#color-me-club Blog on deviantART: RULES

Edit: December 15, 2009. Since the #color-me-club is now utilizing the Groups system, a lot of the rules and procedures for the #color-me-club have been modified, removed, or added. Please take a moment to read over the rules again if you haven't recently. Hopefully this will help clarify how the #color-me-club plans to utilize the Groups system.

How To Join

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1. By joining this club, you AGREE to the rules provided, and will abide by them as a member.

2. To join, press 'join' on the front page. The 'Join' button is at the top of the #color-me-club front page in the blue banner.

GENERAL RULES

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1. MEMBERS can suggest their line work to the #color-me-club collections. ANYONE can color.

2. Please be RESPECTFUL of other artists, particularly on their line work. Critique is strongly encouraged as long as it is constructive and uplifting. A lot of artists here know that they aren't Rembrandt, nor do they strive for that sort of greatness, and they can be very sensitive to what others say about their work. If you really want to lay it down on them, it is recommended that you keep it in notes format (free from public view) and that you acquire their permission to be critiqued first.

3. Submitting lineart or color work that is not your's to the club will result in an immediate report to the deviantArt administration. Attention line artists: this includes tracing.

4a. Please do not plug your clubs anywhere on our pages. There are forums more suitable for getting the word out. If you do want to have your club affiliated with the #color-me-club, see the Affiliates link in this journal's header for more information. Members who plug their clubs on our main page, our gallery, or our journals will have their comments hidden, and repeated offenses will result in a report to the dA administration.

4b. Do not spam non-art or non-club-related messages ANYWHERE within the #color-me-club. We have a ton of messages to sort through, numerous images that need updating/uploading/modification, and require many hours a week just to keep this club current with the volume of submissions streaming into it. Chain notes, shameless promotions, non-affiliate solicitations, and other aggravating transfers of mass-distributed binary will be reported. Repeat offenders will be purged by the mighty hand of Odin.

5a. All images supplied in the #color-me-club gallery and subsequent collections are protected by their respective copyright holders, and uploaded with the direct consent of their original artists. They are open for others to color. Not steal. Copying and distributing uncolored line art provided on this gallery and the galleries of #color-me-club members is a violation of deviantArt's terms of use in addition to international copyright law. In simpler terms: You only get to call the image your's when you're done coloring it. Even then you are still responsible to properly credit the original line artist when it's done, and are subject to the demands of the original artist as they still retain their Intellectual Property Rights.

5b. Make for DARN certain you understand 5a. In fact, read 5a again. Just to make sure.

Lineart Submission Guidlines

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1. We DO NOT require linearts to be inked, but they MUST be relatively clean. They must also be of a certain "color-able" quality. Extremely simple gestural strokes or silhouette images will not be uploaded.

2. We accept both fanart and original art. You may not, however, create fanart of original works in our gallery or collections without the direct consent of the original artist.

3. The lineart MUST be your own. You may not suggest someone else's lineart for them or claim it is your own. If the lineart was a collaborative effort, ensure that you credit them as well as yourself when submitting it to the club.

4. To keep the #color-me-club uncluttered, to influence members to take time with their lines, and to alleviate the amount of content being thrust upon color artists, only two linearts per week may be accepted from each member. If two of your linearts were entered into the gallery, but the others sent in the same note weren't, just suggest them again the next week. There are exceptions to this rule, which means this doesn't stand as a concrete rule but more of a forewarning and a courtesy notice as to why only a small portion of a bulk entry was accepted.

5. Please keep it relatively clean. Nudity can be tasteful in some pics, but if you feel the need to put a "mature content - strict" stamp on your work, it's probably not for our collection. Please leave out excessive nudity unless you feel it is ABSOLUTELY necessary (good example of proper excessive nudity would be the paintings of Dante's Inferno, if you haven't seen them).

6. It is very highly recommended that you put a signature or non-invasive watermark on your image. Images that use the gigantic deviantArt watermark will not be uploaded. Use a non-invasive water-mark. This means, something that is small, off to the side, and very subtle.

7. You are allowed to trace lineart from photographs that you own the copyrights to. You may also trace from stock, ONLY IF tracing it and sharing your finished work with the #color-me-club gallery falls within the rules of that stock's owner. Under no circumstances are you allowed to trace copyrighted photographs, let alone any copyrighted image of any medium.

How To Submit

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Step 1:
Join the #color-me-club. The join button is at the top of the #color-me-club front page in the 'Groups' banner. The join process is automatic, and does not require authorization to finalize. By joining the club, you automatically agree to the rules listed in the Club Rules Journal Entry.

Step 2:
Select 'Suggest a Fave.' This is in the blue banner at the top of the #color-me-club front page. Use 'Suggest a Fave' for both lineart and color work. Then, on the 'Choose a Deviation' pop-up window, select the 'Your Gallery' tab, and select the work you wish to submit to the #color-me-club. Press OK.

Step 3:
You are now done on your end. Real quick, real easy, nothing to it at all. We take over from here. Once your work is submitted, we will add it to our collections. The first collection it will go into is the 'Lineart Submission Archive' or 'Color Submission Archive,' depending on what kind of artwork is submitted. Then, if it's a lineart image, it will be added to either the 'Simple,' 'Moderate,' or 'Complex' archive, which will categorize it by how detailed the image is. This categorization is for the convenience of color artists, and the image's complexity will be determined by the #color-me-club administrators.

Step 4:
Twice a week, a journal will be posted showing all the works collected over the last few days.

There is a chance your work will be rejected. This could be for any number of reasons, but the most probable reasons are:

- Too many submissions: Try to keep your submissions to a sane level, and only send in your best work. We will start rejecting images if an artist submits too much in a short period of time.
- Traced image: Submitting a traced image will result in a report to dA admins, be very careful with what artwork you choose to submit.
- Image is not on a clean medium: For example, poor quality scan, lines are difficult to see, image is submitted on lined or graph paper, paper quality is dirty, etc.
- Too small: We want images to be at least 400 pixels in size.
- Strict mature content: Some nudity is allowed, but not excessive sexual exhibitions, extreme profanity, or gratuitous violence.

Rules for Coloring #color-me-club Images

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1. You MAY NOT alter lineart without express permission from the individual artist.

2. You MAY change the title of your colored work.

3. Grayscale images are definitely allowed. They also do not have to be shaded, as noir tones can always make for a perfect mood for many images. Just because the name of the club is #color-me-club doesn't mean that we disqualify the 10 to 90 percent shades of gray from being considered as colors, too.

4. You MUST give credit to the original artist when posting colored works in your gallery.

5. Unless you have received express permission from the artist them self, you may not upload your final colored version on any host other than deviantArt. This is because dA already has a very strict copyright policy in place that automatically protects your work. We are not responsible for damages or theft of intellectual property for images that get posted elsewhere. This also includes using your colored versions as tags, signatures, layouts, wallpapers, or backgrounds on other webpages like MySpace, Facebook, or LiveJournal. As a holder of a colored piece, PROTECT YOUR WORK; not just for your sake, but for the sake of the artist whose work you colored.

6. Under no circumstances are you allowed to tamper with any signatures or contact information placed upon the image by the line artist. This INCLUDES getting permission from the line artist to do so. Even if the original line artist allows the modification of their signature or contact information, it is imperative that #color-me-club participants never do so. This is a huge protective measure to prevent one person getting permission to remove or relocate the signature and others starting doing the same without permission.

7. Line artists still retain the rights to their work, even when another is done coloring it. That means that their rules still apply to colored art when colorists submit it to their galleries. In the very highly unlikely event they do not like the final product (for whatever reason, whether it be quality, content, offensive, etc.), they still have the power to demand you to take down your work. This is not a club rule, neither, but an emphasis upon the legal fact that simply coloring an image doesn't grant one exclusivity over it. Don't want any of you colorists surprised by what powers an original line artist still has.

8. Be aware of additional provisions the line artist may provide in the image's comment or in that artist's journal. For example, some artists may not want the colored versions of their lines hosted outside of deviantArt. Or, they may require the line artist to follow a particular color scheme (even though not following a color scheme will not disqualify an image's legibility for showcase in the #color-me-club). See 7, and remember that the line artist still has the rights to their work, so be extra respectful to them.

Failure to abide by these provisions may result in your colored version being removed by deviantArt administrators. These rules don't exist to hold you back and keep the #color-me-club staff dodging boredom by hunting violators. They are to protect you, your gallery, and your reputation in the art community. Please be mindful of the feelings of other artist, practice humility, be humble, and above all else, enjoy yourself by partaking in this ever-expanding collection of thousands of images!

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RULES - How to Join/Submit

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