Contributing art to SmogonSmogon is always in need of artists who are willing to lend a hand and volunteer artwork, and that won't stop being the case any time soon. At the same time, Smogon can be a pretty big place, so knowing where to direct your efforts could be tricky. That's where this page comes in! Below we've listed some of the threads and directories that artists of varied experience and styles can contribute to, either directly or after proving themselves, so if you want to help out, just keep on reading and check out the links below! Open for allThe threads and projects listed in this category are open to any artist that feels confident in their craft to draw or design an image for others to use. However, because anyone can contribute, odds are that not all entries will be used, but don't let that discourage you from trying! All images created for these areas will be considered if an artist is eligible for an Artist or Pre-Contributor badge. 
The WorkshopThere is a vast number of threads and projects around Smogon, and essentially all of them can gain from having a cool logo or image to give a good impression and attract new contributors. Tournaments are also something that benefit greatly from exciting banners to make participants enlist, and for the larger tournaments, official teams can even use the Workshop to request new team logos. The Workshop is open for any thread owner or project leader to make an artwork request, and then it's up to the artists to heed their call! If you want to make a good image that's tailor-made for its specific purpose, read the suggestions made by the requester, and check out the thread or project itself to learn more about it so that you can better decide how to approach the task. Other than that, Smogon's metagame forums have a ton of discussion threads. Some of them, especially ongoing or important discussions, can greatly benefit from having artwork. If you find an ongoing discussion thread or project that you think is awesome and you want to do artwork for it, contact the thread owner and see if there's something you can do to spice it up a notch. So just because it's not a request inside the Workshop, feel free to help out whenever you see fit! The Create-a-Pokémon ProjectSmogon has a community-wide Create-A-Pokémon (CAP) project, in which competitive Pokémon are made through a large-scale community effort. So naturally, artwork is a part of that process! Here's a page elaborating on the rules and requirements concerning the design phase each CAP round, and, once a thread is up for artists to submit their designs, the race is on! Sadly, only one design can be the winner, but if you perform well in the polls, your participation can still be rewarded, such as having your design featured on-site. If you keep close attention to other qualities that the CAP receives during the process, such as its typing, ability, and moves it gets, you can more easily tailor your design to what the community is looking for. Quality illustrationsThere are certain areas of Smogon where the expectiations on contributors are higher, depending on how much exposure the finished product receives. Much like how authors have their written work examined by others before publishing, or how HTML writers need to get evaluated before uploading content onto the site, artists also need to show that they're capable of creating adequate images to illustrate various content. The areas listed below are thus only open to approved artists, and artists who have already received the artist badge. For more info about approved artists, see this link. Art for ArticlesThere are numerous articles hosted on Smogon, all of them created by the Contributions and Corrections (C&C) department, where the topics can span between in-game guides to info about the various metagames played on Pokémon Showdown! Thus, all the artwork created for this area will end up directly on Smogon's main site, which is also why the illustrations need to reach a certain standard. If you'd like to contribute with an artpiece, post in the thread where you specify which article you'd like to illustrate and what you're planning to make for it. If you're lacking ideas, either read or skim through the article to get a good understanding of the content before you start working on the image. Also, feel free to post WIPs in the thread to ask for feedback. Because most of the articles are already uploaded, there's thus no immediate rush to get the images done, so artists who want to take their time with their creations are encouraged to try out this section! Smogon's Flying PressThis is a community project that's been on-going for several years (initially known as The Smog), where users from this very forum join together to write, grammar check, HTML encode, and illustrate articles of various subjects. The artists obviously help out with the latter, taking their time and effort to make a solid illustration for the article before it goes live! However, because the work is being done behind closed curtains, you need to ask for access to the hidden workshop if you'd like to contribute art, so contact any staff member on this list, and they'd be happy to set you up! When you have access, this thread will be of high interest to you, as it contains a list of articles of different priority so that artists know which ones are more urgent to complete. Sometimes, the art director can tag artists if an article is expected to release soon and see if anyone's available to help, but artists are free to make an image for any article on the list as long as there's still time before release. If you can churn out cool art at a reasonable pace, then you'll do just fine in this area! In this day and age, having a solid presence on most social media platforms can greatly benefit any community, and Smogon is no exception. If you want to step up to the task and create stunning artwork for the analyses and announcements posted onto Smogon's Facebook and other media outlets, then this is the place for you! Pokémon of the Week, as well as Pokémon giveaways, are reccurring series, where the accompanying image can be made by one of Smogon's artists. Content posted on Facebook is immediately sent to thousands of people's newsfeed, so the exposure artists can gain is significant, although it needs to be noted that the artwork created for this purpose cannot be sloppy. At the time of writing this, antemortem and P Squared are the people to ask about contributing artwork to Smogon Media in general, so if you're an approved artist with more questions to ask, shoot them a message! This should cover most of the possible avenues on Smogon that's at high demand in art. If you have more questions about contributing art to Smogon and what that involves, feel free to contact any of the Art Leaders on Smogon, who at the time of writing this is Bummer and LifeisDANK. Thanks for reading! |