DeviantArt Speaks About Pulling Out Of San Diego Artist Alley Sponsorship

DeviantArt is having an unusually active year launching our new Mobile App on Apple and Android platforms and introducing an entirely new, modernized branding. While SDCC is extremely important to the comic world, as well as to DeviantArt, our team is currently focused internally on a comprehensive site redesign that will benefit all of our 34 million registered members. We look forward to any sponsorships opportunities with SDCC that may resurface in the future. We are actively looking for a replacement sponsor for Artists Alley this year and we are assured by the SDCC management that it continues to deeply value the artists who attend Artists Alley.

He then told Bleeding Cool,

We really hope SDCC can find a way to continue to provide the artists in the Alley with the simple comforts we brought in; padded seats and carpeting in particular. On the plus side, without our booth in there, they will have room for a few more artists to participate.

San Diego for us was a big enterprise in terms of staff commitment and time. We had at least four staff members in the Alley the whole time, so with rotation that required us to bring at least eight people with us. We did a different, exciting graphic presentation for the Alley's signage each year, presented multiple panels, created side-events for DeviantArt's members and the artists and we organized the artists' work for display on two giant screens hanging off the ceiling. It just became very apparent that we needed resources for these other critical, company-wide projects and so would lack resources to deal with SDCC and the incredible effort that it requires.