DeviantArt (historically stylized as deviantART) is an American online art community that features artwork, videography and photography, launched on August 7, 2000 by

Angelo Sotira Angelo Sotira (born February 14, 1981) is an American entrepreneur who co-founded the online community DeviantArt on August 7, 2000, with Matthew Stephens and Scott Jarkoff. Career Angelo co-founded DeviantArt at nineteen, but it was not his f ...

, Scott Jarkoff, and Matthew Stephens among others. DeviantArt, Inc. is headquartered in the Hollywood area of

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

. DeviantArt had about 36 million visitors annually by 2008. In 2010, DeviantArt users were submitting about 1.4 million favorites and about 1.5 million comments daily. In 2011, it was the thirteenth largest

social network A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...

with about 3.8 million weekly visits. Several years later, in 2017, the site had more than 25 million members and more than 250 million submissions. On February 23, 2017, the company announced it was being acquired by

Wix.com Wix.com Ltd. ( he, וויקס.קום) is an Israeli software company, publicly listed in the US, that provides cloud-based web development services. It allows users to create HTML5 websites and mobile sites through the use of online drag and ...

in a $36 million deal.

History

Creation

DeviantArt started as a site connected with people who took computer applications and modified them to their own tastes, or who posted the applications from the original designs. As the site grew, members in general became known as artists and submissions as arts. DeviantArt was originally launched on August 7, 2000, by Scott Jarkoff, Matt Stephens,

and others, as part of a larger network of music-related websites called the Dmusic Network. The site flourished largely because of its unique offering and the contributions of its core member base and a team of volunteers after its launch, but was officially incorporated in 2001 about eight months after launch. DeviantArt was loosely inspired by projects like

Winamp Winamp is a media player for Microsoft Windows originally developed by Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev by their company Nullsoft, which they later sold to AOL in 1999 for $80 million. It was then acquired by Radionomy in 2014. Sinc ...

facelift, customize.org, deskmod.com, screenphuck.com, and skinz.org, all application skin-based websites. Sotira entrusted all public aspects of the project to Scott Jarkoff as an engineer and visionary to launch the early program. All three co-founders shared backgrounds in the application skinning community, but it was Matt Stephens whose major contribution to DeviantArt was the suggestion to take the concept further than

skinning Skinning is the act of skin removal. The process is done by humans to animals, mainly as a means to prepare the meat beneath for cooking and consumption, or to harvest the skin for making fur clothing or tanning it to make leather. The skin ...

and more toward an art community. Many of the individuals involved with the initial development and promotion of DeviantArt still hold positions with the project. Angelo Sotira currently serves as the

chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

of DeviantArt, Inc. On November 14, 2006, DeviantArt introduced the option to submit their works under Creative Commons licenses giving the artists the right to choose how their works can be used. A Creative Commons license is one of several public copyright licenses that allow the distribution of copyrighted works. On September 30, 2007, a film category was added to DeviantArt, allowing artists to upload videos. An artist and other viewers can add annotations to sections of the film, giving comments or critiques to the artist about a particular moment in the film. In 2007, DeviantArt received $3.5 million in

Series A A series A round (also known as series A financing or series A investment) is the name typically given to a company's first significant round of venture capital financing. The name refers to the class of preferred stock sold to investors in exc ...

(first round) funding from undisclosed investors, and in 2013, it received $10 million in

Series B A venture round is a type of funding round used for venture capital financing, by which startup companies obtain investment, generally from venture capitalists and other institutional investors. The availability of venture funding is among the ...

funding.

Mobile version

On December 4, 2014, the site unveiled a new logo and announced the release of an official

mobile app A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a phone, tablet, or watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop applications which are designed to run on d ...

on both

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...

and Android, released on December 10, 2014. On February 23, 2017, DeviantArt was acquired by Wix.com, Inc. for $36 million. The site plans to integrate DeviantArt and Wix functionality, including the ability to utilize DeviantArt resources on websites built with Wix, and integrating some of Wix's design tools into the site. As of March 1, 2017,

Syria Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...

was banned from accessing DeviantArt's services entirely, citing US and Israeli sanctions and aftermath on February 19, 2018. After Syrian user Mythiril used a VPN to access the site and disclosed the geoblocking in a journal, titled "The hypocrisy of deviantArt", DeviantArt ended the geoblocking except for commercial features. In autumn of 2018, spambots began hacking into an indeterminately large number of long-inactive accounts and placing spam Weblinks in their victims' About sections (formerly known as DeviantIDs), where users of the site display their public profile information. An investigation into this matter began in January 2019. This situation ended some time in late 2021.

Copyright and licensing issues

There is no review for potential copyright and

Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...

licensing violations when a work is submitted to DeviantArt, so potential violations can remain unnoticed until reported to administrators using the mechanism available for such issues. Some members of the community have been the victims of copyright infringement from vendors using artwork illegally on products and prints, as reported in 2007. The reporting system in which to counteract copyright infringement directly on the site has been subject to a plethora of criticism from members of the site, given that it may take weeks, or even a month before a filed complaint for copyright infringement is answered.

Contests for companies and academia

Due to the nature of DeviantArt as an art community with a worldwide reach, companies use DeviantArt to promote themselves and create more advertising through contests. ''CoolClimate'' is a research network connected with the University of California, and they held a contest in 2012 to address the impact of climate change. Worldwide submissions were received, and the winner was featured in ''

The Huffington Post ''HuffPost'' (formerly ''The Huffington Post'' until 2017 and sometimes abbreviated ''HuffPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and ...

''. Various car companies have held contests.

Dodge Dodge is an American brand of automobiles and a division of Stellantis, based in Auburn Hills, Michigan. Dodge vehicles have historically included performance cars, and for much of its existence Dodge was Chrysler's mid-priced brand above P ...

ran a contest in 2012 for art of the

Dodge Dart Dodge Dart is a line of automobiles marketed by Dodge from the 1959 to 1976 model years in North America, with production extended to later years in various other markets. The Dart name originally appeared on a 1956 Chrysler show car featuring ...

and over 4,000 submissions were received. Winners received cash and item prizes, and were featured in a gallery at Dodge-Chrysler headquarters.

Lexus is the luxury vehicle division of the Japanese automaker Toyota. The Lexus brand is marketed in more than 90 countries and territories worldwide and is Japan's largest-selling make of premium cars. It has ranked among the 10 largest Japanese ...

partnered with DeviantArt in 2013 to run a contest for cash and other prizes based on their

Lexus IS The is a compact executive car sold by Lexus, a luxury division of Toyota since 1999. The IS was originally sold under the nameplate in Japan from 1998 (the word ''Altezza'' is Italian for 'height' or 'highness'). The IS was introduced as an e ...

design; the winner's design became a modified Lexus IS and was showcased at the

SEMA Sama ( tr, Sema, Persian, Urdu and ar, سَمَاع - ''samā‘un'') is a Sufi ceremony performed as part of the meditation and prayer practice dhikr. Sama means "listening", while dhikr means "remembrance".During, J., and R. Sellheim. "Sam ...

2013 show in Los Angeles, California. DeviantArt also hosts contests for upcoming movies, such as '' Riddick''. Fan art for ''Riddick'' was submitted, and director

David Twohy David Neil Twohy ( ; born October 18, 1955) is an American film director and screenwriter. Early life Twohy was born in Los Angeles County, California. He attended college at California State University, Long Beach, graduating with a degree in ...

chose the winners, who would receive cash prizes and some other DeviantArt-related prizes, as well as having their artwork made into official fan-art posters for events. A similar contest was held for ''Dark Shadows'' where winners received cash and other prizes. Video games also conduct contests with DeviantArt, such as the 2013 ''

Tomb Raider ''Tomb Raider'', also known as ''Lara Croft: Tomb Raider'' from 2001 to 2008, is a media franchise that originated with an action-adventure video game series created by British gaming company Core Design. Formerly owned by Eidos Interactive, ...

'' contest. The winner had their art made into an official print sold internationally at the Tomb Raider store and received cash and other prizes. Other winners also received cash and DeviantArt-related prizes.

Website

The site has over 358 million images which have been uploaded by its over 35 million registered members. By July 2011, DeviantArt was the largest online art community. Members of DeviantArt may leave comments and critiques on individual deviation pages, allowing the site to be called "a reepeer evaluation application".Mccreight, Brian M..
A Comparison of Peer Evaluation: The Evaluation App versus DeviantArt
. Purdue University. Retrieved September 28, 2012. p.33 Along with textual critique, DeviantArt now offers the option to leave a small picture as a comment.Wang, Jennifer (2-24-2011). "THE DEVIANT EXPERIENCE". Entrepreneur 39 (2): 22–28. . Retrieved November 24, 2012. p.27 This can be achieved using an option of DeviantArt Muro, which is a browser-based drawing tool that DeviantArt has developed and hosts. However, only members of DeviantArt can save their work as deviations. Another feature of Muro is what is called "Redraw"; it records the user as they draw their image, and then the user can post the entire process as a film deviation. Some artists in late 2013 began experimenting with the use of breakfast cereal as the subject of their pieces, although this trend has only started spreading. Individual deviations are displayed on their own pages, with a list of statistical information about the image, as well as a place for comments by the artist and other members, and the option to share through other social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.). Prior to Version 9, Deviations were required to be organized into categories when a member uploaded an image and this allowed DeviantArt's search engine to find images concerning similar topics. Individual members can organize their own deviations into folders on their personal pages. The member pages (profiles) show a member's personally uploaded deviations and journal postings. Journals are like personal blogs for the member pages, and the choice of topic is up to each member; some use it to talk about their personal or art-related lives, others use it to spread awareness or marshal support for a cause.Perkel, Daniel
"Making Art, Creating Infrastructure: DeviantArt and the Production of the Web"
. Berkeley CA. Retrieved September 28, 2012. p.34 Also displayed are a member's favorites, a collection of other users' images from DeviantArt that a member saves to its own folder. Another thing found on the profile page is a member's watchers; a member adds another member to their watch list in order to be notified when that member uploads something. The watcher notifications are gathered in a member's Message Center with other notices, like when other users comment on that member's deviations, or when the member's image has been put in someone's favorites. Members can build groups that any registered member of the site can join. These groups are usually based on an artist's chosen medium and content. Some examples of these are Literature (poetry, prose, etc.), Drawing (traditional, digital, or mixed-media), Photography (macro, nature, fashion, stills), and many others. Within these groups are where they do collaborations and have their art featured and introduced to artists of the same kind. DeviantArt does not allow

pornographic Pornography (often shortened to porn or porno) is the portrayal of Human sexual activity, sexual subject matter for the exclusive purpose of sexual arousal. Primarily intended for adults,

, sexually explicit and/or obscene material to be submitted; however, "tasteful" nudity is allowed, even as photographs. To view mature artwork and content, members must be at least 18 years of age and to enable the content, they have to make an account. In order to communicate on a more private level, Notes can be sent between individual members, like an email within the site. The other opportunities for communication between members are DeviantArt's forums, for more structured, long-term discussions, and chat rooms, for group instant messaging.

Versions

DeviantArt has been revising the website in "versions", with each version releasing multiple new features. Coincidentally, the third, fourth and fifth versions of the site were all released on August 7, the "birthday" of the website's founding.

Eclipse (Version 9)

In early November 2018, DeviantArt released a promo site showcasing a new update, titled 'Eclipse'. The site showed that the update would include a

minimalist In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post–World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Don ...

design strategy, a dark mode option, modified CSS editing, improved filtering through a 'Love Meter,' profile headers, and other cosmetic changes and improvements. The update would also include no third-party advertisements and improved features for the site's Core users. On November 14, 2018, a beta version of the Eclipse site was made available for Core Members who marked their accounts for beta testing. As of November 21, 2018, the site reported that over 4,000 users tried Eclipse and that the site received almost 1,700 individual feedback reports; these included bug reports, feature requests, and general commentary. On March 6, 2019, DeviantArt officially released Eclipse to all users, with a toggle to switch back to the old site. On May 20, 2020, the previous User Interface was discontinued from access, leaving only Eclipse available.

Live events

deviantART Summit

On June 17 and 18, 2005, DeviantArt held their first convention, the deviantART Summit, at the

Palladium Palladium is a chemical element with the symbol Pd and atomic number 46. It is a rare and lustrous silvery-white metal discovered in 1803 by the English chemist William Hyde Wollaston. He named it after the asteroid Pallas, which was itself na ...

in the Hollywood area of

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. The

summit A summit is a point on a surface that is higher in elevation than all points immediately adjacent to it. The topography, topographic terms acme, apex, peak (mountain peak), and zenith are synonymous. The term (mountain top) is generally used ...

consisted of several exhibitions by numerous artists, including

artscene groups The computer art scene, or simply artscene, is the community interested and active in the creation of computer-based artwork. Early computer art The history of computer art predates the computer art scene for several decades, with the first expe ...

old and new at about 200 different booths. Giant projection screens displayed artwork as it was being submitted live to DeviantArt, which was receiving 50,000 new images daily at the time.

deviantART World Tour

Starting May 13, 2009, DeviantArt embarked on a world tour, visiting cities around the world, including

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...

Istanbul Istanbul ( , ; tr, İstanbul ), formerly known as Constantinople ( grc-gre, Κωνσταντινούπολις; la, Constantinopolis), is the List of largest cities and towns in Turkey, largest city in Turkey, serving as the country's economic, ...

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...

and

. During the world tour, the new "Portfolio" feature of DeviantArt was previewed to attendees.

"Birthday Bashes" and deviantMEET

Occasionally, DeviantArt hosts a meeting for members to come together in real life and interact, exchange, and have fun. There have been meetings for the birthday of DeviantArt, called "Birthday Bashes", as well as simple general get-togethers around the world. In 2010, European DeviantArt members held a deviantMEET to celebrate DeviantArt's birthday in August. There was also a celebration that year in the House of Blues in Hollywood, California.

References

External links

* {{Authority control Online mass media companies of the United States Art websites Digital art Image-sharing websites Internet properties established in 2000 Virtual art museums and galleries 2017 mergers and acquisitions American companies established in 2000 Shorty Award winners