I have 11 gigs of reference pictures.

[teyekanik]

Everything from medievil armor to kevlar vests. Jungles to ancient Islamic cities.
Children to Cadavers. I got over 10,000 pics of stuff from all over the internet and my work.

Is there a good way to share this? It's over a years worth of scanning and browsing... is FTP a good way? If I can put it up, I will. Maybe an exchange can be started someday soon?

Anyone interested that can help?

[Lauren Short]

ftp is a good way to get it out there.. only thing is security issues, i think maybe have people pm you for the password and set up info so you can have people sign up and help out if you need it, that way you won't have a million people on your sever too :teeth:

thank you for this offer, truly a great service to all of us :teeth:

[0kelvin]

That would be totally kickass of you. Might want to think about bit torrent, that seems to be the way most people do their file sharing these days.

You must have a lot of pretty high res stuff for 10,000 images to come out to 11 gigs. My reference collection is a measly 2,000 images, and it only comes out to like 300 megs. I have reference envy...



0kelvin

[teyekanik]

its a rough estimate.. I might have more like 27k but ya, alot of high rez stuff.. I work at a printshop (the starbucks of printshops) so I get alot of stuff through there... All of the model shoots from clothing companies here in SF, also Police crime photos included so I might have to set up a psycho folder to protect the kiddies. I'm just amazed myself about all the stuff I've accrued this year so I thought I could help out and put it up on a Concept Art exclsive site or something.

Ya, I might go with ftp or a coppermine gallery thing. we'll see. Maybe break them into categories and zip files.

[Slash]

Breaking them into categories and zip them up would be much better than just one big file, since not all of us are interested in all kinds of references.

But no matter how you do it, it would be a great service to the community!

[Badger]

My Cod! You sir are the reference God, i'd love to see this happen as i'm always having reference issues....
*Hopes*
-Badger-

[bRyaN]

I'd defintely be interested....

[teyekanik]

cool.. looks like there is alot of interest.. I decided a nice clean web page with ftp links or something would be the easiest. So I'll try to get it up. Can anyone recommend a good web company to host? Something without any restriction policies as some of the imagry is controversial :x

Thanks. After I get it up I might make it so everyone can load thier own zips or images on the site, sos I can benefit from it too ;)

[le capitan]

uh would dc++ be a good way of doing this? you wouldnt have to upload anything and it would just be right from your computer. It would be cool if we could set up a hub and share stuff that way. i've been collecting fav. art stuff for inspiration, but im low on the reference. cool idea, hope it works out well,
cheers

[madster]

A very generous offer, to be sure, but one must ask...
What rights do you have to these images, and what rights will you provide to anyone downloading the images? The model shots from clothing companies brings to mind some copyright infringement for you to be putting them on the Web without permission...

Or don't any of the rest of you care about the ethical and legal issues here? A whole lotta "ooooh, awesome!" with very little "are these your images to share?" Stolen off the Web and from where you work (the starbucks of printshops) just makes you a pirate if you upload them in the interests of "sharing."

[feral714]

If you tear a photo out of a magazine ( lets say a clothing catalog) and use it as reference is that infringement? Not if you change it enough. I'm sure the companies he's getting the images from would flip and maybe sue if they found out and he'd lose his job and his parents would come down on him and his friends would desert him ,his GF would cheat on him and show him pictures of the deed before kicking him in the berries, but I have no problem using it a reference. Thanks for going out on a limb for me dude!
Seriously, I'm not gonna publish the pics myself. You ever download an image? Everything you ever see is copyrighted, you can still look at it and use it in your work.
Legal issues for him? Probably just like any file sharing. But he's not trying to make $ so who's gonna sue him? I don't know but think about it dude before you make a site for it. Maybe just a site with zip files on it.
Also think about bandwidth. You might be able to pay to host a site with 11gigs but if 50 people download even half...you got 275gigs of bandwidth use.
Maybe just list the different types of images you have and trade with people?
Or everyone make a pact to pass along some dvds you burn and mail to the 1st person on the list. How much would it cost to mail 2 or 3 dvd's? $3? 5$? Probably would fail because of lack of responsibility/honesty on someone's part...

[Denart]

awesome man! I would love to check it out

I think it would be easiest if you created a ZIP file of each category (armor, nature, nude figures) and uploaded onto your site then just give us the web address!

;)

[USER777]

i am most definitely down for it!
great idea. :yayca:

[teyekanik]

FUX! Well, dude. . If I'm labeled a pirate, so be it. It's alot of hard work put into collecting this reference and sharing it in a small, contained art community such as this. In my previous posts I said it would not be a public site but a site for CA members only. Aside from not even having it up yet, I don't really give a shit what happens. The images aren't bieng used for profit and are meant only to give people with limited resources some cool images to get inspired from.

To answer your question, I dont have any rights to these images, so I cant exactly give anyone else rights, can I? Is it legal? I dont fucking care. Ever hear of artists going out on a limb for the SAKE OF ART? >:{

Is there an Ethical issue? No. Simple as that.

There might be a legal issue with some of the images, to tell you the truth I'm not sure. I have so many that are from so many places it would take me ten years to track where I "stole" them from.

So here's a broad disclamer for any fucknuts:
These images are for the purpose of inspiration and reference for art. I want to provide a resource for common artists to see what I have been using as reference for the last year. If your a dick, and you use the images for anything else, then let it be known, your a dick.

This kind of attitude gets me steamed Madster, the moment anyone wants to try something for the betterment of the art community as a whole.. (Brush exchange, link exchange, ect.) There's someone waiting in the bushes to call em a "pirate" when, in reality.. all thier trying to do is say, "Hey, fellow artist, here are some reference images that have inspired and educated me greatly, I hope they help you as well. "

But screw it, I'm going to put the site up anyways... If someone wants to rat me out then g'head. I'll deal with it then but at least by that time I would have helped a few people.

Ne way, your entitled to your opinion, and I'm entitled to risk legal crap if I want to so lets just see what happens, ok?

All the rest of you seem to get it, so thanks.

[Noah Bradley]

This thing sound like it would be perfect for a bittorrent. That way, it could be very widely distributed without putting a serious load on any one person/server. Just a thought. :)

[Jason Manley]

madster you need to leave this topic alone. if you can find the images on google then they are released for publication on the net. if he were selling or modifying the images there would be a problem. there is not. so lighten up already dood.

if we had the space i would offer to host them for free so they can be organized and put into ref folders for the references section. we are in the midst of switching to a dedicated server. it would be great to have a ref section filled out with great images which are all organized. hopefully there will be space for such things soon.

Jason

[LaPalida]

teyekanik yarrgh fellow matey! :pirate: If ye seek some webspace to share ye fine jewels I will be the first to step up and lend you some of my chest space! Jest send me a message in a bottle.

Or don't any of the rest of you care about the ethical and legal issues here? A whole lotta "ooooh, awesome!" with very little "are these your images to share?" Stolen off the Web and from where you work (the starbucks of printshops) just makes you a pirate if you upload them in the interests of "sharing."

No. No ethical issues here. Sorry. Knowledge should be free. Stolen from Web? Ain't no such animal. If it was so forbidden ... why is there a print screen key on your keyboard?

[savii]

What a great idea! I've only got 150MB of ref so far, this would be such a great boost in my motivation. Would love to check this stuff out.

I think that splitting it up into sections would be a good idea. Bittorrent is not a bad idea either, but in my experience, unless you have a lot of user downloading the speed really suffers.

And Jason, that would be such an awesome thing to have on the site, especially for people with slower connections so that they could pick and choose the images they want, rather than having to download 11 gigs.

[dogfood]

Thanks for doing this, teyekanik. If you get entangled with legal difficulties, I'm sure we can fire up the Concept Arts Legal Defence Fund. If we can't keep you out of jail, I know we'll set up a steady stream of smokes, baked goods, and gay porn. But if we can't keep you off death row: The Teyekanik Memorial Art Thread! Huh? Huh? ...yeah, pretty good...

[teyekanik]

Jason - that'd be sweet.. You can always be relied on to make things better for us. I'll start it up with some established Hierarchy, (Categories, etc.) and see what happens when you get the switch over done, good luck with that too.

Feral - ya, I gotta respect the bandwidth.. Maybe bit torrent is a good way to go. Torrent all the zips individually and include some previews on the site, etc. I'll have to noodle it for awhile.. thanks.

LaPalida - Sorry, man.. I don't speak pirate. But I think I understand, haha.. I'll message you as soon as I got a gameplan....

Dogfood - Hope I don't get lock'd down.. I have a feeling my lack of discipline in the gym and all the beer, cigarettes, and my effeminate ways would default me into catcher status. But I'll take reference pics of my bitch-hood and post those too! On a sidenote I just read a story about how this guy got bitched in prison and was forced to take hormones and grown some titties.... . That is just the suckiest thing I've ever heard. :nohope:

Thanks all,
Matt

[obid619]

I'm in dewds. seeing as in I haven't drawin for literally months, I'd still love to have teh reference. If it happens, then hit me up :yayca:

[JustinBeckett]

i would love to get my hands on some of those ref pics, it would be great if they were categorized. I also, am always on the hunt for ref pics, which are hard to find these days.

[EccoXile]

Soo many ref pics! thats a goldmine, i would love to see them as well. I am now more mtivated to get a new harddrive :P

[young paddy1]

That's a lot of ref to have on a computer, hope you've got it backedup.

I've only got 2gig on my comp but around 800-1000lbs of cut up magazines and odds'n'sods in filing cabinets and boxes.

I wouldn't worry about the getting busted thing there are thousands if not millions of sites on the net with magazine images, and unlicensed model shoot photos, the worst they usually get is the site shut down.

go sea-ninjas :pirate:

[loomer]

Awesome idea...I would love to take advantage of that. I'm starting my own little Ref. Library, and it takes ALOT of time searching just to fill 10 MB - I can't imagine how much time you have spent on this.

Rock awn!

[JaegeR]

teyekanik if you could do that, it would be amasing. I have an online ftp account that is 2GB in size and have it for as long as I live. If I can be of any use let me know. I could offer perhaps 1Gb each week or onth or something.
If security for an ftp is a problem for you, cou can use a program called SFTP, which means "secure ftp" original isn't it!?
Finding a large online ftp server is difficult and usually you would have to buy a site online and have the account there, however, with the amount of interest that would be shown in such a vast range of material, bandwidth would be peoples biggest and most relentless enemy.
One option for you is this;

If you were able to afford it yourself or use PayPal or something,
you could buy say a 20GB HDD and install it onto a rudimentary
computer. This then could be hooked up to the internet, and to
the best of my knowledge the internet is extremely cheap in the
states is not almost free. This machine could then be accessible
online 24/7 to all those who would have an appropriate password.

This is just a suggestion, so I ask people to refrain from use of burning materials on my sorry ass.!

In any case, teyekanik :yayca:

[look]

That sounds great. Of course the legal issue brought up by other ppl might be some problem, but if we all respect the original artists by not copying the entire thing, it might help. After all, who can sue you if we only referrence off an arm or leg? Although it'd be nice if you never edit out the owner info (such as url and stuff) on the image, assume they had it to begin with.
As much as I feel a bit guilty of encouraging you to do this, I am one of the many who needs referrence badly. T T

By the way, anyone willing to share stock photos taken by themselves? I've made myself a stock gallery with photos taken by myself (100k at Deviantart), and I'm looking for other ones, especially the ones I can use without having to worry about copyright issues.

[AngryScientist]

If you were able to afford it yourself or use PayPal or something,
you could buy say a 20GB HDD and install it onto a rudimentary
computer. This then could be hooked up to the internet, and to
the best of my knowledge the internet is extremely cheap in the
states is not almost free. This machine could then be accessible
online 24/7 to all those who would have an appropriate password.


Sounds great :) I'd lend some space as well, but my bandwidth is pretty much minimal. That said, put these babies online! ARR!

[look]

Sounds great :) I'd lend some space as well, but my bandwidth is pretty much minimal. That said, put these babies online! ARR!
The bandwidth would be a problem once you get traffic up. Most internet providers would charge a crazy amount for uploading bandwidth.

[JaegeR]

The ftp that i have has insane bandwidth, it's a college society and is sponsored by many large companies. Its, I think, near to a T3 industrial connection, the intranet here works at like 100KB/s - 8.9MB/s so that much to worry about.

[Carnifex]

By the way, anyone willing to share stock photos taken by themselves? I've made myself a stock gallery with photos taken by myself (100k at Deviantart), and I'm looking for other ones, especially the ones I can use without having to worry about copyright issues.
wheeww...now you show me what a stock account should be like... :x
i'm afraid i'm not doing enough for mine...siansaar.deviantart.com

[look]

The ftp that i have has insane bandwidth, it's a college society and is sponsored by many large companies. Its, I think, near to a T3 industrial connection, the intranet here works at like 100KB/s - 8.9MB/s so that much to worry about.
Does your college has a limit for uploading? 'cuz I know my university would ban students from internet access if they use up too much uploading bandwidth. We can download all the movie and porns we want, but once we set our p2p share program to upload, the tech team will seal our port within a week. T T

Carnifex: hey, I was looking at your gallery the other day when I look for stocks. :D

[Bishop Six]

This would be the totally awesomest thing ever. I'm sorry that I don't have any server space or anything to help out. But if this becomes a reality, I will love you forever and ever. Amen.

[Carnifex]

haha,cool.
which just reminded me-why not make the zip packages and post them on deviantart?

[Noah Bradley]

Didn't anyone notice the bittorrent suggestion? That way you wouldn't have to worry at all about bandwidth or uploading... :[

[look]

haha,cool.
which just reminded me-why not make the zip packages and post them on deviantart?
That would go against the policy. :/ It's unauthorized reuse.

bittorent is probably the best solution beside of a server.

[ADPass]

Dude, I would love to d/l your reference collection. Im in the process of building mine... physically, but having 11 gigs of pics to work from would be a huge help. Whenever you have a sure fire way to share your files let us know!

by the way this is my first ever post on this site... I have been reading the forums for some time now and have to say, you are all a souce of inspiration to me and my own work.

[teyekanik]

Ok... so its a good idea it seems.. I'm trying to get it goin soon. I will let you know of my progress.. I think I will consider BitTorrent as my first option. Ideally I'd want to provide zips or Acrobat files or something but ya, that damn bandwidth. Thanks brothers, hopefully this will happen very soon.

Just a teaser, these are some of the Categories I am brainstorming:

Armor
Weapons
Human Reference
Costume Reference
Animal Fauna
Insect Fauna
Flora
Military
Texture
Indoor Environments
Outdoor Environments
Film Captures (from DVD, etc.)
Concept Art (From game sites, etc.)
Art by Artists (including classical and current pros, etc.)
3D (These are samples of really good 3d env. and meshes I've found)
Sculpture (again, classical and contemporary)
Industrial Design (Concept cars, new technology, etc.)
Forces Of Nature (fire, lightning, tornados)


These are just a few I have been working out... Most also have more detailed sub-categories.

So, Any specific things you'd like to see that is not in this list?

[theincredibleandy]

I'm gonna second the idea of one category a week, and if you suggested a specific time for people to do it, then maybe we could get enough people doing it at once to make it go quickly.

yeah, 11 gigs is hella reference...

[mayneart]

Bring it on!!!

[LaPalida]

Hey I'm going to post the way I categorize my stuff. Hope it'll help. I have about 2 gigs of reference myself.

[tulokyn]

I'd love to get my hands on some of this. My reference folder is crap. T_T

[fukifino]

By the way, anyone willing to share stock photos taken by themselves? I've made myself a stock gallery with photos taken by myself (100k at Deviantart), and I'm looking for other ones, especially the ones I can use without having to worry about copyright issues.

Haha, I've totally downloaded stock from you for my ref folder before!

But I think a Stock Exchange (hahahah..ha..ok, I'm lame) would be a great idea.

[aerez]

I'm sure someone mentioned it.

Bittorent is by far the best way.

If you could upload all the reference art, you would have accomplished one of my life missions.

THANK YOU!

[AmishCommy]

Awesome idea!!! I have 6 gigs and i was thinking of torrenting them. I think the best way is to split them up in categories, zip them, and then create a torrent of each category. My upload speeds suck so uploading 6 gigs of stuff would take forever. but once this stuff gets out in the P2P community it will be easy to share. About copyright issues, if you are not making any money off of the images, just using them for reference, then no one has a legal case against you.

[teyekanik]

cool Amish.. I aint worried a bit about legal issues. I break the law every day anyway (420!). But ya.. I have been breaking my stuff down to torrents over the last few days and I'm trying to set up a simple site to test them out. Maybe we could get together and share some images or good resource sites. 6 gigs is pretty good.

So I think it will start off as bitTorrent.. but when I get some steam i'll have it set up to DL the zips directly.

Thanks again..

Maybe list some good sites here in the meantime?

Here's my top faves:

Gamers Gallery (down right now) (http://www.gamersgallery.com/)
Movieweb (lots of free Hi-rez stills of current movies) (http://www.movieweb.com/)
GREAT site for cars. I love this site. (http://www.highresautoimages.com/)
The Pentagon Press Resources page has great photos (http://www.pentagon.gov/photos/)


And of course Google.

[bRyaN]

can anyone recommend a good bit torrent client...

Dude, i'm getting ready...

[look]

Haha, I've totally downloaded stock from you for my ref folder before!

But I think a Stock Exchange (hahahah..ha..ok, I'm lame) would be a great idea.
sweet, glad to know someone's using my stocks.

Should I make a new thread for the stock exchange, or we'll just all post it here?

teyekanik: thanks for sharing those links, that movie link is great!!

[look]

Hey, maybe we can use this: The Grouper: http://news.deviantart.com/article/17432/

[teyekanik]

wow.. actually that's a not bad idea.. but I'll have to research it more.. looks like it could maybe get outta control if too many people group offa my little internet connection. I might upload Grouper to a computer at work and make it a dedicated server there. Gj Look. I'll definitely consider this for now.

[P E N Ricklund]

Hey teyekanik I love this idea, how is it turning out?
Reff pics are allways useful. :tihi:

[teyekanik]

It's going ok.. I'm breaking all the categories into zips..and hopefully soon I will have some sort of site put up with a good solution. I have some help from a friend of mine so hopefully its sooner than later. I haven't given up yet!

[Diego]

can anyone recommend a good bit torrent client...

Dude, i'm getting ready...

Bryan, AZUREUS (http://azureus.sourceforge.net/) is a good option to get started with.
Offers multiple torrent downloads, queuing/priority systems (on torrents and files), start/stop seeding options and instant access to numerous pieces of information about your torrents.
Good luck.

teyekanik: GREEEAT IDEA!!! I'm eager to see your reference collection.

[JaegeR]

Hey teyekanik, if all else fails, you are more than welcome to put a bunch of zip files on my public FTP. I posted a while ago saying that I have about 1.5GB of FTP space left and the bandwidth is huge.

You are more than welcome to to use this as a fallback method. PM if you are ever interested.

[JaegeR]

Another way to get your files up is using Rapid Share.
You can upload up to 30GB a file and is available to anyone who wants it.
however, if it isn't used for 30 days, it gets removed.

Check it out, might be alot easier.

[teyekanik]

thanks Jaeger.. I will check that one out too.

[Slash]

wow.. i just realized that i have 11 gigs of porn on my hard drive.. hows that for a coincidence?

[AmishCommy]

Hey, Porn could be a good reference tool too. My buddy has the biggest Hentai collection I've ever seen and he used it for all his Figure Drawing assignments. Yeah its a copout - but there's a good example of porn used as reference.

[teyekanik]

*takes one big step back*

[teyekanik]

I thought of a very simple Idea to make this work:

A few guys on this thread have offered some space to me to host zip files for everyone to DL. First of all, thanks! Apparently I stumbled upon one of those ideas everyone has but no one has made it happen all the way. The fact that you guys are offering up your valueable time and bandwith means alot to me and I'm sure other people.

Basically I think it will work like this:
I will break up the reference I have into categories just like before. But instead of hosting them all on one site, I want to host them on multiple sites. ( ie: A Euro site, A US site, etc.) So for each zip, there will be 3 or more links to DL it from. This will solve the bandwidth problem. If one site exceeds bandwith, there will be other links to use.

I'll start a thread here on CA with a huge list of all the links to categories. And you just click-save the zip to your computer.

This eliminates the need for a front-end site. And doesn't have all the complications of bit-torrent.

So, for this to work I need servers with extra space. I've already messaged a few guys that have offered. But if your reading this now and you have space to serve. Then I need it. Probably going to need alot of US and Euro servers to start.

So message me! Email me! And I'll start a list of people serving.. . I'll get the zip to you somehow, to upload them to your site, and when everything is in place I will post a massive thread with all the server links to the zips. Like a sharing registry, managed by me.

Does this sound completely dumb? Or will it work? I hope it's the solution I have been looking for.

If not, then I'm open to more suggestions of course!

[JokingClown]

Bump.

[JokingClown]

uh would dc++ be a good way of doing this? you wouldnt have to upload anything and it would just be right from your computer. It would be cool if we could set up a hub and share stuff that way. i've been collecting fav. art stuff for inspiration, but im low on the reference. cool idea, hope it works out well,
cheers

Is anyone else interested in exploring this idea further? So we could have a whole network where people could upload photos instead of just one person..

[teyekanik]

I'm interested in any possibility man, Im totally ignorant to the internet stuff. So If you offer up a good solution, I can give you the images on dvds or whatever and you can take it from there. I just broke 13 gigs. So let me know.

[briggsy@ashtons]

Another way to get your files up is using Rapid Share.
You can upload up to 30GB a file and is available to anyone who wants it.
however, if it isn't used for 30 days, it gets removed.

Check it out, might be alot easier.

I just uploaded something to Rapidshare for the first time. If anyone is unfamiliar with the system please try the link below. (You will get a very nice set of 19th century anatomy diagrams for your troubles).

http://rapidshare.de/files/1933050/Fau.rar.html

To download, click the link, click "Free" at the bottom of the first page that comes up, then wait a minute or so for the download link to come up at the bottom of the second page. If you have a download manager/accelerator such as LeechGet or NetTransport installed do NOT use it or you won't get the file; just right click and save to disc. UnRAR using WinRAR or the freeware 7-Zip.

Uploading instructions are on the first page. When the file is finished uploading a page comes up with the download link and a link for removing the file. The maximum file size is 30 Mb (not Gb !) but multi-part files are now allowed (up to about a month ago they were automatically removed).

Uploading was dead easy, but I wouldn't enjoy uploading 13Gb in 30 Mb chunks on my dial-up! If anyone was doing some serious downloading it would be worth paying for a Premium account to avoid the 30 Mb/hr download limit.

[Aberrant]

Right the fuck on. I tried getting something like this going years ago but couldn't find anyone with a decent ref collection much less interest in sharing/building it.

I have a few gigs, lots of anatomy ref, famous artists by category, a good airbrush/custom paint section, and a "life" section categorized by taxonomic nomenclature.

I think what's needed is a way to keep a master "library" and allow others access to it. My first idea was that one person could organize and keep the database on a local disk, and allow others to add to it using FTP or whatever they want, and occassionally this central person would make a torrent and get it out there so everyone else can take up the bandwidth and share it. A 50GB torrent can be made so that someone could download only 50MB of giger paintings from it.

I don't care how it happens I just want a peice of it!

[Jane Radstrom]

Yeah! Unfortunately, I don't have any resources to offer help, but I really hope something can get going for this.