There are a few tools out there that monitor searches. The one I used for this one was the Overture keyword tool, on their site (I think it was just UK searches I looked at)

Last month, 5% of all Google users who searched for "Renderosity" misspelled it as "Renderocity" 4% of searchers included another word. That word was always "Poser" :( All interesting stuff...

If you want to get into 3D, concentrate on Lightwave and learn it to death. This will take all of your time - at least 18 months to get a good knowledge of it. If you want to do digital painting, buy Painter 8. But there's no point in doing digital painting unless you have a tablet, preferably a Wacom. Image and photo manips and basic painting - use Photoshop. Poser's OK to have a laugh with, but I'd advise on just using it to get used to anatomy / proportions.

27 individual segments is a little excessive. Based on what's there, 18 segments would suffice, or 19 if "blank" segments are required in the main body of the graphic. If the links were text, you'd still need a minimum of 8 graphics. The point is you cannot have "one big graphic", either background or foreground or any-damn-ground. HTML does not work like that. The fact that corners, etc. are defined separately is a basic concept in web design. There is no other sensible way of doing it. (If text was being used then a background graphic could indeed be implemented. However, this would be extremely bad design because the border graphics would not expand to accommodate changes in text size, and anyone doing this should be shot immediately and their body disposed of in secrecy.)

""Slicing" is applicable in the case of large images - what benefit does it have for an image that should be less then 50kb? " :| ??? How are you going to get individual links if you use a single graphic? (Apart from using hotspots - ahem...)

IE is currently the most popular browser and this is why its security flaws are targetted by these malicious programs. If Netscape increases in popularity, they will target Netscape too, with exactly the same results. It has nothing to do with IE being unsecure and Netscape being in any way better (Netscape is more bugged than IE for rendering HTML) From the article:- "NetSec's Houlahan advocated drastic action. "I told my wife, unless it is absolutely necessary and unless you are going to a site like our banking site, stay off the Internet right now," he said. " This guy sounds nuts to me. I just hope nobody's listening to him...

It wasn't OT anyway, it was US politics.

I agree with that - I'll always make a comment on what I do like before I say what I don't like :)

Forgot the ;) after my first paragraph. Sorry if it seemed harsh, Ardiva, but it is my view :) DragonWizard - I probably wasn't harsh enough with you/

Ardiva - that's not criticism, constructive or otherwise. If people can't take a well-meant comment then that's a reflection on them rather than the commenter. If someone put a gun to my head and said it's either "I can just picture..." or a bullet in the brain, I'd be forced to take the bullet. DragonWizard - please, stop whining. Personally, I'd pay good money to get decent constructive criticism on my artwork. If someone takes the time to give me advice, even if it's obviously wrong, I'm over the moon and I'll personally thank them. I cannot understand why people would want only comments that say "awesome" or "bitchrod, dude!" What's the point of it? It's nice to get good feedback, but if you're going to throw a hissy fit every time someone tries to be constructive then maybe it's better to disable comments and send yourself an email stating "I am an awesome artist" 100 times. It's that kind of attitude that makes people not want to give proper critiques, for fear of receiving an angry response in return, or one of your "nice" PMs (shakin in my boots), and that deprives a lot of people of the chance to learn from others and improve. Some time ago I used to give critiques to people and almost every time I got back a PM thanking me for taking the time to comment (I still have the PMs on my old account). I wouldn't bother now though, I'd likely get an earful from someone who already knows it all.

Hmm... just checked out the image linked to. If this image is a (c) violation then it may well be the fault of the site that supplied the compenent parts rather than the artist. My comment about separate categories still stands, however.

"viewers see something WE KNOW is copyrighted we cant do anything because we are just viewers" Why not comment on the image and inform the mods? That's what I've done in the past. But I agree, there's so much of this stuff goes on it's overwhelming. I honestly didn't know about "tubes" until a month or so back - I'd never heard of them. Personally I'd go even further and say that art created using the art of others, be it tubes or stock or whatever, be given a separate category. That way the skills of a person who simply cuts and pastes will never get ranked against the person who creates a completely original work from scratch.

Is this really still going on?

:|

Sell them on ebay. Boris oils fetch from 2 to 5K each (some more, I believe); I assume pencils will be less, but you should still get a fair amount...