R&C Rules Updates: Updated 01/05/2010

[Noraboo]

Gaia's Content Guidelines and Art Commissioning

Please remember that Gaia's content guidelines apply not only to posting images on the site but also to commissioning art.

Artistic nudity, images that may contain rear or frontal nudity, or unclothed but covered individuals, in non-sexualized or suggestive poses, is acceptable to be commissioned or used as samples. When posting content that contains artistic nudity, users must link to the image, rather than directly posting it, and the link should be accompanied by a note that says that the link contains artistic nudity, so that any users who do not wish to view such content may avoid it.

Artistic nudity does not include hentai or other pornography. Think Venus de Milo, not La Blue Girl. If the image you want is highly suggestive, sexualized, or pornographic, you may not request it on Gaia.

Users found to be requesting pornographic or explicitly sexual art will be warned Terms of Service violations. Please take this sticky as a preliminary warning, and adjust your request threads or contests if you are currently soliciting mature content.

This applies equally to artists, who should not offer to do hentai or other sexually explicit material in their store or auction threads. Offering to provide these materials or posting or linking to sexually explicit or pornographic images will also result in a warning from the site.

If you should find anyone asking for or offering these materials, please use the forum report system to bring it to our attention. ^^

Thank you!

[Noraboo]

Previous Updates/Reminders:

There seems to be a bit of confusion on these issues, so here's a bit of clarification.

Offering to mail original commissioned art:

Gaia is not the post office! We have no way of making sure that someone mails something to you. This means that if you gave someone 500k for a painting, we could never verify that they did in fact send a painting to you or not. You could lie and say they didn't, or they could just never send it, and we couldn't tell. What this all means is that this just isn't allowed. You cannot sell real life items for Gold, even if they are original commissioned creations.

We also are not responsible for any negative consequences as a result of you giving out personal information. Please read Gaia's Safety Tips and do not share personal information on Gaia.

• While artists can offer to mail the original version of the art, they must provide a high quality digital version. This means a scan or good quality digital photograph as would normally be expected to be received in R&C. Any artwork that cannot be transmitted in a functional form digitally cannot be sold.
  
  
• Lousy webcam photographs that only serve to prove that an artwork is involved are not sufficient.

Essentially, offering to mail the finished art from a commission or auction should be treated as a bonus, and should in no way change the normal auction process nor the product required to be delivered on gaia.

Because of the requirement that the person must receive an accurate, good quality digital version of the commission, things such as plushies, cosplay items, statues, and so on CANNOT be sold in requests and commissions, because there it is clear that without the real life exchange, you are not receiving the actual, functional creation.

Clarification on offering real life commissions:

We know that many of you accept commissions for real money. After all, Gaia gold doesn't buy you ramen. However, please do not list your real money commission prices in threads, as this would be solicitation, a violation of Gaia's Terms of Service.

You are more than welcome to say as an aside in a thread or signature that you also do real life commissions, and then link to a personal web page, dev art, or email address to provide further information.

However please do not make this the focus of your thread or make a thread only for the purpose of this, and do not list prices or carry out real money transactions in your threads or via PM (or anywhere else on Gaia).

Please PM an R&C moderator if you have any questions on these or any other aspect of selling or buying art here.

[Noraboo]

No Selling of Drawings Made Using Art Pad

Just a reminder, since recently there have been a few cases of users using art pad to make drawings and then selling them (or the animations thereof).

The Art Pad ToS does not allow for users to profit from art pad. I double checked with their customer support that this does indeed still apply to virtual currency. Users are more than welcome to make and give away art pad art in art freebies for fun, but you cannot sell art pad drawings.

Thank you for reading. ^_^

[Noraboo]

totorochic

In light of the growing number of threads in the Requests and Commissions forum, it has come to our attention that it has become increasingly difficult to find shops with open slots in them. To help resolve this problem, we ask that all threads use the following naming guidelines.

SHOP: for all shops
REQUEST: for all request threads
[O] and [C] for shops open and closed.

So an open shop would then be SHOP [O]: My shop name.
A request thread would then be REQUEST: My request thread.

We hope that by adopting this way of naming threads, we can improve the community and make it easier for users to find what they are looking for.