City of Angels + deviantART HQ

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I'm so terrible, I haven't updated a journal regarding Los Angeles experience and now it has been a week  … I forgot many things from the trip :roll:



We got back to our FL home from L.A. and we lost bags again by Delta airlines. It was again terrible and chaotic flight….


Okay, I was kidding. But actually, it was funny- we were in such big paranoia with the Delta's bad experience.We took 3 heavy bags as carry on and left one bag with least important stuff as baggage lol. But this time all our four flights were very good, no problems and all our bags were fine. Our Delta planes provided personal TV for each passenger! Thanks to Delta I became new fan of beloved series "Dual Survivals"…
But funny thing is, I noticed Delta improved after chaos of thousand baggages where were lost in December along with mine- they made new baggage tracking system. But thats not over of "happiness" with Delta- I saw a huge queues of people where have problems with Delta and missed many flights. So many people were complaining…. I guess this time we're lucky with these airlines…?

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Tv+"Dual Survivals" +not lost bags = I <3 Delta

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Flight over California- hey, there was snow on the summit! Let's bring sleddogs and mush!



After arriving, as usually, we had couple many unexpected problems- which doesn't surprises me anymore- even if you plan the trip very well- ALWAYS expect  that something will go totally wrong. We ended being unable to rent a car. Our trip ruined? Panic? No, I looked for the alternatives. Bikes! We had to ride in whole Santa Monica and LA by bikes. Five hours of biking has gave us embarrassing sunburn on owe faces where we showed to dA with red and ripped off skin faces! :giggle:


deviantART
IMPORTANT: The information about new upcoming dA features and whole v8 are not official. Sure, they are real and directly spoken with dA admins, however it's NOT an official announcement of it. Potentially something may change before the release and such. So please don't take them very seriously. It also concerns to tanathe's journal where I'II put a link.

Then finally a day has came where I was about to knock the heart of deviantART after the four years I've been a member there online.  (or 5..? idk.) We got there by metro railway, red line to Hollywood thus… I was so much more tempted to take blue line where takes to legendary Compton city :XD:. After we got out, jesus what's up with the stinky crowds of people ther… seriously, if I may ask people what is really attractive with Hollywood? Unless if you're fan of Justin Bieber where you'll find tons of paper mannequins of him and nothing else.  It was nice experience to break whole stereotype and myth about sparkly Hollywood, and walk a few streets more from main street… totally shanty and Watts/Inglewood-ish style dirty district. Nice :D

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Red line takes to Hollywood. Purple to historic places and blue… to darkest places of L.A.

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That's main street of Hollywood where tourists who are buying sparkly visions about that place. Nothing but a messy street.


Back to dA HQ.


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L-l-lamaaaa, the h-headmaster of dA

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techgnotic, Heidi, Arkelion, I don't know who is that girl and spyed


1. The best thing that I'm half-brained idiot sometimes. I prepared a decent list of important feedback stuff where I collected many useful notices from you all people, we're about to speak… I lost it. So more I was like empty-brained due to excitement (you know, one day you visit such special place and your brain go" @@@@~~~~~~####****") And many other dumb thing I've made- but hey, at least I'm happy that I belong to people who do something a gaffe, something little stupid I deeply laugh at myself and the situation and keep going on :)
2. I'm happy that Arkelion didn't listen me. I wanted to go to Hollywood from our place (Santa Monica) by BIKE since I'm sport freak, but we got by buses… if he did, jesus…
Mostly we hung up with spyed, Heidi, Mister (I'm sorry but I cant remember the name, once I find it, will replace! :giggle:) and we had pleasure to meet a new friend- techgnotic (Ron) where he took most of his time to spend with us. I must say techgnotic was probably the kindest dude in HQ where we greatly thank for the all time, fun and even help which we had with him.
Not only.
I'm impressed that atmosphere in dA HQ was very friendly and it feels like… returning to home. Yeah I'm not kidding, I've been in many other grand places. It's hard to describe the feeling but it doesn't matter here, I'll keep it to myself.

Anyway.
Being in DA, besides of giving a personal feedback and having friendly hang-up time and such, I also brought an important project where my friend AlectorFencer and I  are working since some time - where brings up an issue about very forgotten part of the Art. A project with it's potential where no one has brought it decently. It maybe has not much related with dA as the community part where most of the time deviants and staff are speaking dA as site of comfortable social community more and - then - my goal was to bring up in cooperation with dA something different, and an art based thing. Our initiative in this project has great potential and especially (which we really hope)  it will be greatly helpful for all the people. So we had to make an epic presentation. Ok, not epic anymore, we have too few of the time. To make a decent and good presentation would even require many weeks of work… believe me, it's quite hard to present your complex idea correctly with it's convincing meaning written in words… woah. So due to very tight time of both us, we had to make… I was one, the writer and Alector was editor, grammar corrector and graphic maker for presentation.


… when I arrived in LA, in our place in Santa Monica.. we had no internet so I had to rush a few miles to Starbucks coffee to catch the internet and FINALLY get presentation done on time. I got a note from ALector, I went all "YAY" and *downloads presentation*.


… and I didn't read her final version of presentation where actually in front of showing to dA had some amusing mistakes…

… well, I expected it to be written as same as we were discussing on emails/notes but just in case I imagined that I'll stand on the front of projector and speak more deeply about the concept of that our project if the text of presentation doesn't enough presents the vision of our project…

… but back to the reality, in reality, yes in reality I was on the front of presentation. In TOTALLY silence.  Especially spyed came here out of curiosity with what I'm about to show.
Normally whole scene looked from an american comedy film.

:giggle:
  

But at the end, that project came out okay until… yes now we've learned the main mistake- we didn't specified the mission/help for addressed people where I present presentation. If you present to someone/company it, they are not about just to hear out the project but have specified mission/request of it. So after that, Heidi asked us "how we can help?"…. it torn me into "o- shit!" :lol: Yes, in original and full version of grand presentation I planned up panels like: intro, the goal, (main) concept of the project, effects etc and THEN important part we included where is about the help/support/volunteering/sponsoring but for really short-version, we decided to throw away part of "help" and such
:shrug:
So we learned that everywhere you want to present to someone, the help and what you expect from that person/company needs to be clearly specified no matter what. Hurry is a no good friend of us!
Anyway, everything is okay and I think it touched dA just in general concept of meaning. I must mention on public a huge thank you to AlectorFencer for joining in this and all her work so far :hug:

So, what's that our project? It will be written in some next journals of mine if we'll be ready to present it on public light!


And then spyed invited us to his office to present us upcoming dA features. And jesus, HUGE thanks to vesner for writing up that journal where if I had to write alone what v8 brings after what I've seen… Please read there:
tanathe.deviantart.com/journal…

In a few words of mine…. mainly I see big improvement are Journals on dA. No more "classic" journals.  I'll say, I like it. The usage of them will be much more pleasing, exciting and especially more useful… like let's say, you can make pretty nice travel reports, articles and instead making a tutorial files as art deviation you can write up simply in journal. I so loved that finally in journals you can easily put images and more effectively. However, I am still not convinced with +favourite on journals.
Yes.
Yes, officially in new dA you'll have possibility  to +fav in exactly same way as you fav artwork, and it will have displayed magical number of favorites. I already explained in my past journals WHY I'm against and awakening another race of popularity. However, it wont be as horrible as I (we) thought.
As tanathe hasn't mentioned but very relieving option is where you can set journal in way as you want. People who used to cherish journals as personal corner, they can set it on privacy level. Like only your watchers can watch it.
There were other fancy stuff, but I'll leave to surprise by yourself when it comes :P

In general, to summarize new dA's revolution is- you can set and view dA as you want and fit to your individual needs!
You cannot make dA into perfection, because everyone's views are different. Ones want have fav+ journal and spreadout, race with popularity and another wants to have set as personal art corner another want to look professional etc. With new v8 is more like a free-choice where  you can fit your needs.
Again, please don't take completely seriously what I wrote and that concept is exactly like- it's what I've seen and understood! We'll see in practice how it works. And yes my face wasn't all "omg it gonna be awesome" and I was all " hmm.. we'll see how it will go in practice" : |
PS: I have not seen any coffee machine in kitchen where vesner plans to piss when system fails. *lol*

And then in pack we went to SUSHI restaurant. Yay.
I can't remember what exactly we were discussing, mostly were lolz stuff, how Arnaq bitches all bitches, and then spyed brought an interesting question… which would be worthy to think in future. You know, dA plans to put a commission tab in new v8. I'll have to experiment it in practical way in the future, it's about commissions- a thread concerning many dA users, which is not often spoken.

I wish had more useful and safe 18-200mm lens.. but I ended having wildlife 70-200mm lens for this trip, where Mister tried to take a group photo of us from my camera, since they were for long-distance so he risked his life standing on middle of street where drivers were driving quite fast. Good job mr. thank you for risking your life for epic photo! It can be viewed here:


hq.deviantart.com/blog/4068775…



Later we split I hung just with techgnotic, Arkelion and spyed on night walk in Hollyshi- erm, wood where they took us to drink bar where I was only who wanted to pour out that drink away in toilet. When Angelo was talking about world tour, it gave me to think in what direction deviantART is heading. So much of changes has happened in social community on network business has happened after devTour'ing around the world.

(…)

Santa Monica

Not only dA was focus of our trip but exploring the mysterious city of Angels for seeking inspiration, meeting with wonderful people because I wanted to find some answers for myself- where later in future I'd love to share with everyone.

The City of Angels is very inspiring place and wow.. aaa… look at those tall palmtrees.
Mostly I enjoyed the dark side of that city and it's style… not many people can understand what is "nice" in poor districts. Where everyone is chasing to Hollywood to photograph and spread that happy sparklylife, where I'm dreaming I could do a good photojournal reportage of dark districts where expresses real life and it's problems- the Compton City, the darkest side-city of Los Angeles. Anyway, some photos:

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Venice Beach. The most artistic place in unique style- many punks, artists, skate-y, hippies, weed-smokers, metals, indians and well some gangs.

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Pissed seagulls on photographers. Yes they attack people in Venice

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Venice is full of action.

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Venice's Native America shop. For animal lovers, there were so many beautiful real native sculptures and stuff of symbolic animals such like wolves!

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We're living and traveling on bikes since there were perfect conditions… so many reasons to love L.A. since they support sport and nature activity

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Hiking in trails with Drayok and Arkelion

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Crazy palmtrees on 6th street in Santa Monica

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Six hours of biking…

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… and seven hours of walking every day.


We also met a guy named Marek Probosz who is an actor and professor with a respect of grand film schools in Hollywood, who lead his life and dreams into successful way. I admire him not because he's actor where media says it's cool to be actor and work in Hollyshit. But because what he has archived in his life by it's all hard work and his wisdom of life experience. I say, he is absolutely wonderful guy. We greatly thank him for helping us and setting us to live in Santa Monica and for the inspiration where we did hang with him.
Then we went to Traveller's house with him, a man who used to travel all around the world and mostly we were speaking about life related stuff and travels- it truly confirms that traveling (not luxury traveling, to hotel and having vacations- absolutely not. But experience ones, like extremal trips, challenging with nature, traveling for yourself to find yourself and just simply immigration to work or live.) very strongly leads you to better understanding the world and trains your natural thinking where absolutely no schools can give.
My friend Arkelion had rough time to find out in himself and felt desperate that he feels lost in his life and down for having no success in his life (especially after comparing to successful people from dA HQ…) but I hope Marek and I helped him out. Marek told a story about his friends who were gray people having troubles in finding dreams, but now are the most successful people who had great privilege to work with "Black Swan" movie.


And one thing,  a receipt to your life become as a failure is when you compare to others.   
It same goes with art.
If you keep comparing your art to great artists and getting down how you suck no matter how hardly you'll try, you'll fail in art. Never rise.
Again people are forgetting to take care and simply look inside of themselves, but they are constantly looking on others.

At the end of our trip we met with Drayok! It was great to meet you!  :hug:


Thank you so much for spyed, Heidi, techgnotic and as well whole dA $taff, Marek and his friends, Drayok for everything! As I'm still young, I learned many things on that trip.  As well to Arkelion, my friend too ; -)


ps: :empllama:









*lol*

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veritasBtold's avatar
I guess you didn't take Arnaq to LA... awwww... :/
sounds like you guys had lots of fun! and Im glad that you're putting more pictures of yourself online. it's always fun to see what the real artists look like, cause believe it or not you can actually tell a lot from an action picture of a person. :) and what i'm getting is that your loud and your guy friend from FL is more quiet.... but I could be wrong...
anyway glad your haveing fun and hope you were able to make some sort of change in the DA HQ! (you should have done some small grafettii in their bathroom for them to find weeks later! :XD: lol )