Just wanted to give everyone a heads up that we've added several often-requested new features over the course of the last week.  These include:

• Download counts for files.
• Social networking links (not just on blog entries -- check the art pages too!)
• More RSS feeds, including per-user art feeds.
• A helpful submission guidelines link conveniently located at the top of the art submission page. ;)

Enjoy. :)

FOSS steampunk MMORPG Tempest in the Aether is celebrating their first release with an art contest!  They're looking for both 2D and 3D art matching their distinctive style, so if you think you've got what it takes, head on over to their contest page and take a look!  They'll be giving away some significant cash prizes.

P.S.  Stay tuned for OGA's big announcement later this morning. :)

Hey folks!

We've had a big influx of art lately, which is awesome, but we need to make sure the archive remains clean and useful for people using it, which means I need to tighten the the guidelines on what constitutes art that's useful for games.  If the art you post doesn't meet these guidelines, I (or one of the other admins) will leave a comment and give you a few days to fix the issue (or respond with a plan to fix it, if it'll take more time than that).  So, without further ado, here are the guidelines (per art type):

General

• If you are submitting an art asset, you must upload the whole art asset in a usable form.
• We cannot accept watermarked submissions (audio, image, or otherwise), as watermarks render the content unusable on its own.
• Specifically, if someone must go to a different website to obtain a usable version of your submitted work, we cannot accept it (however, it is perfectly fine to request that someone go to your website).

Concept Art

• Since the purpose of concept art is to convey an idea, we're not putting any restrictions on concept art except that it convey an original, game-appropriate concept.
• The usefulness of concept art will be weighed more heavily if the art is being used as an advertisement by the artist.  The idea of the loose guidelines in this category isn't to give people a place to dump art that's not really usable -- it's to allow people to post legitimate concept art. :)

2D Character Art

• Character portraits and other character art should be released in a non-lossy format with a transparent background.  The easiest way to do this is use PNG.
• There shouldn't be any evidence of pencil lines in the finished product unless that's the intended style of the work.  Use your pencil sketch as a guide to paint over, then hide the pencil layer before you save the image.
• 2D character art should generally not just be a render of a 3D model, unless the model is already available on the site.

2D Background Art

• PNGs are preferred, but not required.
• Make sure the your art is clean.  As above, if pencil lines aren't part of the art style, be sure to paint on a separate layer and hide them when you're finished.

Music

• Music tracks should be encoded in a high quality format, with a 128kbps MP3 bare minimum.  We prefer OGG or FLAC, as these are higher quality than MP3 and aren't encumbered by patent licensing issues.
• For size considerations, please don't upload WAVs of long music tracks.  If you prefer to release your music in a non-lossy format, use FLAC.
• If you are using software to compose your music and you can export a MIDI file, that would be a bonus.
• Volume should be normalized so the music is audible at a typical volume but no clipping occurs.

Sound Effects

• Short sound effects should be released in WAV or FLAC format.  Longer sound effects are acceptable in high quality MP3 or OGG.
• Volume should be normalized so the music is audible at a typical volume but no clipping occurs.

Textures

• Loss-less formats are preferred for small textures (1024x1024 or less), but it's okay to use JPGs for particularly large textures.  Please keep the JPG quality high enough to avoid visible artifacts.
• If you're posting photographed textures, it's best to take pictures on an overcast day, because that provides an even, white light without casting obvious shadows.
• If you're making a tiling texture, use a high pass filter to avoid vignetting and brightness variation in your photos.

3D Art

• YOU MUST CREDIT YOUR TEXTURES.  If you don't know where your textures came from, we cannot use them.
• On the subject of textures, we can't accept any textures that come from CGTextures or sites with similar licensing restrictions.  All textures used in your work must be available under one of OGA's allowed licenses.  For legal reasons, we can't make exceptions to this under any circumstances.

Finally, a word on adveritising.  It's all well and good for you to advertise your site with the art you submit, but the art must be usable on its own.

We're changing our site policy slightly with respect to anonymous comments.

Since it's very easy to be rude when hiding behind an anonymous account, site policy from here onward will be to delete anonymous comments that we find impolite or trollish.  There's been a debate for a long time about whether to allow them at all, and we've decided in the past that there are a lot of anonymous users who add value to the site with their comments, and I don't want to force those people to register.  As the site grows, we may need to reevaluate that, but for the time being anonymous comments will be allowed.

Please note that I can't be in the business of policing every single comment to reach the site.  If I miss a rude comment by an anonymous user, please contact me through the contact form and leave a link to the page with the offending comment, and I'll take care of it.

Thanks,

Bart