This site exists as a way to be independent of any overarching art portfolio site. I used DeviantArt as the primary place to host all my art until the quality of the site descended significantly in the past 1-2 years. I can ignore AI generated slop being posted and winning art contests I do not participate in anyway, but when DeviantArt began to display AI generated explicit pornographic advertisements on the sidebar of my artwork, I can no longer ignore that and have to step away or risk exposing friends and other people to it. DeviantArt's 20 year reputation as being the fetish art capital of the internet was bad enough to deal with, but that is inexcusable and has literally forced me off the site.

The complicated part here for an artist is where do you go from here. DeviantArt has always been the single decent free art portfolio site on the internet until very recently. With it's degradation in quality there is really no other place to go for someone who wants to display their artwork online. ArtStation is the big contender but it is paywalled with file size limits and insists on plastering your real legal name all over the place. Newgrounds is an option but also suffers from DeviantArt's reputation as being a fetish art haven. I have no problem with NSFW artists but I do not make that kind of material myself and don't want to be immediately written off by being on those kinds of sites. For the most part, your only options at this point are tumblr, instagram or host your own site.

I first experimented with neocities in early 2023 and found this to be the best option for me. Neocities is just a free website host where you provide all your assets and source files, meaning you write and control the code to your own website. If neocities ever kicks the bucket or I decide to pay for my own personal independent domain in the future, the site will look and function the exact same because there is no neocities specific formatting or requirements. This site is written in plain HTML and CSS that I've learned in a couple weeks.