I have had several submissions deleted because of an arbitrary, unsubstantiated claim, and, for lack of a better word, I think it is bulls%!t.

My last post was not up for long, but someone faved it--someone whose work clearly established them as a superior artist to myself. If they liked my post enough to be recognized, and this was someone who knew a little something about good and bad art, doesn't that mean my meager work deserves to at least hold a spot on the dusty back corner shelf of this grand exhibit known as e621?

I mean, these admins are not accredited art historians, and they probably got their illustrious position on this website because they knew a guy who knew a guy--so what exactly gives them the right to pass judgement on my art?

I'm not really asking for an explanation because there really is none--besides personal preference. And if personal preference cannot be quantified, then these "minimum quality standards" can't be quantified either.

oh boy, here we go again

GSSniper said:
I mean, these admins are not accredited art historians

Not that argument...

Have you tried messaging the admin who deleted your uploads?

Or maybe wait a while, he'll come here eventually

GSSniper said:
so what exactly gives them the right to pass judgement on my art?

Because we are the ones who approve and delete pending images?

GSSniper said:
My last post was not up for long, but someone faved it--someone whose work clearly established them as a superior artist to myself. If they liked my post enough to be recognized, and this was someone who knew a little something about good and bad art, doesn't that mean my meager work deserves to at least hold a spot on the dusty back corner shelf of this grand exhibit known as e621?

Neither of the two people who favorited that image are artists, just because they upload stuff doesn't mean they drew it.

GSSniper said:
so what exactly gives them the right to pass judgement on my art?

The fact that we run this page and get to decide what stays and what doesn't.

GSSniper said:
I'm not really asking for an explanation because there really is none--besides personal preference. And if personal preference cannot be quantified, then these "minimum quality standards" can't be quantified either.

It isn't personal preference if your anatomy is bad.
And if the image quality is bad.
I already told you, get a scanner and the decision may be different, but if you keep making sub standard pictures with your mobile's camera then this is very likely to happen again, and again.

Also, your logic is hilarious, Revenge is best served cold, strawberry ice cream is cold, thus revenge must be strawberry ice cream.
If you couldn't tell, it does not work like that.

NotMeNotYou said:
Also, your logic is hilarious, Revenge is best served cold, strawberry ice cream is cold, thus revenge must be strawberry ice cream.
If you couldn't tell, it does not work like that.

They'll rue the day they humiliated me, my vengeance will be quick and swift, they'll never see that double strawberry ice cream with chocolate frosting and 3 Cherries coming! *Cue in Evil Maniacal Laughter*

But seriously these kind of threads pop in a lot, i would think people would understand why their posts are being deleted.

I don't know much about but i think people shouldn't make emotional attachments when they post something since everything here is subject to being deleted.

It would be best for me to not ramble a lot here and make myself look like an idiot. Unless i already have

Just_Another_Dragon said:
But seriously these kind of threads pop in a lot, i would think people would understand why their posts are being deleted.

I don't know much about but i think people shouldn't make emotional attachments when they post something since everything here is subject to being deleted.

It would be best for me to not ramble a lot here and make myself look like an idiot. Unless i already have

You are actually 100% correct

GSSniper said:
I mean, these admins are not accredited art historians

If they were, e621 would be empty.
Except maybe for proper_art

Something being liked isn't the same as measuring the quality. Bad quality gets liked all of the time. B-movies are beloved, bad writing is enjoyed after a fashion, crap tv gets fans who watch it faithfully, etc. Something can be of low quality and still be likeable, that's just a fact of life.

Also, be careful assuming that because someone is talented and likes something, that this somehow validates a certain level of "quality". It's nice, as a compliment, but all it means is that they favorited it for some reason. Could have been to look at it later, could have been because they liked just one thing about it but thought the rest was poor quality, could mean they just subjectively loved it regardless of quality. Or maybe they really did think it was really high quality. But it's actually far more likely that a talented artist would be willing to look past the lower quality parts of it and value something in it despite that. Doesn't mean that it's good enough to get through quality control through.

And there's nothing subjective about bad anatomy, poor photo quality that makes it hard to see the actual image all that well, etc. Things like this are objective measures of quality level, regardless if there's things that are likeable about it.

Your art has some nice qualities about it, and with some more practice, the balance of problems vs good traits will end up with more good than bad. And that will mean more of your art will get approved instead of only getting approved sometimes. Even if we like an image, we have to measure all of the images by the same standards and approve only those that meet some basically agreed on measures of quality.

The fireworks and silhouette one was deleted because it's blurry and fuzzy, and the anatomy of the neck and torso of the anthro feline is lacking a little bit of definition or anatomical structuring. But if the photo of it had been better quality, it would have had a much better chance of getting approved. And if the anatomy had been a little stronger with the feline anthro, that would have definately helped a lot too.

The tied human male and the purple anthro has a lot of serious anatomical structure problems. Areas like the limbs, muzzle, etc suffer from being disproportionate and sometimes skewed from the wrong angle. And the line work is a little wobbly. There's bumps and curves where nothing seems to be there anatomically to cause them. The scenario is awesome, and it has real potential. But right now there's just too many issues with the quality that can't be overlooked so it was deleted for being not meeting the minimum quality standard. The photo/scan quality of that one was actually pretty decent though.

The third one deleted, the purple anthro in the pool, was really hurt by the poor photo taken of it. It distorts the coloration of the marker quality (or the marker was running out of ink, either way it has some definite quality issues). The boobs are great, but the coloring on the upper arms, shoulders, and face are all weirdly washed out compared to the overly dark coloring on their ass and thighs. The tail seems a little out of place because you used colored pencil instead of the marker, and you didn't mix the mediums enough to make it seem like they belong as part of the same cohesive thing. The tails also have a lot less detail than the rest of the anthro, almost as if it was added as an afterthought and rushed. The anatomy is a little stronger here than in past work and there's a lot more that comes close to getting approved in this one. The line work is a ton stronger and makes up for a lot. If it didn't have that weird inconsistency with the color on their shoulders/arms/face and the way their tail is so much lighter than the rest of their body, not even getting the same black line work as the rest, etc. Those are what really got it deleted. You're obviously getting better. Keep improving your skills with anatomy, keep up the improved line work and work out some of the issues with photo/scan quality and some of the other details that I mentioned and you'll probably get your work approved more often.

post #605441 isn't perfect, but the anatomy is at least passable, the line work is decent enough, and the photo/scan quality was good enough, so it was approved.

So it's not personal. It's just in the details. Hopefully this gives you a much better idea of what made the difference with the ones that were approved vs the ones that were deleted. And what you can do that would give you a better chance of getting past the minimum quality standard.

Munkelzahn said:
If they were, e621 would be empty.
Except maybe for proper_art

Today's furry artist is tomorrow's Picasso.

Just look at the post-postmodern digital neo-expressionism of crystal-for-ever

furrypickle said:
Something being liked isn't the same as measuring the quality. Bad quality gets liked all of the time. B-movies are beloved, bad writing is enjoyed after a fashion, crap tv gets fans who watch it faithfully, etc. Something can be of low quality and still be likeable, that's just a fact of life.

Also, be careful assuming that because someone is talented and likes something, that this somehow validates a certain level of "quality". It's nice, as a compliment, but all it means is that they favorited it for some reason. Could have been to look at it later, could have been because they liked just one thing about it but thought the rest was poor quality, could mean they just subjectively loved it regardless of quality. Or maybe they really did think it was really high quality. But it's actually far more likely that a talented artist would be willing to look past the lower quality parts of it and value something in it despite that. Doesn't mean that it's good enough to get through quality control through.

And there's nothing subjective about bad anatomy, poor photo quality that makes it hard to see the actual image all that well, etc. Things like this are objective measures of quality level, regardless if there's things that are likeable about it.

Your art has some nice qualities about it, and with some more practice, the balance of problems vs good traits will end up with more good than bad. And that will mean more of your art will get approved instead of only getting approved sometimes. Even if we like an image, we have to measure all of the images by the same standards and approve only those that meet some basically agreed on measures of quality.

The fireworks and silhouette one was deleted because it's blurry and fuzzy, and the anatomy of the neck and torso of the anthro feline is lacking a little bit of definition or anatomical structuring. But if the photo of it had been better quality, it would have had a much better chance of getting approved. And if the anatomy had been a little stronger with the feline anthro, that would have definately helped a lot too.

The tied human male and the purple anthro has a lot of serious anatomical structure problems. Areas like the limbs, muzzle, etc suffer from being disproportionate and sometimes skewed from the wrong angle. And the line work is a little wobbly. There's bumps and curves where nothing seems to be there anatomically to cause them. The scenario is awesome, and it has real potential. But right now there's just too many issues with the quality that can't be overlooked so it was deleted for being not meeting the minimum quality standard. The photo/scan quality of that one was actually pretty decent though.

The third one deleted, the purple anthro in the pool, was really hurt by the poor photo taken of it. It distorts the coloration of the marker quality (or the marker was running out of ink, either way it has some definite quality issues). The boobs are great, but the coloring on the upper arms, shoulders, and face are all weirdly washed out compared to the overly dark coloring on their ass and thighs. The tail seems a little out of place because you used colored pencil instead of the marker, and you didn't mix the mediums enough to make it seem like they belong as part of the same cohesive thing. The tails also have a lot less detail than the rest of the anthro, almost as if it was added as an afterthought and rushed. The anatomy is a little stronger here than in past work and there's a lot more that comes close to getting approved in this one. The line work is a ton stronger and makes up for a lot. If it didn't have that weird inconsistency with the color on their shoulders/arms/face and the way their tail is so much lighter than the rest of their body, not even getting the same black line work as the rest, etc. Those are what really got it deleted. You're obviously getting better. Keep improving your skills with anatomy, keep up the improved line work and work out some of the issues with photo/scan quality and some of the other details that I mentioned and you'll probably get your work approved more often.

post #605441 isn't perfect, but the anatomy is at least passable, the line work is decent enough, and the photo/scan quality was good enough, so it was approved.

So it's not personal. It's just in the details. Hopefully this gives you a much better idea of what made the difference with the ones that were approved vs the ones that were deleted. And what you can do that would give you a better chance of getting past the minimum quality standard.

Kardashian says what?

if anything needs to change it's the policies on second life porn. What makes second life porn worse then source filmmaker porno that it's not viable to be posted, if it's low quality then delete it as low quality.

also would like to maybe see sexy fursuit pin ups on e621 as well

memeboy said:
if anything needs to change it's the policies on second life porn. What makes second life porn worse then source filmmaker porno that it's not viable to be posted, if it's low quality then delete it as low quality.

also would like to maybe see sexy fursuit pin ups on e621 as well

yooo i second this notion. SL has updated numerous times to allow high quality assets to exist in the game world so high quality porn is definitely possible.

Qaus said:
yooo i second this notion. SL has updated numerous times to allow high quality assets to exist in the game world so high quality porn is definitely possible.

Still haven't seen any of that high quality, though.

Most of the sl stuff is worse than Skyrim and that by a huge margin.

NotMeNotYou said:
Still haven't seen any of that high quality, though.

Most of the sl stuff is worse than Skyrim and that by a huge margin.

probably because most people take screenshots on low settings with potato computer. also of the 100 items tagged "second life" i'd say about 15-20 of them are of the actual game, and all of these screenshots are seemingly from the lump amalgam era. i can say with firsthand experience that there is MUCH better stuff out there nowadays. not comparable to what skyrim is capable of by any means (mostly due to how each game handles assets) but potentially above the quality of standards policy. i implore you to bring this up with fellow staff for consideration.

Qaus said:
probably because most people take screenshots on low settings with potato computer. also of the 100 items tagged "second life" i'd say about 15-20 of them are of the actual game, and all of these screenshots are seemingly from the lump amalgam era. i can say with firsthand experience that there is MUCH better stuff out there nowadays. not comparable to what skyrim is capable of by any means (mostly due to how each game handles assets) but potentially above the quality of standards policy. i implore you to bring this up with fellow staff for consideration.

I'm not trying to call you out when I say this, but I've yet to a good SL screenshot that I'd consider a good 3D render, especially in an erotic way. But I'll be honest, I rarely look at them, so things might have changed. If you have any examples, share em! A few good images proving that there are high quality erotic porn screenshots from SL might get the administration to reconsider their stance. Until that happens, I don't think there'll be a change in the current policy.

SL supports now the upload of proper meshes now rather than the weird crap it used before, which actually gets some high quality models uploaded. Once you max out the graphics settings, use a high resolution and use the depth of field options you end up with some pretty decent screenshots. I'll go look for some if people are curious.

They're piss easy to make though, which is why I don't think they should be allowed. We'll end up with hundreds of generic furry characters fucking that all look the same. Little to no creativity goes into taking a screenshot most the time, looking at some of the boorus that allow Skyrim and SL screenshots illustrate this.

Qaus said:
probably because most people take screenshots on low settings with potato computer. also of the 100 items tagged "second life" i'd say about 15-20 of them are of the actual game, and all of these screenshots are seemingly from the lump amalgam era. i can say with firsthand experience that there is MUCH better stuff out there nowadays. not comparable to what skyrim is capable of by any means (mostly due to how each game handles assets) but potentially above the quality of standards policy. i implore you to bring this up with fellow staff for consideration.

We judge stuff on artistic quality, if there are screenshots that somehow are artistic then those are likely to be accepted, but as long as those aren't visible to us then we're not going to have a hypothetical discussion.

Give us examples, and we may yet revise our rule.

NotMeNotYou said:
Give us examples, and we may yet revise our rule.

Sorry it took me so long, had a busy week and a half.
but here is one example of high quality SL photography https://dl.dropbox.com/s/mbb6t87d73nkzb7/Snapshot_001.jpg?dl=0

I could take more photos if you wish.

Edit: Maybe I should make this its own thread to see how much support the idea gets? In the meantime I took another photo https://dl.dropbox.com/s/bwb583t6k1zbgno/Snapshot_002.jpg?dl=0

Qaus said:
Sorry it took me so long, had a busy week and a half.
but here is one example of high quality SL photography https://dl.dropbox.com/s/mbb6t87d73nkzb7/Snapshot_001.jpg?dl=0

I could take more photos if you wish.

Edit: Maybe I should make this its own thread to see how much support the idea gets? In the meantime I took another photo https://dl.dropbox.com/s/bwb583t6k1zbgno/Snapshot_002.jpg?dl=0[/quote]

Well, the graphics certainly got better but they are still far away from being good art.

NotMeNotYou said:
Well, the graphics certainly got better but they are still far away from being good art.

So why is all the low-quality SFM junk accepted if this isn't? I can safely say that Qaus's screenshots are better than at least 50% of the stuff under the sfm tag.

Tuvalu said:
So why is all the low-quality SFM junk accepted if this isn't? I can safely say that Qaus's screenshots are better than at least 50% of the stuff under the sfm tag.

That's the difference between Pre-made everything (and the limitations of a software that is used for plain posing of models and doesn't allow the transformation of models at runtime) and people who manually pose and place everything.

I'd personally rather approve furry characters made from Lego than Screenshots from games.

Qaus said:
Sorry it took me so long, had a busy week and a half.
but here is one example of high quality SL photography https://dl.dropbox.com/s/mbb6t87d73nkzb7/Snapshot_001.jpg?dl=0

I could take more photos if you wish.

Edit: Maybe I should make this its own thread to see how much support the idea gets? In the meantime I took another photo https://dl.dropbox.com/s/bwb583t6k1zbgno/Snapshot_002.jpg?dl=0

That's not bad, but it's not amazing. It's not really something I'd want to get off to, but perhaps that's me.

I agree with Nimmy on this. Although that's certainly better than it used to be, I still don't think it has the capacity to be more than just acceptable. If the flood gates are opened to allow second life content, many MANY crappy images will be posted alongside the ones that aren't too bad, and it wouldn't be worth the hassle.

One problem is that the skill level requirements for this are so low. Some people, possibly like yourself, are enthusiastic about actually making art with second life. But the majority aren't. Instead of spending a good chunk of time to properly pose/light/whatever their images, they'll be happy to spam uploads of really low quality screenshots in the hopes that some people will toss a bone their way. But that can be true of SFM too. The nail in the coffin for me is that with SFM you CAN occasionally find a gem, Something that looks REALLY good, and that a lot of people like, and that obviously took a lot of time to do. I just don't see that happening with these models from SL.

Tokaido said:
One problem is that the skill level requirements for this are so low. Some people, possibly like yourself, are enthusiastic about actually making art with second life. But the majority aren't. Instead of spending a good chunk of time to properly pose/light/whatever their images, they'll be happy to spam uploads of really low quality screenshots in the hopes that some people will toss a bone their way. But that can be true of SFM too. The nail in the coffin for me is that with SFM you CAN occasionally find a gem, Something that looks REALLY good, and that a lot of people like, and that obviously took a lot of time to do. I just don't see that happening with these models from SL.

What about SL screenshots that were edited afterwards?

http://www.furaffinity.net/full/13759898/

Honestly, I don't think this looks bad at all. It's an above-average model to begin with, and it was then spruced up outside of SL to look even less like an ordinary screencap of your average badly textured, 500 polygon sparklewolf.

It could pass for something made with SFM, it's just that we know it comes from Second Life and that automatically renders it trash. That's pretty weird.

Though I understand about the flood gates sentiment.

Gosh I hope my art is good enough to be posted on here. I know I draw bad, but... eh. >_>

Jugofthat said:
What about SL screenshots that were edited afterwards?

http://www.furaffinity.net/full/13759898/

Honestly, I don't think this looks bad at all. It's an above-average model to begin with, and it was then spruced up outside of SL to look even less like an ordinary screencap of your average badly textured, 500 polygon sparklewolf.

It could pass for something made with SFM, it's just that we know it comes from Second Life and that automatically renders it trash. That's pretty weird.

Though I understand about the flood gates sentiment.

those legs look wrong to me, especially around the knees. looks completely unnatural (theres too much bulge on the inside of the legs next to the balls) imo. i could overlook the clipping in some spots but not those unnaturally shaped legs.

Jugofthat said:
What about SL screenshots that were edited afterwards?

http://www.furaffinity.net/full/13759898/

It could pass for something made with SFM, it's just that we know it comes from Second Life and that automatically renders it trash. That's pretty weird.

This is fairly well done, but to be honst the lack of relative shading/shadows on that character looks really bad and unfinished. As if it was intentionally made brighter so that you could locate them in a game or something.

From what I've seen SFM seems to be a lot more forgiving (read: natural) than SL in low light settings. I could easily be wrong about this though; I haven't done much in the way of 3D modeling beyond AutoCAD (which was designed for a completely different purpose).

NotMeNotYou said:
Well, the graphics certainly got better but they are still far away from being good art.

What can I and other SL photographers do to get our photos good enough for e621's standards of quality?

Jugofthat said:
What about SL screenshots that were edited afterwards?

http://www.furaffinity.net/full/13759898/

Honestly, I don't think this looks bad at all. It's an above-average model to begin with, and it was then spruced up outside of SL to look even less like an ordinary screencap of your average badly textured, 500 polygon sparklewolf.

It could pass for something made with SFM, it's just that we know it comes from Second Life and that automatically renders it trash. That's pretty weird.

Though I understand about the flood gates sentiment.

Again, I admit that this piece is above average, but still just passable. Its not entirely the person who screen capped/excited the image's fault, it's second life's. The lack of ambient occlusion, even just screen space AO, and cast shadows that really damns this image in my eyes. It looks so unnatural and flat. Those options are available in SL though, so I'm not sure why they aren't on in the pic you linked

Regardless I don't think that SL is a very good renderer for 3D porn. I don't think any game engine is, at least not yet. Didn't anyone else think the Mass Effect sex looked like barbie dolls smashing together? And that was done on a much more powerful engine. IMO the most important things for 3D sex to look good is some good mesh displacement, i.e. "boob squish" and the like. From what little I've done with SL, I don't think that's an option. Or at least not easily. It seems like a huge hassle to mess with meshes, you just can't do that on the fly. But you CAN do that with Source Film Maker, because that's its intended purpose, posing and rendering things.

Lastly, this is subjective and it may have changed a but since I last looked at SL but, SL has really meh lighting, where SFM has pretty good lighting. Not Unreal Engine levels of lighting, but close enough. Hell, I think it even has the option for subsurface scattering textures, which is pretty important for making organics look good. But SL's lighting is really simple, you can only have so many light sources, and they're not great. Not to mention you can only have diffuse, specular, specular strength, emissive, and alpha textures, if I'm remembering correctly, which are the bare minimum.

I'm really critical of 3D art though, so I'm perhaps not the best person to ask.

Qaus said:
What can I and other SL photographers do to get our photos good enough for e621's standards of quality?

I'm no admin, obviously, but I think the problem isn't so much that the images you've posted in this forum are worse than some of the art that gets accepted, its because its potentially so much lower effort to create. Whoever drew that Yoshi actually had to spend time doing it, and it took at least a modicum of effort, time, and skill. With screenshots of a video game, it takes no more than pressing the print screen button, then paste. Let me stress that I'm NOT saying that's what you did, it looks like you took the time to actually set up a shot, pose your character, and attempted to do it with good lighting, but there are SO MANY people out there who just want to take dozens of screen caps of their character standing around doing nothing and put NO time and effort into it. Its so easy to do that if screen caps were allowed this site would be FLOODED with really crappy ones, and THAT'S the problem

My suggestion on making any 3D erotic art? Don't use Second Life. Its a sub par engine at best. Use blender, or Source Film Maker, or Unreal Development Kit, all of which are FREE 3D engines that are actually intended to render good quality 3D art instead of intended to be an MMO platform.

Edit: One last point about Second Life and other video game screen caps. Who do you credit as the artist? Let me ask you Qaus, who is the artist you'd give credit to in your screen shots? The guy who made the mesh and textures? The guy who made the pose pack youre using? What about the guy who did the scenery and props? What about the person who did the rigging for your character? Or the guy who took the screen cap? If you're taking pictures of art that other people made, does it become your art?

Tokaido said:

I'm no admin, obviously, but I think the problem isn't so much that the images you've posted in this forum are worse than some of the art that gets accepted, its because its potentially so much lower effort to create. Whoever drew that Yoshi actually had to spend time doing it, and it took at least a modicum of effort, time, and skill. With screenshots of a video game, it takes no more than pressing the print screen button, then paste. Let me stress that I'm NOT saying that's what you did, it looks like you took the time to actually set up a shot, pose your character, and attempted to do it with good lighting, but there are SO MANY people out there who just want to take dozens of screen caps of their character standing around doing nothing and put NO time and effort into it. Its so easy to do that if screen caps were allowed this site would be FLOODED with really crappy ones, and THAT'S the problem

My suggestion on making any 3D erotic art? Don't use Second Life. Its a sub par engine at best. Use blender, or Source Film Maker, or Unreal Development Kit, all of which are FREE 3D engines that are actually intended to render good quality 3D art instead of intended to be an MMO platform.

Edit: One last point about Second Life and other video game screen caps. Who do you credit as the artist? Let me ask you Qaus, who is the artist you'd give credit to in your screen shots? The guy who made the mesh and textures? The guy who made the pose pack youre using? What about the guy who did the scenery and props? What about the person who did the rigging for your character? Or the guy who took the screen cap? If you're taking pictures of art that other people made, does it become your art?

The problem you expressed with game screenshots applies to real world photography too. Anyone can take a dumb and pointless photo because cameras are so readily available and easy to use. That doesn't make the medium as a whole lack artistic value, photography is still considered a valid form of art and is nearly universally accepted among online communities. The real problem is the photographers. If the photographer doesn't intend on creating art then they won't, this is a matter of print screen to mspaint to imgur versus render to photoshop to flickr/deviantart/etc. Saying "no video game screenshots because it's too easy to hit printscreen" is no different than saying "no traditional art because it's too easy to use a paintbrush". Part of the philosophy of creating art is that the medium is never the problem.

As for crediting photography, it mostly goes to the photographer! It may sound unfair, but you don't credit a clothing brand for providing clothes to the person being photographed. The art in photography isn't necessarily the content contained in the photo, it's the arrangement, the framing, the tone/emotions you're trying to convey, the vision as a whole etc. And some would argue that simple photography of other peoples' art is still art, but they're taking the the philosophy of 'what is art?' too far in my opinion.

Photographers need to watch for and factor in a lot of things, like what lenses, time of exposure, focus and other things, screenshots are literally just a button press to get an "ideal" picture.

A Screenshot is, for most people, just taking assets created by other people, placing them in a way the game allows, and pressing a button.
More than not they don't even place things, they tweak a couple sliders during character creation, dress them in whatever the game provides and do an emote while facing the camera while saying "look at my character!!!".

This is the difference for making photographs as "art" and photographs as "memories", most people on this planet make screenshots and photographs to document memories and moments, only a fraction of the over all photographs taken are done with creating art in mind.

The people who want to make art with screenshots will also tend to move to blender and other dedicated 3d programs because these programs allow total control over every single aspect, they are not bound to limitations of the engine and level designers, they are God in their little projects.

Were not here to collect memories, we're here to collect art, yes, there is often an overlap, but we do have to draw a line somewhere.

Qaus said:

Saying "no video game screenshots because it's too easy to hit printscreen" is no different than saying "no traditional art because it's too easy to use a paintbrush".

It is extremely easy to find a free furry mod on SL and take 15 screenshots of your new murrsona, probably less time than it would take to paint something by hand.

The rule wasn't put in place in order to stifle artistic expression, it was put into place to keep the new queue from being stuffed with what ends up being 99% low quality low effort posts. Sure, we can still delete them, but we would also have to take a lot of extra time to go through them. It's the same line of reasoning as not allowing macro image memes; it's there because it's a filter.

As usual, nimmy and parasprite have beaten me to the point :P

Qaus said:
but they're taking the the philosophy of 'what is art?' too far in my opinion.

ceci n'est pas une pipe

It's like people didn't even read my post...

Qaus said:
It's like people didn't even read my post...

I read the whole thing :D And I see where you're coming from, but I disagree is all

Qaus said:
It's like people didn't even read my post...

Just because my answer isn't what you hoped for doesn't mean I didn't read and understand what you wrote.

I plain and simply have a different opinion and disagree with you.

NotMeNotYou said:
Just because my answer isn't what you hoped for doesn't mean I didn't read and understand what you wrote.

It's not that, it just really seems as if you're ignoring 99% of my post.

NotMeNotYou said:
I plain and simply have a different opinion and disagree with you.

This is 100% fine with me.

Your post doesn't really stand up:

• screenshots are not a medium, pixels are a medium
• The average level of intentionality found in photographs and screenshots is very low. Admins do not approve images of a few brush strokes on a canvas, admins approve images that are, at minimum, coherent, readable, and of moderately decent quality. The amount of intentionality (planning, skill, structure, research, practice) required to create such a, merely mediocre, image via traditional or digital art.. is much higher than is required to make a photograph or screencap.
• ie. the comparison screencap/photograph vs trad/digital art is simply invalid. The most charitable interpretation of this is that you have no idea how much effort it takes to create traditional or digital art. The barrier to entry there is high.
• Credit: how much credit is due the photographer/screenshotter is proportionate to the amount of effort put forth to arrange the specific circumstances depicted. ie. on average, their level of contribution to the outcome is very low.
• NMNY has already outlined the consequences of allowing submissions that are on average very low effort. They are undesirable.

In short, there may be a reasonable argument for allowing screencaps etc on e621, but the argument you have made quite clearly isn't such an argument.

So, the quality of art can be measured with the following equasion:

quality = artist_skill * production_time * intentionality_factor

So if your skill is 0, then quality is zero. Similarily, if you put practically 0 time into the product, then quality will be 0. Btw, all the variables are judged by observers, not the art creator.

Also, could the title of this thread be renamed? It seems a bit too ambiguous.

savageorange said:
The amount of intentionality (planning, skill, structure, research, practice) required to create such a, merely mediocre, image via traditional or digital art.. is much higher than is required to make a photograph or screencap.

I was going to dispute that for photography, but cheap digital cameras have made that far easier. It's simple to take hundreds of quick photos and hope for one good one, compared to old 24 shot films.

Even so, photography typically takes more effort than screencaps.
For example, nature photography is a constant battle against the elements. Slightest breeze can ruin a good shot. Learning how to stabilize the camera without a tripod takes a long time to master. The wilds are inhospitable: swamps, cliffs, wetlands, snakes, bears, wolves. And always a cloud of mosquitoes and other bloodsuckers to distract you. At least GPS has made it harder to get lost.

Sorry, I didn't mean to ramble. Sufficient to say, I've tried both and screencapping isn't really comparable to photography. Even that 'dumb and pointless photo' from last page must've taken more work to set up than most screencaps that I've seen.

Genjar said:
I was going to dispute that for photography, but cheap digital cameras have made that far easier. It's simple to take hundreds of quick photos and hope for one good one, compared to old 24 shot films.

It's also a smart strategy IMO, if your camera is not a super responsive professional one (well, pros also do it a lot, too, AFAIK). You don't always know exactly what you want, but burst mode might help you find it.

Even so, photography typically takes more effort than screencaps.

As someone who has done a large quantity of all three of these (screencap, photo, drawing), I agree.

But I would also say that you and I are more discerning than the author of the average photograph. The average photograph took 0-3 seconds of thought, is taken with a cellphone camera, of 1 to 3 people in no particularly readable arrangement, is blurry and contains noticable distracting elements in the background.

Even that 'dumb and pointless photo' from last page must've taken more work to set up than most screencaps that I've seen.

I would say that that 'dumb and pointless photo' was itself well above the quality of the average photo.

Then there is stuff like Mjranum 's photos -- clearly thought out, readable and well lit, overall icon-like.. these unmistakably have a high level of intentionality. Not trying to say this level of intentionality is not possible, my argument is entirely aimed at the -average- quality level : low for photos, even lower for screencaps. IMO it's an unavoidable consequence of how low the barriers to entry are.

NotMeNotYou said:
Photographers need to watch for and factor in a lot of things, like what lenses, time of exposure, focus and other things, screenshots are literally just a button press to get an "ideal" picture.

A Screenshot is, for most people, just taking assets created by other people, placing them in a way the game allows, and pressing a button.
More than not they don't even place things, they tweak a couple sliders during character creation, dress them in whatever the game provides and do an emote while facing the camera while saying "look at my character!!!".

It's clear that you've never taken a screenshot on SL, the process is much more involved and could be compared to traditional photography

SL features various graphical options analogous to those you get from "lenses and time of exposure", along with engine-level stuff like time-of-day modification (which completely modifies the color and subsequently the "mood" of the finished shot) and, obviously, composition, which on it's own can give a screenshot plenty of artistic merit and intentionality.

I could draw two stickmen bumping into eachother and get it rejected, that doesn't mean esix should ban digital art because it's easy to make bad digital art

I won't comment on the legitimacy of SL ad a medium for art, but I think it's worth mentioning that at this point we don't approve much in the way of photography either. It's just not hugely relevant here.

Why is it everyone who posts a complaint like this never gives a link of their post (Their denied picture) so people can see what their complaining about?

Reading this thread especially the beginning makes me wonder sometimes how did my content managed to be approved.

LatinGeek said:
It's clear that you've never taken a screenshot on SL, the process is much more involved and could be compared to traditional photography

SL features various graphical options analogous to those you get from "lenses and time of exposure", along with engine-level stuff like time-of-day modification (which completely modifies the color and subsequently the "mood" of the finished shot) and, obviously, composition, which on it's own can give a screenshot plenty of artistic merit and intentionality.

I could draw two stickmen bumping into eachother and get it rejected, that doesn't mean esix should ban digital art because it's easy to make bad digital art

If you believe traditional photography is akin to this, I will have to strongly disagree.

Our rules have always excluded Second Life. I'm sure you could polish a turd to make it look really nice, but it will still be a turd. Even with mods, a good graphics card, computer, and editing tools, SL is still low-grade digital art.

We are here for art, not a view of how well a computer clicks "print screen".

Speaking of which... There's a couple of public domain photos that I've been thinking of uploading, but I'm not sure if they're acceptable.

There's been very few real uploads recently. Dunno if it's because nobody's uploading photos, or if those tend to get rejected. Should I maybe send an admin the links to the photos and ask their opinion about them? (And if so, to whom?)

Post the links here.

Well... Okay.

Dickey Mouse
Žilvinas

First one is certainly on-topic, but it would be better without the guy.

And the second one... I'm too fascinated by Lithuanian mythology and snake worship to accurately judge if that's worth posting.

Genjar said:
Dickey Mouse
Žilvinas

The first one is great, and I'd say very on point. The second one is awesome, and I don't see a problem with it other than "it isn't porn," but there's plenty of not porn here too. So I think they're fine images to post, but I'm certainly no authority on the matter.

I personally wouldn't approve either.

Then again, personally I wouldn't approve anything in the terms of sculptures, figurines, statues, fursuits or other things that aren't drawn.
In my eyes we're best at archiving rendered artwork in either traditional or digital medium, and not necessarily art in form music or statues.

With that said, under the current approval guidelines the second one would get approved, and the first one likely deleted because of the presence of that dude.