h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What's the position on hand drawn art please?

And quite frankly this bit confuses me

"Any image that is not rectangular will need to be anti-aliased to the appropriate background colour and then saved in 'gif89a' format (JPEG format cannot be used for this type of graphic) with the background colour set to 'transparent'. Therefore you will need to have software capable of creating these on your computer. The colours are RGB 255, 255, 255 (#FFFFFF Hex) for the white background and RGB 0, 0, 102 (#000066 Hex) for the blue background. The files must be named w_filename.gif for the white background, and b_filename.gif for the blue background."

I'm not a Community Artist, but here's some info until those who really know there stuff show up.

Hand drawn art that is then scanned in tends not to look as clean or manipulate as well. All the Community Artists I've spoken to have created their projects on the computer, maybe using hand drawing for preliminary sketches. Many seem to use those pen/tablet things that attach to your computer.

If you don't understand the bit about anti-aliasing, the technical aspect of being a Community Artist might be something you'd need to bone up on. This does come down in part to a software issue, though -- in order to be a Community Artist, you need to have access to software that can do these things -- the little free graphics programs you get with your computer are not sufficient. When people have been able to create computer generated art that's been a high enough quality for the group during their "application", I have seen Amy or someone else walk them through how to do the anti-aliasing bit correctly -- how to do it varies a bit across different software programs, I believe.


Mikey

They don't do non-rectangular images for the EG any more (with separate blue and white versions for the skins). So the bit about needing GIF for transparency is largely irrelevant now. Part of the reason for abandoning this will have been the server problems. The last few genuine numbered blobs as opposed to named images were rarely being shown (and some older blobs were flaky too).

Thankkew

But does it need to be created on computer, or can it be hand drawn? Will that be excepted. I feel that hand drawn is more real, and creative (for me, no offence to any computer artists) and I have a scanner.

well the page is a little out of date....
all of our images are now rectangular so the part that confused you no longer applies

and I dont beleve you are allowed your own images on site or else everyone would be doing it

but if you really want to do some art you should consider volentering to be a community artist

That doesnt answer my question. Can it be hand drawn, would I still be taken seriuosly, would they be accepted. Also, do I get to chose what I draw and then just submit it or do you request pictures that you need?

So long as you can scan your work, and assuming it's to the standard we're looking for, yes it can be hand-drawn.

I've done a few hand-drawn pieces for the Guide and then coloured them in on a computer later.

and a list is given but you can choose to illustrate any edited guide entery that dosnt already have a picutre....

i think thats right Jims?

That's occasionally right. We have spates of illustrating older entries every now and then