The Artist badgeHopefully, each and every art contribution an artist creates for Smogon should be met with heartfelt appreciation and thanks from the users who receive it, but given how much time and energy certain pictures can involve, we try to honor our generous artisans through other means. Thus, the Artist Badge is rewarded to users who at multiple occasions have taken their time and effort to make images for articles and events around Smogon, a demand that's growing larger for each year that passes! Any badge a user receives comes with a nice slew of benefits on the forums, but apart from proving that you are a contributor to Smogon, the artist badge will also be proof that you possess considerable skill within the visual medium, be it traditional art, digital drawings, or spriting. So wear it with pride! At the time of writing this, Bummer and LifeisDANK are Smogon's Art Leaders, and therefore the people in charge of rewarding artists with the badge when they have contributed enough quality images to Smogon. If you believe yourself to be eligible for the badge, feel free to contact them and specify where you've contributed, and they'll be sure to either fill out your paperwork, or explain why you haven't been rewarded yet. But if you're curious, here are the official requirements for receiving the artist badge This badge is rewarded to users who have contributed a multitude of images to areas that require art of decent quality, such as competitive articles, social media, on-site guides, our Sprite project, or other areas of similar importance. The contributions required for the badge is judged case by case, where both the number of contributions and their overall quality are considered. The artist must also be an approved artist before receiving this badge (some exceptions can occur, like for sprite artists). If the user has contributed images before becoming approved, those contributions can be used as supporting material for rewarding the user with an artist badge either immediately or later in the future. In summary, the art badge is rewarded to those who have contributed a considerable amount of images to the site, and has also shown enough skill to handle specific requests and create images of appropriate quality. 
In the past, the artist badge was considered to be one of the easier badges to receive, particularly in the early days of Smogon where a single image contributed to the site could be enough to get badged. Some concerns were also raised when certain artists who didn't put much effort into their craft could still earn the badge simply by contributing enough images, causing the artist badge to be associated with quantity rather than quality. So over time, changes have been made to the badge requirements to emphasize that the artist needs to produce art of sufficient quality, along with a reasonable amount of contributions. So today, the artist badge could be seen as one of the most difficult badges to earn, depending on how skillful you are as an artist when you begin earning it. So whenever an artist is rewarded with it, it should not just be seen as the outcome of contributing with enough images, and instead what it rightfully is: an accomplishment! Because the artist badge is based on contributions and not activity, it won't be removed if a user quits Smogon or goes inactive for other reasons. In those cases, the artist alumni badge (grayscale version of the same badge) will replace the standard artist badge, to show that the user is no longer active but still an earlier contributor to Smogon. That said, the alumni badge should still be seen as something given to veteran artists who've spent either a considerable time or effort on Smogon, so someone who just earned the artist badge and goes inactive will have less odds of becoming alumnied, and instead keep the regular artist badge. Here's an index of all of our current artist badge holders. Do you want to be one of them? Then the community in Smeargle's Studio would love to help you improve, and the whole of Smogon would also appreciate any generous donation of your talents! —Bummer, Art Leader of Smogon |
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