does a fractal have to just be a self contain pattern?
i have made many cellular autonoma that are fractal-like in nature but not sell containing, should they be put in fractals?

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I agree! There seems to be a lot of trouble with people having their fractals, specifically ones that have mixed media elements, recategorized. I think that if it has a fractal in it, and is at least 75%+ of the submission, it should be left to the fractal art category.

A simple way to handle these would be to allow Fractal art its own Main Category. Take it out of Digital Art, and let it have specific Sub-Categories like Mixed Media, Abstract, Wallpaper, etc etc etc. Even if you left it in Digital Art, and gave it the Sub-Categories, it would make the deviants, and admins jobs of categorizing much simpler.

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That's beacause a lot of the new users these days seem to live out their myspace 'spamage' here, and what better than do some miscats!

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the principal trait of fractal art is showing self-similarity. there is of course a fuzzy boundary (and actually both apo and uf can make decidedly un-fractal images), but generally it would be nice if the mods wouldn't second-guess (often incorrectly) the artist quite as much as they do.

i see where you're coming from, and sometimes on da you see "thx for the aaaaaadd" etc. i think the art-centred aspect of deviantart makes it a lot more genuine than myspace, and respect for the artists' creations goes a long way to fostering such a community.

well, the piece of mine that got re-mis-categorised had some photoshop work on the lettering and circles, but i think it's a lot more fractal than it is just abstract. there have been extremely clear cases of 3d fractals by *Aexion being re-categorised to "futuristic/sci-fi" because the mods are just... abusing their power through lack of understanding (of the art form).

In the specific piece of yours that got recategorized, its bluntly obvious that it is a fractal. And anything Aexion does that is considered sci-fi...is crazy! There needs to be some kind of consideration for fractal art..its been getting kicked around quite a lot. There is a much simpler way to handle the dilemma than what they have chose to do by going on category rampages..[ill educated ones at that...]

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Can\\\'t get enough of you You\\\'re so contagious
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You traded honesty for lies - You faked it all your life
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I wish you had the heart to tell me that you sold your soul

i noticed that, too. i think the anime positing guys/gals are often just trying to increase their reputation by taking other people's imagery (a.k.a. stealing) and then posting like/through a spam-bot.

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Well, thanks muchly for the compliment but there are very many people on the site (you, for instance!) much better qualified than me to advise on what is and what isn't fractal art, especially when it comes to some of the less well-known and/or private programs that are used.

In a discussion not so long ago, I mentioned that the term "algorithmic art" had been tossed around as potentially a better - and more wide ranging - descriptor for the current Fractal Art category. One of the things that would probably help is if the artists always indicated what program they had used. This would, I think, alleviate many of the misunderstandings. That would probably have to go along with a little education for us all as to what programs/methods can properly be put under the category umbrella. In the absence of specific information, I really don't think we should be laying any blame for erroneous miscats at the door of our dedicated and hardworking GD. If a mistake has been made, I'm sure she'd be only too happy to correct it.

As for the obvious miscats - ugh! My take on it is that they are mostly from people who are new to the site and who are totally confused by the cat system. Not helped, of course, if they don't speak English, or don't understand it well. Fractal Art is 'easy' to submit to: most people would start at the top of a list, and Fractal Art is the first category you can get to in only 2 clicks. I've also seen people submit .gifs, both animated and not, to FA because the category they wanted to submit to wouldn't accept gifs so they looked for any one that would

I have a personal opinion on images which combine fractal and non-fractal elements and that is that unless the fractal is a substantial or significant part of the image, then it should be in mixed media or other appropriate gallery. There could only ever be guidelines for something like that and they will always be open to personal interpretation. Artists working in other genres use the general mixed media category (I realise there are difficulties if the image is a mix of traditional and digital) but I'd be hard pressed to justify why fractal artists should get their own mixed media category. However, as someone who doesn't work in that area, I can't say I've really given it much thought and appreciate that there may be good reasons for this which haven't occurred to me.

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