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The Messaging System/Video Hosting

Well, I can give feedback here so I will..!
I know I've been away from Artspots for a while-oh, which I should ask this about.

I've been working on some animations for class. Would there be any way for me to showcase them here? What I do on other sites is put up a preview image and then the link in the description to my youtube? Thoughts on that?
I suppose there's no need for such a feature if there's not many on this site that do that kind of work.
if it's not something considered, then I hope my preview/link combo will be acceptable here :)

And now! I just want to say that after the long wait I saw the new messaging system upon my return! I was surprised, really.
I think the idea of being able to message the artist is really nice. Some people don't like to post their e-mail address, and it's a good way to obtain contact in that sense. I think that is really cool (do all of the messages look like postcards? :) )

What I have to say I don't like-personally- is the listings of new watchers, comments and faves...
That was one thing I liked most on the site. That I could post work and not worry about developing some sort of complex of "omg, how many faves do I have, or watches" etc etc. It made me feel more confident to see a new comment in my widget when I received them, and then very complimented and pleasantly surprised when I saw my name listed on someone's watch list.

I dunno. In my experience, some people like to turn watches and views into some sort of contest, which isn't why we're here. The focus here has always been about the quality in the work we do, which is absolutely fantastic and the main reason why I adore this site so much!

This might plant the seed of temptation in some people and I guess that weirds me out a little bit. I'll just do my best to ignore the watches and etc, but I wanted to get that off my mind! I know ArtSpots is a work in progress in itself so I can only wait and see what further developments take place!

Cool. Hrmmn here's another suggestion to our dear admins.

I think if the admins don't make it so we can upload here, they might think about partnering with other sites like Aniboom. http://www.aniboom.com/ This way there is less of a pull on their site as a vid is dl'd. Plus Aniboom is specifically for animations and thus in a way more QC then just You tube.

I've seen stuff on you tube that I REALLY don't want my kids to see..., and that's even with the filters set on. I mean even without loggin in I can still find stuff that is open to the public that is foul and obnoxious.

Animboom on the other hand is a bit more moderated, is a animation-only youtube like site, and is a community in and of itself that supports variuos forms of animation. :) So its a smaller selectiong of "types" of people. ;)

I wonder if we could have the option of turning off certain notifications?

AmonOmega said: Well, I can give feedback here so I will..!
I know I've been away from Artspots for a while-oh, which I should ask this about.

I've been working on some animations for class. Would there be any way for me to showcase them here? What I do on other sites is put up a preview image and then the link in the description to my youtube? Thoughts on that?
I suppose there's no need for such a feature if there's not many on this site that do that kind of work.
if it's not something considered, then I hope my preview/link combo will be acceptable here :)

This has come up and I think it's time for me to work on something like this. The question here is, what formats should be supported, and up to what size? Should only Flash be supported, or perhaps Quicktime as well? Also, up to what size should be allowed? 10MB? 50MB? 320x200 max resolution if we do QT, or more? How large is the animation you're talking about, AmonOmega? Sorry for all the questions, I just need to get an idea of what people talk about when they want to include animation. :) I should just investigate the way YouTube and Vimeo handle processing on the back end to just turn it all into flash, perhaps.

Drakenhart said:I think if the admins don't make it so we can upload here, they might think about partnering with other sites like Aniboom. http://www.aniboom.com/ This way there is less of a pull on their site as a vid is dl'd. Plus Aniboom is specifically for animations and thus in a way more QC then just You tube.

I've seen stuff on you tube that I REALLY don't want my kids to see..., and that's even with the filters set on. I mean even without loggin in I can still find stuff that is open to the public that is foul and obnoxious.

Animboom on the other hand is a bit more moderated, is a animation-only youtube like site, and is a community in and of itself that supports variuos forms of animation. :) So its a smaller selectiong of "types" of people. ;)

What, YouTube can be foul and obnoxious? Nooo. ;)

We don't mind hosting the animation files here, we have the space and are no where near our maximum bandwidth limit. The trick is just figuring out the proper way to do it. It seems YouTube set the standard for how online video is handled nowadays, so that might be the best avenue to approach. I will admit, I am not brushed up on Flash as much as I should be. Any Flash developers out there willing to lend a hand? :)

And now, for the second part of the topic.

AmonOmega said:
And now! I just want to say that after the long wait I saw the new messaging system upon my return! I was surprised, really.
I think the idea of being able to message the artist is really nice. Some people don't like to post their e-mail address, and it's a good way to obtain contact in that sense. I think that is really cool (do all of the messages look like postcards? :) )

Yes, this is something I should've realized early on, people not wanting to use email. And yes, right now, every private message looks like a postcard. :)

What I have to say I don't like-personally- is the listings of new watchers, comments and faves...
That was one thing I liked most on the site. That I could post work and not worry about developing some sort of complex of "omg, how many faves do I have, or watches" etc etc. It made me feel more confident to see a new comment in my widget when I received them, and then very complimented and pleasantly surprised when I saw my name listed on someone's watch list.

I dunno. In my experience, some people like to turn watches and views into some sort of contest, which isn't why we're here. The focus here has always been about the quality in the work we do, which is absolutely fantastic and the main reason why I adore this site so much!

This might plant the seed of temptation in some people and I guess that weirds me out a little bit. I'll just do my best to ignore the watches and etc, but I wanted to get that off my mind! I know ArtSpots is a work in progress in itself so I can only wait and see what further developments take place!

It was a tough decision, really, showing faves and watches, and one we resisted for quite a long time. As you can still see, there is no way to see who is watching you or faved you outside of the message system. Still unsure if we want to include that.

The honest truth of the matter is this: Faves and watches on websites are designed to be a contest of sorts and get people coming back. It niggles at our conscience and human nature, and makes us want to come back and check to see how many more we have today than yesterday. Or how many more we had this hour compared to last. It would be one thing if other sites also did not have them, but because of all the modern art sites I can think of, we did not have watches/faves, it was a detriment to our traffic and usage. If we had them from the get-go, I think we would be a much more well-visited site than we are now. (Conversely, if we were much more well-visited, we wouldn't have felt so pressured to include them. It's a two-way issue.)

That said, even with watches/faves, we plan on having stuff that will overshadow them in a good way. I can't say much more at the moment. :)

Yeah, I'd like to get comment notifications turned off since I already get them through email. It's a bit annoying to have to click the same message twice two different places.

Growly said: Yeah, I'd like to get comment notifications turned off since I already get them through email. It's a bit annoying to have to click the same message twice two different places.

Good point. :) This is done now. If you have comments emailed, they will not show up in messages. If you have emailing disabled, they will show up in messages. Thanks for bringing this up, still working the kinks out of the system.

Ohh.
I do have to say, I like getting the forum reply notifications on that little messaging bar :P

But hmm..
As for the subject of Animation files...
A lot of my animations aren't really saved out in flash format. Pencil tests and whatnot I save out in quicktime formats, mpegs, those sorts of things.

But I think the Youtube way of doing things makes it efficient, all files are the same, but that might sacrifice some quality-although not everyone knows how to compress movie files!
I ramble a little bit...
I think it might help also to know just how many animators have animations to show on this site before it becomes a serious consideration!

As far as the messaging and whatnot commentary goes, I figured it was a way to get more traffic, which this place certainly deserves. :) But I guess I found it to be a comfortable 'hiding place' without it since I preferred feeling a certain level of anonymity.

Well! I can only look forward to what else you have in store!

I'm still getting notifications via both email and the message system for the forums. I didn't click the subscribe tick box at the bottom while replying, rather I had clicked the little Subscribe to this topic via email button at the top right corner. I hadn't bothered subscribing to any topics till just recently, couldn't have been more than 4 or so days ago.

Concerning the usage of watches and favorites, etc, I personally would very much like to see some feature implemented that allows me to see who favorited what. Right now there's a real needle-in-the-haystack feel to this which I find somewhat frustrating, and it's partially showcased by the "art recommendations" that show up at the bottom of a favorited image. For example, I really like blatant cartoon / animation art and that's the art style I most enjoy drawing, and when I see other people favoriting my work I want to go and see what other work caught this person's interest. The new messaging system allows me to see exactly who did what on my own entries, but I still can't do a targeted interest followup on other images I like since the art recommendations only shows four entries and nothing at all about who favorited them.

I've used this breadcrumb trail method to find some very interesting stuff on Flickr which a simple keyword search wouldn't yield the same thing and I'd love to see a similar level of dexterity used on Artspots.

Apologies for the horrible verbing of "favorite".