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Big Changes Are Afoot

Bonjour once again, everyone!

I know it has been quite awhile since there was last an update. So, there is a lot of catching up to do for us! I will go into more details about new developments after Anthrocon.

This is what is going on currently. The JaxPad/ArtSpots combo has now all been merged into ArtSpots. Anyone with JaxPad accounts can now view them on ArtSpots. This was done to help bolster the community aspect of the site, and help further collaboration between artists.

This is not to say we are abandoning the improvement tier and quality aspect. Far from it! Artists can still work through the ranks and improve. Those who were ArtSpots artists before now have a blue star by their name (this will change to something more elaborate soon) which designates them as "Compagnon," the French term for journeyman. Yes, this also implies there will be a master class at some point. :)

Also, after Anthrocon, I will introduce details of the new ArtSpots scholarship.

I am sure there are many questions, which I am now available to answer.

Oh wow! I had just noticed those stars next to my name!
Sounds exciting!

Are AS and JP still separate in their own right? as far as general colour schemes and URLs go?
ah, I'll wait until after AC to ask more questions, that is if they aren't already answered in your full update

Hmmmms the icon by my name looks like a cat barfing. Is this the lowest tier?? :D j/k ArtSpots scholarship even? Ooooh sounds interesting though. Could do with some renewed enthusiasm again lately.

AmonOmega said: Oh wow! I had just noticed those stars next to my name!
Sounds exciting!

Are AS and JP still separate in their own right? as far as general colour schemes and URLs go?
ah, I'll wait until after AC to ask more questions, that is if they aren't already answered in your full update

I can at least answer this one. They are currently still separate, only because much of the staff is away at AC and aren't able to focus fully on the site. :) We have a larger update planned, but wanted to get a few features set by this weekend. Over the next week or so, JaxPad pages will redirect to ArtSpots.

What is to become of the JaxPad domain, I don't know yet. ArtSpots is what Google is nuts over, and most queries point to AS over JP. There were some ideas tossed about, such as turning it into a companion writing site (which is the strongest contender.)

Sort of how Elfwood has a separate writing section (except this would be its own domain).

Some other offers:
What about a tutorial/help site? (Kinda like FARP.)

Or a place for Juried contests?

Make Jaxpad the community side of Artspots? Let Artspots be the gallery/design side of things?

Jaxpad could be the Blog side of Artspots for a select few writers? For articles on such things as techniques, mediums, and tools?

A 'zine for artspots where anyone can offer or supply stuff for it, but there would be a set of "editors" to be sure of content?

Since so many artists are now contributing to the Recents, could the daily upload limit be reconsidered?

Yeah, I always thought that the separation of ArtSpots and JaxPad was kind of odd when it came to browsing for artwork.

Wouldn't a site with a completely different purpose being hosted on the JaxPad domain confuse people though? I'm not that familiar with the history of the site, but I'm guessing that the purpose of JaxPad was to fill the gap that was left when Yerf went down (which I'm very thankful for because I was actually quite upset when Yerf crashed shortly after I discovered it; I stopped doing visual research on anthropomorphic characters for a year because all the other sites—to be brutally honest—creep me out). If that's the case it might be a good idea to keep the JaxPad name true to it's roots.

I'm not sure what to suggest if you do still want to use the domain for something else besides redirecting to ArtSpots. If it's art related I'd say just add it to ArtSpots instead. For things like tutorials there's already Draw Furry for that (which people should be contributing more to). If it's something else entirely, you should probably get a new domain for it anyway, again due to potential confusion.

If you are going to do a new project, whatever it is, I just hope that it'll be what the fandom is lacking, and maybe a (non-adult?) writing site is one of those things.

At the very least keep the JaxPad domain registered so no one camps it.

Well, that explains some of what I saw on the 'recent' page this morning!

I have to admit, that as someone who has entirely removed themselves from the fandom, but still enjoyed seeing the absolute best of what it's artists produced from time to time, I am a little confused and disappointed by this move.

I understand the reasons, and applaud the focus on education, critique and improving quality (seriously, major kudos for the scholarship! I know it will help someone greatly. Art supplies are expensive things on a student's budget! ;) ) but I can't help but feel like the fandom has lost another showcase of some of it's finest output. Visiting Artspots has always been a treat, because I knew I would be greeted with the high-quality work you have to go hunting for on so many other art sites.

I do hope that these titles (journeyman/master/etc) you are hinting at can be linked to filtered viewing options for the site in the future, so a casual viewer such as myself can sit back and visit every once in a while and enjoy the art, without large amounts of sifting and skipping.

That little bit of snark aside, I do wish you all the absolute best in the future, and I am sure that this move was made with large amounts of consideration to the community as a whole. And really, what do I know? I'm just a cynical disembodied voice from the past. ;D

Best of luck, and keep up the excellent work.

I agree; filtering options based on artist level would be nice.

Filtering already comes with watching artists and being able to view only their recent uploads, which is cool for me. But I guess there is something to be desired if you're browsing on a lark in search of something new.

It's a bit of a double edge though, I do like quality work, but I like equality. Anyone who's willing to learn I try to take a look at!
But! should the integrate that further filtering through titles, then it'll be optional. Artspots is nothing if not accommodating to the people :)

Speaking of the Jaxpad domain, my thoughts basically go with... ArtSpots makes sense because there is art on there... "jaxpad" would make a good writing place, should there be enough demand for it, because the name always made me think of a writing pad.

I have my hangups with a brother site devoted to writing though. I don't read so much and I'm very picky with what I read! I'm not sure...

We'll just have to wait I guess.

I like how they do it at CG Society where they have a gallery devoted solely to choice artwork

As well as a main gallery of general 2D Art.

And then a basic WIP/Critique forum where all kinds of art can be posted.

Notice, that in maintaining a "work in progress" type gallery, they eliminate a lot of unfinished, unprofessional work from the main 2D gallery, as people have a place to post things that they would like people to see and get feedback on, but that are not polished. Also in having this tier type of system, it encourages beginners to really devote time and effort to pieces rather than churning out a ton of low-quality doodles and sketches and quick background-lacking character pinups/poses that overwhelm the casual viewer in a main gallery. The WIP forum allows for something like our own "Sketchbooks" as well. For instance, this person posts their daily experiments and sketches, but also shows updates on pieces that they intend to finish.

How about a little blue star on the corner of the thumbnails of 'Compagnon' artists in the recent uploads? I like that we can now see all the art there now, but it'd be nice to be able to still easily tell who has gone through the review gauntlet successfully. That might help encourage more people to keep striving for that Compagnon title, as well!

I've still got to read the rest of the topic and then I may have more to say. XD

Dani said:
I have to admit, that as someone who has entirely removed themselves from the fandom, but still enjoyed seeing the absolute best of what it's artists produced from time to time, I am a little confused and disappointed by this move.

I understand the reasons, and applaud the focus on education, critique and improving quality (seriously, major kudos for the scholarship! I know it will help someone greatly. Art supplies are expensive things on a student's budget! ;) ) but I can't help but feel like the fandom has lost another showcase of some of it's finest output. Visiting Artspots has always been a treat, because I knew I would be greeted with the high-quality work you have to go hunting for on so many other art sites.

I do hope that these titles (journeyman/master/etc) you are hinting at can be linked to filtered viewing options for the site in the future, so a casual viewer such as myself can sit back and visit every once in a while and enjoy the art, without large amounts of sifting and skipping.

As AmonOmega already mentioned, you can utilize the favorite artists feature to look through a custom-tailored selection of artwork by your preferred artists. However, I believe since it would be fairly easy to employ a filter specifically for Compagnon artists, much like the filters now for Anthro, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Realistic and Cartoon artwork. It's very possible that the only reason this hasn't been implemented yet is because Seurat and others were away at the convention for the weekend and just wanted to get the initial system in place beforehand. =)

Yeah, it's important to get everyone's art noticed. It's worth noting that there are Compagnon-quality images done by non-Compagnon artists for whatever reason (e.g. they suddenly had a stroke of genius and are getting better, they are Compagnon-quality artists and are in the middle of the long approval process, or just feel too inadequate to apply).

Vizon mentioned something like this, and what I think would be ideal is to have some kind of moderated "cream of the crop" gallery for those visitors that only have the desire or time to see the best work on the site. It should be community moderated to keep the load off of the admin's shoulders. This way everyone has a chance to get noticed. CGTalk only does a few images a month, so having it sorted by quality and giving people the option to view x number of images in the past x number of days would be good, so they can spend as little or as much time looking at art as they want.

However, ratings on content has known to cause—how should I put it—self esteem issues within a community, so having the voting and score for each image be completely anonymous would be a wise move. Also, not making a search filter based on score available would be prudent so people can't reverse engineer their score based on the results. A search option for choice artwork (top 15% or whatever you want the secret criteria to be) might be a good idea. For visitors using the sort-by-awesomeness search filter, it should appear somewhat arbitrary by hiding the method by which the search results are generated, and if you want to take it a little bit further randomizing the results somewhat. Because the methods are a mystery, they may feel that still helpful but they might still be missing some good artwork, which will encourage them to look around some more if they are still interested. And if an artist sees their image on the search results they'll feel like they are getting better, even though it just might have been a slow week and it got pushed to the top, or was also the result of the injected randomness :). So, using a little bit of psychology I think you can cater to picky patrons without alienating or discouraging artists at the same time.

Of course with any scoring system there's the risk of abuse. Having only trusted community members vote on the artwork or including some code that will detect bogeys in the statistics (someone giving it a 5 when everyone else gave it a 2 or 1) and then not counting it as part of the score should fix that problem. But I know that there's all kinds of trusting people who never make so much of a peep on this site, so we might just want to keep it open and let the randomness and bogey detection take care of the rest.

I do believe that the internet in general doesn't have a lack of content but instead a lack of quality control, and having a system in place where the best work, which may or may not be created by the upper crust of the community, gets noticed by lots of people is a good way to encourage people to create better work and find better work.

What if there was an option to nominate a piece for the top picks gallery - then you could sort by most popular (which as Metsy's stated would be best if it were a silent vote), and then the folks who used to judge whether an artist was talented enough to qualify for Artspots would now be in charge of judging whether a nominated piece is good enough to qualify for the top picks gallery (this would then create a gallery that was not necessarily the most popular, but the highest quality by anonymous judges). I think this would be good since those same judges are "out of a job" now so to speak, if there is no longer an application process.

Also if a piece was really good, but lacked mainstream attention, it could still get into the gallery.

This is all of course not to create a feeling of elitism so much as to create a goal for aspiring artists to work towards, and to present to visitors the kind of talent we are proud to harbor.

It's all well and good to talk about setting filters and preference, and maybe it really isn't all that hard to do, it's a big internet out there that's competing for attention. If Artspots wants to attract more people, especially those who might be new to anthropomorphics, it would seem to me the it should present its best stuff with as little fuss and bother on the part of the viewer as possible. Just like the current default setting maxes out at PG, rather than PG-13, put in a filter for the various levels, like Dani suggested, and have the default value at Compagnon, or even Master, once that's set up. Maybe set it up with tabs like you have wuth Anthro, Scifi, Fantasy, etc, so it's easy enough to click on "All" and view the rest. It would certainly be less demanding on that Artspots staff than having to come up with a daily set of "Moderators' Choices".
Yerf, for all it's problems, provided a valuable service in presenting anthro art with a minimum standard of content and quality, and despite the criticism, was still one of the most popular, if not the most popular, furry resource in it's heyday. Maybe I'm being wildly optimistic, but something like that is still needed.

I should also point out that gaming companies would browse Yerf in the search for artists, so a site that gives them easy access to quality art could be a valuable resource, and not just to the fannish community.

Interesting filtering system ideas folks. I do like the idea that any vote that might be had should be anonymous.

I just had an idea though.
What if there was another tab on the front page of ArtSpots, say a "Spotlight Gallery"
They already have their random presented images generate on the main page, but maybe that could be where those secretly voted images end up for the folks to browse... and what if also it showcased only the works people selected in their portfolio row? I know those show up while browsing through artists, but it might be a good idea to feature those in that tab, and then after that is the normal filtered resets, etc...

At least if that showcase tab were limited to portfolio contents, artists are free to change which images of their own are featured as they grow and evolve. I know I'm restocking mine. :) Then it becomes more of a personal "No no, I want this piece to communicate who I am as an artist" than the potential worry about what other people think. For me, seeing my work randomly among other work I admire is my own way of seeing how I stack up and compare, and provides me that motivation to improve.

Just a thought.

Good idea, AmonOmega! Choosing your own best work is a great idea...unless someone dumps all their stuff into the portfolio. I guess you'd have to limit the number of pieces in portfolio to prevent that and make people think more carefully about what they choose to put in there.

Richard Bartrop said: It would certainly be less demanding on that Artspots staff than having to come up with a daily set of "Moderators' Choices".

Just wanted to point out, Richard, that the idea is definitely NOT a daily set of Moderator's choices. I too think that would be completely outrageous. Anything daily is enormously difficult to keep up with!

The idea I mentioned would have no time constraints. It would be updated whenever the mods have the time to devote to it, as it is a gallery and not a filter.

It's good to see this site is still under active development!

I agree it would be nice to keep the compagnon art the most prominently visible. Maybe two or three different sections on the front page would work? Random art by the compagnons at the top, perhaps a featured work (I remember there once was a "Salon" mentioned for this purpose -- but it could also be the latest piece by one of the Masters, or something picked by the Metsys Algorithm). And then another section with random art from the apprentices.