Hold On

Back in October, just before parting ways with deviantART, I entered a drawing into 8Aud8's coloring contest.  The drawing, irregardless of me being banned, won third place by popular vote.  The prize was this full color drawing by 8Aud8....thank you my friend....and I hope you don't mind me posting it here:

Pen and Inks

A sort of stylistic then-and-now comparison. I drew Kim Possible in late 2008, whereas the other (yet to be titled) one was done around 1988 or so. Both were originally drawn in pencil, but obviously have been digitally inked. I was never any good at inking the old fashioned way.

Over, Finished, Gone, Done, Out....

I'm done with deviantART. It was a tough, though short battle, but I lost....and I can live with that. If however, by some small miracle they reverse their decision and reinstate my account I will return only on a limited basis...and then only to check out my favorite artists and comment as I see fit.

Otherwise, as of last night, I washed my hands of them and removed all of my 300+ pictures from their site. No sense allowing them to gain advertising revenue at my expense.

Molotov Cocktease - In Stereo

No, I didn't say 3D and you don't need any funky glasses. Stereo Pairing is not a new drawing technique by any means as it has been around since the 1840s....but it is new to me. I'm not very good at it yet.

Click here for Viewing Instructions

Original Inks and Colors by Gagala

Addtional Inks and Colors by Phillipthe2

Open-mindedness and Objectivity

Yep, I finally received a response from deviantART regarding my bannishment today. Needless to say, I'm a little pissed off right now so I will let our respective responses speak for themselves:

_____________________________________________________

I apologise for the delay in responding to you.

In reviewing your request, I note that you have previous copyright violations within your gallery and therefore I'm reluctant to reinstate you to the community. Not only that, but you misrepresented yourself to many artists, and therefore there's a breakdown in trust.

This leaves us with no option other than to wish you the best in finding a community which does have a more tolerant approach to such issues, however we have no place for such in deviantART.

Kind regards,
Fiona
--
Fiona Hooley
Director of Community Operations
deviantART.Inc
http://chix0r.deviantart.com

Nov-10 2009 08:34 am.

_____________________________________________________
My response

Specifically, what previous copyright violations are you referring to? I am only aware of the one, or rather, the alleged one. I have spoken to several artists who have had multiple violations for copyright infringement, multiple violations for prohibited content, have been suspended multiple times, and yet they still remain within the deviantART community. Everyone I have spoken to since being banned is of the opinion and agreement that my punishment is vastly disproportionate to the infraction.

On the opposite side of the coin, I personally know of at least one individual (and I'm sure there are hundreds, if not thousands of individuals like her/him) that has had a dozen or more works removed for blatant copyright violations, been reported numerous times for harassment and/or overtly racist remarks to other artist, and routinely uses other peoples work without their foreknowledge (i.e. Art Theft). All of this individual's violations far, far eclipse anything I have deemed guilty of, but what punishment has this particular individual received? None, zero, nada, zilch. Justice, apparently, is blind after all.

After being suspended in September for linking to what deviantART deems as "inappropriate content" I took a good long look at my deviantART gallery and purged all of the content whose source I could not readily verify. In other words, I deleted all of the pictures that various individuals asked me to color / manipulate, but they in turn may not have been the original artist of the work. What remained were works that I had permission from the original artist to color / manipulate, works in which I was the original artist, and photography that I personally took. Additionally, after my suspension ended, I immediately removed all of the offending links...and quite a few more that were even vaguely questionable. The only work that was even remotely questionable (and only because it resembled another work so closely) was the one that got me banned.

Did I violate deviantART policy with solely malicious intentions and/or intentions of misrepresentation? Of course not. Ignorance of the law, so to speak, is no excuse...but you cannot honestly expect every artist to read through hundreds upon hundreds of Frequently Asked Questions in order to determine whether or not their work will potentially violate deviantART policy. That's just plain idiotic. That however, is exactly what one must do in order to post (hopefully) violation-free media upon your site.

Granted, the majority of my works involve cartoon characters who are depicted in an adult manner, though not all of them in a sexual sense. Naturally, some people have a certain dislike (and even outright hatred) of this depiction. Conversely, a lot of people just plain love it and (obviously) draw / color them too. This "hate-love" is nothing new...you see it all throughout the various mediums depicted on deviantART. However, after my bannishment from deviantART I immediately sought to appeal this decision thinking that said appeal would be met with a certain open-mindedness, objectivity, and someone would listen to what I have to say in my own defense. No, what I got was the one individual who has a previous bias toward not only adult depictions of cartoon characters, but to the very individual characters I tend to depict. Don't beleive me? Read his journal entries. So much for open-mindedness and objectivity.

Nov-10 2009 02:49 pm.

Ups and Downs - Continued

Another week and yet another....down.

My girlfriend's grandmother passed away early this morning. Honestly, it didn't come as a surprise as she has not been in the best of health for several years now, but still...it's rough loosing a close family member. At the age of eighty-eight, three children, four grandchildren, nine great-grandchildren, and one great-great-grandchild I'd say she lived a pretty fulfilling life.

My father, having recently been diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease, hasn't seemed to let it slow him down any. He's currently in Camagüey, Cuba's third largest city, on a church sponsored mission tour. Granted, Dad hasn't been to any foreign countries since he and I lived in Southeastern Mexico back in the early '80s, so I'm not sure how he's managing with no air conditioning and (probably) no hot water. One things for certain though, he's probably wet and pissed off....as Hurricane Ida passes between Cuba and the Yucatan peninsula.


As for deviantART, it's been two weeks since my "support ticket" was supposed to be passed from one moderator to another....I have had zero communication from them since October 26th. In any other business, such a lengthy time period would be met with a bit of supervisory scrutiny and a few choice words for an employee or two. DA however....hmmm....their lack of supervisory oversight should be a cause for concern.

Drawing and coloring on the other hand, I'm doing a compilation piece using a couple of Gagala's work, a coloring of this one by DA's MrSinister616, and an Iron Maiden inspired piece of my own...simply because ones like this suck out loud.

Ups and Downs

If it isn't overly obvious, I haven't been drawing, coloring, or posting as often as I normally do.

It's been one of those weeks.

First and foremost, my girlfriend's...ummm...girlie doctor discovered a lump in one of her breast several weeks ago. After the standard battery of tests, several mammograms, and two weeks worth of waiting the doc concluded that she had nothing to worry about....that was Monday.

This past Wedsnesday, if the stress of waiting for test results to come back weren't enough, she fell at at work and broke her ankle. Not a normal break, but rather the zero weight-baring spiral fracture kind. So, she gets to look forward to six to twelve weeks of hydrocodone induced haze and endless wakeful hours of pure boredom and reruns. Personally, I've broken my ankle much more severely than her's (motorcycles and inattentive, cell phone-wielding soccer moms in minivans don't mix) and have a tolerance for pain that any Gitmo torturer would be proud of....errrr, I mean captured enemy combatant interviewer. She however, has zero tolerance for pain in any way, shape, or form....a stubbed toe will send her into agony and fits of wailing bloody murder.

Yesterday however, was the blind-siding bomb shell, so to speak. My father, now in his late sixties, had a minor stoke this time last year. It was so minor that, unless he pointed it out to you, one wouldn't be able to tell that he was effected in any degree. I however, noticed the slight (almost imperceptible) slur in his words and a little tremor in his hands right away....he is my dad after all. A stroke in any magnitude opens one up to other long-term neurological disorders such as early onset dementia and....Parkinson's Disease (PD). Yes, that would be the same disorder that Michael J. Fox suffers from. His doctor(s) diagnosed him with it Monday and had him on a medication that would reduce its effect the same day....the tremors in his hands went away almost instantly. Fortunately I suppose, they diagnosed it relatively early....a year would be a fairly short period of time considering that PD can take years and even decades for it's symptoms to become apparent.

Yeah, it's been a week of ups and downs.

As for deviantART and any hopes of my account being reinstated, DA seems to be (not surprisingly) dragging it's heels in passing the case review from one moderator to another....after calling one out as having a lack of business etiquette and objectivity. Given this past weeks events...DA, drawing, coloring, and bullshitting around on various art / toon related sites is on the back burner.