Thread: The Artist's Alcove's Rules and Guidlines

Okay, let's go over the basic rules and guidelines of The Artist's Alcove:

General Rules

1. No Porn/Hentai

Posting of porn/hentai (i.e. depiction sexual acts and/or private parts) is not allowed under any circumstances. Tasteful nudes are allowed, but if drawn with nasty bits, the nasty bits must be edited/blurred/etc out of the picture itself by its artist(s), and the thread must be properly labeled (e.g. Adult Only/Mature).

2. No Bashing of Art

Do not post saying how someone's art is horrible or badly made without offering some constructive criticism. And even then, try to refrain from sounding like a jerk in your posts. Give nice, well mannered criticism so that they artist may work to improve. If you have no constructive criticism, then stay quiet and move on. Vicious and/or repeat-bashers will be infracted.

3. No Plagiarism (ripping off other people's art)

Taking other people's art and saying that it is your own is strictly not allowed. If you are known to have taken someone's artwork without their permission, the topic in which the offending artwork resides will be edited and locked, and you will be immediately infracted. Editing someone else's art is also not allowed. If your images seem a lot like someone else's work (as if you traced them, for example), you will be watched, and person possibly being ripped off will be notified. Coincidences occur, though, so if someone's art is only somewhat like your art, and you suspect them of ripping you, wait until they've made several supposed violations before reporting it in a Private Message (complete with hyperlinks to the "offenses" and "originals") to one of the section Moderators. You may also use this method to report any rips that may have been overlooked.

You may not post a new topic for others' art, even if you aren't claiming that it's yours, and even if you're just hyperlinking to some webpage off somewhere. If the artist wants the people here to see their art, they'll post it themselves. The Artist's Alcove is a place where you show off your own work, not someone else's. You may, however, post a hyperlink to someone else's art webpage when there is a situation in a topic that requires a reply with an example of similar technique, theory, etc. Even then, you must give full credit to the artist, and link to their webpage, not an image hosted on their webpage (bandwidth-leeching is bad).


How and Where to Post

The Artist's Alcove's main forum is for all types of artwork, be they drawn with pencil and paper or created with software like Photoshop, Painter, GIMP, SAI etc. You are allowed to show off things like sprites, signature banner or image manipulations that you made, but keep in mind that this is not the place to offer your services to other users (see: The Artisan's Gallery).

When posting art, do not make multiple topics for your artwork. Each user should have only one thread which they can update whenever they want to display a new artwork, however, exceptions can be made if a user wishes to post something completely different in a different thread. Within the threads, large images should be within spoiler tags and if there is any mature content, it should be stated in the thread title. A Moderator will do this for you if you don't do it yourself, but please try to avoid this.

The Artisan's Gallery is for user-made "shops". These are threads where users offer their graphic skills to you. You post a request in a shop thread, and the shop owner finishes the request based on the details given. There are a variety of different services that the various shops have to offer, for example, banners, avatars, sprites etc. For more information on The Artisan's Gallery's rule and guidelines, go here.

When posting updates in your threads, you are allowed to post even if you were the last person who posted.

If you actually read all of this, good job! And remember, whenever in doubt, ask a Moderator!