"But there is a lot of unimaginative junk around." lol, i guess that would include people like myself and rio, since we didnt make your little 'talent qualifying' list and are high up on the hot20 right now. now you can bash me all you want, i could care less. but when you insult a very original piece that she spent so much time and effort painting, it irks me. i submitted my 'cheesecake' image, went to bed, and when i woke up i was told by a friend that i had 33 votes. big deal. same thing for rio's image. and yeah i did vote for her and her for me, but thats one vote out of 40 or so. but who the fuck are you to decide who is talented and who isnt? who has imagination and who doesnt? art is the most subjective thing on earth, and while everyone has the right to formulate their own personal opinions on it, they have no right to publicly tear it apart. all i hear are some people bitching because theyre not on the hot20 and others are. i dont like the voting system - honestly i think it should go back to unique hits rather than votes, because friends and popularity will inadvertantly give you a boost to your chances of getting up there. and i know about some of the things that popular artists do here - some, that i wont name here, message their friends and people in their newsgroups asking them to vote for their image. but just because some people do it (and these are pretty easy to distinguish from the rest, since pretty much any run-of-the-mill image or product promo they do instantly pops up in the hot 20), it doesnt mean that everyone does. i havent (to my knowledge) been in the hot20 in ages, and rio hasnt either. the most i will do is send a quick IM to a couple of my closest renderosity friends and tell them that ive posted a new image in my gallery, and they do the same for me. its a simple 'hey man, look what i just painted' type thing. i didnt ask to be up there, nor particularly want to be, but just because i am should i be pigeonholed into some category of talentless, unimaginative losers who have their friends vote them in? as for "You know what I consider cheating? Making a thumbnail that is only part of the picture. That's cheating. I hate it. And if I suspect the thumbnail isn't the whole thing, I don't click. So there.", thats the silliest thing ive ever heard. a lot of artists post closeups of [part of the image so that the browser can see the level of detail involved. also, theres a widespread browser mentality out there that if they see the entire image posted in the thumbnail, theyll figure theyve seen all there is to see and move on, unless the subject particularly interests them. if youre deliberately not clicking on these images, lol, the only person youre 'cheating' is yourself. and as for attention junkies, your little hero legume is the biggest one that ever lived. interesting that some of you look up to someone who messages entire newsgroups urging people to create renderosity accounts solely for the purpose of voting him and his friends artist of the month, and then brags about it. pfft. cheerio, -gabriel