Art & Writing Rules

[SuperDecimal]

Criticism and Commenting

One MAJOR flaw that plagues many artists pages and public galleries is that there is a genuine lack of proper commenting. What is truly ideal is something similar to what Polykarbon forums has, where each and every member has a solid thing to contribute to any sort of work, as opposed to the generic comments, which are essentially little more than copy/paste commentary, should not be allowed.


Do NOT post comments such as:

• "Good/nice job/work"
• "I like/love it"
• "Awesome stuff"
• "Haha/LOL/ROFL/That was funny (*obviously* in reference to humourous things)"
• "-generic statement of anticipation for more work from said artist-"

However, if you do have something worthwhile to say, and to really test the skill of an artist/writer/poet/etc, this is the guidelines on how to do it.
Criticism is to be done in a constructive and sensible manner. For every statement, it is a good idea to provide reasons why. A small paragraph of at least three of four sentances would be nice.



Art

To post Art on the according subforum, it is required that you include an abbreviation before the actual topic name, ie:

(Orig) My hand [Nudity]

(Orig) being the topic pre-abbreviation, and "My hand" being the topic name and [Nudity] being the topic suf-abbreviation.

Art Topic Pre-Abbreviations

• Spriting/Sprites/Pixel art - (Spr)
• Flash/Gif Animations - (Fg)
• Original works (Covering comics, manga, one-piece works) - (Orig)
• Official Art imitations - (Offc)
• Zelda or other series Fanarts - (Fa)
• Movies - (M)
• Photography - (P)
• Artist's Thread (meaning basically a dumping ground of works) - (Dump)
• Graphics - (Gra)
• Sculpture - (S)
• Miscellanous - (Misc)

Regarding nudity, it must never be of anything other than artistic nudity.
Homosexual acts are allowed, again this must be in good taste.
No-no on heavily done-over-the-top cherry popping. You must also not directly image-tag the nude work, but provide the url.
Regarding violence and gore, same rules apply, URL the image and give warning.

And also how to put your art on the web
Ok, this is how to do it:

Scan or take a digital photo of your picture
1. Find a host like "Image hosting, free photo sharing & video sharing at Photobucket or ImageShack® - Hosting and register.
2. Upload your pictures through their uploader.
3. Find the link of the picture, and copy it. (usually go into properties)
4. When on the ZU boards, paste the URL, and slap on the image tags like so: [img] www.yourimage.com [/img] (without the spaces)


Fiction

To post Fiction on the according subforum, it is required that you include a topic abbreviation before the actual topic name, ie:
(Hor) My butt went nuts [G]
(Hor) being the topic pre-abbreviation, and "My butt went nuts" being the topic name and [G] being the topic suf-abbreviation.

Fiction Pre-Abbreviations

• Fantasy/Spiritual (Fan)
• Comedy/Satire/Parody (Com)
• Sci-fi (Sf)
• Action/Adventure (Act)
• Mystery/Crime (MC)
• Horror (Hor)
• Romance (Rom)
• Tragedy (Tra)
• Non-Fiction (NF)

If you work contains a mixture of the above, combine them as such:
(Fan/Com/MC) <-- Easy peasy lemon squeezy?

Age Ratings
Put these at the end of your topic line.

• (G) - General
• (T) - Suitable content for over 10
• (M) - Suitable content for over 16
• (MA/R) - Suitable content for over 21

Again, this is confined within the boundaries of what writers and moderators deem "tasteful". However, this does not mean lemons, orgies and a story dedicated to eating babies.
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Requests
Simply place a (REQ) prefix, and post your topic in the appropriate forum.



Thread Bumping

Basically, if you have had no comments for a while and you want to bump your thread to give it some attention, you must do so by posting the next part of your fiction/new art piece, and not by posting a spammy little generic comment of intent, like (but not limited to);

• New part coming soon!
• Chapter 17 coming soon!
• I'm just updating, I'll be finished soon
• New part is on the way!

In addition, if you've just posted a new fiction or art piece, and you wish to submit the next part but have not received any comments, don't worry about double posting, simply post the next part.
Sometimes, a mod may merge the posts together, but that said, feel free to post new art and fiction pieces.
A note to all those that comment on art and fiction - be sure to read and obey the rules about commenting on pieces, no brief, short spam please. Continued spam will result in warnings.

[Cody]

What's the rule on deleting and reposting your last post in the thread to bump it? I've always wondered about that from back when I had a signature shop.

[SuperDecimal]

If it's exactly the same post, then I'd consider not doing it often, if at all.
Most of the time in the past, a person would post something, and if they didn't get a reply in a few hours, they'd continue bumping until they did, which gives their thread unfair attention when others deserve just as much notice.
However, the use of the new thread-bumping rule is designed to try and get rid of that, since now, in order to bump your thread, it has to be a new piece of art or fiction so that bumping with spammy comments (as listed above) or indeed, deleting and reposting the same post, is no longer needed - and if it happens, it's warranted a warning possibly.