I was emailed an invite to Artician today. It looks like an alternative to DeviantArt, so I thought I’d give it a try. I got as far as registering, but I’m not sure I’m in love with it.

It still appears to be very much in beta: Uploads not working, import not working, page titles like “Browse -> AJAX TEST -> Browser Photography”, etc…. and that’s just stuff I ran into in a few short minutes.

My biggest beef, though, is that it’s dripping with ads. While I certainly understand the need for them to pay for hosting, bandwidth, and development, but the ads there are obnoxious. I don’t normally see ads, as I run Ad Block Plus, but when trying out a site like this, I’ll check to see how it looks for those poor souls not running APB. They do have a subscription option, but I think a much more appealing model (and site) is to have the paid subscriptions get extra portfolio space, and charge enough to keep the overall ads to a minimum.

And it’s not like DA isn’t covered in ads as well… but it’s too bad, as I’d love to see a good alternative to DA. I don’t see Artician having any anything above and beyond DA, and I doubt that with its bugs and ads it’ll be able to gain a fraction of the user base DA has.

Enough complaining for now… I’ve been slowly but surely catching up on a massive backlog over the past few months. I’ve got tons of new images to share, I’ll be starting on some gallery updates soon!