Guess what? You can now send DMs (Direct Messages) to other users on Proko.com!  We've heard your requests and we're excited to bring you this new feature. This is the perfect way to chat with other art students and your instructors, making it even easier to collaborate and learn together in real time. To start DMing, just click on the message bubble icon 🗨️ in the top right corner next to the shopping cart. Search for users you've connected with on Proko, send them a request, and once they accept, you're good to go! Heads up: This feature is still in beta testing, so we'd love to hear your thoughts on how we can make it even better. If you have any feedback or suggestions, please drop a comment in this community thread. Happy messaging, and as always, thanks for being a part of the Proko community! 

Any more Dark mode enjoyers out there?:)

Loving the new website Proko team! It’s fun, engaging and socially driven. What else could we need? I think an app that would give us live notifications on comments, forum threads, new announcements and at mentions on the site would be great. It would make this experience that much more engaging and personal for each of us. And I think it would be a natural progression with the new more social dynamic of the website and overall proko community. all in favor, say “I”. Is this a good idea gang? Or am I a crazy man?

Hi Proko team, first of all thanks so much to allow me to be part of the Proko 2.0 beta. To the point, for the ones that are halfway through the courses I thought it would be useful a "complete lesson" button such as in the Aron Blaise's tutorials website. It would add up in your completion percentage at your "courses" panel and give you a nice sense of achievement boost without having to rewatch lessons you have already done. Example: I'm currently doing Mannequinization assignments so I'd like to mark all the previous content of the figure course as "completed". I hope it's helpful, Tobey

Hey Beta Testers. We got more updates! ALBUMS - Finally you can control your albums. - Create new albums in My Classroom - Manage Images - delete or move images from one album to another by selecting an album in My Classroom and clicking 'manage images' - New image uploader when writing posts - Now when you upload images to a post, you can select which album to add them to. Or, you can attach images to a post that already exist in one of your albums. - Hidden Albums - in the settings of each album, you can make an album 'hidden'. This will hide it in your profile. This is useful when you want to add images to a post, but don't want those images to appear in your profile. Simply attach images to a post from a hidden album, or select a hidden album when uploading new images to a post. - Default album - One of your albums is the 'default'. This is the album images will automatically be uploaded to when uploading new images to a post, unless you select a different one. POST FROM NEWSFEED AND PROFILE - Now you can write a new post directly from your classroom newsfeed or from your profile. The "post to" setting is by default set to post to your profile, which means only your followers will get that post in their newsfeed. You can also change the "post to" to a lesson. A few of your recent lessons are shown in the dropdown, or you can search for any lesson. POSTS MENU - Updates to the 3 dots menu on every post. - Follow a user directly from this menu - Moderators have some new options Lots of bugs squished Load time optimizations

Hey Beta Testers, we deployed a big update today that included several suggestions from you. We also squashed many bugs (and as with any big update, we probably released some new bugs). Here's a list of some updates I thought you guys should know about: - Mark as completed button under each lesson. - Admins can bulk mark complete all lessons in a course part for those of you that finished watching a course on the old website. You can request this by email. - Allow Standalone lessons (not part of a course) to have 'completed' icon. - Allow ctrl + click on links throughout website. - In Browse courses, lessons and tools, we added a "Purchased" flag on items you have premium access to.  - In Browse Lessons page, can filter to show only FREE lessons. - In Community, if you click on a topic and then click back, it takes you back to the same spot you were before instead of to the top of the page. So, you don't have to scroll to find your place. Thank you all for the help so far! We're continuing to work on addressing more issues and developing more exciting features :)

Hey, guys! I've been using the beta site for a few months now and it's looking great overall, can't wait for it to be launched! Although, since I've been dealing with critiques so often, one thing I've had some difficulty with is that sometimes I just don't see all the posts marked with "ask for help". Would it be possible to maybe create a special section on the site which would show only the posts made with the "ask for help" checkbox marked so that anyone could easily access? Perhaps there could also be a green icon or badge that the users could check afterwards to indicate if any feedback was given to that post and/or if the user's question was answered - that way, anyone who would access the "help" section could prioritize replying to the unanswered posts. Another thing is that some people seem to be having trouble figuring out how to get help. @Steffen Anzivino recently made some comments on that - he said: --- "I have not yet posted for a critique on prokolab.com, after reading this, it will be on my mind. If you are having to remind people to check that box then maybe the box itself should be a little more of an eye grabber? or placed in front of the "Post" button. I don't know, just pondering. The critique is one of the things i look forward to the most in my courses. I'm glad I read your response, or i may have been posting help request to an open forum for a while! lol, so thanks for the info." --- Maybe this is something you've already been considering? Thanks! \o/

Based on your feedback, we decided to change the community categories to be theme-focused (painting, anatomy, concept design) instead of intent-focused (learn, teach, share). We did our best to migrate all your existing posts to the new categories. https://prokolab.com/community/categories One side effect is that now everyone's category subscriptions are reset. So, please go to the community page and "follow" the categories you're interested in to receive those posts in your newsfeed. Sometimes you'll run into the problem where your specific post can go into more than one category. It's impossible to make categories without any overlap. So in those situations, just pick the one that makes the most sense :) Hope this system is less confusing.

Hey, guys! As I'm exploring the site and looking for people's posts to give feedback, I was wondering if it would be possible to add a feature that could enable some kind of filter in my feed so I'd only see the "asked for help" posts. I suppose this might help a lot for people to critique and get critiqued, what do you think?

Hello Everyone Making Magic Here! I think we can all agree, it can be difficult to make real connections with other people online. This is mentioned from time to time on the podcasts. I think we can also agree that we are going through an extraordinary time in earth's history when being able to make supportive friendships online with fellow travelers might be more important than ever. With that in mind, I have a few questions. It looks like we don't have any kind of DM ability directly on the site. If someone wants to reach us, they have to go to our website, IG, or other SNS accounts. Is that right? Also wondering if there's a way someone can see when we've supported their post by upvoting it. Maybe we can't see upvoters and downvoters by design, to protect anonymity? I'm still kind of stuck in the mindset of using it like a 'like' to acknowledge that it's been seen. If I want someone to know I've supported something they've said, I have to take the time to comment. (Ordinarily, I would strategically go right to the thing I'm studying, do my work, and leave. However, since we have this special invitation, I'm trying to use the site in accordance with the picture in my mind from what I've heard on Draftsmen.) The third thing I'm wondering is if there will eventually be a way that we can form groups, or accountability partnerships with other members here on the platform. I'm incredibly blessed to have a few partnerships that I've had ongoing the past few years that have made all the difference for me and my partners. Thank you for reading and considering all of this. Other Beta Testers, what do you all think?

It seems there are a lot of us here that love books. Some of the books we all love are the kind of books you have to draw your way through, like Scott Robertson's books. If we had a category for it we can draw our way through books together as a community, or just discuss books that we all like.

Hey Beta Testers, we have a few updates worth mentioning: - Mobile website. We just launched the dedicated mobile version of the website. So, now it's much easier to navigate the site on a phone. It should load automatically on phones and tablets unless your browser is set to load the desktop version. Since we just launched it, there will most likely be some bugs. Please report them in this thread. - Push notification settings. Click on your avatar at the top right and select settings. Then click on the Notifications tab on the top. Here you can turn Push notifications from your browser on/off and control which things you get notified about. - Undo complete lesson. Many of you requested to be able to mark a lesson as NOT complete after we launched the feature to manually complete a lesson. Now you can complete and un-complete as you wish! - Sticky Header. Small feature, but it was requested. For convenience, the header will stay visible at the top even as you scroll down, so you can access the menu items quickly. Thank you for all your feedback everyone!!!

I love Proko's courses, so this isn't a criticism, but just a suggestion to help improve the site: I think the whole Proko experience would be improved if there was more community interaction by the Proko team. The reason I say this, is because I routinely check the community pages for Drawing Basics and for the Site Suggestions, etc and there's rarely any responses from Proko team members. Lots of questions asked but only occasional answers or responses. It feels sort of abandoned in a way. I feel like if there was more interaction/feedback from the Proko team to community questions, etc it would go a long way to improve the site and the community around it. There's a lot of feedback on social media from the Proko team, so I know they can do it, it just doesn't seem to extend as much to the native Proko site.

Hi there, thank you very much for inviting me as a beta tester! I really was waiting to visit Proko 2.0 and I must say, I'm very pleased with the result! :) You guys did a great job! The new look is very nice and the add of a community is really neat. I've done a quick tour, I intend to spend more time using the site but I'm a bit confused about some things. Also I thought we could use this thread to gather our thoughts about the website. (Please consider the following are just observations and personal taste, I know you just launched the site and you're still working on it, so if anything said here seems irrelevant just ignore it) So, that said, here are my two cents : 1) Regarding the lessons : I love the new feature allowing to request for help under each lesson. However, 3D models and ebooks are now buried among the videos. I think I liked it more on the old site, where I had a quick access to it. Maybe in a separate tab? 2) Forums : They look very clean and easy to use but regarding lessons, everything is stacked into the same category. Maybe it would be easier to navigate into separated sub-categories : gestures, figure drawing, anatomy, podcasts an so on. Again, you did an amazing work! I can't wait to use it more! Cheers

I personally have found the Discord community platform to be most functional for this application. Real time voice/video/sharing. REAL TIME! Voice! Video! Sharing! Great for the community in general but many uses become apparent such as classes and workshops... all under one platform!(PS Art-wod has successfully implemented its usage.) Thanks.

I'm not sure if this has been addressed in a livestream or elsewhere as I haven't had time to watch through everything but I'm worried about the apparent direction Proko seems to be taking. The thing I've always loved is that the content is free and open to everyone but the premium is there for extras and as a bonus. Now it feels as though the bulk of the content is gated off and has to be purchased and the free content, as substantial as it may be, is merely there to herd you towards making a purchase. From what I've seen so far the free lesson is usually a later chapter in the course which not only makes you want to continue but also makes you feel like you're already missing part of the puzzle which feels a bit manipulative. Again, if this has been addressed and the site will continue to operate as before with full free courses on the way and these new courses are the exception then please disregard but as the title says I'm worried.

Hi, I really like to take some time every day to draw or paint some scketches. Before the pandemic I used to personally go around armed with a camera to create my own reference gallery, so that I wouldn't get on rights violation even by accident, I had also planned a trip with some friends and colleagues to visit zoos and natural history museums around Europe when the pandemic broke out and Italy went into lockdown, since then the camera has been gathering dust. When I can I buy some reference packs from photographers or specialised sites but often the variety of subjects leaves something to be desired (especially when it comes to animals). I have a lot of photos that could maybe be useful to someone and I would be happy to share them with other students, free to use (after all I'm not a master of photography...) and I'm sure I'm not the only one who takes care of her own references and have some photos to share. It's possible to have a section where share our references, maybe also make request to other students? (Dunno "Hi, I need horses reference. Did someone have some to share?" <--- something like this)

If I am not mistaken, I remember that mentorship should be a big news about Proko 2.0. Is it already available and I am not seeing it? Is it this forum? Thank you!

I implemented this on my forum (back when I had a forum) and I used it all the time. A lot of other users did too. It was a hit and I think I have an explanation for why. In "Designing With the Mind in Mind", a book on the psychology of people when they are interacting with computers, it talks about how precious and limited a person's working memory is. Working memory, if you don't know, is basically all the things we are aware of at a given time. ( It doesn't quite mean the same thing as attention or short term memory, but if it's easier for you to think of it that way, you can.) Human working memory is like running a computer with only 100KB of RAM or something insanely small like that. It fills up very quickly and if it wants to add something else, it has to kick stuff out to make room. And like RAM, it's volatile. It's just electrical activity in the brain. Once the activity for something stops, it's gone. If it got saved to long term memory (much like a hard drive) it's possible for it to be retrieved later but still it is no longer readily available to the person. So how does this relate to quoting? Well over the years I've found that people are really bad at remembering what they said in posts and it's probably because by the time I respond, their working memory has long since moved on to thinking about other stuff. So if I want to go through their post and make comments on on specific parts, I quote exactly what I'm responding to so they can be reminded. Here's an example. Let's say Stan made a big post introducing us to his sock puppet collection. I read it and I have a few things to say. So I quote the relevant parts of Stan's post and put my comments below, like so: "This is Binky. He's my favorite because his eyes go in different directions." I agree, He's adorbs. "And then this one is a cactus, so I named him Mr. Cuddles." You should cuddle with him. "And I used to have one more sock puppet but I think my dryer ate him." Oh no! Let's organize a search party! Haha. See how I can be more immediate and conversational in my responses? I think this helps promote community because it bridges time and space. It makes it so you can react to stuff like it just happened. And yeah I could just, by hand, copy and paste what I want and manually put quotes around it. But having the feature built in has a few advantages: #1 The site can automatically format the quoted text to communicate that it's quoted text, not something you wrote yourself #2 That will also make it really easy to visually distinguish the quoted text from the original text in a post #3 It makes for a much better user experience especially on a phone where copying and pasting is tedious. And yeah, maybe not everybody would use this, but I think if a lot of people were using it, a lot of other people would see the value and start using it as well. Just my two cents.

The forum looks great and I'm really really excited to participate ! One thing I was wondering is - could you please make a " Sketchbook" sub-forum ? In the places I participated in the sketchbook section was always the most active place. because people use it to track their progress and to follow all the work of somebody they like etc. and its really fun and easy to communicate with peers about what they are up to, since all their work is at one place. Having sketchbooks is just insanely engaging - community wise. Other than that , this place is magical, i love it :)

I was just recently followed by an obvious scam account (CashApp, Crypto, the usual stuff). However, there doesn't seem to be any functionality for reporting these or blocking them? Any suggestions? The account in question is: https://www.proko.com/@usasmmhivej/activity Thanks!

Making a community gallery page where it shows randomly some art from users of the site, and navigates to their profile. No fancy filtering or popular ordering or anything like that, just to get people interested in what others are up to? Also I posted this artist webring idea earlier in the artist lounge, I think proko would be in the best place to host something like this in the modern age: https://www.proko.com/community/topics/artist-webring

This is probably something you’re already planning for when the paid mentoring and critiquing comes online... Will there be a place or a way to give testimonials for teachers, and ratings for courses, now that we have more teachers onboard? @Stan Prokopenko , of course all your courses will be five stars 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟, they’re already proven, great content, densely packed with fun and humor ☺️. I’m thinking of what a great job @Liandro Roger has been doing, and how generous he’s been with his time, going out of his way to find students looking for help, and providing expert, inspiring critiques over a wide variety of topics. He consistently finds something he likes and a way to honor the students’ work, no matter where they are on their journey; his advice is spot on; and he gives actionable advice so students can improve immediately. (He’s rapidly becoming one of my favorite people on the site.)

It would be really interesting to get someone to do a full Manga-oriented course for the site. Someone traditionally famous like Naoki Urasawa (author of Monster and other popular manga series) or maybe a YouTube celebrity like DrawLikeASir. There's a lot of manga-specific subtleties that would be useful to learn in a specialized course and would create a nice parallel with the western-themed Marvel course that's being released.

Is it possible to mark a topic as help request?

Hi Stan. I think it would be a good idea to have a tab where you could find all the free videos in one place. I'm currently looking for 'hand' videos and have done a fair bit of wading through all the videos to find them. Cheers

When Posting assignments for critique you have to browse through a ton of topics to find the right lesson. Perhaps organizing them in courses (anatomy, figure drawinc, portrait, etc) , "body parts" or something else (torso, legs, arms, etc) would make it easier to find the right lesson?

Just wondering what thoughts are on what’s coming from the roadmap and where the community sees priority needs? I think a lot of people have dropped off the community section (?) but I’d like to see them back and see see it really thrive and grow here (aside the courses and challenges which are already great). My thoughts on what is missing at the moment: - to be notified when someone you follow posts work to their album, possibly by also setting up dedicated published vs WIP albums - Commenting on albums/personal walls - Sketchbooks/journals, for members to track their progress through the courses, general art progress and thoughts, again with notifications - a dedicated critique section (like the ‘ask for help’ checkbox but it’s allowed in community/personal wall posts) - News - particularly Proko site/course news, but also somewhere for members to post Art related news/content for discussion, like a bulletin board - Personal messages and/or group chat - Maybe a few sub-categories in the Community section, though I’m not sure how deep or wide to go depending on how active it is. Could even add tags or something to allow searching/pseudo-categorisation. Keep up the great work, the content here is fantastic and I look forward to the future developments and growth.

I think maybe @Thomas Donovan mentioned something along these lines when he wrote about “glitching”. I just watched the first Gesture video, and it kept stopping, and then repeating the previously said phrase. This happened 34 times. I’m watching on an iPad, 6th gen. Wifi connection is very stable today. Thank you 🙏!

With all the livestreams, AMA's and courses launching here, it's hard to keep track of when things are and what's coming up. It would be great if the site had a global calendar or schedule (unless I've missed an existing one?) so we can track what's coming up or what we've missed to then replay. This could also integrate the roadmap to show site upgrade or feature release dates too... Great to see so much content and so many events already on Proko 2.0, I hope it keeps going like this!

With so many great model photos in the library, I would love to see a timed figure drawing tool similar to Quickposes: https://quickposes.com/en/gestures/timed Users can select the gender, length, and number of photos that will randomly popup for gesture practices.

As title. It would be very nice if we can download the 3D models from anatomy lessons like this one: https://prokolab.com/course-lesson/3d-model-of-robo-skelly/discussions. I know I can already manipulate those models on web, but downloadable files have some advantages over Sketchfab: 1) Loading time. Sketchfab isn't always so fast with my internet connection. It's frustrating that I want to get a quick reference but it just doesn't load. 2) Lighting study. It's much easier to change light sources in a real 3D program like Blender. One can have any kind of lighting, like only diffuse light, or multiple direct light, etc. I don't think it's possible in Sketchfab. 3) Comparison to other models. For example one can find a high-poly model and compare it to the Proko model, to get a better grasp on which structure is simplified to which. And probably more. It shouldn't cost too much bandwidth (compared to the downloadable videos) either.

Hey team, The website looks amazing! I'm so excited to see everything you've been working on for years! I ran into a couple bugs earlier, but they've been patched in the last few days. What I love: Thank you for lining up all the Assignment Examples and adding buttons to skip through the timeline efficiently. This is super useful when returning to the exercise the following day. That feedback/discussion is tied to every lesson. A couple suggestions I have from browsing the Beta site, and hanging out in the Figure Drawing and Anatomy groups on Facebook: Could you find a place to explain the flair associated with the usernames? (the crown on Stan etc ... ) Under each lesson, you could change "Discussion" to "Submit My Work" it's more actionable and encourages students to post. (unless discussion is only for questions, then just make them separate categories) Under each lesson you could add another tab "Exceptional Student Work" that is determined by the instructor. It's similar to Stan's videos that critique work, but those videos are static. If you add a new tab, students have something to strive for. It would be an accomplishment to have work selected. A way to further segment students. It's great to have the forums to discus with the larger community, but maybe you could sign up to "accountabili-buddy" groups. In the real world, you can just walk up to folks in the same classroom, but online, we have no idea who else is working on what. So idea: once a month, you can opt into a group that focuses on a segment: gesture, caricature, forearms ... it wouldn't be governed so there's no energy spent guiding students. But there is an organization structure, like a mini-forum or a chat function. And the group sets it's own goals and schedule. It would be wonderful to have a "Where Should I begin?" quiz or forum. From personal experience, I started the Anatomy class and I've backed up to Figure Drawing, and then further into foundational skills. The time spent in anatomy wasn't wasted, but I sure wish I'd just gotten some basic skills first, and I often see this in the FB groups too. Folks are excited to tackle the shoulder girdle, and they don't know how to draw a confident line. Or they're working on robo-beans, and they don't know how to draw a box. Proko Challenges! I hear that you're kicking this around, some ideas - 100 mannequins from the Proko models. Pick 10 choreographers and do 10 gesture drawings for each to capture their style. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_choreographers Draw a bean of the woman who have been on the cover of Vogue Magazine (photos start in the 1940s) https://www.vogue.com/slideshow/vogue-september-issue-cover-photos-history Draw 100 robo-beans based on marble statues at your museum. (if this is valuable, I can drop into the Smithsonian when it’s open again and collect images for a digital collection here) Draw the face of every actor and actress that has won an Academy Award Caricature every comedian that has done a Netflix special.

Hello everyone! This is more of a quality of life suggestion, but I was wondering if this site could have a library for all the 3D models you bought access to. I use them as reference for my drawings often (both for class and outside of it), so it would be pretty neat to have them all in one place instead of having to scroll through your lessons to find each one. You could even add them in 'Tools' perhaps? What are your thoughts?

I'm sorry if I'm asking too many questions or posting too much. This space to explore is like having a brand new toy as a child where you just can't put it down or stop thinking about it! How does the Proko usage rights of photos uploaded by users work? I felt the natural inclination to decorate my little profile space here, you've done an excellent job in priming. I don't remember seeing the legal lingo, though. Is it like FB, where basically you've given them permission to use your photos as they see fit? Or like on Insta (IG?) where they strip all the metadata from everything you upload (I've read - don't actually know)? There was something Marshall said in a podcast I heard recently (listening to S2 as they come out, S1 in between), something about make sure to have your name embedded in the pixels. What does that mean? Sign it before you photograph it? Or add it in digitally for digital works as a sig? There was also what sounded like commiserating about artists using a watermark, but without additional information I couldn't follow this train of thought. Is adding a watermark bad? Please elaborate. Thank you so much!

It would be rad to be able to message people directly. Could be something you can enable/disable if you don't want to receive them. If there's a way to do this already and I'm missing it, let me know.

Going through Stan's awesome beginner course at the moment, thought of this idea, figured I should throw it out there - it'd be really cool to have a place on the site to have a library of exercises and warmups. I'm imagining something you pull up when you first start out for the day, and it'd randomize an exercise for you. Today you're working on value. Next time, it gives you perspective exercises. etc. These could be basic ones that everyone knows that are just in the tool always, and/or miniature versions of the lessons from the paid material - just all collected in one spot and easy to peruse. You could then get really fancy tracking consistency and suggestions for these various skills, but that may be further down the line. I can go in more detail if that doesn't make sense, but it's fairly simple. Thanks for everything you all do!

If someone has already brought this up, or if maybe this feature already exists, I apologize, this is just what I found after doing the course for a little while. I have been working on the portrait drawing course, and I think for new students, a step by step tutorial on exactly how to take the classes, how long to spend on each module, and all the features available would be very helpful. For example, right now, you watch the video and then have to scroll down and click on another tab to access the assignments. I got several videos in before I even realized there were assignments on this course. I didn’t have this problem with the figure drawing and anatomy courseS in the past, because I think the assignments are talked about each video. I’ve been an online student with the Academy of Art University, and one struggle I’ve seen MANY students there face is navigating the online interface. First-time students would often not realize there were assignment videos or accidentally skip over lecture material because there was a learning curve on navigating the site. I think something like a quick welcome video for anyone making an account that goes over all the features of Proko 2.0 would be very beneficial.

Hi @Proko Thanks for the videos on Gesture (your own Gesture method, bean method, Michael Hampton's 8 parts of the body method). There are so many gesture methods that you can lose track. So my suggestion would be an overview of the different gesture methods and which industry or genre uses which method. To my knowledge, the animation industry tends to use fluid gesture drawings. Michael Hamptons or Prokos Method is more for fine art, I would guess. Thanks a lot. @georgerabbitearl

I'm new around here, and I'm assuming the prices being displayed are in USD$, it would be really cool if we got some sort of automatic Currency Converter on the website for people outside of America. I need some peace of mind on how much exactly it is that I am paying in my local currency. thanks :) I'm from Australia btw

So I'm listening to the podcast on critique and I am thinking about all the bad (and sometimes just plain wrong) critiques I have gotten online. I think when someone is critiquing you, especially in an area you don't know well, it can be hard to know if you are getting good/accurate advice or not. I think this can be especially difficult for beginners. What about a program for tagging "Trusted Critiquers" on Proko so people can feel confident that are receiving good advice? I also think this could help incentivize people to want to learn to, and offer, good critique.

My firewall keeps saying that the the site is Phising. What could be tha cause of that? I can fix it easily if I add it to the exceptions, but this might be also a problem for some others.

Is it likely that there will be some kind of messaging system where you can message other students in the future?

1. When I first logged in to Prokolabs, the Dashboard had a list of instructors to follow so their activity would be displayed in my feed. Is there a way to get that list again? I can only find 'Unfollow' buttons in 'Edit Profile'. 2. Would it be better to have some kind of cogwheel icon next to the feed in the dashboard where you could control what appears in the feed? 3. Is it possible to add a 'Posts' section to the Dashboard. There's a posts count in the 'My Profile' panel, but no way to see a list of posts.

Hey I am new so I may have missed it somewhere but as of right now, the website is kinda hard to look at especially when reading or entering in information. I know it is super nitpicky but if there is not a way to enable dark mode, are there plans for a dark mode?

Hello. Really love the work you’ve been doing creating the 2.0. Apologies in advance if this is a stupid question. What do the “Remove from Classroom” and “Remove Lesson from Class” buttons do? If you click them by accident, is there a way to recover?

I am in figure drawing fundamentals and am unable to play either completed lessons or future lessons. I don't get the play button icon

Hey guys :) Today I just noticed the rules link above the forum category list and it was also the first time I noticed the sticky at the top of the learn board called "On Giving and Receiving Critiques", among other things. Now that I'm aware these things are there, they show up to me plain as day, but previously they didn't register at all because my brain considered them part of the background. Maybe make the rules link and stickies contrast against other things listed on the forum? There's other ways I've gotten disoriented on the site but I don't know how many I should list in one post. Don't wanna bombard the dev team with a whole list of things all at once.

The challenge thread is so long I can't even seem to get to the bottom, at some point, the circle spins and spins, but doesn't load any more posts. Could we have some sort of a gallery view for challenge submissions? We could upvote right in the gallery, and we could click the image and it would take us to the post, if we want to read more or leave feedback.

Recently I was looking at Norman Rockwell charcoal comprehensive drawings and trying to understand how the rich textures were created. The surface was so beautiful, like fine bread crust. We decided it must be connected to the type of paper used, but couldn't imagine what it was or how to access something like that. Suggestion, a section or lesson or podcast devoted to the subject of what we draw and paint on. There's so much out there about what tools and media to draw with, but relatively little is said about what we're drawing on. The interaction of drawing tool with surface is so important. There's also the issue of longevity. It would be great to help demystify this topic. What are popular brands, what do they do. If they are colored how long will the color last? Are there inexpensive ways to create durable surfaces? Etc. What do you think?

This is partly a test. I'm adding a new topic about... adding a new topic! I notice quite a few people asking for help/ critiques and there is no option to comment on their post. All these posts have something in common: directly below the user's name it says "added a new topic" rather than the name of a specific discussion forum. So I'm both pointing this out and testing to see if the same thing happens on my post, which is after all a new topic.

First, let me give an example and explain my reasoning. I would like to have an album dedicated to my finished pieces, but then I would also like to have individual albums for projects where I can include reference, process photos/iterations/adjustments along with the finished piece. That way when I'm asking for critiques on particularly pieces other members can go to that projects album. While on the flip side, members who just want to check out my body of work can look at the finished pieces. Additionally I could have albums dedicated to specific mediums, classes, etc. As of right now, I think you could just post specific images twice, but that seems like it would just take up a lot of necessary space. I think this is more of a quality of life request. Especially as people's volume of work grows, having organizational tools like this will make it easier for teachers/critics to go In and quickly get a read on the students style, habits, process, etc.

I tried logging in with my old account that I purchased the Torso section of the 'Anatomy of the Human Body' with, but I was unable to do so after the site update. Is anyone else experiencing this issue, and if so, what can I do to fix it? I like the update, but I would like to access my course. PS: I blurred out my old email for privacy. If any admin can help with this, I will gladly share it! Thanks

Just noticed that 3D-model for the deep neck muscles only has the proko logo as a thumbnail

Hi there, I often find it hard to lose the red dot that shows how many new notifications there have been, even if I scroll down through and click on them all one by one - would a "Clear All" button at the top be a good idea? Jo

Hi! In my anatomy course the video "How to Draw Breasts - Form & Motion" is censored. I attach the screenshot (in Italian, but I'm in France). I thought it was a Youtube issue in France, but on Youtube the same non-premium video is accessible. I've checked other videos, it seems like it's just a problem for this one. Thank you!

I recently bought a model pack from the help Ukraine promotion. However, I can’t access the photos. It doesn’t even show up in the tool section of my classroom. Going into the normal store it doesn’t show it as being purchased and looking at the my orders I get the following message I am attaching. Has the purchase just not gone through yet or was there some sort of bug with the purchase?

https://prokolab.com/tool/anatomical-skull/overview At the linked page on prokolab the skull is priced at $85, but click buy now button and it takes you to the shop where the price becomes $99.

I wanted download a hand e book. (tried hand bones, hand muscles 1 &2) It failed with these error message:  This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below. <Error> <Code>AccessDenied</Code> <Message>Access denied</Message> </Error>

I think that part of the enjoyment of getting upvotes is knowing when somebody that you think is cool upvotes your post.

When posting at discussion section one can mark the post as a "help request". But what does it actually mean? I think most people'd post for 1) clarification on the course content 2) critiques for their assignments. So almost every post would be, in some sense, a help request..?

Hello. Would it be possible to add a wishlist for future courses? I think it could be neat :)

Hey hey Proko Team! Just a heads up, whenever I get a notification of a comment added to a discussion I've started or am engaged in it give me an error when I click on it. I have to go find my post to see the comment that's been added.

Hello, just got the image packs for gesture drawing references, and since I'm on a tablet when I work on my traditional drawing desk I thought the Proko Timer tool would be good for practice, I think the tool works fine but there is a few things I'd like to see improve. 1. Being able to select a "Class Mode" with the timer increasing after a few images, like in Quickposes.com, or other gesture drawing apps. 2. Selecting more than 25 images. 3. Being able to see the total session's lenght after selecting the image and timer parameters ex. "30s images, 40 images total = 20 mins session" 4. Show images in grayscale and upside down. I think that's about it, I think it'd be really useful since I think the other gesture drawing websites's image pools are very limited and I would like to use the packs I bought from proko at it's fullest when I only got my phone or tablet to practice from. On my pc I have the Quickposes app which comes with all these options so when I get to my pc I use that since it lets me sample images saved in my pc (including the proko ones I bought), but on tablets and phones there isn't really something like this as far as I know.

It will be amazing to have an app of this website.

Dear creative team from Prokolab, would it be possible to offer the tools in such a way that you no longer need to download them and can view them online instead? I work as a lecturer at an educational institution and use my private computer for this purpose. Sometimes a colleague borrows my computer and then I always hope that he does not find the nude models. Unfortunately, I also always lose USB sticks, so this would not be an optimal solution either. Last week my husband found the pictures with the nude models on my computer, which initially caused jealousy because my husband had not yet noticed that I have been practicing figure drawing for some time. I was able to explain it to him and now he thinks it's great. Nevertheless, it would somehow be more reassuring for me if I did not have to download the pictures. Thanks again for the great website. I enjoy every second :-) Best regards, Katja

I got really confused wondering why the button wasn't there but when I navigated to my albums through my classroom > albums I was able to get the button. The place on the site where you can view your albums and add a new one, and the place on your profile where you cannot, they look very similar, so it communicated that were the same kind of "thing" in the system and my brain expected the same functionality, hence the confusion. My suggestion is either make these two ways of viewing an album look different or make it so there is an "add album" button with viewing your own albums on your own profile.

I can't delete unnecessary pics from album in profile. Will there be such a function?

If I understand correctly, any photo I upload to my feed, whether that is to ask for help, to make a critiqued drawing for someone else, or just to post something I’ve done it all gets added to one single album. I’d like to be able to separate that from pieces I’m just sharing that are things I’ve finished or else it all gets lost in a long collection of photos. But I might be understanding this album thing wrong, I’m not the most savvy when it comes to the interwebs. Could there possibly be a way to have an extra “Portfolio Work” album just to showcase artwork? Does anyone else have this thought? Thanks!

In Forums where there is a long list of topics (for instance https://prokolab.com/community/categories/lesson_discussions ), after clicking on one of the topics, hitting the back button takes me back to the top of the list rather than repositioning the page to the topic I'd just clicked on. This is particularly a problem with very long pages with lazyload (like the one above). It's a small point but it might put people off browsing the forums, especially when the forums start to fill up with new posts. Here's a discussion on stackoverflow about what I'm talking about: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25168861/take-user-back-to-where-they-scrolled-to-on-previous-page-when-clicking-browser

Hey, guys, After the last update, my Notifications panel has been showing some weird issues: . When I delete older notifications, they simply appear again as I refresh the page; . As a I delete the old notifications, the number in the bell icon increases rather than decreases; . It turns out that the number shown in the bell icon ends up not corresponding to the amount of new notifications I have. I made a recording so you can see the bug in action: https://www.dropbox.com/s/cfk8eiliqtgzqm9/notifications%20bug.mov?dl=0 Thanks in advance!

Hello guys and gals of prokolab, there is a question or maybe a suggestion that id like to make, are you thinking about implementing a figure drawing tool similar to quickposes.com or line-ofactions.com? If not, please give it some thought! I believe it would enrich the site a ton! Ok, quick breakedown of the tool and why we need it: Figure drawing requires frequent practise to get better at, but life drawing clases are hard to participate in regularly. For example when there arent clases nearby, have difficult workshifts or other circumstances Drawing from images can help (of course you still need life drawing to make proper use of them) but having to create a pool of images that are of good quality, setting timers and opening the images out of folders yourselfe, whenever you want to draw 60sec poses, is very impractical and I think it gets you out of flow very easily. The sites mentioned above have tools that show poses for a set amount of time, but those are of poor quality, very limited image pool and are not well maintained. Also you cant upload your own images which would solve the problem of pool size and quality (on line-of-action you can upload 100 images for some categorys, but only in the premium membership that costs you ~15 dollars). As these sites are right now, this does not feel like I get enough for that money, but I would pay that, if the site would work better and if the image pool would be better/there would be an option to upload If prokolab had a tool like that integrated, I would be visiting the site on daily basis and it would also atract a lot of newcomers. Id probably be more motivated to take lessons, practise them with the tool and share my progress or engage in discussions when i face problems. This could work in the same way as the rest of proko: let the tool be used for free but with a limited pool and configurations. In the full version id be willing to pay up to ~10$ pre month but heavily depending of usability of the tool and quality, size and variety of the image pool Thanks for reading, hope y consider this, and if you have already: THANKS A LOT!

In general I'm very happy with 2.0, and I hate to be critical of anything. I'm sure you have your reasons, and I've given this a lot of thought before saying anything, but I really don't love the way the album section on our individual pages work, and that we have no control over what shows up there, other than to post or not to post. For me it's been post inhibiting, and as @pinkapricorn mentioned in the don't do list, everything you post anywhere, even if it's an example of someone else's art for study or whatever, shows up in your "album."

Long, long ago when I was a Neopets player, I really got into the part of the site with guilds and I both ran and was a part of several over my years on that site. I loved it! I loved how people could gather around an interest and have their own little community within the community. So, Proko team, what are your thoughts on having something like this in the new Proko? Groups I'd personally want to be a part of would be stuff like "Weebs of Proko" and maybe a mental health one where people with various mental disabilities work together to help each other keep moving forward with their art despite their mental health fighting them every step of the way. There is a lot of value in the monkey-see-monkey-do phenomenon. Like even if your mental health has kept you from your art for literally YEARS, being surrounded by people who are managing to do art despite feeling awful could finally give you the boost you need :) And also just being surrounded by a bunch of people you identify with could make you feel better and thus have much more mental energy to work with in the first place :)

I prefer dark mode over light mode. If the option already exist please direct me on how to change it. I would really appreciate this.

Hi guys, as the Lessons feature becomes ever more populated, would it be possible to add something like ‘Artists A - Z/ Artists Z - A’ filters so their work could be listed and any lessons series more easily identified and followed?

Hello. I’m seeing this from my iPad 6th gen today. After I click on the notification bell to see what’s happening, it disappears. I hope it’s accidental. I don’t like this because I’ll go look at one item, and then want to go back to the list. The area where the bell should be is still clickable from my classroom. Thank you 🙏.

Suggestion, it would be nice if the preview image on posts was larger, and allowed different aspect ratios. I imagine maybe the current limit has to with bandwidth and delivery speed. Since all preview thumbnail images are both small, and cropped to a landscape format, viewer interest is largely dependent on what they can see appearing inside that window.

Hi guys, I have this little issues with my pencils. after I sharpened them and try to shade with them and even on the point sometimes , it feels like there are those tiny hard pieces in the lead and it messes the shading process and give this scratchy feeling on the paper. Any suggestion ? Do I do something wrong ? Thanks in advance guys.

I may be blind, stupid or both... (It would not be the first time) But where do I find the model pictures for this lesson? A suggestion: When starting a new chapter, like I just did with the arms, it would be great if all the downloadable content was in one place. Now I have to click on the e-book first, than underneath it I find the download-tab, and by clicking that tab I can download the e-book. Than, if I want to download f.ex. the video "Arm-Bones-Assignment-Example-6", I first have to click on this video, than the download-tab and than I can download that video. And so on... Wouldn't it be better if all the downloadable content for that chapter could be found under one download tab?

Let’s say a post is checked the red “asked for help” by author of the post. Then later suppose someone generously provides useful feedback such that the author of post is no longer looking for feedback. Is it possible to keep the post and Feedback response all visible and let the author choose to toggle off just the red “asked for help”?

Hello. I've noticed that I've stopped getting in house notifications for the Proko videos, I'm only finding out about them through lucky email announcements (lucky because I hit the bell in a YT video to see what would happen, over and over because I couldn't see anything change). I think this is because of the change in categories. Will they be living in the "Lesson Discussion" section from now on? I just hit follow for it just in case. Thank you!

More of a suggestion if anything, but I wanted to gauge concern of the community: what does everyone think about the "Open Original" feature that gives you the same resolution and full size image that the original poster uploads? Personally I see the good it can do for someone like me who LOVES to study each pencil/brush stroke and try to deconstruct an artist's process, but I also can't help but think about the potential downsides. I worry that some of the artists here might get their work stolen to be reposted elsewhere, and convincingly so because the work they would upload will be available in their highest resolution. I've seen websites use a right-click blocking feature so discourage saving the original image to the computer, or just the click or hover-zoom might be a safer alternative. I believe in the integrity of this community that we wouldn't go stealing each other's work, but as a free and open website viewable by anybody, I think it is an important concern to at least bring up, even if just to dispel worries or dismiss it!

Hi Proko team and thanks for the beta invite! I don't know if this has already been suggested but would you be able to implement a dark mode for the website/UI? I tend to study later in the day and have most of the other sites I use set to their respective dark modes. Thanks!

Wrote a comment this morning, but when I wanted to edit it now later in the afternoon I couldn´t. The edit button didn´t show. Just wanted to check if this is intentional and not a bug :)

Hey guys. In this post I want to talk about two things: -A confusing icon -Clicking "Mark as Complete" by mistake Confusing Icon ---------------------- Please refer to the attached image. See those two light gray icons? See how one goes with the view count and the other is a checkbox for "Mark as completed"? Because the icon next to the view count is similar in shape and value to the icon for checking "Mark as Completed", I instinctively thought it was clickable and experienced a bit of discomfort when I clicked it and nothing happened. It took my mind out of automatic mode and I had to think about the interface as opposed to what I was trying to accomplish from it. A small thing, but I point it out because when I read Steve Krug's book "Don't Make Me Think" he taught me that's the #1 rule of UI design. "Designing With the Mind in Mind" talked about it as well when they were explaining the limits of human working memory and why a UI needs to occupy as little of that as possible so the person can focus on their goal. That's why I notice this stuff :) Of course I know that there will never be a perfect UI and that time/budget constraints are always a factor, but this seems like something you could change cheap and easy. You probably could just make a new image file and save it over the top of the old one. :) I'm thinking you'd want to go with black since red would communicate "I stand out because I'm important" and grey is the color it is now. Or if it's really important for it to stay gray for some reason, then make the silhouette drastically different from the checkbox. At the end of the day it's your call if this is even worth fixing but just doing my duty here and making suggestions :) Clicking "Mark as Complete" by mistake ------------------------------------------------------ Now this problem is more critical. I checked "Marked as Complete" on a video just to see what would happen and I felt a sense of dread when I discovered I could not uncheck it! Please turn this into a toggle. :) I point this out not only for the obvious reason that I want to be able to uncheck stuff but also because I'm thinking about the concept of a UI making its users feel free to explore as opposed to them being afraid of making mistakes. Being low risk, basically. Well, being able to undo your mistakes plays into this :)

I've talked a lot about what features I use on the site and how they could possibly be improved but I haven't talked much about what I DON'T do and WHY. Well since I think this could also potentially help the dev team, I'll share. :) ------------ When I'm on the forum main page, I click the name of a board or the name of a post. I would click on what's under "last activity" to be taken directly to the latest post on a particular board, but that isn't a link, so I don't do it. When I'm on a board, I click the title of a post. I would sometimes click what's under "last activity" for a particular thread to be taken to the latest post on it, but it's not a link, so I don't. I click the big "Categories" button a lot but it's just to get back to the main page of the forum. I don't conceptualize my action as viewing categories. To me this link means something like "Home" or "Main" I never, ever, never click "latest" or "popular" no matter where I am on the forum because I don't understand how they work and instead of struggling with that my brain found its own way to navigate the forum: picking a board name or post if I'm on the main page and clicking "Categories" if I'm on a board page but wanna get back there to find a new jumping off point. If I'm in a thread I'll click the "Back" link if I want to go back to its respective board page or "Community" up in the global nav to get back to the forum main page. I've since become set in my ways of navigating like this and without a compelling reason to learn how "latest" and "popular" works I'll probably never use them. ---------- Maybe I'm dumb but I don't really understand how the "Browse" section works in the global navigation, so I never use it. I visited it a couple times and I felt overwhelmed by all the stuff I saw and like I didn't know how to take it in. I don't know why I experienced this because I didn't feel this way on the old Proko site. I enjoyed staring at the class offerings even though I've already purchased everything I wanted. Something about it just drew me in. Perhaps the page on the other site gives me a better sense of having a visual order? I know stuff with a strong visual hierarchy I generally feel comforted looking at it. On here I'm confronted with a wall of tiles that are all formatted the same and my brain is like "AHHH!!!!" Also I wasn't particularly motivated to overcome my feelings and learn to navigate the "browse" section because my account was made on old Proko and I already had courses in my classroom. Maybe if I had nothing I would have felt better about wading through the stuff in Browse. *shrugs* We'll never know. But as it is I just don't like it there. ------------- I get confused by how clicking "My Classroom" in the global nav and clicking the Proko logo both take me to the same page. For some reason I've developed an aversion to clicking "My Classroom" and always click the logo--despite the fact it takes me to the same place. ------------- I never go to My Classroom > Album. For some reason it bothers me that every single thing I've posted on the forums went in there despite the fact a lot of what I've posted is screen shots or examples of somebody else's art. ----------- I keep forgetting that I can see all my courses in My Classroom > Courses and have to remind myself every time how to get there. Sometimes I go to my dashboard and click on one of my active videos to get to a particular course. Because for whatever reason my brain remembers that path better. ----------- On stuff like 1w, 1m, 8hrs, etc. for how long it's been since something was posted, I don't hover my mouse over it like I do on other sites because it does not give me an exact post date. For some reason I feel a bit of mental anguish when I do not have a way to access the exact date when something was posted. Like on Reddit I can use the hovering method and on YouTube the post date is plain to see under every video. I have a habit of checking this every single time I watch a video. ---------- Hope this helps <3

communication is very important that is why i think that there should be a message's center so that fellow students & teacher's would be able to communicate with ese thank you. Stan from proko & to all of the awesome people who are hard at work developing proko2.0 and for making such an incredible experience for all of the proko2.0 community :)

It would be awesome to have a course on backgrounds, environments, and layouts. Everyone wants to be a character artist but I’m really more interested in environments!

Like the title says, I think it would be great, kinda like what Arstation does too. Cheers!

Hello Proko Team. What does the follow button do? (other than the rush of dopamine when you see an announcement that someone is “following” you 😉) When I first started following, I expected to be able to see everything they do, but that doesn’t seem to be the case; so maybe there’s only a notification for top level posts? Please clarify this. Thank you ☺️.

Browser: Google Chrome (PC) I also closed the site, tried to log out and then join but it didn't work

I think it would be great to have an art journal feature. I don't mean this just as a sketchbook, but more structured with some included features: -Provides templated page layouts that include images, notes and goals. - Option to be public or private, with options to make individual pages either - Allows comments per page, and against the overall journal - Provides a 'cover page' with image and title, which also suggests allowing multiple journals (e.g. Sketching, anatomy course, traditional progress). Could even be aligned to courses to track progress through them (add field for lesson no.) - And of course very importantly, allow others to follow individual journals to be notified of updates! One other feature would probably be to have a 'spotlight' feature to show random journals or a dedicated community section where they are browsable and searchable. Feedback and further ideas welcome :)

The title.

Just some ideas for potential additional forum sections: Drawing: we have Painting and Sculpting & 3D, but no drawing category. Possibly also mixed media? Or just an 'other art styles' category? News and announcements: to make sure things aren't missed in the dashboard, etc (site upgrades, new features, roadmap, new instructors/staff, rules, etc. Resources and Utilities: discussion of art instruction sources, materials and tools, digital software, hardware, etc. Thoughts?

Refer to attached image. This came to my email. It looks like in the HTML or CSS the width for the smiley got set to something way too wide. It might help to add a style rule that has max-width: 100px; in it (or whatever the native width of the smiley image is.) Then if some other code tries to scale it based on a percentage, it won't go above that width.

After using Proko forum for some time I found the thread is actually not quite convenient for people who wanna read them 1) Why are all the replies by default folded? Like Of course I want to read the replies, just give me an fold option like reddit does when I actually want to skip. I know this probably to reduce page size and load on demand, but you could load next reply threads when people scroll to the bottom. 2) You guys need to put the recent updated/answered replies on top of each reply thread (?) so when people goes to read the discussion, they end up getting updated stuff instead of scrolling through old ones. Current system doesn't seem to follow "upvote order" either? What's the logic in here :? And a bug where you click on the "Someone mentioned you in xxx" notification it's always "not found". Any ideas? i think it's due to the folding mechanism where when the page loads that comment isn't present at the time js want to direct you to, so yeah guys... (It's nothing bad to use a static thread instead of this crappy load-on-demand scheme, like... those are all just text, how many KBs would you send for a page anyway? And that way you get less request onto your server side as well.)

Having some kind of automatic yet flexible bookmarking system for course videos would be really useful. So, it would mark your progress as you watched videos but also could be overridden or reset. This would be increasingly useful as more courses are added to the classroom. It might only be a few days or a few weeks, but the first thing I want to know when reopening a course is "Now, where was I?" Or I might have watched a couple of videos in a section, but they didn't really sink in and I need to watch them again. If I can uncheck them, it will make it easier to work out where I got to in the course when I open it again. Ideally, this bookmarking could be toggled on individual videos or on whole course sections.

In the non-prokolab portrait course, there's a loomis head model that doesn't have the annotations. It looks like this version is missing from the prokolab version, however. It'd be great to have it with the annotated one, since the annotations kind of get in the way of the model. Also, I think someone already suggested this, but it'd be great to have all the 3d models in the tools section as it's a pain to fish for them. Thanks!

Hello wonderful electronic Magic Makers! I was just looking at a few profiles and noticed that when I click on the social media or website icons, it takes me off of this site and dumps me on the SNS or website, rather than opening a new window. New windows would be a lot safer for me, to help me focus on why I'm here, rather than getting lost down a rabbit hole. Thank you!