Angelo Sotira is the CEO of DeviantArt, the world’s largest online community for artists and art enthusiasts. In 2000, at only 19 years old, Angelo co-founded DeviantArt for people to share media player "skins” they had designed alongside other artwork. The site evolved into a community where digital artists could meet, share their artwork and exchange feedback with one another. DeviantArt allows emerging and established artists to create, exhibit, promote and sell their works within a peer community dedicated to the arts. Work and styles range from traditional media, such as painting, drawing, photography and sculpture, to digital art, pixel art, films and anime.
More people visit DeviantArt in ten days than visit all of the world’s top museum exhibits in a year. DeviantArt is where people see art first, it is where art starts, where boundaries are pushed and new genres of art originate and flourish.
The DeviantArt Mobile App will expand the digital experience to hand-held devices and reveal a full range of exciting, fresh and culturally relevant content from traditional media such as painting, drawing, photography and sculpture to digital art, pixel art, anime and fan art.
The objective of the new app is to increase the accessibility of the arts by giving users, new and old, a mobile access point to browse endless streams of content as well as a way to communicate with and submit to the community 24/7.
Simply put, the DeviantArt Mobile App is the world's largest art gallery in your hand.
Key features of the DeviantArt Mobile App include:
Today Page – every day, the editorial team will draw from and reflect back to the community a vibrant combination of news, features, curations and conversations.
What’s Hot, Undiscovered, Daily Deviations and Explore – gives users ways to be liberated and inspired with extraordinary images drawn from an art collection powered by some thirty million artists and curators on DeviantArt. Features like “More Like This” associate images through member-curated Collections to provide endless entertainment and inspiration while traveling through the app by browsing layers of similar art.
Status Updates – post short updates and in-phone camera images in a simple and direct format that lets users create informal conversations with watchers. Status updates allow users to share how they’re feeling, what they’re thinking, what they’re working on or to share the work of an artist they love.
Watch Feed – a personalized and easy-to-access feed of every Journal, Collection or Status Update posted by watchlist.
Notifications – the communication center of the app where users can manage all mentions, replies and other messages.
Submit – submit art and literature to DeviantArt or compose a status update to initiate rich visual conversations.
The DeviantArt Mobile App is available as a free download on the App Store and Google Play.
One of my favorite features is “Tap and Hold”. With the “Tap and Hold” technology, users can travel far beyond the initial deviation with easy access to favorites, sharing and finding similar art. The “More like This” option is the ultimate rabbit hole for browsing more content based off of preference, my personal favorite feature in the new app.
It’s the world’s largest art gallery in the palm of your hand and you don’t need a membership to spend countless hours in it. The DeviantArt Mobile App brings creativity to people at scale, entertaining the world with art. We ended up making DeviantArt an even more immersive, bigger experience than on the web. On the web, it’s hard to take an entire screen to focus on one image. But on mobile you can really appreciate one piece of art, which makes it a great place to start.
Over thirty percent of existing traffic is via mobile devices. We have 33 million registered members and over 65 million monthly unique visitors. We look to mobile to significantly expand both participation and traffic. Without question, with the mobile app, more art will be seen by more people than ever before.
The SketchBook Team proudly supports DeviantArt with integration in our mobile apps. Download them now and check it out! Get inspired, get drawing, and join the official DeviantArt community for SketchBook.