You may have noticed a list of art collections on the left sidebar, and if you're particularly observant, you may have also seen the "Collect" item in the main menu up above.  What this means is that it's now possible for people to create art collections.

This feature is still very beta, and at the moment the form for actually creating an art collection is very ugly and rudimentary, but it works without major issues.  If you want to make an art collection, the best way to do it at the moment is create an empty collection (Collect -> New Collection on the main menu) and then look at individual art submissions.  The option for adding art to a collection you own (or are listed as a collaborator on) is in the left sidebar for all art submissions, and is quite smooth to use.

You don't have to be the author of a piece of art to add it to a collection.  The purpose of collections is to allow us to organise art into coherent sets, which is a feature that OGA has lacked up until this point.  You'll notice I'm already trying to do that with the official 16x16 JRPG set.

I'm planning on making some major improvements to the collection editing screen, the idea being that you'll be able to quickly search through multiple art submissions and add them to a collection by clicking on them once without refreshing the page.  It should make collecting art a lot more convenient.

After that, I'll be putting together the collaboration, critique, and remixing features, and at that point I think it'll be safe to call this site OpenGameArt 2.0.  :)

Comments?

The Krita 2.4 beta is out, and I've been playing around with it for the last hour or so.  I recommend giving it a try if you haven't already -- the brush settings are absolutely wonderful if you like making digital art.  The usual beta caveats apply, though -- save your work frequently if you're planning on doing anything serious with it. :)