In the past I had been able to upload my drawings now it seems like every drawing I put up there it gets deleted by the mod notmenotyou. Its gotten to the point where I feel like this person has a vendetta against me. I know some of my pics had noise and I did the best I could to clean it up and the pic still gets deleted by no surprise notmenotyou. So Yea I'm pretty ticked rtm. All I want to do is get critiques and advice from others to help me improve. But I can't do that when 60% of my pics get deleted by the same mod

They were deleted for being poor quality. I would have deleted them as well.

From the looks of things most of your uploads are photos.

I'm not a mod but I wouldn't approve them either.

Whts funny is that I seen the mod accept worst quality pics than mine. It just don't make any sense

Your photos are so grainy I could grind them into flour and make some bread. There are so many artifacts I'm not sure if I'm looking at furry art or an archaeological dig site. We don't accept photos of poor image quality, so they wouldn't be accepted regardless of who went through approvals.

KungFury said:
Whts funny is that I seen the mod accept worst quality pics than mine. It just don't make any sense

Care to point them out. There is a grandfathering rule that might shed light on that...

Ratte said:
Your photos are so grainy I could grind them into flour and make some bread. There are so many artifacts I'm not sure if I'm looking at furry art or an archaeological dig site.

Absolutely roasted

So Whts being said is that only digital art gets accepted? And if not anything hand drawn has to go through a scanner which basically has to get digitally modify for it to be accepted? Please take note that I'm not trying to be rude or anything I'm just confused.

Yeah. You have to use a scanner which is not digitally altering your images. Just taking a reasonably high quality image of them.

No, not only digital art gets accepted. We require that the image quality is good, which means you will need to scan it or take impeccable photos. Scanned work is only modified digitally...if you choose to modify it digitally. If you don't want to, then don't.

KungFury said:
So Whts being said is that only digital art gets accepted? And if not anything hand drawn has to go through a scanner which basically has to get digitally modify for it to be accepted? Please take note that I'm not trying to be rude or anything I'm just confused.

Scanners take high quality pictures--If you scan it and it's still low quality, that means the skecthwork itself was low.

Whts my next best option to a scanner? I don't have the money to buy one

KungFury said:
In the past I had been able to upload my drawings now it seems like every drawing I put up there it gets deleted by the mod notmenotyou. Its gotten to the point where I feel like this person has a vendetta against me. I know some of my pics had noise and I did the best I could to clean it up and the pic still gets deleted by no surprise notmenotyou. So Yea I'm pretty ticked rtm. All I want to do is get critiques and advice from others to help me improve. But I can't do that when 60% of my pics get deleted by the same mod

I think it has to do rendering and comp stuff as oppsed to the art it self then again heck if I km know

KungFury said:
Whts my next best option to a scanner? I don't have the money to buy one

Use a library scanner. Some public libraries allow for you to use their scan print services manually to USB. Check it out.

GDelscribe said:
Use a library scanner. Some public libraries allow for you to use their scan print services manually to USB. Check it out.

Migt be tricky depend on the arts contents

GDelscribe said:
Use a library scanner. Some public libraries allow for you to use their scan print services manually to USB. Check it out.

I'm not sure if my library has one.

KungFury said:
I'm not sure if my library has one.

That too well hope you figer it out

Photos can be approved, but they need to be of better quality.
For starters, don't take shots in the dark. Too much noise. Bright sunlight is best for even lighting. Lamplight doesn't suffice, outside of an actual studio setup. And make sure to align the shot correctly, not at angle. And crop out the background. We don't need to see what's in your room.

Then they might have a chance of being approved, but no promises.

In short, the art isn't bad. But the photos are terrible.

Genjar said:
Photos can be approved, but they need to be of better quality.
For starters, don't take shots in the dark. Too much noise. Bright sunlight is best for even lighting. Lamplight doesn't suffice, outside of an actual studio setup. And make sure to align the shot correctly, not at angle. And crop out the background. We don't need to see what's in your room.

Note: these rules may not apply if you are a legend.

Clawdragons said:
Note: these rules may not apply if you are a legend.

> 2 years ago

That submission wouldn't have been approved today.

@OP: Even the cheapest flat bed scanner will work off of Amazon, simply invest around $50 for a new one, or pick one with good ratings up on ebay. Offices cycle their stuff regularly so you should be able to get a good bargain on one if you're looking around.

KungFury said:
Whts my next best option to a scanner? I don't have the money to buy one

You could try looking for a free one on Craigslist or Freecycle. Don't forget to look for a printer with an attached scanner.

Depending on your location, there could be multiple public libraries nearby. You should find their phone numbers, call them, and ask about the scanners.

As for scanning pornography in the public library.. hide the computer screen with your shoulders.

OK, and what about post #1006196? Something like 8 faves, no comments, and suddenly "Does not meet minimum quality standards"? Are these standards documented somewhere or is it just a whim? I find it pretty hard to believe that that image was worse than some of the crap that gets posted here, and incredibly annoying to have it just deleted without even any hint as to what was so bad about it.

RenaKunisaki said:
I find it pretty hard to believe that that image was worse than some of the crap that gets posted here

Everything that you listed weren't as bad as this... (no offense". Monstrosity

Two of those posts are years old, and post #26863 is way better than post #1006196

Overall I'm actually almost amazed how well mods are doing their job on this site and deserve more cookies.

PSA about taking photos of traditional artwork:
If you take images, nowdays not only phones but also modern cameras have GPS coordinates and other data inserted in JPG EXIF data for easier organization, tagging, etc. That means if you upload questionable/explicit material you do not want to be connected to your home address and other real life information, either wipe EXIF or disable setting before taking photo.

This is one of many reasons why scanner would be the ideal thing to get. Even the most cheapest and ancient scanner does give good quality. If I go to local recycling center, I can see several of printer/scanner combo devices which has been thrown away because of ink running out or printer part being broken, meaning basically free scanners.

NotMeNotYou said:
That submission wouldn't have been approved today.

Really? I feel as though some leeway could be given considering the circumstances and the artist.

Clawdragons said:
Really? I feel as though some leeway could be given considering the circumstances and the artist.

Who someone is doesn't really matter.

Lance_Armstrong said:
Two of those posts are years old, and post #26863 is way better than post #1006196

If we're calling out on specific posts

I'd bring post #936798 into question which is messy at best and definitely not more than 2 years old.

GDelscribe said:
If we're calling out on specific posts

I'd bring post #936798 into question which is messy at best and definitely not more than 2 years old.

I would definitely say that is not messy. That has actual body proportions for males and body details, expected colors and methods for a monochrome image, and (my personal interest) appropriate body language / reactions.

GDelscribe said:
If we're calling out on specific posts

We're not calling out approved posts, since mods have discretion to decide what deserves an approval, and your one example isn't even low quality. We don't need to bring in any more examples. If it's not an image that you uploaded that got deleted, it is not on-topic.

Mighyenta said:
Everything that you listed weren't as bad as this... (no offense". Monstrosity

OK, obvious trolling aside, WTF is so awful about it that it deserves to be deleted, when there are so many utterly terrible posts that have stayed? Is it a rule now that all submissions must be up to the personal standards of one particular moderator who happens to have a stick up his butt that morning?

I mean if you don't like it, fine, but what rule did it break? What exactly are the "minimum quality standards"? Are they listed somewhere? Because I'm pretty sure quality is a matter of personal opinion, and can't be objectively measured. So if one person not liking something is reason enough to delete it, well that's just stupid.

I know it seems like I'm making a big fuss over nothing, but this kind of system really strikes a nerve. (and yes, I'd react the same way if it weren't my own drawing.) When you delete a post, that means:

• it can't be re-submitted after the mod who deleted it has had their naptime
• nobody can comment on it (so no constructive feedback to help the artist improve)
• it counts against your upload limit (so there's a long-term consequence affecting more than just that post)
• it's deleted from everyone's favourites list (so mods get to decide what other peoples' favourites are!)

The only reasons to delete a post should be that it's breaking the rules (objective rules that are listed somewhere, not subjective things that can be disagreed on), it's a duplicate/smaller version, or the artist/copyright holder requests it. If mods are free to delete just because they don't like it, that just leads to... well, this thread. :V

What you could do instead is simply let users rate posts good/bad, and be able to sort by rating. Then everyone can easily decide their own quality standards. Oh, and we already have that exact system! So why do a few select individuals have the power to impose their personal opinions of good and bad on everyone? Is this a community, or a collection of images a certain few people liked?

And let's not pretend there isn't plenty worse approved every day. (I mean it can't be that bad, since nobody seems to have any actual criticism!)

Well, if your image was deleted for minimum quality, then maybe you should try to improve said image's quality in general. I'm not gonna offer critique unless asked, but you, since the character was anthro, could learn by studying the human body and other anthromorphic characters. A humanoid body isn't easy to draw, though, so photos might be better study material. The human body has a universal constant in a photo, it doesn't have drawing lines or distracting colors; it'll be a good first step.

RenaKunisaki said:
it's deleted from everyone's favourites list (so mods get to decide what other peoples' favourites are!)

Not true.

https://e621.net/post/index/1/fav:RenaKunisaki%20status:deleted

Interestingly, not a single image you have favorited has been deleted for the reason of low quality, so it wouldn't be a problem for you in the first place.

Siral_Exan said:
Well, if your image was deleted for minimum quality, then maybe you should try to improve said image's quality in general.

That is both completely unhelpful and not addressing the actual issue.

Lance_Armstrong said:
Not true.

https://e621.net/post/index/1/fav:RenaKunisaki%20status:deleted

Yup, they've all been replaced with "Deleted". I guess if you want to be super pedantic, the IDs are still there, but the images aren't. I added those to my favourites list and now when I look at my favourites list they don't show up, because someone else decided they shouldn't.

Interestingly, not a single image you have favorited has been deleted for the reason of low quality, so it wouldn't be a problem for you in the first place.

Strawman. The question isn't whether I, personally, have been affected by one particular problem caused by poor moderation.

Do you want actual advice or do you want a pat on the back? You're now complaining about the moderators and have shrugged off or ignored a key part of my comment to instead take offense, which explains the phrase you took to offense, so it's definitely sounding like you want the latter.

Your advice is what, draw humans? Could you try to be a little more vague? And yes, this thread is about the moderation; the fact that one particular mod feels that these are worthy of approval but this is breaking some unspecified rule (and that one opinion is sufficient) is just one small part of the complaint.

Study, not just draw. The human body has contours, shades, folds, etc., that will provide you with a great base to see how positioning, shading, and proportions is shown. This is against my normal statement on studying how artists draw, because yours at least has a defined art style. Your image does not have viable anthro anatomy (vaporeon or otherwise), which is based off of human anatomy, or plausible positioning.

In layman's terms, the image does not look how an anthro of an equivalent situation would be shown as. It looks 2d against a realistic background, and would benefit from studying how a person in the same position would actually look.

See, now that's actually helpful!

RenaKunisaki said:
See, now that's actually helpful!

Well, then forgive me for short selling you. I'm more used to people who do the opposite, and take offense when you point out details.

That is pretty much all I can say, since (again) you have your own art style.

wow wht the heck happend here?

I'm not sure how exactly we got here, but on this topic: be careful about studying proportions from photos: unless the photo was taken from a fair distance away (min 2*largest_object_dimension), it will contain noticable lens distortion -- the shorter the distance the worse.
Study from life (eg. sitting in a shopping centre doing gesture studies of passing people) provides a lot of additional information that can help avoid this, just keep in mind the same principle applies (your eyes have lenses -> more distortion the closer an object is to you)

...

On the original topic/last thing brought up by OP:

Taking good photos of art via camera is hard. The best photos will always be worse than an equivalent scan. But here are some things you can do to get better results:

• Use thick, non-glossy paper if possible. This minimizes a)non-flatness of paper, and b) undesirable specular highlights.
• Use a tripod to remove any blurring due to the involuntary motion of your body. Even if your camera has anti-shake or anti-blur, this will still help.
• Use maximum resolution and highest quality setting. This gets you the best quality 'master' picture to start with, which allows you the most flexibility in producing a good image to upload.
• There should be some things visible beyond the picture -- you can crop them out in a paint program later. Usually, if there aren't, you are too close/zoomed in and may get an undesirably blurry result. Also see what I said above about lens distortion -- if possible it's good to use maximum resolution and be more distant, as this produces a result that is closer to the true rectilinear geometry that your actual picture has.
• Make the picture really flat. If the paper has small-scale ripples, that's pretty bad -- you can sometimes get away with ironing (the back side, of course!), but I generally don't recommend it. Larger-scale waves can be corrected with bulldog clips / clamps and methodically ensuring the tension along every edge is equally high (pulling it out if needed, being careful not to pull in a direction that might tear the paper). Of course if clipping it down, you should also make sure that the surface you are clipping it to is straight in both dimensions (this is typically a concern with wood). You may also want to have a thick white piece of card/cardboard/etc to place between the picture and the backing , to prevent features of the backing showing through in semi-transparent parts of the paper.
• Align the camera carefully with the edges of the picture (the edges of your picture should align exactly with the edges of the camera display, making a clear 90° turn at every corner). Many cameras and phones have a rule-of-thirds display option that can help you check this.
• If your picture in the best photo is mildly non-rectangular, use the perspective tool in Corrective mode to correct the almost-rectangle to rectangular. (this is GIMP terminology -- not sure how you do this task in PS). This is one of the tasks where maximum resolution is definitely a benefit to the final result.
• Have lots of lighting on hand. This is actually quite hard. You need very even lighting shining directly on the face of the picture. Sunlight can work, but only if you can set up the angle just right.
• Check that white in your picture is white on the camera. Printer paper is good for this (hold the sample next to the camera display; it won't necessarily be the same brightness, but should be equally colorless.)

If you can't get the camera to produce the white you want, you need to adjust the white balance in post-processing. Sometimes you can get away with simply doing 'Auto white balance' (Color->Auto->White balance in GIMP. Available in most image editors). But more often you will need to manually use Levels / Curves to achieve a result that best matches the appearance of your picture.

• Take lots of photos (via burst mode, or tuning lighting/positioning). Which is best only becomes obvious via comparison

So it's really a lot of work. Sometimes still necessary even if you have a scanner, though (eg. for paper formats that are way too big for the scanner. For formats that are just somewhat too big, they can be scanned in parts and stitched in image editor or via Hugin)

RenaKunisaki said:
hard]

ಠ_ಠ the FUCK am i looking at?! is that like some bastard child of sonic x robotnik or something? someone BURN that abomination!

KungFury said:
wow what the heck happend here?

i'm pretty sure this is what the results look like when one opens a so-called "can of worms". a perfect example of that would be the "slur tags" thread.

KungFury said:
wow wht the heck happend here?

In short, person makes pictures of laughable quality, and takes it personally

And I thought those trolling turds who go on downvoting sprees (and targeting very specific artists and their art) were bad enough. If someone doesn't like something, they should either ignore it or give critique on how to fix it.

I mean, in the original poster's case, it's not even like, a criticism of their art, it's their method of transferring that art to the internet.

Suffice it to say, the art has to survive the transfer without turning into a pile of snot. It's not a critique on their skill. Nobody's saying that all the art here has to be digital, aside from the obvious 'when you scan it or take a photo of it, it becomes digital'.

I'm loathe to suggest to people to spend money on things, as I'm very aware that not everybody is in the position where they can do so freely, but depending on your circumstances you might invest in a cheap scanner.

Honestly, it'd be cheaper than trying to get the lighting to work or a better digital camera. Either way, I hope the best for you.

RenaKunisaki said:
OK, obvious trolling aside, WTF is so awful about it that it deserves to be deleted, when there are so many utterly terrible posts that have stayed? Is it a rule now that all submissions must be up to the personal standards of one particular moderator who happens to have a stick up his butt that morning?

I mean if you don't like it, fine, but what rule did it break? What exactly are the "minimum quality standards"? Are they listed somewhere? Because I'm pretty sure quality is a matter of personal opinion, and can't be objectively measured. So if one person not liking something is reason enough to delete it, well that's just stupid.

I know it seems like I'm making a big fuss over nothing, but this kind of system really strikes a nerve. (and yes, I'd react the same way if it weren't my own drawing.) When you delete a post, that means:

• it can't be re-submitted after the mod who deleted it has had their naptime
• nobody can comment on it (so no constructive feedback to help the artist improve)
• it counts against your upload limit (so there's a long-term consequence affecting more than just that post)
• it's deleted from everyone's favourites list (so mods get to decide what other peoples' favourites are!)

The only reasons to delete a post should be that it's breaking the rules (objective rules that are listed somewhere, not subjective things that can be disagreed on), it's a duplicate/smaller version, or the artist/copyright holder requests it. If mods are free to delete just because they don't like it, that just leads to... well, this thread. :V

What you could do instead is simply let users rate posts good/bad, and be able to sort by rating. Then everyone can easily decide their own quality standards. Oh, and we already have that exact system! So why do a few select individuals have the power to impose their personal opinions of good and bad on everyone? Is this a community, or a collection of images a certain few people liked?

And let's not pretend there isn't plenty worse approved every day. (I mean it can't be that bad, since nobody seems to have any actual criticism!)

while I don't disagree with most of what you said, you have to think of how many people would abuse that power to make sure an artist's work can never be available on this website. People on YouTube do it all the time, and YouTube is even playing along with it's "YouTube Heroes" program. There has to be another way admins can give us a little bit of power over what stays and what goes, but giving us the whole pie is only going to get messy.

Linicks said:
while I don't disagree with most of what you said, you have to think of how many people would abuse that power to make sure an artist's work can never be available on this website. People on YouTube do it all the time, and YouTube is even playing along with it's "YouTube Heroes" program. There has to be another way admins can give us a little bit of power over what stays and what goes, but giving us the whole pie is only going to get messy.

...Wut?