Artwork Requirements

After the redesign Vancouver Anime has a number of spaces on our website and in our extended media that are in need of artwork.

I’m accepting submissions from multiple artists to fill these areas. I’d like to promote local artists with these images so I’d prefer that submissions come from artists local to the Metro Vancouver area.

The artists of artwork I use on the site will be credited for their work on a new credits page. The current images I need for the website don’t have room for artist signatures but larger banners outside the website I add in the future may.

General requirements

  • Where characters are required, artists are encouraged to create new characters or better incorporate their own original characters into the artwork. There are less copyright and trademark issues than with fan art. Plus original characters drawn by local artists are even better for representing our area.
  • Images must be digital with transparent backgrounds in place of white ones. These images will be incorporated into the website. Non-transparent white backgrounds, image formats such as JPEG, and scanning of hand drawn artwork will create image artifacts that will make the image look worse when it is put into the website.
  • [Request] If you draw your art in vector formats such as .svg or .ai I encourage you to submit in those formats instead of sending me a exported raster image (.png, .pdf, etc). I should be able to handle conversion of these formats myself and the vector sources allow me to keep the images at a high quality.

Special resolutions

I’ve done some work in supporting mobile devices which have high-resolution screens. This means that the resolution of images I’m accepting and the physical size of the area they are put into on the website will be different.

Specifically every rectangular area will have a rectangular size of image they can accept but the real image I need for that space will be 4x that size.

For artists this means that while drawing you’ll have to be aware of a few things.

  • Be aware that while you are drawing a “large” image (like one that is 1600x800px) but that image will actually be squeezed into an area that is 4x smaller (like a 400x200px area).
  • For many people on their computer all the finer details of the image will be lost (they’ll see it as if you drew an 400x200px image).
  • Phones will display varying levels of extra detail making your lines much smoother and bringing out a bit more of the details of what you draw.
  • Keep in mind this means that you do not need to actually draw 4x (1600x800px) the detail.

Note that the way this site rearranges itself to accommodate  different monitor screen sizes, tablet sizes, and smartphone sizes will also make the size of the area the images are part of vary even more.

Artwork

Here are the spaces I plan to add artwork to.

Homepage list tiles

The groups, conventions, stores, and Japanese events tiles on the homepage are in need of images. These are what I’d really like to start with.

Screenshot of the groups title on the homepage

The size of the image area in these varies. The area can sometimes be as large as 450x180px however most people on their computer will see something closer to a 400x160px area, and on my phone the area is closer to 290x116px.

So these images need to be 1800x2160px (to fit in the 450x180px area) but keep in mind the area may shrink all the way down to 290x116px, so make sure characters and objects you want to be visible are still visible at that size.

Here are some hints on what I think would be good to draw for these spots:

  • Groups: A “group shot” of various generic people is the best I can think of to represent clubs and Meetup groups.
  • Conventions: I can think of two ideas to represent conventions. The vendor hall, with tables of vendors and artists with crowds of people browsing them. And the wide open spaces outside with people cosplaying all over. Or you could combine the two together and draw part of a vendor hall with crowds of people some in generic cosplay browsing.
  • Stores: Something involving the shelves of anime DVDs and manga in most stores would be nice. Perhaps incorporate someone browsing the store.
  • Japanese events: The first staples I think of for Japanese festivals are the use of open grassy areas, Japanese themed things like sakura, kimono/yukata, taiko drums, and food stalls. It’ll be tough to get everything in so I recommend incorporating sakura and the grassy area then picking one or two of the other things to draw.

Website banner

At the top of every page on the site is a banner. Right now this is just the site name and tagline, but I would like to replace it with artwork representing the area. I’m thinking that the best thing would be to represent multiple artists by creating something that looks like a group shot of characters (original and generic) drawn by various artists in the area.

I’d like to see artists who would like to draw their original character for the banner send links to some of their existing artwork featuring the original character(s) they’d like to draw and mention any poses they’d prefer to draw their character in.

After that someone can help me sketch out how a group shot of these characters would be laid out and I can start breaking it up into separate requests for the artists.

This one will need some attention from me because the banner area’s size changes drastically between phones and computers.

Screenshot of the page top banner on desktop

Screenshot of the page top banner on mobile

Facebook banner

Right now the site’s Facebook banner is a set of screenshots of the website. In the future I’d like to incorporate artwork into this. However I will probably base this one on the website banner.

Screenshot of the Facebook page's banner art

Facebook avatar

Vancouver Anime will be needing a Facebook avatar to replace the current one that just says “Vancouver Anime”.

For this I will likely be accepting suggestions/sketches of what a site mascot may look like.

Screenshot of the Facebook page's avatar