Hello, EF!

It’s no secret we have a ton of incredibly talented artists in Spuffy fandom, and as artwork is such a lovely medium for storytelling, the Mods decided to follow the example set by Sunnydale After Dark (thanks, guys!) and amend our submissions to accommodate artwork-only posting. Effective immediately, artists may share artwork as they would a story.

We’re going to demonstrate with a piece of artwork thoughtfully supplied by author and artist, HappyWhenItRains. The title and metadata aren’t hers; she’d come up with something a lot more creative than I have for the purposes of this demonstration. 

Most of you will be familiar with parts of this process, so please feel free to peruse or scroll to your heart’s content. This is just here out of an excess of caution and so artists have a reference guide handy if it is needed. 

Here’s how to add artwork: 

STEP 1: Select the artwork you would like to post.

STEP 2: Upload the image to your account by visiting the Series, Stories, and Challenges panel under Account Info. To accommodate art, the site now permits artwork uploads 1500x1500. We highly recommend you review the sizes to ensure maximum viewer experience.

This will bring you to the image upload panel. Select Upload New Images, which can be found at the bottom of the screen.Once the image is uploaded, it will populate on this table. Grab that URL. It’ll come in handy for the next bit.

STEP 3: Go back to the Series, Stories, and Challenges panel under Account Info. Now you’ll select Add New Story.

STEP 4: Add your artwork details. You will need a title and a summary for your artwork just for the purpose of adding it to the catalog. It doesn’t have to be greatly detailed – just enough that EF members have an idea of what to expect. Please refrain from using solicitous language, same as with story submissions. Likewise, all summaries should be appropriate for general audiences.

STEP 5: Add categories, genres, and warnings as needed. Ensure the proper rating is affixed to every art submission. We have added a couple of new categories and genres to help artists clearly mark which of the submissions aren’t work-appropriate. You will also notice the option to mark your submission as exclusively artwork. This is exactly what it sounds like – the submission should contain nothing but the art itself.

The submission process from here is the same as with story text submissions. You will simply select the artwork icon in the story text box.

This pop-up will appear to take the image’s information. The link you copied earlier will go into the “Search” box.

And that’s it! If you’re a new EF member or haven’t submitted material to the archive before, your submission will not immediately appear on Most Recents until our validation Mod has made the choice to grant you automatic validation. Once it does, your art will be listed among the stories and other artwork supplied by EF’s many talented members. Submissions that contain artwork only will also be denoted with a story icon. This is a permanent fixture designed to help members quickly identify which works on the archive are artwork-only.

What else you need to know:

• The site’s minimum word count has been stripped to accommodate this change.
• All works must be clearly labeled and appropriately rated. Any applicable warnings are also mandatory.
• All works must follow the site’s submission rules. If you have any questions about a piece of art, please reach out to the Mods.
• If you’re interspersing art with textual storytelling, we will not consider that Exclusively Artwork. Exclusively Artwork should be limited to submissions that have no accompanying text. Stories told with both text and pictures should be submitted as usual, with the appropriate categories, genres, and warnings.
• Artists may post single pieces of art or ongoing stories (comics).
• Artwork may be hosted on EF, but we ask that you do not hotlink. This is not a new policy, just a reminder.
• While we have adjusted the size requirements for artwork uploaded to your account, regular story banners must adhere to the existing 920x300 parameters to help keep the Most Recents and story lists orderly.

We have likewise added the following rules for visual media submissions.

• All artwork submissions must adhere to the site’s Spuffy prominence rule. We do not allow Gen Art submissions. We’re sorry, but we have finite hosting space and we are, after all, a Spuffy archive. Therefore all art pieces must be Spuffy-centric.
• That said, for visual media purposes, we do allow solo artwork renderings of Spike or Buffy. They don’t always need to be together, but the piece must remain Spuffy friendly (i.e., No Bangel, Sprusilla, etc.)
• All NSFW artwork pieces must be rated NC-17 or AO (Adult Only) and assigned NSFW Category and Genre tags. These must also be Spuffy only.
• Use appropriate warnings for every art piece.
• Artists are free to link to any artwork that does not meet the Spuffy prominence rule in their profile, as well as in the story notes. However, EF is not the place to host any such artwork. Any non-Spuffy artwork stored on our server will be deleted at our discretion.

Please don’t worry if you make a mistake or skip a step in adding artwork. The system will catch most, and the Mods will catch the rest. Innocent mistakes will absolutely not be penalized. The Mods will contact you if there is an issue with your submission to let you know what it was and how to fix it, if it’s something we haven’t already handled on our end. We anticipate there being a few hiccups along the way and we’re here to answer your questions.

And that’s the long and short of it! Thank you again to HappyWhenItRains for letting us use your brilliant artwork in our example. 

Stay tuned for more exciting developments here at Elysian Fields!