Help With Your Work and Other News...

Hello! Chi2 here!

First off, I want to say that I hope you all got to take a chance to look at jia-flynn's wonderful news post here. It's quite long and very useful: linking to various tutorials on how to draw anatomy, make good compositions, color theory, and a whole lot more!It will take you a while to look through, so make sure you have the time before you begin, and feel free to take a look at the tutorials as many times as you need. :3

Since we've been a group for a while now, we've decided to make some changes that we hope you will like.
First off, we are cracking down on what gets submitted here. We admit we have made a few mistakes in the past, and looking back on some of the work that has passed, we think we may have been a little bit too nice. We're not "upping" our standards to be mean or anything, but we want to make sure that we uphold our title and deliver the work that you expect to see.
Help with your works in progress
That being said, we are also welcoming and encouraging people to let us take a peak at Works in Progress (WIP). We do give out critiques (when asked), but the main disappointment with our critiques is that our advise is a bit late with the picture already being done. Yes, it's always good to know what you need to look out for next time, but it's also important to learn what you're doing wrong in the process itself. Besides, we're pretty nice and we want you to succeed.
Anyways, you can simply respond to this journal entry at any time, replying with a link to your WIP. (Please post here so we can keep all the requested WIP critiques organized: it just makes it easier for us). So yea, just let us know you would like a critique on how you're doing so far, with a link to the picture you're working on (you can always submit your work under the folder as "scraps" and there are also other picture upload links such as flickr and photobucket). Please do not actually submit them to our group. We will do our best at explaining what's wrong, and sometimes we may even do a redline! (We do redlines because most of us are visual people and explaining something in words can be hard sometimes. Please don't be insulted if something is redlined, it's to help show you your mistakes, and if you really don't want us to redline something, just say so in the beginning). :3

So not only are we willing to help you, but I would like to announce one more surprise that I think you'll all love: we now have a craft folder! :3
We don't have many guidelines for the craft folder, but it does have to at least look nice and that counts in presentation as well.
Which reminds me to say, that when submitting to our cosplay folder, that you submit well-thought out photos. We don't accept candid shots at cons where there are people in the background (and if we do, it's gotta at least look decent). We don't want any Sailor Moon characters with a Naruto or a Pokemon in the background. ^^;
I also have another thing to announce (I know, a lot of stuff here!)... we have decided that we will accept people's Original Characters (OC) only if the work meets standards and they are not the main focal point of the picture So if you have a picture of Sailor Moon and Chibi Moon in the foreground, with a few of your own OCs in the background, then that's okay.
Okay, last but not least, we would like to hear some feedback from you guys!Tell us how we're doing! Are you liking the pictures that are being submitted? Do you like the "higher standard" idea? Do you think we were doing just fine before? Any other ideas to help us with the group? Even though we try not to make many journal entries (to prevent flooding your inbox), we still work hard "behind the scene" to discuss issues at hand. You're always welcome to ask anyone of us anything that you need help with. We may not respond right away, but we'll do our best to help you.

Take Care!
-Chi2