When it comes to the deviantART fractal community, I feel like a geezer sitting on my porch watching the world pass me by. I look around and see many new faces. Some of them bring refreshing, innovative things to the genre. But many of them churn out forgettable Apophysis renders... and these renders get faved. Standards become lower. And when I look to the "old guard" as an example of what fractals can be, I notice that more and more of them are simply disappearing.

I have felt like this for a very long time now, but I have always had (and still have) a lot of reservations about voicing it. But I am shucking those off for now. I'm going to name a few names, point a few fingers, and give an example (maybe more than one) of a fractal which I think does not deserve the recognition it has. I am sorry if it is yours. I am not out to hurt your feelings; I am simply sick of only being able to say flattering things.

In the four and a half years since I posted my first fractal on deviantART, I have seen many changes within the fractal community. It is probably impossible to thoroughly describe those changes, but I am sure as hell going to try.

Best of the Best?

If I could point to a single thing that sparked this article, it would be this news feature: 40 Fractals: The very best of 2008. I am not looking to rip this news article apart. It was, on the whole, very well done. Plenty of worthy fractals were featured, and there was an okay balance of UF and Apophysis. I was especially glad to see =silwenka, ~LeXXe, and *fractek get the recognition they deserved.

I am also not trying to present an alternative "best fractals" list. Obviously nobody is going to agree 100% on a thing like that and =tragic-saturn is just as entitled to his opinion as myself or anyone else. But I found a few of his choices thought-provoking. For instance:



It's pretty, yes. But there is nothing particularly original about it, and viewing the full-size image via a download will reveal that the render quality could be better. Is this pretty-but-not-jaw-dropping fractal really one of the best of the year? Especially when deviants such as =Velvet--Glove, =Beesknees67, ~Rykk, =magnusti78, =misterxz, and *LaPurr were omitted? I think not.

This issue of great fractals being passed up for mediocre ones is also prevalent when browsing. I found this near the top of the "popular in the last three days" page of the fractal gallery:



At the time of writing this, it has fifty-nine favorites. Fifty-nine favorites and a high spot on the first page for something that looks like it could be generated in a random batch? You have got to be kidding me. This is especially depressing because I found the following gems relegated to page nine, ten, and beyond:



I think it is easy to see that all of these fractals required a lot more time, effort, and talent than the first one. And yet, they do not get the recognition.

Before you accuse me of putting too much importance on faves and popularity, I would like you to imagine something: a fractal gallery where the most popular deviations and the best deviations were one and the same. It's been said a million times that faves do not necessarily reflect quality. But what if they did? It would make browsing a whole lot easier--no more hunting through pages of popular, mediocre fractals to dig up the great, ignored ones. It would also reward those artists who truly deserve it. Maybe this is an unrealistic pipe dream that will never happen. Actually, with the fractal community the way it is now, I know it won't happen. But here's the thing: It wasn't always like this.

I'm trying to avoid going into a "lost halcyon days of yore" mode, but I do remember a time when the "popular" button brought you a page full of amazing fractals, rather than the random, toss-up, grab-bag it is now. I was naive enough to think it would stay that way. Perhaps I am even more naive now for hoping it might come back.

No School Like the Old School

Enough whining about bad art. What happened to all the good stuff? Let's take a look at some people who I consider among the best fractalists on dA.

~segami, *FireLilyFractals, and ~Funygrl haven't posted any new fractals since September. Also in September, `Nestalgica vanished to a completely different account. ~premutos has had no new fractals since August. ~onebadpenny, ~denise-g, and =MelonLogic's last fractals are from July. So is ~fib3rglass's... and the one before that is from October 2007... and before that, August 2005.

What about ~PimpcessTyna? `sya? =zeolyte? None of them have uploaded a fractal since May. ~Taser-Rander hasn't put one up since April, and ~zzzzra's and ~sharkrey's last fractals are from March.

And then you get to the really old ones. *unHnu and ~laethian's last fractals were in March of 2007. I'm not sure when ~o-LJ-o stopped, because her entire gallery is invisible now, but it used to be a treasure trove of amazing fractals. ~nythrind has not put out anything since February 2006, ~greenarmani since January 2005. *deliquescence's last fractal dates back to November 2004. I fear she is never coming back, but I keep her on my watch list just in case.

`creativ82 is an interesting case. He's still fairly active (thank God) and still really well-known... but I bet most fractal newcomers, casually browsing his gallery, would never realize that he was once regarded as the best fractalist on dA by everyone involved with fractals, no exaggeration.

And, to be honest, I just don't think the current big names in the fractal community have the artistic chops that the people above did. Oh, there are some individuals that do; not all of the great artists have gone inactive, and quite a few new people have proven just as good as the old-school folks. But as a whole the current fractalist pool is a weak shadow of the old. IMHO, of course. I also think it is a large problem that the new group may not even know of these fractalists that came before them. How many of the names above were new to you? I won't bore you with another list of dates, but I will throw a few more fractalists at you: ~muetze. `grubin. ~datagram. ~uberlord. =Enronian. ~JFMuni. ~batoruco. =trinity-77. ~Mignon. ~Erosa. All of them were once very important in the fractal community. Do you even recognize their names?

A House Divided

Sometimes I feel that there is this unspoken current of tension in the fractal community between Apophysis users and Ultra Fractal users. Maybe I am imagining this. But I am going to talk about it anyway.

I have very mixed feelings about Apophysis. On one hand, by being free and open-source, it brings fractals to the masses. Yay! But the fractals those masses make? Not so yay.

Please don't twist that statement into something like, "FarDareisMai thinks all Apo users are talentless hacks." That couldn't be further from the truth. There are many, many great Apophysis artists out there (=banana-tree, *Kaeltyk, *Zueuk, `MichaelFaber, `DragonWinter, and `JoelFaber all come immediately to mind, and there are plenty more) and I believe that Apophysis used at its highest level is artistically equal to Ultra Fractal used at its highest level. But Apophysis doesn't seem to get used at its highest level quite as often. There's a lot of bad Apophysis work out there. There's a lot of bad UF work as well, of course, but it is nowhere near the volume of the bad Apophysis stuff.

Also, because Ultra Fractal is simply used by fewer people, it also seems to be more neglected and more misunderstood. Apophysis images are more likely to win contests, get DDs, and score a high number of faves. I am sure this is partly because there are simply more Apophysis images. But I do not think that is all of it. Remember that huge blowup between the fractal community and the dA administration over parameters back in 2007? Remember how the dA administration made it up to the fractal community by raising several fractalists to senior status? Every single one of those fractalists was primarily an Apophysis user. The Apophysis community is a large part of the fractal community, but it is not the only part, and I think people forget that sometimes.

One of the worst UF misunderstandings I have seen comes from the fractal forum here on dA. (Didn't know we had one of those? Here it is!) At first, the deviant in question was simply trying to convince someone to use Apophysis to create fractals rather than GIMP. So far, so good: Apophysis is a dedicated fractal program and GIMP isn't. But then he made this comment: "...there are so many fractal artists out there who use gimp and ultrafractal to churn out hundreds and hundreds of fractals they made in the 60 seconds they had spare at lunch."

As I am sure most of you know, the complexity of Ultra Fractal makes this highly unlikely. I suppose someone could churn out an endless stream of one-layer spirals. But I sure haven't seen it. People do begin with those effortless fractals, but even the most basic of UF users usually start experimenting with layers early on. I don't know where this person got the notion that UF would generate random fractal images like that, but clearly he does not understand the nature of UF. And that leads me to wonder how widespread attitudes like his are.

Community?

Back in 2004, `newklear posted an editorial that bemoaned the decline of the deviantART community, and ended his editorial by asking how it would affect you if deviantART were to disappear, and what your reasons were for staying on the site.

This is an excerpt from my response, given in July, 2005:

"In my first nine months to a year here, I felt like one drop of water in a very, very large sea. Then I discovered the fractal community. Yes, community."

"I browse the new deviations is the fractal gallery, see a piece I've never seen before, and say, "Wow, that looks like it was made by such-and-such. Oh yes, it was! Wow, this is definitely some of his best work so far." In the fractal gallery, you can stand out from the crowd, not be buried in it. You can still be discovered. You don't have to be popular, or even very known, to get your art on the DTFs. (the fractal specific ones) I have randomly commented on fractalists, to find out that the artist has heard of me before; others have done the same to me. Fractalists know eachother, help eachother, teach eachother... there is not as much anonymity."

I don't think that statement is true anymore. And it saddens me, deeply. I feel a bit bad for complaining about it for such length without suggestion a way to fix it, but I honestly don't know how. I am open to suggestions. Comment away.



Author's Note: This was originaly posted in my journal, and I encourage you to read some of the original comments there.