| Proxy Errors |
[Apr. 30th, 2009|10:45 am] |
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Anyone else having trouble trying to connect to Artspots? |
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| New Features (and Updates) |
[Nov. 20th, 2007|03:24 am] |
Bonjour, everyone! First off, let me say that I know I have been somewhat distant as of late, and for that I apologize. I am now going to catch up on everything as best I can and get the staff rallied back up to help. But! There was a reason, a few actually, that I was off in seclusion.
Paint Chat
We now have paint chat! I have been wanting to have a paint chat on this site for awhile now, and by far the best one out there is Sketcher. So, we have negotiated a deal to have Sketcher on our site! Not only can it be used for fun and collaboration, but for tutorials as well. This is really nice software, think of it as OpenCanvas for the web. Drag a couple friends in and have some fun!
http://chat.artspots.com/ or http://chat.jaxpad.com/
We will be soon getting some help pages up about it, since it has a lot of features. Until then, I can offer these tips: You need to select a layer before drawing, "/save" will save the current canvas, the filename must end in .png, and for those who want to try, this is a pressure-sensitivity plug-in that works with it. (PC-only for now, which makes me sad too!)
New Shop
We have a brand new way to get art from artists on this site! Best of all, we no longer require PayPal to check out. (Although it is still an option for those who want to use it.)
http://www.artspots.com/shop or http://www.jaxpad.com/shop
It took a lot of work, but since no "off-the-shelf" shopping cart software existed to meet our needs, we made our own. Part of the reason it took so long is because we wanted to do a lot of testing and make sure it is a smooth experience.
Now we have Featured art in the shop, based on keywords that are placed into pictures when you upload them! We will be letting people know what the keywords are in our newsletter, so you can make art to sell seasonally or for specific holidays.
New membership options are also available. In addition to 1-year, we now have 6-month and 2-year options available. Also, they can be given to other users as gifts! Either give a gift to someone else or get someone to buy one for you. :)
Improved Security
With a shop comes the need for better security. Not only is the entire checkout process in 256-bit encrypted SSL, but we decided to apply that to other sensitive information as well, such as when you use your password to log in or when you edit your personal information. Now you can even log in over a wireless network and not have to worry about anyone seeing your info.
Those are the major things, not to mention a slew of small bug-fixes and tweaks. I cannot express what a relief it is to have this done, and after the Thanksgiving break, we hope to have more regular updates and be more attentive.
Any questions or if anything unusual pops up, please let us know! We passed the one-year mark in October, and thanks to all of you we are looking forward to many more years to come. Here is wishing all of you a happy start to the holidays! |
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| How can $15 equal $250? More print options, too! |
[Aug. 13th, 2007|01:33 pm] |
Two pretty big announcements. Well, one big, one moderate.
First, a new feature for paid members: A starting $250 USD net terms/consignment credit on buying prints. What does that mean? You can purchase up to $250 of materials and pay for them when they sell until the net terms are up. Since we are aware of con schedules and how spaced they can be, our net terms are pretty generous.
Secondly, we are now offering prints on Arches watercolor paper! Currently we are offering Arches smooth watercolor, but will get their textured stock in soon. Perfect for fine art reproductions of, you guessed it, watercolor paintings as well as "digital watercolor" paintings, to give them the real attention they deserve.
All this and more details, like finally getting our print sizes and resolutions up, can be found here:
http://www.artspots.com/help/prints |
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| New Features |
[Aug. 4th, 2007|06:16 pm] |
Some may have started to notice a few new features cropping up. Here are a couple of the more notable ones:
Chat
We now have an easy-to-use chat. Just click on the tab and go, provided you are logged in. Talk it up with your fellow artists, complain at the reviewers if they are about, and it opens up the possibility for real-time art games. (Do I hear "Ambush?")
Buy/Sell Originals
In addition to prints, you can now buy and sell originals through ArtSpots. Just click on the Originals tab under "My Home" for more info.
Widgets
I think Babbage covered this a few weeks back, but they are still neat! Click on "My Home" to play with them.
Yerf Historical Archive
People may have heard already, but in case you have not, you can see what we are doing here:
http://yerf.artspots.com
In store...
Things we expect to have up shortly: Detailed print info, including pricing pricing charts. A more comprehensive help system, which will start going over some of the more advanced (but optional and usually unseen) parts of the site. |
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| Applications are cleared! (for now) |
[Aug. 4th, 2007|05:44 pm] |
I just want to mark at this moment in time:
From the FAQ, which dynamically generates based on the queue:
How long does a review take?
We try our best to get reviews done and respond within two weeks. Sometimes they may take a little longer. Right now we do not have any applications waiting. Now would be a good time to apply!
That's right, the application queue has been brought down to 0. For how long, probably a day, maybe a few hours. But it has been done!
We have a few folks awaiting further, more detailed critiques on previous reviews, they're next! |
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| Big Change Coming |
[Jun. 11th, 2007|11:58 pm] |
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There will be downtime early AM Tuesday, might last an hour or so. In the morning, things will be a bit different. :) |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 16th, 2007|12:27 am] |
| [ | mood |
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Does anyone know how to make dotted or dashed lines in Illustrator? |
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| ACEO reminder! |
[Apr. 29th, 2007|04:37 pm] |
Just a reminder, there are only a couple days left to get a free ACEO-sized print to see an example of our new print service. Those that have emailed, we have received them and are processing them! Those who have not emailed, you should! It's free, and that means there is no excuse not to! :)
Edit: Send files to prints at artspots.com. Minimum resolution is 450x630 pixels and maximum resolution is 900x1260. RGB preferred. |
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| DNS Wonkiness |
[Apr. 27th, 2007|02:15 pm] |
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A small percentage of users may have had trouble getting to the site earlier, getting an outdated site instead of the archive itself. This was my fault. *blush* I made a typo on one of the slave DNS servers, but all is okay now, or should be in about 4 hours for those affected. Sorry! |
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| Free ACEO-sized print! |
[Apr. 9th, 2007|02:59 pm] |
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) ryokokitty asked in my initial announcement about prints, and other artists have asked me since, "Can we see the quality of a print?"
Why, yes!
From now until the end of April, if you have an account on ArtSpots or JaxPad, you can get one ACEO-sized (2.5" x 3.5") sample print on Ultrasmooth Fine Art paper of any image of yours. Just email the image to prints at artspots.com along with an address to send it to, and we will mail it out.
Minimum resolution is 450x630 pixels and maximum resolution is 900x1260 pixels. High-quality JPEGs preferred, RGB colorspace. For those a bit more adept in Photoshop, convert it to sRGB or Adobe RGB(1998) color profiles. (We will have a tutorial on color and print prepping by the end of this week.)
Not an artist but want to see the quality of our prints? If you have a piece of art that you commissioned (own the rights to the characters therein) and can get the permission of the artist to have the small print made, we will send one to you too. |
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| ArtSpots Prints |
[Mar. 28th, 2007|07:18 am] |
The time has come for what we have been working a couple months on. Oui oui, reviews will be taken care of shortly, all of them. We've been working on those too. This is even bigger.
ArtSpots and JaxPad now offer art prints!
Yes, it is wonderful indeed. But, these are not just any old prints. No, no, that would be too easy.
More specifically, ArtSpots now offers archival museum-quality prints!
In the art world, the fancy term for these are Giclée (zhee-klay) prints. In short, this means using special pigment-based ink on acid-free fine art quality paper and made to last. Color prints, unprotected and cold outside of a frame, will retain their vibrance for close to a hundred years, and black and white prints for over two-hundred. It is getting good, yes?
So good, in fact, that galleries and museums, such as the Boston Museum of Fine Art, use the exact same process to make their archival prints that we now do. Although, I will admit, our printer is one generation ahead of theirs. I told you this would be big!
And, we have a good deal when it comes to pricing, too! By way of example, Boston MFA charges upwards of $125 USD for a 16"x20" print. Our price for patrons is almost a third of that at $44.95. And speaking of pricing, we looked at the competition, mainly two other art sites that I will not name but have the initials DA and AW, and worked on matching our prices best we could to theirs. So, not only do you get a print worthy of the artwork that goes on it instead of something on photo paper, but you can get it for nearly the same price!
It gets even better. Ooo, I can hardly contain myself!
( What does the artist get? Number-crunching for penny-smart artists. )
I have spoken a lot, so now I will quote what kitsumi mentioned to me in an email, graciously used with her permission, as she was part of the initial print quality testing:
"I'm really pleased to see nary a trace of the print dots I'm accustomed to seeing in giclees and typical inkjet/laser prints.. I peruse the small art gallery at Disneyland quite a bit, and the dots are a dead giveaway. I don't even have to scrutinize those prints, one look and I can tell. For the desert love print however, I had to look pretty close and hard to find evidence that it's a print."
It just tickles me to think that we are offering better prints than what you could buy at the Disneyland gallery!
There are bound to be a few bumps along the way as we start this up. But, as always, we are open to questions and will assist in the best ways we can. We currently offer three paper types, and soon will be adding more, from brands such as Arches for watercolor paper and Fredrix for canvas. This is only the beginning, and something we are every excited to be a part of. Bring on the art!
[Edit:] Anyone who is a member of either site can set up and sell prints. Just click on the ArtTools tab, and then the Prints tab, and the directions are there. |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 27th, 2007|04:58 am] |
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Things are slightly different. Like a glitch in the Matrix. Can you feel it? More elaboration tomorrow. 8:) |
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| Speed increase! |
[Mar. 6th, 2007|04:16 pm] |
Last night's work went well, and mostly on time! Everyone across the board should feel more responsive page loads, up to 1/5th the data vs. what was being sent before in some instances! I can't wait to see the bandwidth statistics for the next couple days. But then again, I would, wouldn't I?
This is really useful for those on dial-up connections or during congested net-times. |
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| Downtime 3-5am PST, March 6th |
[Mar. 5th, 2007|10:58 pm] |
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It has come to our attention that our site is slow to those on dial-up. We investigated it, and found out why! A few reasons why, in fact! The site will be down tonight for roughly 2 hours starting at 3am Pacific time while I fix this. Obviously, by proxy, broadband users will also feel a speed increase. :) |
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| Maintenance Window, Tues. 2-3am |
[Feb. 5th, 2007|09:51 pm] |
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Starting at 2 a.m. Pacific Time, the data center that ArtSpots resides in is performing network maintenance. There might be hiccups or the server might be unresponsive during this time. It should not last more than an hour. |
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| IRC Channel |
[Jan. 12th, 2007|01:47 am] |
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Due to the inevetable momentum growing towards this, we have created an IRC chat at irc.anthrochat.net 6667, channel #ArtSpots |
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| This afternoon's downtime |
[Jan. 11th, 2007|04:00 pm] |
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I apologize to everyone for the hour or so we were down earlier this afternoon. We had to perform some software upgrades and configuration, and unfortunately it came together at a time when was best for all involved. Everything is up and running again, better than before. :) |
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| Trading Post 2 is up! |
[Jan. 10th, 2007|08:10 am] |
Just as a reminder to everone, the winner of last week's Trading Post, Vizon, is now the new subject of this week's post! Take a look, toss up a piece, anything from a sketch to a finished piece, and get a chance to become the subject of the next TP! Only three more days to enter.
http://www.artspots.com/forum/topic/186 |
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