Pixiv Chat
Now, I've been with Pixiv for about a year now. For those of you who do not know, Pixiv is the Japanese equivalent to Deviantart without all of the drag-you-down popularity competition. That's not to say there aren't popular artists on Pixiv but it seems their fair exposure is actually fair. When you submit, your art is actually on the front page for people to see. When you type in keywords, it doesn't automatically filter out to the most popular in that tag. It goes from order of submission with the newest pieces popping up first.
I really like this.
Anyway, I started using the chat client a few weeks ago because I was curious about oekaki and what it actually was. Turns out, it can be used a nice form of communication! And pixiv has several different clients that can be used as such:
Pixiv Drawr
DrawTwit
And, aside from drawing small little sketch blips in SAI or Manga Studio, having a side little doodle palette online is actually a lot of fun, and it helps to build interest from people in other countries thus stimulation connections between users.
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OKAY, so now that the intro is out of the way I wanted to break down how to use these sites or how I understand it thus far starting with Pixiv Chat:
- #1: "Now on Air" means that the user created a canvas and is actively drawing in the client. To join them, click inside the blue square (and I will cover that screen a little later).
- #2: This is the topic or what the user is doing in the chat. Sometimes, I noticed, people will create different rooms for different things. I've seen rooms range from adult themed inflation to yaoi to random girly doodles.
- #3: This is the user's name
- #4: This tells you how many people are in this persons room.
- #5: I'm not sure what the Japanese says but I think it means: "My page". If you're using the client for the first time it will ask you to log in and all you need to do is log in with your pixiv account ID.
- #6: The "Help" Button
- #7: "Log out"
- #8: This is a typical search bar. I would use the Japanese tags if you're looking for something. For instance if I wanted to find someone drawing "Slayers" stuff I would instead type "スレイヤーズ"
- #9: I believe these are popular tags or recent tags. I'm not quite sure.
(Inactive Room or Expired Session)
- #1: The screen with the giant "Play" button on it is a recording of the session thus far or, if the session has expired, is simply a recording of that session. A few days ago I held a little Slayers: Xellos session to learn the client and using it as an example.
- #2: These are occasional static snapshots that Pixiv takes. I'm not sure how frequent these are but it allows you to click on and it will pop up in another window as an image file.
- #?: I'm unsure what this box does...really.
- #3: The "Subject Line" of the chat room
- #4: Tags list
- #5: A description box.
- #6: Pixiv user information with a clickable link to my user profile.
- #7: A list of users will pop up in this box. Since I was the only one in my room it just counts me.
- #?: Not sure what this box does either...
- #8: A handy-dandy twitter button. This will notify your followers that you are currently in chat or if you want to share what you've done.
- #9: Same thing only a link if you want to post it in FB or another area of the net.
Active room changes:
- #1: If you click a live room this is what the side bar will look like.
- #2: "Log in with your pixiv account"
- #3: "Log in as a guest"
- #1: "Create Room" button
- #2: "To use this software, you must have Java installed" ..I think.
- #3: A view of my user history
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Alrighty!
This is the first installment to the Interface at Pixiv chat. The next blog post I'll go over how to create a room and the third I'll talk about the actual drawing client!
