Shadowness - Shadowness Forum

Shadowness: A Home for Artists by Artists

Thu, 07 Apr 2011 13:19:27 -0400

Ten years ago there weren't many sites on the internet catering to artists. The ones that did were only using artists to click banners, and pay their bills. As the years progressed, it got worse; Ad space grew to cover and clutter up the pages, reducing the quality of the sites themselves.

Now, vendors and "art-sites" make profit from their artists without returning anything to them at all. Contests are created solely for the interest of the site and its chosen few 'best' artists. Contests are created just so that artists can receive commissions, with no pay-out at all.

Shadowness was created in order to put an end to that. Gone are the days of corporate sites with no community, that don't care about the art and the artist. Shadowness is here to give back!

Our Vision:

To Empower and Educate artists, creating a place to share artwork and connect with a network of diverse talents. To provide a free and individually customizable environment that is and user-friendly and distraction-free.

We want to revolutionize the industry. We will not accept the industry standard of taking money from our artists without giving back to the community. We aren't here for the profit. We're here to give back to the Shadowness community. All monies collected by Shadowness via subscription or donation will go towards contests to pay back the hard work of the community artists.

‎The Shadowness Staff, including the founder are determined to be friendly and down to earth. We will encourage constructive criticism and ensure that our experience and vision are passed on to SN Members by our exemplary conduct.

We are determined to view each piece of artwork and comment on a majority of them. The Shadowness Staff will focus on constructive and conversational feedback by encouraging replies and encouraging the viewing of outstanding artists and their work.

We have Facebook Connect and Likes implemented for our Members to allow easier and more global sharing. We also offer Twitter Connect. The Shadowness platform will remain extremely open. Instead of becoming ‘just another social networking site’ we will strive to become the best art-oriented site on the internet by encouraging members to connect socially off-site using Facebook, so that even Non members can share the great artwork on Shadowness with their family and friends.

Here’s How We Plan To Give Back To The Community!

- We will hire freelance within the Shadowness community for our needs, including, but not limited to: Contest logos, Shadowness version Logos, custom wallpapers and other artwork needs as they arise.

- We will build a commission system that handles transactions made between members or outside buyers for Shadowness artists. The artists will gain everything, unlike other sites which only pay artists a small percentage, we will take a small transaction fee, in order to pay our expense, and the artist will make over 90% of his/her sale.

- We will take no profit from Prints, we will only pay the expenses of shipping and print creation from qualified ICC profiled print shops. You’ll get what you pay for, rather than paying for the Shadowness name and getting sub-standard prints.

- We will hold contests wherein there will be several categories and many more prizes than the usual 1st-3rd places. 30-50% of all participants will be winners. We hope to encourage all levels of participants regardless of their skill level and focus on promoting a platform abundant in collaborations and creative thinking. All monies collected from subscriptions and donations will be applied to contests after the Shadowness bills have been paid.

This is the promise that we make to the Members of Shadowness. We promise to deliver a fun place to learn, full of intense artworks and open, caring members who are as interested in spreading the knowledge and love of art as we are!

Cheers, Shadows!

Here are some Shadowness-Related Artworks

S9: Upload Limit

Mon, 10 Jan 2011 19:51:33 -0500

The upload limit has been set to:

- New members get 5 initial upload slots.
- Then, you have a 1 upload limit + 1 per level gained. (Max 5 per day)
- Subscribers get 5 bonus uploads per day on top of that.
- It's a 24-hour scale.

Why?

- We encourage you to upload your finest work that you're proud of, thus help maintaining the quality of work across Shadowness.
- Ensure that you give equal opportunity to all members for exposure.
- Allow time for your work to get recognition and feedback.
- With the limit, we can avoid spamming.

Feel free to suggest. Thanks!

S9: Nude art rules

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 19:56:08 -0500

The nude body has intrigued many artists through the decades and therefore it's natural that there will be nude art posted on Shadowness in all art mediums. We have therefore some rules and requirements we would like you to follow:

> Keep it artistic. It means that your image has a concept and thought to arrangement or execution.
>Please use the description to explain your concept (idea) or thoughts about the image.
>Add the mature filter.

> No models under the age of 18
> No images that depict human or human-like characters having sexual intercourse or masturbation
> No depiction of body fluids of any kind (fake or real)
> No erect penis
> No vaginal spreading
> No sex toys or other things used as such
> No bestiality (human sex with animal)

If your image doesn't meet our requirements it will be scrapped/removed.

When do we delete smudge paintings?

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 04:51:21 -0400

This is an example of a proper stock photo manipulated with smudging and painting techniques.

Smudge painting is a technique to make a photo appear like a painting by using the smudge tool. Actually, the term "smudge painting" is a little misleading in some cases because some people don't bother painting anything--they just smudge what's already there. In my opinion, these "smudge paintings" should therefore be called only "smudges" then.

Smudging comes in handy, e.g. when you want to change a family photo, a photo of your dog, or a photo of your friend into a painting. While saving you a lot of time and effort, you get a great artistic result.

However, problems arise when you don't use proper stock material, and that's where we at Shadowness draw the line. Smudge paintings based on stock photos (like from istockphoto.com, sxc.hu, your own photos, the stock section at Shadowness or Deviantart) are fine--but photos from Google image search or wallpapers (especially celebrity wallpapers and photos) are not allowed because virtually all of these images are copyrighted, meaning you can't use them for any kind of manipulation. It's like stealing a dusty car and making strokes in the dust with your fingers. The look of the car might have changed, but it's still a stolen car!

If you really want to have a painting of a celebrity, well, then you have to be more original and actually paint it. Smudging or other manipulations will get the image deleted.

P.S. I know from first hand that in Asia, for example, the copyright isn't really an issue. However, in Western countries such as Canada, where Shadowness is based, copyright holders actually sue image thieves because images are protected just like MP3s and movies.

New Emoticons List !

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 15:41:55 -0400

Today is a very important day for Shadowness !

We are proud to introduce to you NEW EMOTICONS !
Actually, it's just a "preview" but we hope you'll give us some positive feedback !

Some of the new emoticons that you will be able to use throughout the site:

: panda - :panda
: monkey - :monkey
: tiger - :tiger
: smile - :smile
: cookie - :cookie
: heart - :heart
: love - :love

Have fun with brand new emoticons !

Your Shadowness Team :heart
P.S. More coming soon !

Linotype Giving Away Fonts Worth $400

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 07:29:47 -0500

To celebrate the rebranding from Linotype to Monotype, the company is giving away the following fonts for free (regular price: USD 400; offer ends on 3 April 2013):

Click here for further information and to download the fonts.

Win a surreal/supernatural portrait of yourself!

Sun, 20 Jan 2013 12:32:22 -0500

Hi everyone, I'm having a contest I'd like you to enter in:

A randomly selected winner will receive a digital painting of themselves in some sort of surreal or supernatural setting (think monsters, ghosts, mermaids, zombies, vampires, angels, people with odd objects growing out of their faces, etc. etc.) All for the price of a few clicks of a button! :)

I have recently realized that my portfolio could benefit from more cool creatures and general surreal madness and lately I have not been painting as much as I should, so this contest will be an excuse to put work aside for a moment and play! And lucky for you, it's also a chance to get your face immortalized in a potentially horrible monster version. Yay!

The contest closes on midnight, Feb 1st 2013, Danish time. A random winner will be chosen and notified soon after.

How to enter:
1. Like the page: https://www.facebook.com/MariamismART
and
2. Share the poster( https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=494625700581121&set=a.410086875701671.89408.158586124185082&type=1&theater )on your Facebook wall

Come come come and bring your friends!
Cheers,
M.

S9: Bugs

Sun, 02 Jan 2011 22:36:17 -0500

Post your bugs here.

Logo Competition for Plusketeers Challenge

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 17:45:58 -0500

Graphic Artists: Can you help?

+Plusketeers All for One Plus One for All is a movement that seeks to use social media platforms for good.

It's looking for a few graphic artists to help crowd source a logo(s) to use on www.plusketeers.org. Would you consider sharing your talents?

A bit of background for your design inspiration...the Plusketeers raise money and awareness for a variety of causes including people who lack mobility in poor countries, kids with limb differences and aging veterans just to name a few.

Please email within the next two weeks your logo submission to dotsfordollars@plusketeers.org. Google Plussers will then vote on which Plusketeers logo(s) they'd like included. The artist gets to showcase their talent and the Plusketeers Challenge gets a new visual tool to draw attention to people who need help.

Logo must be square, ideally 1000x1000 pixels but don't let that limit you. Musketeers? Swords? Surprise us with your own design inspiration.

Would you consider submitting a logo?

All for One...Plus One for All
www.Plusketeers.org
#Plusketeers

This was just posted on Google+ Lets show the group what our Shadowness members can do, send your entries to that email, but also submit that to Shadowness so we can share them and the message of this nice cause.

S9: Features Request

Sun, 02 Jan 2011 13:24:30 -0500

I've noticed there are a lot of feature requests being found all over the community – walls, forums, chat, etc.

It can be quite hard to keep track of what members are requesting, so I took the initiative of starting this discussion where feature requests can be made and Meng will be able to respond accordingly on whether or not those certain features will be introduced.