Dont worry Aviary.com is actualy really cool in fact you can use it to create your own custom Bopper toy! To make sure Aviary was on the up and up I did a little interview with one of it’s co founders. The interview and a link to the blank bopper template is after the jump

I’m always looking for new tools to make and share my creative output. I was very intrigued when a friend linked me to http://aviary.com/home a site that currently offers a range of web based image editing tools.

I can’t count the number of discussions about digital art and content creation I have had. Between my friend who worked adobe tech support for years, my programing brother and my need to simply get the job done there was always plenty to talk about. While the points and topics were always changing the basic conclusion was Adobe products were usually the best option available but they could still be extremely lacking and had obvious areas for improvement.

Content creation tools that take a fresh approach interest me. While I have yet to dig into the Aviary tools to see if they really can match or exceed my current programs. For this article I’m going to assume that the programs will eventually meet this goal.

While I would love some better tools. There was something in Aviary’s terms of use that caught my attention, imagination, and suspicion. This was the concept of the marketplace. The implications of this took a little bit to sink in. but it started to make since, Aviary’s mission is after all to “Make the world’s creation accessible“.

For now Aviary only offers tools for editing and creating images, however they are working on a range of tools that encompass everything from music, word processing, video editing and 3D modeling. It looks like they will eventually have the capacity to help you make anything you could imagine. In a very real way they are making the tools that will be used to make the “world’s creation”. Making the worlds creation accessible is where things get interesting.

By combining the tools required to create content and the methods needed to market and sell content under one company and website Aviary is positioning it’s self as not only the total solution for working as a creative person in the digital age but also as a gateway for accessing this content.

In order to help me form an opinion about Aviary I have asked Avi Muchnick a co-founder of Aviary if he would answer a few questions. Most kindly he said yes.

Tyler: Thanks very much for taking some questions. While a few of them are about the terms of use, of far more importance to me are your motives and values. I don’t mean these questions come off as provocative or accusing, they are the questions I must ask of something I see so much potential in.

Aviary offers it’s users an incredible value. In fact it all seems a little too good to be true. So other then subscription fees what do you and your partners intend to gain from Aviary?

Avi: On the business end: We ultimately aim to open up a marketplace where our users can voluntarily sell their works and services if they like. That is what we’re really hoping for with this business in terms of monetization as there is only so far you can go with subscriptions. On the idealist end: We hope to change the current dynamic where really only professional artists and tech geeks have access to design tools. We want the whole world to be able to create.

Tyler: Also what do you expect the market place to be used for? Professional level transactions of creative work like a publishing contract or smaller consumer level transactions like an i-Tunes song purchase?

Avi: The focus will be on smaller consumer-level transactions at the beginning. I have found it’s better to take baby steps first and see where they go.

Tyler: What level of user do you expect or intend to attract, professionals, hobbyists, doodlers?

Avi:We expect professionals will be attracted to the marketplace, both to buy and sell.

We’re hoping that hobbyists and doodlers will be attracted to the tool set, as it’s easier to take in, hassle free and the community will help them learn faster than they would with desktop software.

Tyler: Under funding in your FAQ it says “We have been fortunate enough to attract a group of industry visionaries who believe firmly in our mission and want to help us grow.“

About those industry visionaries, it would help to know who these people are or at the very least know what other projects they have helped. Are we talking people who fund Wikipedia or members of the cell phone dynasty?

Avi: Wikipedia-type projects. I can’t discuss this on an interview that will be published unfortunately (yet), but the main people involved are in that About Us photo, if you can figure out their caricatures.

The people behind us have been involved with Etsy, Creative Commons and other very notable and reputable endeavors.

Values that are important to us:

- Allowing people to profit from their innate talents.

- Allowing people access to tools that were previously relegated to an isolated class.

- Allowing people to draw on the power of not just applications, but distributed computing and the people behind those other computers. In other words, “cloud-sourcing,” a play on the previously coined-term crowd-sourcing.

Tyler: In researching Aviary I can see the vast potential it represents. But with such potential could come massive amounts of power. Historically when an industry controls the tools used to make content along with the method content is marketed and sold, creative people are treated very very poorly. America’s music industry is an apt example. While Aviary’s terms of use currently sound fair there is nothing that prevents them from changing into something abusive.

Avi: I think the market dictates that pretty nicely. Aviary isn’t the only player on the block and if we did anything to change things up we’d lose the one thing we have: the power of our users. We have about 7+ years under our belt working with the artists at Worth1000.com (our first site) and think we’ve established a reputation online as attracting and cultivating a phenomenal culture of talented artists who respect each other. We couldn’t do that by taking advantage of them. So hopefully, if people are concerned our past work will speak in that regard.

Tyler: It’s understandable to periodically need to change your paperwork as laws change, especially in these times when intellectual property is a topic of debate. However there is still a possibility for abusing this reasonable provision. What protection will you give users against an abusive change in the terms of use?

Avi: I guess you’re talking about something like what Facebook ran into:

Here’s what I think we would do, though we haven’t had to deal with this yet, so this is entirely speculation as to how I would handle it.

1) When introducing a terms change, write a blog post well in advance explaining what the change would be and what the pros and cons would be for users. Discuss which date it would go into effect.

2) Assuming people were generally OK with the terms change, give all individuals a choice about accepting or rejecting the terms. If they rejected them and didn’t wish to continue on the site, give them access to all their files somehow or otherwise try to isolate the area they disagreed with from their usage experience.

Beyond that I don’t know. But I think Terms of Service have to be written with the users in mind as much as the company. Online agreements are generally one-sided, unlike regular contracts that are usually negotiated and revised. Given that a user has a choice: sign or don’t use it, the terms need to be written to at least somewhat reflect the users’ rights as well. We tried to do that by giving them a readable summary so they at least understood exactly what our terms meant.

Tyler: As I understand Aviary currently offers it’s users full rights to the content they create, however given it is a web based service and parts of the service are not finished, users are actually offered little control over the their work. Allowing users to save work on their system locally will help but could be useless if their access to the programs that actually edit and output those files is limited by web access or their account status. This being the case I would like to know your intentions with the off line versions of aviary applications.

Avi: The offline version is interesting to us, but I want to perfect our online versions first before porting it. Having a desktop version that is not in a fully-featured state seems a bit wasteful.

Please note users can currently download their works to their desktops even with the online version.

Tyler: Will the off line editions of your programs require an active aviary account?

Avi: Only if they wish to upload their works to our website(s).

Tyler: As your tools move beyond the realm of image editing what is your intent regarding file output going to be?

Avi: We want to enable popular formats, especially those that can themselves be easily converted into other formats. We want people to be able to download them to their desktops.

Tyler: The most intriguing part of your terms is section 10. The marketplace sounds like a wonderful service and is something I would be very interested in working with. However the line “Aviary prohibits the use of Contributor and Subscriber contact information obtained from the Site to complete transactions outside of the Site.” feels too general. It’s my experience that connections and networking are the very things that make working and earning a living as a creative person possible.

Avi: I agree. Unfortunately that term emerged from past experience on Worth1000.com and we realized that it needed to be specifically spelled out to some people.

It’s really just meant to protect the site from an artist using the marketplace to gain work and then slyly cutting the site out of the equation before completing the transaction.

These rules don’t apply to artists and clients who have done work already, just to the first job that they did (when the client listed his job in Aviary’s job board).

I’ll note that for clarification when we do our next revision of our Terms.

Tyler: To help me understand what this line means I will provide a few examples and you can tell me if they constitute a breach of the terms.

Someone is exposed to my work while browsing Aviary. Later while at a convention they see printed copies of my work for sale and purchase some of it from me.

Avi: No breach.

Tyler: Someone is exposed to my work while browsing Aviary. Later they see my work on amazon.com and purchase it there.

Avi: No breach.

Tyler: A publisher sees my work on Aviary and commissions new works from me, we conduct business outside of the aviary store.

Avi: Breach.

Tyler: Eventually that same publisher hires me to work for them in house as an employee. Given that they got my contact information from aviary this may fall under your terms.

Avi: No breach.

Tyler: A musician has made an album using your forthcoming music and audio tools. In addition to offering the music on the aviary store would they be able to offer the music on i-tunes, or other download services without special agreements between these services?

Avi: Yes, totally. They are not required to put it our store at all. It’s their music after all and they can place it where they please.

Tyler: Is it your intent that content created on aviary tools will remain exclusive to the aviary store?

Avi: No, absolutely not. We are hoping many places will feature Aviary content. We actually already have some artists selling their work in DeviantArt’s marketplace and we’re thrilled with it, especially as they are crediting the tools and giving us extra exposure.

Tyler: More importantly is it your intent that careers created on Aviary.com will remain exclusive to the aviary store?

Avi: No, absolutely not. That would undercut our mission of allowing artists to profit from their innate talents and would also be tremendously short-sighted of us. Aviary “graduates” in the field become Aviary evangelists to new artists.

Tyler: Is there anything else you would like to say?

Avi: Just thanks very much for taking the time to ask! I encourage anyone who ever has questions like these to not hesitate to reach me directly at avi@aviary.com. Obviously it’s our job to make our Terms clearer so that everyone understands them and your questions help us do so.

Based on his answers I no longer have any doubts. I think Aviary.com will eventually be the prefect way for the paper toy community to share and customize each other’s work (i think they are still working out a good print solution) . So as a first step in this direction i have made the blank template for the Bopper available in aviary’s image editor Phoenix! Visit http://aviary.com/artists/Tyler-Tinsley/creations/blank_bopper If you want to make your own custom bobble headed dancing papercraft!

The site already has 150,000 registerd users and over 60 tutorials on how to use phoenix. So get cracking I want to see your Bopper! If you make one send me a pic and I will post it here!