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At 9/8/09 02:28 PM, deckheadtottie wrote: I feel the main Art Portal page should be set out more like the Flash and Audio Portals. Have a "best of all time", "Best of the week", "Best of the category" etc. Then have a link offering "all images". Having "all images" as the default is a bit of a turn off for me, and I feel is bumping decent content away from sight.

I agree with this 100%.

Also I think maybe a few more twinks with the scouting system, too.

Though I have no art, I have recommended some artists and have favorite art.

At 9/7/09 11:57 PM, ornery wrote: This thread is to help the art mods and staff to make the art portal a better place.

Someone is going to revive the open discussion thread for the BBS. That steaming pile of shit didn't do anything to the BBS, so I have a lot of doubts that this will do any good either.

We are always curious what the general public thinks about the new art portal. So in this thread we want to hear the following feedback from all of you. Feel free to answer any or all of these questions or add anything that you feel hasn't been addressed.

Personally, I think it's kind of early to make this thread, but whatever; let it fly!

Do you visit the art portal? If not then why?

Not really, seeing that you're looking at just 1 frame. Also, there's been a lot of crap art recently.

Also, it's very hard to "properly review" an art submission. The only things reviewable aspects I can think of is: color, texture, detail, shininess and elements (elements meaning criticizing a certain part of the piece of art). Any other ideas will be greatly helpful.

What could we add or subtract that would make you start going there? If you have any ideas of what might attract more people please speak up. If there is something that is making the art portal undesirable that can be changed let us know, or if you really like its format feel free to say so, positive feedback is always welcome.

I will suggest something that will never happen: GET RID OF THE SCOUTING SYSTEM!

Also, allow us to put whatever the hell we want on our user pages even if it violates the guidelines, seeing that it's out of the art portal anyway. If this was possible, then it COULD REALLY help out with my Newgrounds Guide or help potential great artists in some random way. Currently, it's not possible (according to ReNaeNae) and it's a bitch putting pictures on news posts or elsewhere that have strict upload & file size limits.

Along with that, get rid or increase the limit of submitting art if you're unscouted or don't want to make it public.

What do you think about the scouting system? There is one thing that we hear a lot of, that the scouting system is flawed, so what do you think should be done to make it better?

If someone carelessly scouts other users, don't unscout the undeserving scouted users, but rather heavily ban the careless scouter. Only unscout the undeserving scouters if they break a rule, because frankly, it is very possible that a careless scouter scouted a deserving person that deserved to be scouted, and such.

Plus like the recent events, it is possible to prune or unscout a person using a mod's tools, so if an art mod gets hacked, then what the hacker must do is unscout I-Bot and the entire portal has fucked itself over.

Or do you feel that the scouting system is great and can attest to it working by weeding out all the junk that would be clogging up the art portal?

No. It's very easy to put "good fake" art and then spam the portal with shit. Even with the "Report Abuse" link. It's similar to the spam submissions on the portal; even if you report it, it will take some time to get the crap deleted and the time between the report and deletion can annoy users.

Also, unscouted users should also get the option to see unscouted users/most recommended users, so that they can weed out any stolen or abusive art (especially those that are recommended) and/or recommend unscouted users even more (if they can). I don't see how this feature can be abused.

For this one it would help us to know if you have ever been scouted before, or even know how scouting works.

I have never been scouted before, but with no effort, I have seen lots of people moaning about being unscouted or discouraged from submitting art seeing something like this: "it's no use to submit stuff if nobody is ever going to see it" or something like that.

and yes we know about the recent hiccup in the system so lets leave that out.

...

Are there any rules that you would like to see added, or changed? Let us know if there are certain rules that really bug you, hopefully we can provide a good reason why that rule is there. And if we cant then maybe that rule will be changed.

I find the rules VERY, VERY vague like the review guidelines & the BBS rules. I personally think there should be better, specific and clearer rules than the ones outlined in the FAQ. SPECIFIC is the key word.

What do you think about the job the mods are doing? Good, Bad? Let us know what we can change to improve, or if we are doing a great job just as we are. Any feedback is welcome. And don't worry we wont take it personal and delete all your stuff if you call us out on something.

Unlike the BBS & Review moderators, I personally find the art moderators doing a fantastic job. Unlike the BBS, there isn't that much shit lying around seeing that it gets taken care of quickly. All quality work in the portal whereas the BBS has a lot of shit posts instead of quality posts.

For all of these please provide examples whenever you can or feel it necessary, they will definitely help prove your point. Also don't be afraid to say something even if its already been said, the more people who point out something the better.

This is what Jonas should have said in the BBS open discussion post.

Now lets hear your feedback. But keep in mind that blatantly retarded posts will be removed.

This is a blatantly retarded post...

you could have awards for good art?
like flash entries

Will there be a time in the future were you can blam art?

Honestly, you have been here long enough. I respect the long post and purpose, but its called the Art Forum.

At 9/8/09 02:50 PM, rome-lherison wrote: Honestly, you have been here long enough. I respect the long post and purpose, but its called the Art Forum.

Hardly anyone goes to the Art forum anyway (compared to General), although you do have a good point. STILL, we are talking about Newgrounds, so I personally think it fits here. Even questions that belong in the Wi/Ht also are welcome here, seeing I have done it a lot in the past awhile ago without the thread getting locked, deleted or banned.

Also here's a piece of conversation I had with another user and an art mod regarding the scouting system:

http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1082 368/2

Most of you art mods probably have seen it, but I think it's still good to point it out here.

I'm not a big fan of the scouting system. I've seen a lot of great art submitted for the portal that hasn't been scouted yet. I think part of the problem is that so much art gets submitted, that great artwork goes unnoticed. Also, people may only scout two users per day, which makes it even harder for someone to get scouted.

Think I'll join the party.

To those suggesting awards, I'll briefly point out I-Bot's job from the FAQ:

I-Bot - Helps users filter and sort Art Portal submissions, and picks each day's winning works of art.

So although it hasn't been implemented yet, the admins have some intention to get that done.

At 9/8/09 02:42 PM, NGReviewEater wrote: It's very hard to "properly review" an art submission. The only things reviewable aspects I can think of is: color, texture, detail, shininess and elements (elements meaning criticizing a certain part of the piece of art). Any other ideas will be greatly helpful.

There's summat you can learn from the Art101 page on critiquing.
Pointing out what stands out for you is good, if you're not willing to give technical reviews.

I will suggest something that will never happen: GET RID OF THE SCOUTING SYSTEM!

I think I read somewhere that the scouting system was intended to be a different approach to controlling what goes in and out of the portal, compared to the Flash and Audio portals.
Me defending the tree system is dumb for this thread, but I reckon adjustments to the current method/ideas for a better way might help in this thread.

Also, allow us to put whatever the hell we want on our user pages even if it violates the guidelines, seeing that it's out of the art portal anyway. If this was possible, then it COULD REALLY help out with my Newgrounds Guide or help potential great artists in some random way. Currently, it's not possible (according to ReNaeNae) and it's a bitch putting pictures on news posts or elsewhere that have strict upload & file size limits.
Along with that, get rid or increase the limit of submitting art if you're unscouted or don't want to make it public.

I don't really think the art portal should be used as a private use image library :/

If someone carelessly scouts other users, don't unscout the undeserving scouted users, but rather heavily ban the careless scouter. Only unscout the undeserving scouters if they break a rule, because frankly, it is very possible that a careless scouter scouted a deserving person that deserved to be scouted, and such.

We've got castration tool, which stops people from scouting, but not pruning trees.
And, imo, I think good artists get rescouted. I might be wrong, that's my opinion.

Plus like the recent events, it is possible to prune or unscout a person using a mod's tools, so if an art mod gets hacked, then what the hacker must do is unscout I-Bot and the entire portal has fucked itself over.

Mm.

No. It's very easy to put "good fake" art and then spam the portal with shit. Even with the "Report Abuse" link. It's similar to the spam submissions on the portal; even if you report it, it will take some time to get the crap deleted and the time between the report and deletion can annoy users.

Lol, I know what you mean.

Also, unscouted users should also get the option to see unscouted users/most recommended users, so that they can weed out any stolen or abusive art (especially those that are recommended) and/or recommend unscouted users even more (if they can). I don't see how this feature can be abused.

Ok.

I have never been scouted before, but with no effort, I have seen lots of people moaning about being unscouted or discouraged from submitting art seeing something like this: "it's no use to submit stuff if nobody is ever going to see it" or something like that.

Other people don't want to see it.
(incredibly obnoxious response, but that's the point of the system)

Are there any rules that you would like to see added, or changed? Let us know if there are certain rules that really bug you, hopefully we can provide a good reason why that rule is there. And if we cant then maybe that rule will be changed.

I find the rules VERY, VERY vague like the review guidelines & the BBS rules. I personally think there should be better, specific and clearer rules than the ones outlined in the FAQ. SPECIFIC is the key word.

Yup. We're working on that, it'd be good to know where the rules are confusing or vague, and requires clarification from you peeps.

Good post, btw.

At 9/8/09 02:49 PM, Lunaful wrote: Will there be a time in the future were you can blam art?

I've suggested it, and I was correctly told that the art portal doesn't receive as many votes as the flash portal, and it would be incredibly easy to abuse (chain blammers killing off good art).
So I'd say probably not.

People say it's hard to get noticed in the unscouted section, but before the event the unscouted page didn't rapidly refresh (since it was one window per user), and the best way to get noticed is to submit new art to bump yourself to the front of the queue.

Why is my art not scouted yet? I'm among the best, hell, if not THE best, artist on Newgrounds. So what gives asshole?

art portal is awesome but the hentai boob crap needs to go

The art portal's a really good idea but the reviews ugh... Most reviews for popular art is "TAT GOOD ARTS I ADD TO FAVORITES!!!" This is also the same in the flash forum and audio forum but since the art portal does not have nearly enough people and already has a new system we should also have a new review system, instead of having just reviews we should allow two people to choose between two things "critique" and "comment".

With critique, your only allowed to critique the art piece, it gives it a different label therefore the artist doesn't need to sift through all the crap to get to a good review. Critic's will be deleted if they are deemed not helpful. A person that always is deemed helpful will have the ability to recommend for the art portal, not giving the recommend to everyone and just good critic's allows less crap to churn through to be scouted on the unscouted page. To have the ability to recomend for the portal you must have 70% and over good critique's.

Comments on the other hand are just like regular reviews.

At 9/7/09 11:57 PM, ornery wrote: This thread is to help the art mods and staff to make the art portal a better place.

We are always curious what the general public thinks about the new art portal. So in this thread we want to hear the following feedback from all of you. Feel free to answer any or all of these questions or add anything that you feel hasn't been addressed.

Do you visit the art portal? If not then why? What could we add or subtract that would make you start going there?

I think the way it's formatted, as in you can search for whatever you want. I visit it fairly regularly, but there simply isn't a way to know if you want to open a tab for the image just from that little piece of it.

What do you think about the scouting system? There is one thing that we hear a lot of, that the scouting system is flawed, so what do you think should be done to make it better?

The scouting system should stop existing because if bad art comes up and you haven't submitted any art, you can't turn it down. And if you could, there would be even more trolling without the problem of having to submit anything to be able to scout. Also, it's really hard to find someone to scout because you go to the Art Portal to find art, not userpages.

Are there any rules that you would like to see added, or changed? Let us know if there are certain rules that really bug you, hopefully we can provide a good reason why that rule is there. And if we cant then maybe that rule will be changed.

Nope.

What do you think about the job the mods are doing? Good, Bad? Let us know what we can change to improve, or if we are doing a great job just as we are.

Hmm. I don't know if i can say anything, because although there is lots of crappy and rule-breaking art that you can find easily, the problem of there being too many of those make it harder to delete them all.

For all of these please provide examples whenever you can or feel it necessary, they will definitely help prove your point. Also don't be afraid to say something even if its already been said, the more people who point out something the better.

Hmmm. Well, the fact that even with an extremely low score, of even less than 0.60 with about 50 votes, an image doesn't get deleted bothers me.

Now lets hear your feedback. But keep in mind that blatantly retarded posts will be removed.

Cock

I don't really go to the Art Portal that frequently - about as frequently as I used to visit the Art Forum, honestly (once or twice a week? maybe?). Perhaps some Art Contests actually held in the Portal, or a Themed Day (like the Flash Portal's Clock Day, Madness Day, etc), would bring more attention to that portion of the site.

If I wander into someone's profile and see an Art thumb that looks interesting, either under their own art or 'Favorite Art' section, I'll usually check it out. That part of the art-submission system I love.

Also - whats the final verdict on submitting photoshops to the Portal? No go?

Apparently unscouted users are only allowed to submit a certain number of art because I tried undeleteing art and some error came up talking about unscouted limit exceeded.

what

I still think Art Forum > Art Portal.

I frequent it more, and the criticism there is more than just "lol this is awesome" and "this fucking sucks man ZERO".

My art is decent and I didn't break rules. Yet I keep getting unscouted. Why is this?

The scouting system is fine for me except for how if a person is un-scouted, then all their scouts are un-scouted too, and everyone else down the chain. That is really messed up. Why be tied to the person that scouted you? It makes no sense. I say, once scouted then that person should be independent of who scouted them. Have a link to the person, fine, but no more connection then that.

Other then that, I second the idea that un-scouted people should be able to view un-scouted work and recommend them. Like high scoring flash, have a list of top recommended art for people to scout.

At 9/8/09 07:02 PM, EJR wrote:

At 9/8/09 07:00 PM, Twilight wrote: I still think Art Forum > Art Portal.

I frequent it more, and the criticism there is more than just "lol this is awesome" and "this fucking sucks man ZERO".

Just flag those shitty reviews. I flag a bunch of reviews each day in the art portal. Set a good example and write a long and constructive review like I do every once in a while.

I rather have my reviews on a forum where they can stand out instead of getting lost in the sea of inbreds that review in any portal.

At 9/8/09 02:28 PM, deckheadtottie wrote: I'd love to see more featured content.

When I go to the Art Portal, it's just a mass of images, you click the forward button, and there's another mass of images. I know there is a categories section, but this just offers the same as above, only with marginally fewer results (only 28 pages to sift through instead of 100; OH BOY!!!).

I feel the main Art Portal page should be set out more like the Flash and Audio Portals. Have a "best of all time", "Best of the week", "Best of the category" etc. Then have a link offering "all images". Having "all images" as the default is a bit of a turn off for me, and I feel is bumping decent content away from sight.

I wholeheartedly agree with deckheadtottie on this.

I'd also like to see the voting system set up the same as it is for the other portals. If there is no incentive to vote appropriately (to gain experience points and gain blams and saves under your belt) then people won't be as fussed about making thoughtful decisions on their votes. Review periods could really slim down the number of shit submissions and also give people a reason to vote wisely. Maybe I'm giving people too much credit though.. >_>

At 9/8/09 02:36 AM, LegolaSS wrote: i would like to see something about users useing tracing or free hand copying from existing pictures... i know its already in the rules but it could use with a bit of buffing up... i suppose you want to make sure that the rules cover as much grey area as possible...

So wait, are you saying we should allow tracing (free hand copying is close enough to using references that its fine) or disallow tracing?

At 9/8/09 02:54 AM, squidly wrote: I don't frequent the art portal since I frequent Deviantart for that, and well, I don't know, most of the time I'm here I'm either on the forums or listening to music/playing a game, I guess there just isn't room in my schedule to do a fourth thing, while in Deviantart, the art outnumbers everything else, and it's the main focus of the site, so I only have two things to do on that site, that is check up on my profile and view art.

Maybe if you posted some work here as well you would have more incentive to visit it. I mean you visit DA because you have work there, why not here?

To summarise, I can't do more then three things when I'm on a site.

Hmmm someone needs to learn to multitask ;)

At 9/8/09 03:33 AM, robin1232 wrote: I did review alot of 3d art on it, it would be nice if you included models in there too.

Hmm it would help against theft and would help the mods know what is a user created one and what is a premade one, interesting idea.

also, I dont anymore since 90% of it was deleted

The problem we have currently with 3-D stuff is that not too many mods know that much about that media. Also alot of 3-D programs do so much work without the artists hand that it isnt fair to those who really spend time on their work (rather than type in a few numbers, or use preset models) to have to compete with the lazy ones.

At 9/8/09 03:40 AM, kiwi-kiwi wrote: I think what you did here is great and a step forward for the community, but I'd just have to ask one thing, why don't you make the art portal like the flash portal?.

The flash portal is full of garbage, some great stuff, but its largely junk sadly. The art portal is trying to be junk free, we want those who spend time on their work and have talent to be recognized for it, instead of getting clumped in with a bunch of 5 minute doodles and crappy MSpaint stick figures. The scouting system eliminates the need to have to delete a users work just because its bad. A user can have as much crap on their user page as they like, and can showcase their work for whatever reason there as well as long as it doesnt break any rules. If we implemented a blam system users couldn't do that.

At 9/8/09 04:11 AM, J-qb wrote: I still think a weekly/biweekly/monthly gallery would be very neat. I love these frontpage submissions, but what im talking about is a themed collection of some 20? artworks. so the theme could be "heaven and hell" or something, and 20 pieces from the artportal that fit the theme are selected by mods to be displayed that week(s).
Im thinking the theme of the gallery could be announced a week beforehand, and poeple could get the opportunity to enlist their art for that gallery.

That idea is so fucking awesome it makes my cooch quiver.

At 9/8/09 04:27 AM, FurryDemon wrote: Your an art mod now? I liked it when you had that sword level...

Sorry to disappoint.....

Well I dislike the scouting system, but I'm pretty sure all of us are going to say that.

Care to elaborate why? And not everyone dislikes the scouting system.

At 9/8/09 02:24 PM, gumOnShoe wrote: I think when you go to scout someone there should be a way to view all of the images the user made in the option. So, you feel the urge to scout this person and the images come up for your review, and then you make your final decision. Instead of seeing one image and just clicking yes a couple times.

I think you don't quite understand how scouting works. In the scouting section, when you click on a thumbnail, I would hope you view the rest of the user's gallery before you scout. And you don't have to scout each image, just hitting "scout this user once" does the trick.

Eh, you can see on my art page I have a rather rough sketch of what I would look like as a clock. Its not a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination. But, shouldn't that still be able to be placed in the portal and just receive a low score? Its rough, maybe, but its a character I'd use for a flash if I were going to make a clock film. I don't understand why an art mod would relegate that to personal profile only as was done.

The scores in the art portal aren't really an good indicator of much because art is so subjective. There are amazing pieces that have low scores for whatever reason (users being homophobic seems to be a big one), and rather mediocre ones that have high scores (fanboys). Certain styles seem to warrant certain scores as well, even though they dont reflect the quality of the work. While we art mods realize that art is very subjective and what one person finds crap another will find great, we try to use our best judgment to distinguish between something that we dont personally like, but is still good work, and just flat out bad art.

At 9/8/09 02:25 PM, Lost-Wisdom wrote: The scouting system is flawed. There's a lot of talented artists out there yet it takes a long period of take for them to get taken off from the scouting feature.

Sometimes artists aren't eligible for scouting, you need to have 4 pieces to be even have to option to be scouted. Also because users can only scout 2 people a day sometimes a few people have to wait a little bit. Generally though good people will get scouted within a few days of being eligible if they appear in the unscouted section.

The way the system works is a failure, the stops should be taken out, and better measures should be put in. The scouting system was not a good idea, there has to be several of us who have uploaded their own work right after the art portal had opened, and yet most of that work has even been considered, all because it has not been scouted. So, no one will see it on the art portal front page or the search, so really, there's no point in uploading more when you aren't going to get any recognition for your work.

And it seems like, for you to get recognition, you must obtain recognition first, which sounds like something out of a crazy 1987 home vanity video where a washed up 80s soap opera star says these lines: "Fashion can be acquired by having fashion." So you can have fashion if you have fashion, but you must acquire fashion first.

Do you visit the art portal? If not then why?

Not really. I've peeked in a few times but nothing really caught my attention. Much of it is the same style.

What could we add or subtract that would make you start going there?

Can't really think of anything. It's a great concept..... on paper. The Flash Portal too. In a perfect world this would be a great way for people to showcase actual talent but of course it's overwhelmed with a lot of generic crap. It's not the fault of the people responsible for creating and maintaining it, but rather the users of it (as always).

What do you think about the scouting system?

One thing that makes the flash portal great is that you can come out of nowhere with an overnight success. The biggest flaw with scouting is that you need to hit it out of the park 4 times, hope you're noticed, THEN you can be the next big thing. It's a lot less susceptible to abuse than the Flash Portal system though, and that's just as important.

Are there any rules that you would like to see added, or changed? Let us know if there are certain rules that really bug you, hopefully we can provide a good reason why that rule is there. And if we cant then maybe that rule will be changed.

FUCKING PHOTOGRAPHY!!!

What do you think about the job the mods are doing? Good, Bad?

Sure. Good.

Also; may I go back to the point about there being a lot of the same style available. What I mean is most of it is just a drawing of a character and not much else. Even worse is much of the characters are just Newgrounds characters that people redrew. There shouldn't be as much encouragement of this as there is. I will admit that there are some great drawings but I'm rather bored with seeing the same characters.

At 9/8/09 11:59 PM, ornery wrote: The flash portal is full of garbage, some great stuff, but its largely junk sadly. The art portal is trying to be junk free, we want those who spend time on their work and have talent to be recognized for it, instead of getting clumped in with a bunch of 5 minute doodles and crappy MSpaint stick figures. The scouting system eliminates the need to have to delete a users work just because its bad. A user can have as much crap on their user page as they like, and can showcase their work for whatever reason there as well as long as it doesnt break any rules. If we implemented a blam system users couldn't do that.

Is it not possible to have a blam/save system in place as well as this initial scouting stage? If users had to go through a scouting stage to get their work up in the art portal, then why shouldn't each submission then be subject to a review period where it could be blammed or saved? This would further cull individual artworks and help keep the overall portal free of as many half assed entries as possible (just because they don't break the rules, doesn't mean they should be kept around indefinitely). For example: If users consistently submit blammed artworks, then their 'scouted' status would be revoked.

I would think a user scout + submission review period would encourage better artwork submissions, give some incentive and sense of challenge to artists rather than feeling like we are submitting our artwork into a sea of thumbnails that might never be reduced adequately in order to provide coverage for exceptional entries, and it would also offer incentive towards fair voting during review because voters could earn experience points by voting more objectively. I'm pretty much reiterating what I said in my last post, I guess.

At 9/7/09 11:57 PM, ornery wrote: Do you visit the art portal?

I visit the art portal on occasion. I've only got four submissions, and I'm not scouted yet, but I do try. I like to check out the front page sometimes and see what the talent is like.

I think the biggest problem with attracting people is that the button is too small. It's the smallest button on the toolbar. It just doesn't scream out to you the way "Flash Portal" and "Audio Portal" do. I think that "series" should probably be removed from the toolbar, and "art" changed to "art portal".

What do you think about the scouting system?

I like the scouting system. It keeps the quality under control.

Sure it means that there will be fewer submissions in a given day, but if you compare the front page of the art portal to something like Deviant art, there's really no contest. It reflects very well on the site itself.

What do you think about the job the mods are doing?

Man, Ornery, you're just amazing. I think I love you.

also the ratings (ETMA) are bugged (at least on opera) when I go back to the art portal index all of them are reset, except for that it seems they arent, so its hard to know

At 9/8/09 02:24 PM, gumOnShoe wrote:

I think you don't quite understand how scouting works. In the scouting section, when you click on a thumbnail, I would hope you view the rest of the user's gallery before you scout. And you don't have to scout each image, just hitting "scout this user once" does the trick.

Well, I can't see the scouting system anymore since the incident and I don't have enough art to be inducted again, so I don't know. What I remember is that when it was first released, I was in the unscouted section looking for users who might have talent, saw a really good piece which I liked and from the art page clicked "scout this user" and then he was scouted after I agreed several times to different messages. I don't remember being prompted to view all of his art, but this might have changed since I haven't scouted anyone since.

The point is, the system should show you the gallery of art before it gives the option to confirm it. It reinforces behavior. Regardless of whether the users have the capability to do it already, showing them the gallery enforces that they should be looking at it. And it wouldn't be too much of a burden or additional step. If you like their art enough you ought to be willing to view their art page.

Anyway, you were asking for ways to improve the system.

[Promising Talent Link] >> Views User Page
[Confirm Scout] >> Scouts user, pop up confirmation.

The scores in the art portal aren't really an good indicator of much because art is so subjective. There are amazing pieces that have low scores for whatever reason (users being homophobic seems to be a big one), and rather mediocre ones that have high scores (fanboys). Certain styles seem to warrant certain scores as well, even though they dont reflect the quality of the work. While we art mods realize that art is very subjective and what one person finds crap another will find great, we try to use our best judgment to distinguish between something that we dont personally like, but is still good work, and just flat out bad art.

Which doesn't really answer the question of why a character based on Newgrounds culture would be booted from the portal, but ok. If you'd rather give me an answer via pm, I'm cool with that too.

At 9/9/09 12:48 AM, wwwyzzerdd wrote:

Are there any rules that you would like to see added, or changed? Let us know if there are certain rules that really bug you, hopefully we can provide a good reason why that rule is there. And if we cant then maybe that rule will be changed.

FUCKING PHOTOGRAPHY!!!

Got to agree on that... Although people would abuse it as if it was something like a personal photo album, but we got the scouting system?

At 9/8/09 07:00 PM, Twilight wrote: I still think Art Forum > Art Portal.

I frequent it more, and the criticism there is more than just "lol this is awesome" and "this fucking sucks man ZERO".

Yes, the fact that a discussion can be held on the art forum rather than the art portal is a definite plus. Maybe the Art Portal can have its own built in discussion system like the BBS? That would up the art portal by a lot.

I think that there should be a thread that you can post in if you think you should be scouted. Yes, it will be filled by little kids thinking their scrawls are fantastic, but it will help find talent that has slipped through the portal undetected.

Also, there should be a standard set in then faq. I, and many others, have no idea how good a drawing has to be to be accepted into the portal.

At 9/9/09 12:33 AM, MrCongeniality wrote: The way the system works is a failure, the stops should be taken out, and better measures should be put in. The scouting system was not a good idea, there has to be several of us who have uploaded their own work right after the art portal had opened, and yet most of that work has even been considered, all because it has not been scouted. So, no one will see it on the art portal front page or the search, so really, there's no point in uploading more when you aren't going to get any recognition for your work.

First lets remember that you have to have a certain number a pieces in order to even have the option to be scouted. Next keep in mind that for the most part, if your stuff is good and worthy of the art portal, chances are it will be scouted. The system is new and has a few glitches here and there, but as those get worked out more deserving people are being discovered. Also keep in mind that if you haven't been scouted, your chance of front page recognition is pretty slim anyway. As for not even being able to be searched, that I agree can be seen as a problem for some. But its not like if you aren't scouted your art cant even been SEEN. Anyone can see your art, the difference is that it just wont appear in the art portal listings.

And it seems like, for you to get recognition, you must obtain recognition first, which sounds like something out of a crazy 1987 home vanity video where a washed up 80s soap opera star says these lines: "Fashion can be acquired by having fashion." So you can have fashion if you have fashion, but you must acquire fashion first.

Well you do kinda have to have talent, and you have to show that talent in order to be considered amoung the talented, we cant just take your word for it ;)

At 9/9/09 12:48 AM, wwwyzzerdd wrote: One thing that makes the flash portal great is that you can come out of nowhere with an overnight success. The biggest flaw with scouting is that you need to hit it out of the park 4 times, hope you're noticed, THEN you can be the next big thing. It's a lot less susceptible to abuse than the Flash Portal system though, and that's just as important.

Most good artists get noticed pretty quick. And a lot have hit major success pretty quick, i mean I have never heard of a lot of the top artists in there, but pretty much right after scouting they became big celebrities in their own right. As for needing 4 pieces, any consistently good artist most likely has a lot more than just 4 pieces on file they could submit, that's not that hard to achieve.

Also; may I go back to the point about there being a lot of the same style available. What I mean is most of it is just a drawing of a character and not much else. Even worse is much of the characters are just Newgrounds characters that people redrew. There shouldn't be as much encouragement of this as there is. I will admit that there are some great drawings but I'm rather bored with seeing the same characters.

We notice that as well, but thats more the user base than the portals fault. Think about the flash portal, or the audio portal. Flash is largely video game parodies and sprite movies, or fan flashes. Audio portal is largely techno or frooty loops generated style stuff. its hard to tell people to do something different, we definitely encourage it, buts its ultimately up to the users to act upon it.