. This is someone who takes a bizarre level of shit and then equal amounts of hollow praise, more than any one person has a right to, came on to this site at a pretty young age and with a pretty singular thing she was doing, and just kept pushing on and on and forging her own style and thing and there's no denying she is on to something whether you like her style of work or not. Personally I do, I think the kid has talent for miles and this past year it has been fascinating watch her come into her own and begin really evolving despite all the crap she gets.
To quote Ice-T, "They're just jealous, fuck 'em".

12. What would you consider to be your perfect day?

The day I got to answer all these awesome questions of course! And the day I invent edible sleep and eliminate that problem.

13. If you had to list 3 things you think everyone should do in their lifetime, what would they be?

*thinks long and hard* Dress in drag in public, public nudity, and run from the cops. All three are very liberating experiences, if not necessarily the most sound of things to do. Unless you get away with all three of them

14. As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up and how does it relate to what you’re doing now?

I was gonna be a mothafuckin hussla, you bettah aks somebuddy. Oh wait that was Snoop Dogg when he was a kid. I never really had some clear cut idea of what I wanted to be. There was never a crystal clear finish line or goal or slot to fit into. It was just a broad notion of being an artist and to live my life and make my way through art. And in that sense, well, mission accomplished. I may not have as much time as I'd like to work on my own art but being at the head of something as big and amazing as this huge of a community of artists more than tips the scales.

15. Describe yourself in 5 words or less

The clown with pony arms.