Like other submission sections of Empty Movement, your work here is subject to our approval. What are we looking for? How official does the trace look? The point of vector tracing is not to be an artist yourself, but to reproduce the original artist's work. You’re not Picasso, you’re a forger. Now, we do understand the limitations of the medium, especially for Utena, which was one of the last anime series to be animated using cells. Now anime is done digitally, so a vector of a modern anime ends up looking almost identical to the original. You are not going to be able to reproduce the look of cell animation, but you should have a product that is immediately identifiable and as genuine-looking as possible.
That said, deviations from the original work are allowed under the following conditions:
1. They correct a flaw in the original. If you’re a hero and you decide to make Touga’s chest proportioned in a remotely human way to the rest of his body, we will not penalize you for deviating from the source material. No, we will in fact celebrate you.
2. You are completing an incomplete image. Did you trace someone’s face in a shot where the very top of their head gets chopped off? Did you manage to correct this in a natural looking way? GO YOU!
3. You are adding detail. You’re taking what’s likely a simple image and making it gigantic, which leaves a lot of room for improvement. Did you add shading to a hand, or detail to eyelashes? If it still looks official, you win.
Now, I repeatedly say ‘series’ out of habit, but obviously we will also be glad to get vectors from the movie or the game. You can even get a vector trace ‘cell’ from something only given as a sketch. There are tons of possibilities. |
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People will use your traces. That’s what this is all about; making copies of your favorite images look good enough to be a wallpaper, a winamp skin, a website layout, or even a printed poster. If you have a problem with your work being used to these ends by others, don’t bother submitting it.
That said, people who are using these traces are held up to the same standard, and more, that we have in place for the gallery. If your work is used, it must be properly credited in the same place. If you see your trace in someone’s site layout and on their main page you’re not mentioned, well it’s time to get the pitchforks and torches. We’ve never had much trouble with people stealing work from Empty Movement, though, and I don’t see that changing.
The bottom line is this: don’t look at submitting vector traces as displaying your artwork. Look at it as giving something to the community. Something we can all enjoy and more importantly, use. If someone uses your work in a site layout or a wallpaper, be proud of that, don’t fume because they didn’t make the trace themselves. I’ve seen images from the gallery grace countless websites and papers and skins; people have put to fantastic use a collection of images I spent far more time on than most will ever spend tracing, and it makes me feel pretty good. If you can’t see it that way, keep your traces to yourself. |
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To submit an image, send Yasha your final product, with background if you have it. Keep the file under 1mb, and scale it down to no more than 1600px high or wide (whichever is larger). This can be jpeg, gif, or png. We don’t care. Also include a copy of the original you used for the trace, before you filled in missing sections, enlarged it, or anything else. If your trace is approved, this is what we want:
1. A full scale copy of the trace, saved as a 256-color PNG-8 file with transparency and no background. This should be under 1mb, and most vector traces, you’ll find, don’t change at all being reduced to 256 color if there’s no background. IF, and only if, you have done something fancy-pants with yours, such as glow effects or gradients, then submit it as a PNG-24, again, transparent with no background.
2. If you made a background for the image, and it’s a reasonably good reproduction of the original background, also send a copy of the trace with its background, but this copy must be 1600px high or wide at most. The file format you use is up to you based on whatever will preserve the image best. If PNG-8 doesn’t degrade the quality at all, use that, otherwise send a very high quality JPEG (95-100%). (Go straight to 100% if red is a prominent color. Trust me on this.) Keep the file under 2mb. |
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| If we don’t orgasm at the sight of it, we won’t accept it. Don’t make non-SKU traces with the intention of having them appear here, but if you do happen to make one, and it’s absolutely stunning (and from a series one of us is familiar with), we will probably put it up. This is part of Empty Movement, and so is about Utena, but occasional exceptions will be made. |
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