Do you go to PIXIV.net?

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TsukiShima
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Do you go to PIXIV.net?

#1 Post by TsukiShima »

I'm curious, guys.

I know that PIXIV is an art website in Japanese, it's more advance that DeviantArt.com and most of the talented people (especially Japanese people) are there.

After browsing a few anime pictures, I found out that mostly all the artworks in PIXIV are high quality and professional. I feel that I have a long way to go when I compare myself to them. Their ways of handling things in the website are different as well.

Recently, I'm thinking of creating an account in PIXIV, but I don't know much of Japanese and I fear of ruining their good qualities. Tbh, a long time ago, I refrained myself from making one, but suddenly it changed.
So I was wondering, do you made a PIXIV account, even when you're not Japanese?
What is the basic I should know about it?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of joining?

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Re: Do you go to PIXIV.net?

#2 Post by Desu_Cake »

Yup, I'm on Pixiv, although I haven't even uploaded any pictures yet. The shame!

Pixiv has all the low quality artwork you're used to as well (It's not quite as bad as deviantart though), it's just the way the site is laid out that it hides them better.

One of the major advantages of joining is that, like nicovideo, it restricts access to guests to parts of the site. Joining will get around that.
But yeah, since I haven't actually uploaded anything, I don't know what the community is like at all.

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Re: Do you go to PIXIV.net?

#3 Post by LateWhiteRabbit »

I don't have any experience with the site, but I checked it out after reading your post. I especially find it amusing that you can filter the "most popular" lists by male and female vote! That shows some . . . uh, differences in voting criteria. Haha.

They certainly have good art on display, but I've seen art of just as high quality on DeviantArt. Yes, you have to wade through sub-par art to get to it, but with the proper filters applied for browsing some truly amazing art appears.

It all depends on WHY you want to be on PIXIV.net - you said yourself that you still have a ways to go in improving your art. I bring this up not because I believe you would "ruin" their quality by mixing yourself with them (I actually think it is good for artists to be forced into higher caliber company), but that you wouldn't gain out of it the experience you should because you don't know Japanese.

The main benefit of mixing with more experienced and better artists is to have them critique your artwork and provide constructive criticism and tips, but you lose all that because you don't speak the same language as them. Some of the best improvement to my own art came when I was working with two former Disney illustrators and animators. I had to really work hard and up my game to avoid feeling humiliated by comparison! But I learned a lot too, because whenever they pointed out something I was doing wrong I made sure never to do that again.

My advice would be to keep browsing PIXIV.net for inspiration and try to emulate and bring your skill up to that level by doing honest comparisons between your work and theirs on your own, and continue posting your work on DeviantArt so you can get feedback and criticisms in a language you can understand. Specifically ask for constructive criticism and feedback on your art, then be sure to APPLY that advice. If posters see you taking their tips to heart, you will start getting better and better feedback, possibly from some high caliber artists. Many of them, like me, are happy to give out advice and tips, but we only usually do so for someone we see has the drive to make improvements. Don't make excuses for your art - just try and take everything you learn from one piece and apply it to the next and you WILL get better.

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Re: Do you go to PIXIV.net?

#4 Post by Sapphi »

I have an account there, but I haven't posted anything yet. Like you, I don't want to "ruin" their network with my "inferior" pictures. :P

I love browsing their images, though. I just wish that the search results stayed in the same order every time I made a search.
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Re: Do you go to PIXIV.net?

#5 Post by Omnificent »

I generally browse Danbooru (for shonen/some seinen/most video games/some VN stuff/hilarious comment strings) and Zerochan (for shoujo/other seinen/VNs) in order to get sort of the best-of selection of Pixiv, venturing into Pixiv mostly to retrieve fanart of ridiculously obscure manga/Japanese game characters. I think that otherwise it's pretty much similar to DeviantArt in terms of exposure and art quality, though a Pixiv account is nice because you get to see full-sized images.
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Re: Do you go to PIXIV.net?

#6 Post by TsukiShima »

Thank you for your feedback guys. I really do appreciate it. And I guess a big thank you LateWhiteRabbit for your words of encouragement, it really do help.

I guess I'll wait a little bit more for myself to be there. I'll need to study Japanese as well in order to understand the website, atleast that's a good start.
But I really was amazed of how PIXIV works and how clean the website looks like.

I must say that there are some PIXIV members come to DeviantArt. (though most didn't last)

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Re: Do you go to PIXIV.net?

#7 Post by LVUER »

I went there and found that it's a nice place (and seems neater than DA, but I don't understand Japanese, so...) but it's more or less the same with DA, there are good artists and far more beginner artists.

I've forget the sites, but I know there are several sites (one of them is frequently visited by my friends to download godly illustration) where all the artist are professionals and they are all really good.
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Re: Do you go to PIXIV.net?

#8 Post by Celestie »

I love to browse through the daily rankings. At first of course I never was able to read the tags, lately I am a bit better at it (if they do not contain kanji I haven't learned yet). Nowadays you don't even need to register to see the images 8D
*pending signature, as in, I don't have any if this signature doesn't allow any 100px high images TAT*

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Re: Do you go to PIXIV.net?

#9 Post by TsukiShima »

Hmm.. I'm the type who doesn't know much, so some the art sites I know are PIXIV (the only japanese one that I know), dA (the main art site), Manga Bullet, err.. I'm sure I got a few more but I can't remember.
Celestie wrote:I love to browse through the daily rankings. At first of course I never was able to read the tags, lately I am a bit better at it (if they do not contain kanji I haven't learned yet). Nowadays you don't even need to register to see the images 8D
Eh? Well, we can see the images without registering, but not the full-sized images, right?
I also don't understand the part where they got that 'book style' frame on some arts.
I rarely go there actually, but when it's hard to find fanarts of some of my fav stuff (I remember how little Fate/Extra fanarts back at their first release) I go to PIXIV.

Then, I feel like I'll make an account on PIXIV later, I should focus on my arts first then!

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Re: Do you go to PIXIV.net?

#10 Post by Celestie »

HanaMori wrote: Eh? Well, we can see the images without registering, but not the full-sized images, right?
That's right. Sorry that I didn't specify that (honestly, I never checked about the full-size images xD). It's just when I started to register you weren't even able to see the normal image, THAT is the one thing that changed now xD

Zerochan.net has a lot but of course not all Pixiv fanart uploaded with easier English tags. Stuff like comics (as in the fanarts taht contain multiple pages) usually aren't or are only partly uploaded on zerochan, and of course zerochan uploads fanart of different sources as well. Pixiv is a really nice page and I think the pixiv Facebook posts some of their events and translations in English of these events sometimes as well. It would still be helpful if you understand Japanese, I just learned to browse rather blindly through the site xDDD
*pending signature, as in, I don't have any if this signature doesn't allow any 100px high images TAT*

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Re: Do you go to PIXIV.net?

#11 Post by Omnificent »

For tags, I tend to look up the Japanese names on Wikipedia then copy-paste into the search bar. Certain stuff is easier to figure out if you're using Chrome, though (pages get translated automatically).
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Re: Do you go to PIXIV.net?

#12 Post by Pugfarts »

I was using some english plugins for a while that made navigation a lot easier, but I guess the plugins expired.. which sucks. It's nice to have an account so you can subscribe and favorite pictures you like. I don't submit art as much.

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Re: Do you go to PIXIV.net?

#13 Post by Celestie »

Sometimes Rikaichan/Rikaikun help as plugins...? Or that is what our Japanese professor suggested to us.

And about tags, sometimes you have rather unique pairing names, so I tend to look at one picture and try out all the tags there xDDDD
*pending signature, as in, I don't have any if this signature doesn't allow any 100px high images TAT*

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Re: Do you go to PIXIV.net?

#14 Post by Keilis »

Pixiv is a site any anime/manga/Japanese game-lover should go to. The difference between Pixiv and dA is that Pixiv is almost completely concentrated in anime/manga-styled drawings. No photography. No cosplay. Little-to-no crafts. It's a great place if you want ONLY that kind of art. I get really annoyed at dA because I can't filter some of the categories there. However, there's still plenty of traffic and submissions being made, i.e. you'll find a lot more there in terms of anime/manga material.

Secondly, because Pixiv is mostly used by the Japanese, who are exposed to anime on TV, the site tends to be more up-to-date with currently airing anime. See their current daily/weekly rankings versus what dA has. On Pixiv, you'll find plenty of Fate/Zero, Hunter x Hunter (2011), and some lingering Uta Pri from last season. dA, on the other hand, has some anime pictures, but most are fairly outdated and don't reflect the current trends in Japan. If you like keeping up with what's popular in Japan, Pixiv's got it. :)

Lastly, the reason why I dared to traverse on Pixiv was because there wasn't enough Basara art to go around on dA. All I found were... pretty much crappy fan-arts, with the exception of some. On Pixiv, oh no, there was a plethora of Basara goodness circulating that you'd never find on dA. Another advantage Pixiv has to dA is that you'll find fan-art for titles that are niche in the West, because it's so concentrated in drawings and there's a large fan base there for almost anything.

You can definitely look at Zerochan to find the best of Pixiv, but sometimes Zerochan still misses stuff. Those that upload on Zerochan tend to be English speakers, and their tastes may differ from those of Pixiv. For example, I wanted to find some Street Fighter art, but there was very little on Zerochan because they're not much of a gaming community. I had to look through Pixiv to find a pretty good selection. You can actually use pixivrank.net for better searches (you'll need to know Japanese to read it). If you don't know Japanese, just find out what the series' title is in Japanese, and Google that title + pixivrank (e.g. 戦国BASARA pixivrank). If it's popular enough, there should be a ranking for it.

And to be frank, the talent there is amazing. You'll find so many great pictures because it's concentrated ONLY on anime-esque art. While dA is sort of a jack-of-all-trades for art in general, Pixiv is a specialist in anime art, you could say. I much prefer looking at Pixiv stuff than dA, because their quality of anime art is much better and higher in quantity. Creating an account there doesn't change much, except you can view there stuff in full-size, which is pretty important. As for their Novels, they're just a series of pictures all uploaded as one submission (dA really needs this feature), that's all. They tend to be doujinshi that you can't read, but some are a bunch of illustrations clumped into one. I skipped them when I first started on Pixiv, but then I realized I was missing a lot of great pictures because I wasn't going through them. They tend to be more of doodles or quick sketches, but they're really cool to look through nonetheless.

Post too long. e_e

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Re: Do you go to PIXIV.net?

#15 Post by TsukiShima »

I'm not sure of how plugins would help, but I'm going to try them out, if they can help me as well. Learning a little bit about japanese kanji won't hurt I guess. I did the same way Omni did honestly, I searched for their Japanese title and paste them into the search bar.

@Keilis, no, thank you for the long and detailed comment! But now you're making 'want' to join pixiv.net even more. I did saw that series of artworks, but I can't excess it as I'm a guest. Other than looking at their artworks, I also want to join the groups there since they seem more, um, experienced than dA.
I guess if I ever decide to join pixiv later, it would be because I want to search for the fanarts. But I fear that I would be an outcast there and won't have any friends to help me. It took me long to understand dA and I'm sure it would be longer to understand that japanese website >__<

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