Vexed over Vexels.

A commission was given, create a vexel gallery.  I took this responsibility because it fell within my office's realm of responsibility.  Without knowing too much about vexels, I posted journals, news articles, and wrote about it in the AR Newsletter to get feedback on what the vexel artists wanted in their new gallery.  A lot of feedback was received but most of it was "cool,"  "about time," "glad to see this finally happening,"  etc....  Very little was said about the gallery description and what they wanted to see in it's writing.

I looked at vexels.net, wikipedia, answers.com, and several other sites to get a good base of what a vexel exactly is.  I also read through an old vexel forum thread here and found a good bit of debate on the definition.  Many people pointed to vexels.net, many disagreed with that definition because of it's limiting parameters in saying a vexel is a style of art.  In short, a conclusive definition of what a vexel is still remains much to debate as people are divided over this.

Taking all that into conclusion, a gallery description was written and put into place.  When the gallery was launched, in typical fashion, miscats occurred.  Some have blamed them on how the gallery description was written.  Ludicrous.  Every single gallery has miscats, regardless of how well the description is written.  On one hand I believe strongly in gallery descriptions, but they only work when people read them so the miscats will likely never be completely removed.  On the other hand, vexels are such a new medium that many people don't understand them regardless of the gallery descriptions.  To help reduce miscats to a minimal level, I have rewritten the gallery description to it's most base level, the new description is posted below:

Vexel Art

"Vexel images are:

• 1. Vector-like images that contain non-vector (raster) elements used to enhance the artwork.
• 2. Images created by digital tools such as the Photoshop pen tool, selection tool, or similar device that causes the image to have filled sections of colors next to each other to create the artwork.  This technique gives the image a posterized look, making it look more 2D in appearance much like what a vector image looks like.

Vexel images are not:

• 1. Photographs that have been ran through a filtering process.
• 2. Paintings, airbrushed images, and heavily filtered artwork.
• 3. Pure vector artwork.  Please read the gallery descriptions for vector artwork if unsure.
• 4. Any type of artwork that does not adhere to the rules above as to what a vexel is.

Note:  images that are predominately photographic in nature with little vector work should not be posted here.  Images such as those should be posted to the appropriate Digital > Misc gallery."

As you can see, it's as simplified as possible.  Another way to help the gallery is to promote art that actually is a vexel.  With that in mind, here is a good dose of some really great vexel images.

:thumb35585655: :thumb29647087: :thumb42141006: :thumb24885385:

*just a small sample randomly selected for the broad range

Some things to consider about the new gallery:

1.  There have been a huge amount of miscats moved but the gallery is taking shape nicely.  From what I have seen, the quality level is really starting to shine.

2.  In basest terms, if you do not know what a vexel is, you probably shouldn't be posting art to this gallery.  Vexel artists know what vexels are, there's no doubt to them.  If you think you might be doing this art but aren't sure, ask for assistance, we gallery directors like to help.

3.  In the future, regular vexel articles will be posted to help the gallery gain identity, stay tuned.

4.  Lastly, if you think there's still something that needs to be included in the gallery description, speak now or forever hold your peace.