From a “robo-jark” joke
to “DreamUp AI Art”

The August 15, 2000 capture of deviantart.com is a grey-green portal in three narrow columns of small type. The headline in the middle says Deliciously Devious Deviant Art Opens! and under it deviously serving the art community since August 2000. DeviantArt dates its own birthday to August 7, 2000.^[1]

The left menu lists the sections in this order: Application Skins, Art Packs, Independent Art, Wallpaper, Screenshots, Themes, Textures, Interfaces, Designs and Fonts. Skins come first.

The news column reads like a forum for people who rebuild their desktops. jark posts about a new Litestep build and the geOShell alternative shell. matteo announces a 1.1 GHz AMD Athlon and SkinnyMix, a freeform skinnable volume control replacement for Windows. The Daily Deviation is the winamp deviation "thredz" by dangeruss.

The small print is the best part. The logo’s alt text credits its maker, logo thanks to tech13. At the very bottom the server reports how long it took to build the page: [page rendering and processing was a mere 0.828118 seconds].

By June 22, 2001 a wide illustrated banner sits over the portal, and the browser tab adds a line: deviantART - where art meets application :: we love you! Under the welcome a counter has appeared: :: deviously serving the art and skin community for 319 days ::, then :: 46 days until our first birthday :: and established August 7, 2000. The sum is exact. 319 days after August 7, 2000 is the day of this capture.

The category tree now prints a number after every folder. Skins for WinAMP 2 have 575 entries and WinAMP 3 has 8. Further down than our screenshot reaches, the capture’s text adds up the list: [ 42179 Deviations ].

The May 28, 2002 capture puts Recent Deviation Submissions, a grid of thumbnails, in the middle of the page. The top of the page has an ad slot and a line for anyone tired of it: Tired of banner advertising? Become a deviantART Subscriber and remove advertising ! The counter box now has a title, deviantART dot com Loves You, and it says 659 days, 71 days until our second birthday.

In the June 15, 2004 capture the illustrated masthead is gone. A thin, widely spaced deviantART wordmark sits over a row of menu icons: Browse, Shop, Today, Forum, Software, Services and Help & FAQ. Grey-green panels of Recent Deviation Submissions fill the middle, and a small line in the sidebar counts the whole site: Deviations: 6,113,280. The counter says 1,408 days, Only 53 days until our fourth birthday!

A year later, on June 16, 2005, the number sits at the top right of the page: 12,996,898 deviations. Below it the art comes in three rows, Recent Deviations, Today’s Prints and Today’s Favourites.

The right column has an opinion poll that asks the members about the staff: Does the deviantART staff do enough to promote and highlight the deviations submitted on a daily basis? Sorta leads the results shown, with 42 percent and 5,483 votes. No has 33 percent and Yes 26.

jark’s profile from April 2004 describes him in the site’s own deadpan: the yellow alien, is a Loathed Administrator, is located in Japan, has 363,004 pageviews. One line dates his account: is a deviant since Jul 14, 2000, more than three weeks before the birthday the homepage counts from.

The September 16, 2006 capture is our first homepage after version 5 of deviantART, and it is almost all pictures. Rows of thumbnails under Newest, Popular and Prints fill the screen, and a panel on the right says Become a Deviant! and Join the largest art community in the world! The v5 release notes of August 8, 2006 put it plainly: The front page is art only for now. A planned customize button was missing, with a two-word reason: Bug delay.^[2]

The same notes promised MOODS, so members could watch the communities range of emotion fluctuate throughout the day, and a Flash embed that showed a deviation’s thumbnail on anyone’s blog.^[2]

The counter moved into a notice titled deviantART Loves You: Deviously serving the art and skin community for 2,231 days. Only 325 days until our seventh birthday! Skins were no longer in the top menu, but the counter still served them.

The June 2007 and June 2008 captures keep the rows of art and the Become a Deviant! panel, and the number at the top keeps climbing.

jark’s profile in May 2008 finally says who he is: Status: Co-Founder, under a name line that reads Scott is *THE* Yellow Alien. Next to it, Subscribed till hell freezes over! The page counts 2,155,223 pageviews.

From June 16, 2009 the homepage opens straight on a browse page. A category rail runs down the left, the middle shows Most popular deviations, and a deviantWEAR box under the rail advertises the site’s own clothing.

In the June 14, 2010 capture the code of the Shop menu lists Buy Art Buy deviantWEAR and Buy adCast Buy Premium Upgrade, and the login menu’s code has a checkbox labeled Let me login from more than one device. In the deviantWEAR rail sits an item called Llama Llama. Llamas were a deviantART thing that year: the help center says its llama badges, which members give each other, launched in 2010, one llama per member for each recipient.^[3]

The counter at the bottom reads Only 54 days until our tenth birthday!

The site planned that birthday offline. A staff journal published on July 27, 2010 invited members to a party at the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles on August 7, 2010, in a room for up to 1,600 deviants.^[1]

The June 16, 2011 capture’s menu code includes dA muro and Discover beta; in June 2012 the code also has Sta.sh. The art grid stays pale green, with a category list on the left and a caption row under every tile.

The footer starts to count people as well as pictures. In June 2012 it says Proudly showing 223 million pieces of art from over 22 million registered artists and art appreciators; a year later the same line says 258 million pieces of art from over 27 million registered artists and art appreciators. Above it, the site spells out its own name like a dictionary entry, deviantART [ dee·vee·un'nt·ART].

The June 2013 page has a poll, What is your preferred drawing software? The answers start with the site’s own deviantART muro, then MS Paint, then Autodesk SketchBook, ArtRage and Photoshop, and the poll counts ( 109,719 votes).

The footer also carries the old counter one last time: Deviously serving the art and skin community for 4,695 days. In the next capture it is gone.

On December 16, 2014 the browser tab says DeviantArt - The largest online art gallery and community. The lowercase d and the shouting ART are gone from the name, and so is the line about applications. The top of the page is an ad for the site itself, a phone banner with GET IT NOW: The DeviantArt Mobile App is Here! The world's largest art gallery in your hand is now available on iOS and Android.

Twelve days earlier spyed had presented the new brand in a journal. The green symbol and the letters are cut at a 62-degree angle. The font is Calibre (not Calibri), from the Klim foundry, and the green has a code, DA Green #05CC47. The post counted 32 million registered members.^[4]

The same journal answered the question fans of the old mascot were asking: If you haven’t met Fella, he’s our mascot, and he’s not going anywhere.^[4] The header on this capture already shows the new slashed symbol beside the stacked white wordmark.

The June 15, 2015 homepage sorts the art into named rows. The first is called Undiscovered, the second Daily Deviations, and Today’s News comes after them. The Shop menu’s code says Buy Premium Membership in June 2015 and Buy Core Membership in June 2016.

In February 2017 Wix closed its purchase of all of DeviantArt’s stock, for about $36 million in cash, about $3 million of it in assumed liabilities. Wix put the community at over 40 million registered members and over 325 million original works.^[5] Nothing on the June 2017 homepage mentions it.

That page, dated Thursday, June 15, 2017, says Welcome to DeviantArt! and leads with What’s Hot. The first tile’s alt text names it Ahri D.va crossover by sakimichan, and the line under it reads 122 deviants commented on this. Further down, a whole band belongs to a game: Overwatch Anniversary Celebration.

In June 2018 the homepage is a browse page again, and the tab says so: Browse Popular 24 Hours | DeviantArt. The visible sort list on the left ends with More ..., and its code holds two more choices, Popular All Time and, last, Way Back.

On November 14, 2018 DeviantArt showed beta testers a new site called Eclipse. It promised Header Art for profiles and a Love Meter for showing taste in art, and it had an exit: testers could click their avatar and choose Back to Old Version.^[6] A week later the team counted more than 4,000 testers and nearly 1,700 reports, 407 of them bugs.^[7]

The February 1, 2019 capture is the last old homepage in this rewind: the green browse layout, the category list and a new tab title, DeviantArt - Discover The Largest Online Art Gallery and Community.

jark’s profile from 2010 and 2018 tracks the paid plan’s name in one joke. In 2010 it says Premium Member 'til Hell freezes over, in May 2018 Core Member 'til Hell freezes over, with 2,725,527 pageviews and Deviant for 17 Years. The journal shown in May 2018 is titled jark.me - my new home on the internets and dated March 24, 2012.

The June 15, 2020 capture is Eclipse. The pale green is gone. A near-black header holds HOME, MORE, SEARCH, JOIN and LOG IN and a green SUBMIT, and under it three tabs: POPULAR, TOPICS and DAILY DEVIATIONS. The art fills big dark tiles, sorted by Popular 24 hours. The logo’s slashed symbol has turned from green to mint.

Below the tiles come two rows, Explore Topics and Explore Black Lives Matter; the second starts with a picture titled Obama - Black Lives Matter. In the page’s code the Submit menu lists seven options: Deviation, Status update, Journal, Literature, Commission, Poll and DA Muro.

Not every member wanted the change. On May 20, 2020 a Change.org petition was started under the title Bring the old DeviantART site back or fix Eclipse!^[8] Twenty-six days later, this capture shows the Eclipse homepage in place.

The June 15, 2021 capture drops the tabs. The visible heading reads Home, and edge-to-edge artwork cards run down a dark feed, with a slim icon rail on the left.

On July 1, 2021 DeviantArt announced Protect. It used image recognition to flag newly uploaded work that might copy art already on the site. Every new deviation was covered for three months, and an active Core membership extended it indefinitely.^[9]

By June 16, 2022 Protect is in the homepage’s Submit menu, which opens on a click. Its code puts a tag on it, New!, and a slogan under the name: DeviantArt Protect, We got your back. The visible header has a search box labeled Search & Discover, and the logo in this June capture is drawn in rainbow stripes.

On November 11, 2022 DeviantArt launched DreamUp, an AI image generator built on Stable Diffusion, a third-party model trained on images LAION gathered from across the internet. Members without Core got five free prompts.^[10] An update added to the announcement says: We heard the community feedback, and now all deviations are automatically labeled as NOT authorized for use in AI datasets.^[10]

The October 16, 2023 capture shows where that landed. The visible header has Upgrade to Core in orange, and the Explore Topics row lists AI Art. The code holds a DreamUp panel, Generate your own AI work., and a switch in the user menu called Suppress AI Content.

In June 2024 DreamUp moves into the header itself, a purple button reading DreamUp AI Art, above a colored strip: Core Membership is 50% off through June 18. June 2025 repeats the offer, through June 16. On June 15, 2026 the purple button says Create a video, the strip says Get 5% back on purchases with Core!, and a row of topic chips starts with All.

jark’s profile is still there in January 2026, dark now, under a sky banner: Scott Jarkoff, The Yellow Alien, 6.7K watchers and 2.8M profile views. DeviantArt’s undated About page, read on October 17, 2026, counts over 100 million registered members and over 650 million artworks.^[11]

2000 · Application Skins2000 · Skins2026 · Create a video2026 · Video

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In August 2000 a member joked that jark needed a robo-jark, a small program that would answer comments for him so nobody would notice he was gone. In our January 2, 2026 capture, jark’s Latest Deviations row still includes the TechMiso wallpapers his profile showed in 2010, and the header above it offers to make the art for you: DreamUp AI Art.