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Everyday we're CV'ingAs a Community Volunteer - I do as much or as little within the community that I feel comfortable doing. We're not pressured to do this and that, we don't even have to give a Daily Deviation every day, we choose how we promote our selected galleries/chats and forums and we're not fixed to any specific rule on how much or how little we do. But I do believe that it's important to share with you just what the community volunteers do and why we do it. More importantly it's so easy to get lost on this site full of many people - and miss out on the awesome that's going on. So I'm going to share with you exactly what the latest awesome is...
Project Educate
Almost every week since October last year the Community Volunteers have been working hard both independently and as part of small teams to bring You Project Educate.
Project Educate is about bringing forward art forms whether they are popular or overlooked and giving

#deviant365 For 2013! Tell your friends!Hello Deviants!
We are so excited that the new year is almost upon us! On January 1st, 2013 the fun begins! Weekly tasks start flowing and we start handing out prizes!
But before the new year, we would like to get the word out that #deviant365 is up and running for 2013! Please consider sharing this journal with your friends, watchers and groups. We really want to be there for as many deviants as we can.
#deviant365 aims to bring the deviousness to the deviantART community one week at a time, 365 days a year. deviant365 is deviantART's official 365 Project where you will be provided with weekly tasks for the whole year. The aim of this is to give you motivation to participate in areas of our community that perhaps you have never experienced before, make new friends, work on your art, learn more about deviantART and enhance your experience on deviantART.
So without much more waiting, we are looking forward to the 1st and hope you a

dAMonsters!On a dark and scary stormy night...
within the Zombie Kingdom of dAmn...
monsters are stirring!
The Fella Zombie King needs your help! He needs to grow an army of monsters in the Zombie Kingdom in preparation for Halloween Night. Mummies, Zombies, Vampires, Demons, and WereWolves will all form their own Armies and build up their numbers by biting and infecting human victims and turning them into Monsters!
The Fella Zombie King will bestow prizes on the strongest Monsters! But you must make sure that the humans you infect and turn into Monsters stay in Zombie Kingdom so that they may learn the ways of the Army and be ready for Halloween Night!
The game will start on October 24th, at 4:00pm Pacific Standard Time
How To Play
You begin by joining the #dAMonsters chatroom and "biting" someone, not yet in the chatroom, by typing:
!bite username
Biting th

Why you feature stolen work?!?!Lately there seem to have been a few myths flying around in particular with regards to how we as Community Volunteers, give Daily Deviations. Many people seem to think that we sit at our desks in dark little rooms and let out evil laughter whilst we purposefully feature stolen work. The dark rooms and laughter - well I can't say yes or no on that one! But I can promise you it's not our intent to give exposure to people who have stolen work. I recently featured a piece of work that turned out to be stolen. However I went into extensive conversations with the artist before I featured it, and with added metadata and dates, it's difficult to know where to draw the line. I've given people the benefit of the doubt before - and it's worked out nicely as their work has been legitimate. Below are some comments I have seen being thrown around the past few days - and hopefully an attempt to bust the myth.
"I thought at least that you people would check to make sure the work was the

PE: 5 reasons to believe in yourselfSuccess is not a measure of how much money you earn or how popular you are, rather, it is being able to find your passion - one that makes you happy and ultimately, one that you would be happy to leave as your legacy. To make a step forward to reach your dream takes smarts and guts but why couldn't you? Here is five reasons why you can.
1. Everyone was born equal
More-less, this is true, some people are born more challenged than others but we all possess skills and ability to learn. It is possible to build something out of nothing if we really want to. It all comes down to our preferences and decisions.
"Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent."
Eleanor Roosevelt
2. Overcoming your fears
By constantly challenging yourself, you can get rid of fears that used to follow you. You will no longer be worried, you'll know you can count on yourself.
"If you think you can, you can. If you think you can't, you're right."
Mar

Fanfiction, Fiction, and NonfictionFix That Miscat! is a series of articles aiming to help you distinguish between galleries that are commonly confused or abused in the category system here on deviantART.
Why should I care? 1) If your work isn't in the right gallery, the people most interested in reading it are never gonna find it! 2) Miscatted works cannot be featured as DDs, to put it simply. 3) Some galleries are more full of miscats than others, and this makes it very difficult to find what you're looking for.
Whether you're an art appreciator or trying to get your art appreciated, miscats affect your site experience. Please help us get the word out there!
Fanfiction
Fanfiction has its very own category under the Fan Art gallery:
Fan Art > Fan Fiction
NOTE: Fanfiction is a genre rather than a style, so poems, scripts, character sheets, etc. that are fan works belong in this category as

A Note on Daily Deviation FeaturesAt ten features into my tenure as Community Volunteer for Abstract & Surreal Photography I am noticing a certain trend in response to abstract and surreal Daily Deviations. I shall address some of the recurring themes here, and hopefully answer some questions along the way. At this point I would like to mention that I am talking about a small and vocal minority, and I sincerely thank the overwhelming majority for supporting the featured artists and their work. You're what makes this site such a great community.
With that said, let's get to the troublesome themes I am coming across.
The "This is crap!" Argument
As an observer and a critic, you're entitled to think that something isn't very good. However, exclaiming as such on the comments of a piece of work that an artist has spent time and energy creating is not only counter-productive, but rude and insulting, especially if it's not followed up with some advice about how you think they could make their

How to make a great Journal featureJournal Feature Tutorial
How to make a great Journal feature!
This article has been written for #projecteducate by `miontre.
Featuring other artists in your Journal is a great thing to do, because everyone wins! Not only are you supporting other artists by giving them some extra exposure, but you can also earn some exposure for yourself and make new friends too. Additionally, those who view your feature have the opportunity to find some new art and artists.

Therefore, it pays to make your Journal features the best they can be. Making a really good Journal feature can involve a lot of time and work - planning, collecting artwork, arranging the artwork in a Journal, publication, and promotion. Taking these steps instead of merely dragging in thumbs from your Favourites will result in an appealing and rewarding Journal feature. In this tutorial, we're going to produce a feature with images arranged like this:

Craft a Moustache ContestWhat is Movember?
During the month of November each year, Movember asks men across the world to grow a moustache (or Mo') with the aim of raising vital funds and awareness for men’s health issues. Mo Bros are helping to change the face of men’s health by effectively becoming walking, talking billboards for the 30 days of November and through their actions and words raise awareness by promoting private and public conversation around the often ignored issue of men’s health. Together, we are truly changing the face of men’s health.
Source: Movember's Site
How to help
Raise awareness, share the news!Register on Movember.com and grow a mighty manly moustache on that beautiful face of yours, you can choose to join deviantART's US Team,

Photomanipulation vs. Digital Mixed MediaWhat is this series?
The "Fix that Miscat" series has been designed to help educate deviantART members about the different galleries to which they can submit their art. Tired of submitting to a particular gallery and having your art moved to a different one? We will help minimize this occurrence by examining pairs of categories that frequently get confused and doing our best to clarify them for you.
What is a Photomanipulation?
What it is:
On deviantART, we define photomanipulation as "two or more PHOTOGRAPHIC elements that have been combined to form something NEW."
This means that:

At least 2 elements must be from photographs.

The result must be something new and different, distinguishable from the original.
What it is not:

It does not involve 3D images, even if there are also photos involved.

CR Newsletter - November/December 2012 Director of Community Relations :iconmoonbeam13: :
Table of Contents
1. Happy Holidays and Merry New Year
2. Volunteer Openings in Community Relations
3. Community Projects
4. Official Contests
5 Project Educate 2011/2012
6. Art History Project
7. News from the Chats and Forums
8. News from the Galleries
1. Happy Holidays and Merry New Year
As the old year begins to fade into the sunset, it is customary to reflect on the passing year and make plans for the upcoming one. Some do this in the form of resolutions, some people make action plans, some people just swing into the new year the same way they swung out of the old one

Whatever way you intend to welcome in 2013, I hope you're surrounded by love and that you do it safely!
I've been reflecting on the year and like many, with some focus on the unimaginable events of the last few weeks. Specifically, the shooting in Newtown. I know that it's "human nature" to want to find

Want to Become an Alpha Tester? Now's Your Chance!Update: A massive thank you to everyone who sent in a application to be an alpha tester! Applications are now closed. Due to the volume of applications it will take a few more days to finish going through them. Users will be contacted if they are successful in getting a place, so keep an eye out! - $DEVlANT
Calling all beta testers, bug lovers and feature loving deviants.

I have exciting news! #devBUG is looking for some new deviants to be Alpha Tester!

But what is an alpha tester?
An Alpha tester is a bit like a Beta tester only they get to test out new features before Beta testers do.

So, what do alpha testers get to do?
As an alpha tester you'll have the chance to talk to staff and developers about new and upcoming features, and help find and report any bugs that there may be, before it goes to beta testers or th

Daily Deviation Suggestion Drive!Back By Popular Demand!
In January of 2012, the community was challenged by `thorns to do something about their complaints on dA. Thus was born this very group! But before the group, it was just a fledgling idea on `Kneeling-Glory's account that began with a DD Suggestion Contest. The results of that contest were overwhelming. And so, under the prodding of quite a few Community Volunteers, we're going to do it again!

UPDATE: Less than 1 week in and we've already got 100 suggested DDs and 2 accepted suggestions!!

Keep up the great work guys and gals. Please remember that you need to leave a link to every deviation you suggest in this journa

Small steps: Preventing Art Theft on dA

Permission Issues and Art theft: It's sadly a common thing now.
It is a huge problem on deviantART/ internetz.

But wait! IDK what art theft is..

Then Read this!
Art theft is unacceptable. Think about how long people spend on their works. And how much of themselves go into it. Now someone else has spent 0 seconds and claimed it as theirs. NO.

You must credit resources. That includes OCs, stocks, brushes, textures, snippets of code(no, changing the colors of a journal skin does not mean you made it) , tutorials(sometimes).
Written credits. Google images is not good enough.
Read these FAQs.
Can I use the works which I find on deviantART?Does deviantART own my a

PE: Artisan Crafts Week Circus ContestArtisan Crafts Week Contest
EDIT: The winners have been announced here.
We love crafts! We love crafting, we love watching crafts, we love talking about crafts! If you're like us you're always looking for an excuse to craft something, so we're going to give you one: join the circus! The circus contest, of course

Rules
You must make an object using any artisan craft you desire, photograph it and upload it to the appropriate Artisan Crafts gallery. Also you need to submit it to the Artisan Crafts Contest folder. You need to be a member of #projecteducate to submit.
The work must be your own, using tutorials or resources is allowed but you must credit them. No copying anyone else's original work.
You must get your inspiration from the theme "circus"and it must be clearly present in your work. How y

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Submitted: December 28, 2012
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Attention, don't give away your work!

Fri Dec 28, 2012, 4:00 PM

If possible please

this news article so that more people can see it and be wary, thank you!

This week I received messages from two different people (through Etsy and Storenvy) offering to make a review of my work. They splattered huge statics, like having millions of instagram followers, popularity, or having done it before and making people famous. Of course, their generosity was conditioned by me agreeing to send them some of my work for free. While I don't object the concept of reviewing someone's work, I worry that this has become a popular way of scamming artisan crafters to give away their work for free with promises of exposure and increasing their sales. I wanted to write this journal to tell everyone to be careful, specially if you're just starting your business and struggling to get noticed, it may sound tempting but you should never give away your hard work!

One of them was even more blunt and said that he could write a positive review of my work just by sending him money, he would post my pics with positive reviews for his "thousands of followers to see".

Statics can be faked, watchers and followers can be bought, success histories can be invented. Even more, the people that I've seen doing the best job getting new artists out there do it for free, just out of kindness or vocation. There's some pretty established and trustworthy people that review crafts, but most of them buy everything with their own money and don't ask for free things, and when people offer to send them things for review they usually send them back at request. I'm afraid that lately there's a trend of scammers doing anything they can to get things for free.

I just wanted to let people know, and if you receive a message like the ones I described decide for yourself if that person deserves your trust or not. Please spread the word and be wary.

EDIT: Also here's *GrandmaThunderpants comment on the issue, she experienced this before: [link]

Happy New Year everyone!
^Talty

158 Comments

Attention, don't give away your work!by ^Talty

Journals / Art News / Artisan Crafts

A message alerting artisan crafters and all artists about scammers going around lately.

~~fear 0 0~~

~~neutral 0 0~~

!mezay12 Mar 12, 2013 Professional Artisan Crafter

I've had about 10-12 people contacting me- once I tell them that they have to fund the shipping, they disappear

*Zoogoo40 Mar 11, 2013 Student General Artist

My work's not good enough for people to want to scam me.

*FrozenNote Jan 17, 2013 Hobbyist Artisan Crafter

I got scammed like that too ._. This girl, Molly, she showed me her facebook and blog and all that ( [link] ), it seemed pretty legit.. So I sent her 20$ worth of stuff... She then kept making excuses for not replying, then her etsy got banned. I messaged the facebook page, thinking I got scammed, but the girl actually replied, saying no. Then we continued to chat on gmail for about a month, and she kept saying that my stuff got lost in the mail and so on, her mailman doesn't know anything, blah blah, and that she will ask him about it "tomorrow". After I didn't get anything from her for a week, I just gave up.

Don't ever trust these guys. I've had countless offers like these before, but I trusted just this one because it seemed really legit. It wasn't. Like Talty said, things like that can be faked.