FAC Submission Policy

This policy was last updated 2022-12-03 (Add AI art policy), and may be updated by Fanart Central staff at any time, with or without notice. ALL SUBMISSIONS TO FAC ARE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS POLICY, EVEN IF YOU DO NOT READ WHAT THESE TERMS ARE. IT IS THEREFORE IN YOUR BEST INTEREST TO FAMILIARIZE YOURSELF WITH THIS POLICY.

Unless otherwise noted, all first-person pronouns ("we", "us") used in this Policy refer to Fanart Central's staff members, and all second-person pronouns ("you") refer to the registered member of Fanart Central and/or the unregistered visitor to Fanart Central, though this Policy is written primarily with regards to registered members.

This Policy in a Nutshell:

• ALL submissions to your FAC gallery must be YOUR own artistic work and may NOT violate copyrights held by ANY other artist or studio.
• WE reserve the right to monitor and/or review submissions (past and present) for compliance with this policy, and to reject or delete any violations.

1 - Ground Rules, Copyrights, and Enforcement

We at Fanart Central respect the copyrights of artists over their work, and we do not require nor claim any copyright over material submitted to your FAC gallery -- we have no interest in doing so. However we must require a worldwide, non-exclusive right to use and display your submission (as described later in Section 4). That is to say, we must be allowed to exhibit your work in public across the Internet, but at the same time, even though you license these exhibition rights to us, you also retain those rights yourself and are free to grant similar permissions or licenses for other users or sites to exhibit the work as well.

Because of this, we must furthermore require that you are the copyright holder (i.e. creator) of the work you submit to FAC. We cannot accept any submissions which are not your creation and copyright, or which otherwise violate the copyrights held by other artists over the work in question.

Having said that, we cannot allow any submissions of the following:

1. Copyrighted Official Art
   Any material created by a commercial studio, such as from film, TV, cartoons, anime, manga, books, or videogames. Examples include (but are not limited to) conceptual artwork, production art, promotional art (advertisements and box covers), videogame sprites (see below), and screenshots.

2. Videogame Sprites.
   Background or foreground bitmap or 3D-rendered graphics used in videogames are in fact Copyrighted Official Art and cannot be allowed. Please note that our use of the term "sprite" is limited solely to this type of copyrighted art and does NOT refer to original pixel-art creations by the artist.

3. Any Use, Modification, or Inclusion of Copyrighted Official Art.
   Digital art must be 100 percent an original creation and may not in any way incorporate copyrighted material (as described above). So-called "sprite comics"; "traces", "edits", or "recolors" of copyrighted material; "blends" "collages", and "montages" of multiple copyrighted images -- are also classified under this definition and cannot be allowed.

4. General Photography.
   Images taken from either film or digital cameras, except where used to display an artwork created by you. This is to say, that taking photos or scans of your own artistic creations is most certainly allowed, but taking photos of other subjects (like that car in your driveway) is not; additionally we do not allow submissions of altered or manipulated photography ("photo-manips"). Fanart Central is not a photography site -- please use our sister site, Photo Lucidity for submissions of photography or manips.

   Sole Exception: General photography when used as a background layer underneath a digital-media drawing or painting may be allowed.

5. Copyrighted Work by Another Artist.
   Attempting to impersonate another artist, or to misrepresent their work as your own, is acknowledged as a form of theft and shall be prosecuted. To a lesser degree, even if you "disclaim" the submission as the creation of another artist, even if you identify and link to the original artist who created the piece, we still cannot accept the submission simply because are not the copyright holder (i.e. creator) of the work and therefore have no rights to re-use that piece for a submission here. Similarly, this clause also extends to the use, modification, direct copying (such as "tracing"), or inclusion of other artists' material in your submission (in the same ways as modification or use of copyrighted Official Art) -- we can allow only artwork created by YOU.

   Sole Exception: Artwork jointly created through a collaborative, "fair-use" agreement between two artists can be allowed; however, we reserve the right to remove a "collab" if we believe that no collaborative agreement actually took place and instead the result is in violation of the original artist's copyright.

6. Desktop Screenshots
   Images taken with the PrintScreen key or other screen-capturing feature, typically displaying a wallpaper background, desktop icons, the Start Menu and Taskbar (or equivalents). This is because many wallpaper backgrounds incorporate copyrighted material and therefore cannot be allowed anyway. This clause does not extend to the general uploading of original artwork in standard desktop dimensions (e.g., 800x600 or 1024x768), even though it could potentially be downloaded and used as a desktop background itself.

7. Other, Non-Exhibition Images (such as icons, buttons, or textures)
   Images uploaded for the purpose of being used or transferred to another website or domain, rather than as an artistic creation for exhibition in your gallery. Our site is not an image host and we furthermore do not allow images on our servers to be directly linked from outside domains.

8. AI Generated artwork
   We do not accept artwork generated by machine learning systems such as (but not limited to) DALL-E, Craiyon, Stable Diffusion, etc. These system can produce great images, but they are not approprate for this site.

For the purposes of showing off art that does not comply with the above policies you can use any image hosting site (Photobucket, etc).

Violations: Submissions which can be classified under any of the above categories constitute a violation of this Policy and will be removed by FAC staff as they are discovered or reported, with or without warning. Additionally, any re-submissions of material previously deleted as a violation automatically constitutes a violation in and of itself and shall similarly be immediately removed.

Termination: In the event of repeated violations, we reserve the right to take further action beyond the removal of the actual violation, which can include the suspension or termination ("banning") of your FAC submission privileges and/or FAC account itself, as well as removal of all content you submitted to FAC.

2 - Submission Quality Guidelines

All FAC submissions must meet the following minimum standards. Submissions which do not meet these requirements may be removed by FAC staff at any time.

1. Traditional Art: By nature, traditional art pieces must be captured using a scanner or digital camera before they can be submitted here -- we clearly recommend using a scanner over a digital camera because it has greater control over image contrast and detail. When and where a camera must be used to photograph the work, the photo should focus on the piece being submitted and avoid including other elements or subjects that do not relate to or distract from the work, lest it be mistaken as general photography and summarily prohibited.
2. Lighting and Exposure: Images should show enough difference between dark and light to be identifiable at thumbnail size.
3. No Lined Paper: Pencil art should be drawn or created on blank, non-lined paper (preferably a sketchbook, though computer printer paper is also acceptable, and easily available). We reserve the right to reject or remove submissions which were drawn on lined notebook paper, and in which you have made no efforts to erase or otherwise reduce the lines from the image.
4. Orientation: All images must be rotated right-side up before submission. Images deemed to appear "sideways" or "upside-down" shall be subject to immediate removal without warning.
5. Cropping: Unused space should be removed from the top, bottom, or sides of an image before submission. This reduces the size of the image being submitted as well as improves the clarity of the thumbnail. Images need not be tightly cropped, but we reserve the right to reject or delete a submission if it is clear that no cropping has been performed.
6. File format: Artwork saved in BMP format, or in proprietary (program-specific) image formats (such as PSD, PSP, or XCF) should be converted or exported to a standard file format (such as JPG, GIF, or PNG) before submission; this will reduce the amount of bandwidth and processing incurred while submitting the work, especially for low bandwidth ("dial-up") users. Files uploaded in most other formats will be auto converted, however this does not give you as much control over the file so you are better off doing it yourself.

3 - Other Submission Guidelines

The following is a brief description of the submissions form and the guidelines for each field that appears on it. In order for your submission to be processed, you must fill out all the required fields:

• Title - Title of your piece. Your submission's Title must be humanly readable and may not be prefixed with punctuation or symbols. Additionally it must also be appropriate for all ages to view and may not include profanity or swear words.
• Description - Your own comments or discussion about the piece being submitted. Your submission's Description should remain on the general subject of the piece you are exhibiting.
• Keywords - A short list of words which describe the submission, for search engine purposes. Keywords must relate to the piece being submitted.
• Category - The FAC gallery section in which your submission will appear. When selecting a category, please review its description carefully to ensure that it is appropriate for your submission. FAC staff reserve the right to reject a submission if you do not choose an appropriate section for it, or to move it to a more appropriate section.
• File - The artwork being submitted, which must comply with the rules and guidelines listed previously in Sections 1 and 2.
• Media - The medium with which you created the work. Please select the most appropriate option for the medium you used.
• Content Advisories - Labels to identify any potentially offensive (or "Mature") content depicted in your submission. See our separate Ratings Policy for further requirements and details.

Additional, optional fields on the Submissions page are:

• Time Spent: An estimation of the time you spent creating the piece.
• References: Short summary of any reference material which assisted in the creation of your piece.
• Skill Level: This is currently being recorded for statistical purposes only. It has no other effect on your submission.

4 - Summary of Submission Agreement and User Obligations

Under penalty of administrative action by FAC staff, by submitting content to Fanart Central, you hereby swear:

1. That, as previously explained in Section 1, you are the copyright holder to the work being submitted, and that your work does not violate any copyrights of other artists;
2. That you are licensing your work for:
   • Exhibition and display in your Fanart Central gallery, and other gallery sections throughout FAC;
   • Exhibition and display for other purposes relating to Fanart Central, for example the promotion and advertisement of FAC itself;
3. That your artwork satisfies our Quality Guidelines as previously described in section 2;
4. That your work satisfies the conditions of our separate Ratings Policy, i.e.:
   • That your submission does not depict any patently "adult" or sexually explicit content;
   • That you have applied accurate warning labels to your submission for other potentially offensive content.
   For further information, review the Ratings Policy page.
5. That you acknowledge the rights we must reserve of you and the submission (as described next).

5 - Summary of Rights Reserved by FAC Staff

We reserve the rights:

1. To convert your submission to an appropriate file format for optimum storage on our servers, as well as for optimum transfer and display to other users viewing the work;
2. To resize (such as create "thumbnails" of) the image for transfer and display in your FAC gallery and other categories;
3. To "watermark" said thumbnails, resized versions, or "downloads" of the artwork image for identification and association as a submission to FAC, if or where deemed necessary (noting that any such watermarking does not constitute us claiming any copyright over the piece as a whole -- we have no reason nor interest to do that);
4. To modify any secondary fields of a Submission (i.e. all details not including the uploaded File itself) if deemed necessary to comply with policy and guidelines -- specifically:
• Modifying the Title, Description, or Keywords if they are deemed inappropriate;
• Modifying any Content Warnings to accurately reflect the content of the submission;
• Modifying the Category in which the submission shall appear.
5. To reject, remove, or delete any submission which violates the terms of Section 4 (or, by extension, Section 1), and if it cannot reasonably be brought into compliance via our rights described above. If and when such action is deemed necessary we will try to inform you about the nature of the violation, but this is a 'courtesy' notification only and we also reserve the right to remove a violation without informing or notifying you of the reason.

6 - NO WARRANTY.

Use of (and submission to) FAC is provided on an "AS-IS" basis and we do NOT provide any warranties or guarantees of any kind whatsoever; in other words, you use this site at your own risk. We shall not be liable or responsible for any problems experienced or damage incurred through the use, browsing, and/or submission to FAC. We acknowledge that FAC may experience technical problems from time to time, and we welcome reports of them; but we cannot be responsible for loss of time or user submitted data due to any problems that may occur.

7 - Miscellaneous Clarifications

1. Fanart, redrawings, re-interpretations based on or inspired by existing pieces, generally will not be considered a violation of the original artist's copyright, except for the direct inclusion or duplication of copyrighted material (as per Section 1). In general, re-drawings or re-interpretations of existing original art may be treated as original art itself.
2. As mentioned previously in Section 1, "tracing", direct copying or modification of a different artist's work is considered a violation of the original artist's copyright and cannot be allowed. If you believe another user has directly copied or traced one of your submissions, you may report it to FAC site staff for investigation and/or removal.
3. Collaborative Works, as explained in Section 1, can be deleted as a copyright violation if we cannot verify or and/or do not believe that any "fair-use" agreement between two artists was ever made. Therefore, if you are working on a collaborative piece, you must cite who else is assisting you in the work, so that it may be verified.
4. Implicit permission, for example "free" lineart on a website which allows users to use and color in themselves, are considered copyrighted material and generally do not qualify as "fair use" or as a collaborative work, and therefore may not be used. This rule also applies to use of "dolls" or "genreators", regardless of whether you know or credit the source website.
5. Minor violations of Sections 2 and 3 generally will not accumulate towards or result in a suspension or ban of your FAC account; you will be asked to correct the error before trying again.