The digital art industry is in tears today.
The art community site CGHub has officially shut down.
No more CGHUB. Sad day. Project CGHUB is officially closed. The reason behind this extremely tough decision is personal and will remain private. It’s absolutely not connected with business or any kind of technical difficulties. On behalf of development team I would like to apologize to CGHUB users and fans for abrupt project closure and delay with its announcement. – The Shakuro Team
After days of hiatus with no official word, the website announced —through its developers, Shakuro—that “project CGHUB is officially closed” stating that the decision behind the departure is “personal and will remain private.”
No other reason was given as to why the site has gone MIA.
Many of our friends and colleagues were subscribers to CGHub and had online portfolios on the site. They, along with thousands of other digital artists, will be looking for an alternative to the online community to display their works of art.
Below, Concept Art World has compiled a list of such websites:
3DTotal.com/Layerpaint.com
Artician.com
Behance.net
CGSociety.org
ConceptArt.org
Coroflot.com
Deviantart.com
Drawcrowd.com
Gameartisans.org
Increateble.com
Polycount.com
Visualart.me
Vfxartportal.com
Zerply.com
CAW will update the list as we gather more information. Send us your suggestions, and tell us which of these sites listed—or not listed— you plan to migrate to.
For artists worried about having lost their pieces on CGHub, we suggest that you attempt to use the Internet Archive digital library. The website provides permanent access to collections of digitized information.
As always, CAW is committed to providing information on up-and-coming artists and news related to the digital art industry. Be sure to check this page for updates.
UPDATE – 4/14/2014 8:15 a.m. CST
Shakuro has released an additional statement about the closure of CGHub stating that it was “NOT associated with Full Spectrum Digital, LLC- the company that ran CGHUB.com.” In the statement, Shakuro discounted reasons about why the site had shut down and reinforced its earlier statement about the website going dark for “personal reasons.” Shakuro said that if any PRO members have not received their refunds then they should contact Shakuro.
Shakuro also said that it is looking into developing a new social art community.