Customs and Fan Art Gallery Submissions Guidelines and Procedures

Discussion in 'Radicons Customs' started by Superquad7, Jun 16, 2008.

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  1. Superquad7

    Superquad7 OCP Police Crime Prevention Unit 001 Super Content Contributor

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    Please read the following procedures and guidelines listed here, and follow them when submitting photos for the Customs gallery. All of your questions SHOULD be answered in here, but IF you manage to find a question that is NOT answered, by all means PM any of the Radicons staff (Superquad7) with your inquiries, and we can amend this article.

    First of all, there is NO SUCH THING as a custom not "worthy" of being placed in our gallery. If you make it, and you post it here, then we want you to submit a gallery of it for inclusion. The customs that are galleried and are featured on the front page of TFW2005.com are the ones that meet all of the requirements listed. It's that simple.

    With that being said, when you go about photographing your customs with the intent of having them get added to the gallery, please follow the following guidelines:


    15 images minimum, no maximum. Regardless of how poseable a custom figure is, 15 images are extremely easy to come up with. Between shooting front, back, side, front and rear angles, zoomed in shots to highlight details of a particular area, comparison pictures with an unaltered version of the figure, or another version (or group shots!) of the character you created, repeating this for both Alternate and Robot modes, showing off poseability or action or "fun" shots, it really shouldn't require much work to come up with 15 images as a MINIMUM.

    This is not to say you cant shoot more, in fact, the more the merrier! A typical non-custom toy gallery for TFW2005.com is approximately 30-40 images. The goal of a gallery is that you are presenting your custom for the world to see. You WANT to show off detailed areas, poseability, many different angles, comparisons, etc, so that people who view your gallery can fully appreciate the time and effort you put into your artwork.


    Maximum image size is 1800 by 1800. If the image is rectangular, then the longer side needs to be no longer than 1800. Please save all your images as either JPG or PNG. The gallery can also support Animated GIFs. Please keep Animated GIFs below 1 MB.


    Properly Name Your Files! We will not accept submissions of images that have camera gibberish for file names. We have too many things to do to have to go and re-name everyone's files for them, and we can not submit them to the gallery without a properly named file. There are many reasons for this. First, the file name shows up in the title-bar of your browser when you view an image. Second, it sucks for organizational reasons, this became very evident when we had to go and re-upload the entire gallery when we switched servers a couple years ago. This is not negotiable. If you can expect us to put in the work necessary to get your entry into the gallery, then we can expect you to do the same.

    The BEST way to name your files is to simply title it the character's name, followed by a space, and then 001. for example: Devastator 001, Devastator 002, Devastator 003, etc. When you're doing this, you can easily set it up so that it will display them in the order in which you want them to, plus having the extra zeros in there keeps you from having order problems when you hit the numbers 10 and up.

    NOT Accepted: DSC5323501.jpg
    NOT Accepted: Dirgewingszoomed.jpg
    Accepted: Dirge 001.jpg​


    Photo backgrounds - Please try to take your photographs on a neutral background. This means plain white, gray, or black is preferred. You can accomplish this by using a junker sheet, or getting some extremely cheap poster board to use. If you go with poster board, get two sheets (about 50 cents each) so you can lay one on the surface and prop the other one as your background. CROP YOUR PHOTOS! cropping is clipping off all unnecessary wasted/blank space that makes the custom itself small as its unable to utilize our large maximum dimensions. Not cropping your photos makes it hard or impossible to see and appreciate all the details you've painted/sculpted/modified on your custom, which only hurts one person - YOU.

    For more help on taking good photographs, here are two of our very informative tutorials:

    Build Your Own Light Tent/Photo Box Tutorial

    How To Take Good Photographs Tutorial


    Videos Are Supported - Our gallery can support video files to further enhance your gallery entries! Videos are great for showing off electronics in action or any other actionable features of your custom. To see an example, check out Alternators Bludgeon gallery to see 2 videos. If you want to include a video file(s) with your gallery, please note that these must be under 4MBs in size, and that FLV is the preferred format, as it supports great compression, allowing the file to be more internet-friendly. A great free program for converting all the common video file types into FLV is Free Zune, and can be found HERE.



    Please Include Descriptions In A Text File.
    While there are many older entries in there that don't really have this, all the newer ones do. If you haven't noticed already, please take a look around the gallery. The description shows up right at the top of your entry's folder as soon as someone clicks it to open and see your thumbnails. This description can be why you made the custom, what you did to it, a bio, a tech spec, or anything else as long as it is relevant to your project. These greatly enhance the presentation of your work, and make it that much more interesting to browsers when they are looking at your creations. A text file is created by merely right-clicking anywhere and selecting the option of "new" from the pop-up menu that appears, and then selecting "text file". Alternatively, you can use a Word file, but these are larger and will make your submission that that much longer to upload into your email. PLEASE Include in this text file what faction your custom is a member of. If you look in the gallery, you'll see that at the bottom of each entries description area displays either a "Autobot/Maximal/good guy" icon, "Decepticon/Predacon/bad guy" icon, or a "neutral" icon. Don't forget to spell- and grammar-check your text!


    Galleries can't be uploaded instantaneously.I spend a good amount of time working for Radicons and for TFW2005.com, but I have other responsibilities that extend well beyond uploading things to the gallery. Whether that be dealing with members, checking posts and threads, trouble-shooting, creating content, or our "real world" lives which would include work, errands, families, and my own customs. Having said that, I will always do my best to get submissions included into the gallery as quickly as I can, but please keep this in mind and be patient.


    ZIP All Files And Submit. ZIPing up all your images, videos, and text files together not only makes it so you only have one single item to upload, but makes things tremendously easy for us as well. We only have to download one file this way. When we unZIP it, it automatically creates a folder with all your stuff in it, and all your stuff is together. For Windows users, ZIPing is easy as pie. Simply right-click the folder that has your images and text and any other essential files for your submission, and point to the option "send-to" that appears, and then click on "compressed folder". That's it!

    I strongly urge you to create a new folder every time you take pictures of a new custom. When you do this, give it a good name (when you go to ZIP it later, the ZIP is automatically named the same as your folder). Our gallery is organized by the toy line the figure came from, so keep that in mind. For example an Omega Supreme custom created from a Cybertron mold is "Cybertron Omega Supreme by REDLINE".

    While I may be knowledgeable with Transformers, there will occasionally be a custom figure that I won't necessarily recognize which toy line it is from, so PLEASE include that info in the folder name, just like I displayed in the previous sentence! Lastly, don't forget to double-check to insure that not only the images you want included are in the folder, but also any video, text, or animated files are in there as well, so they will ALL be included when you ZIP it up.

    To submit your work, click the submission button below. This link will forward your submission to all of the Radicons staff, and we will get it put up as soon as we are able. Please note: include your board name in the e-mail so we know who to credit the creation to in the gallery!
    [​IMG]


    * * * * *

    I just wanted to post a HUGE shout out to each of you who have submitted galleries in the past. Everyone did a good job adhering to the items posted in the initial post in this thread. We're still getting submissions, and I want to further encourage you guys to continue submitting your galleries!

    I'd also like to say that in the past, there seems to be some confusion regarding when you gallery gets uploaded and our front page updates. Though this has been addressed several times, I'd simply like to reiterate that just because you're gallery hasn't been frontpaged on TFW2005 as an update does NOT necessarily mean it hasn't been uploaded. If your gallery has been uploaded by not frontpaged, it could also mean that there was one requirement not met, but enough were met to have your gallery uploaded. More often than not, the case is that we want things spread out. If you are in question about this, simply pm me.

    To check if your gallery has/hasn't been uploaded, all you have to do is venture into the Radicons Gallery and look to the artist list on the right. Find your name and click it to access all of the galleries that have been uploaded of yours. We like to spread our front page updates out so that it doesn't seem like one artist is dominating the updates and that everyone gets the spotlight shown on them.

    Also, once you submit a gallery, please continue to be patient as your gallery is uploaded. Ultimately, TF customs is my hobby and I do things when I can. Despite that fact, I diligently work hard to make this place the place to go on the internet for Transformers customs. :thumb 

    That being said . . . Radicons, customize!
     

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  2. Superquad7

    Superquad7 OCP Police Crime Prevention Unit 001 Super Content Contributor

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    Tips on Photography

    When I am able to shoot a gallery of a piece, I know that whoever is viewing my work will not be in person to see it. That being said, my goal is to take the viewer around my 3-dimensional piece as much as I can. I go all the way around the alt mode (front, 3/4ths front, side, 3/4ths back, rear, and repeat until I've returned to the front of the piece). In robot mode, I at least want to take a front and back shot and any detail photos if necessary. That, for me, is the bare minimum to share my work with people. The fun comes in when I pose a custom dynamically (and yes, I'll make sound effects when I'm posing 'em too ^_^). Also, if there is a figure of the same mold, I'll do comparison shots (often repeating the 360 degree vantage points in alt mode). I can shoot shots of these bots interacting, friend or foe.
     
  3. Superquad7

    Superquad7 OCP Police Crime Prevention Unit 001 Super Content Contributor

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    Additional Notes:

    I'd like to take a moment to simply comment on a few things:

    Thanks to each of you who submit galleries! We host a wealth of customs galleries, and it's thanks to each of you guys! Radicons FTW!

    There are many of you who do super, awesome work, but for some reason we don't see those submitted as galleries. I've seen many project threads that meet each of our requirements, but they're not in our galleries! You've done all of the work, except a brief write-up, zip, and submit! So come on gang! Send em on!

    On the galleries I've worked on in the past, there are just a few things [that reinforce the initial post of this thread]:

    • Make sure that you make separate filenames for each project, especially if you sumbit multiple projects. For example, if you send 10 galleries, but some have a file name of "tf01" and others have "mv01" and those filenames cross over projects, it makes the uploading difficult, especially if there is no write up.
    • For a Transformers gallery, we need 15 photos for each custom. Don't sell yourself short here! You may feel that your custom is simple, but viewers have no other access to your work aside from your photos. Give us a good 360 degrees of your vehicle, 360 degrees of your robot, and then take some photos of this guy striking a pose! Posing is where you can really let your custom shine and come alive!
    • Your write-ups don't have to be long, but it certainly helps when you include them! This is your chance to share how you made something and what your custom is all about. Often times you can simply cut/paste from your project thread. Know that typically if there is no write up, the person working on the gallery will simply write up a quick description and move on. This is not out of disrespect to your work, but simply because that person is generally working on multiple galleries. Know that if nothing is submitted for this portion, it's often made very brief, if at all.
    • Photography. Simply refer to the initial post in this thread regarding photography. Again, remember, this is your time to shine! The viewer is limited to what the artist shows them. If your photos are blurry, the viewer only sees the blurr, not the details. If your photos are busy with a lot in the background, the viewer sees your work plus the backgrounds. For dioramas, this is good; for single projects, it can be confusing and distracting. Is the viewer looking at your work or the fireplace?

    Keep up the great work, and we want to see more and more gallery submissions!
     
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