I wish Elfwood Rants was still up.

[ellenmillion]

I have until the end of the month to 'clean up my galleries' or I'm getting like half my pieces removed.

What. The. Hell.

Some of the gems:

http://www.elfwood.com/art//m/i/million/crystalgatherer74.jpg.html

(non-genre. Because crystals grow on trees all the time.)

http://www.elfwood.com/libr/m/i/million3/dancingintherain.htm.html

(Too much white space at the end of the document.)

http://www.elfwood.com/art/m/i/million/amandafinished.jpg.html

(non-genre. Despite the description?)

http://www.elfwood.com/art//m/i/million/cuddly.jpeg.html

(They disapprove of the cropping and think there's too much white space to the left.)

http://www.elfwood.com/art//m/i/million/millionaurorabluegreen.jpg.html

(You tell me.)

It goes on like this for another 20 pieces.

I don't have TIME to 'fix' everything before the deadline. Bad week to poke the bear.

Comments

[jemstone.livejournal.com]

I have said before and will say again - Elfwood is in dire need of a purge, and it's not the artists that need it.

I'm sad that you've been hit with this, Ellen. You're a stanchion at Elfwood, a fixture, and you deserve to be treated better. Good luck. :)

-edited because I'm on PAIN KILLERS and I mistook your post for Jill's journal - you come right after each other on my friend's list... I'm a goober when I'm on flexeril. I sorry.-

[jillbamfette.livejournal.com]

eh, it has happened to me, it just happened months ago. :p they told me that they started going through the place at the very first artist in gallery 1... well, second artist since that would be Thomas, I guess, and going through one by one till they reach the end... being in gallery 2, I got hit early. Weird thing is I have had 2 friends who are fairly low in the gallery numbers be hit recently, so either they're moving reeeeallly sloooowww or maybe they've got like, a backup team going after them or something, pick up the nitpicky stuff the first ones missed. I dunno.

*edit - just checked and the last friend of mine to be hit was Liz Chesterman, maybe 2-3 months ago, and she's in gallery 6. Ellen's in 10, so.... just slow, I guess. If they're only up to gallery 10 out of nearly 750, they're gonna be at this for YEARS!

[chamois-shimi.livejournal.com]

WTF, over! When did the Elfwood Nazis gain control?

[thrivis.livejournal.com]

I thought "wut wut nazis?" too when I read this.

Your icon is priceless btw. :D

[sister-bluebird.livejournal.com]

Ew. I know a lot of the older members have stopped updating their galleries, but I've been maintaining mine because of a nostalgic love for the place. If this becomes commonplace, however...

[akeyla.livejournal.com]

I tried that too. then nostalgia stopped as they did same things to me as they did to ellen.

[akeyla.livejournal.com]

ah, so it continues. This is why I left two years ago. for same bullshitty reason-a-biting. Instead of using their valuable valuable time to improve their submission tickets, their quality, their breakdowns they DIG IN THE GALLERIES OF LONG TIME ARTISTS AND ATTACK SUBMISSIONS THAT HAVE BEEN THERE SINCE (quoting thaily here) JESUS WAS RIDING THE DINOSAURS!

think ot this: someone, someone went and eyes every, every darn submission for a MISTAKE. Its find the mistake to win bonuspoints! yay!
one word, goodbye.
and I did that even if elfwood was my first ever and I once really thought it had stile. I dont support this kind of bitchery, especially considering I was always giving them my support, recommending them, etc.
I removed elfwood from my links and I send all the people asking me for places to start submitting, to DA.

considering "the alaskan"
they havent bitten you for "fanart" "violence" or "porn" yet, so thats what its gotta be. Dumbledore's nice wanting to smack Faukes with her goblet and then tear open her already pretty breast-showing gown.
bad ellen! bad bad bad bad!

[akeyla.livejournal.com]

sorry, thats "aurora borealis" I meant... not "the alaskan"

[akeyla.livejournal.com]

"to photo realistic"


WUT?

now really, thats gotta be one of the coolest excuses elfwood related I ever heard.
and I thought mine, where they basically took the painting away because I didnt say from which artists I got my real cicadae wings (I wonder I wonder) was already pretty special/unique/laughable err.. dunno.

[thrivis.livejournal.com]

Nowhere in the rules does it say anything about how realistic in style something can or cannot look.

And if it did, that would be a ridiculous rule.

That is total BS.

[jaenanda.livejournal.com]

That's a load of BS. A huge stinkin' load of it.

[renatus.livejournal.com]

As far as I'm concerned, that ship already sank. I know there are a lot of fond memories attached to the place--gods, it's where I met my husband!--but it jumped the shark yeeeears ago.

I don't think it's worth your time. Elfwood is beyond saving--it was there when Thomas refused to listen to his own handpicked employees six years ago.

[jillbamfette.livejournal.com]

I don't see anything wrong with any of those... It really irks me that unless it's got pointy ears and/or a tail or whatever, you have to go to such great pains to make the announcement 'this picture takes place in a fantasy world!!!!' in your description. I had 2 pictures of knights removed for this reason and it irked me, since they were fairly idealized fairy tale knights.

and I think that picture with the dragon is cropped fine, it follows the rule of thirds, dead center compositions are boring (despite having a few of them myself) and placing them off-center makes it more interesting... croping it so it would be centered would make the picture seem 'cramped' in my opinion.

That last picture... I haven't the faintest idea. It's a flippin fairy, so it can't possibly be non-genre, it's a finished piece, not on lined paper or anything, so... I'm stumped.

*edit- oh yeah, I forgot to say. without fail this always happens when I'm beginning to think 'hey, maybe Elfwood's finally coming around!'. I so want it to be the old place I remember when it started that I'm kind of a hopeless optimist about it, always thinking that it will get better. and I have had good luck with recent tickets (3 tickets all processed in a day, one got mods choice) and the forums seem cool enough, and they listened to me about Project Wonderful, then this happens and I see they're up to their old nitpicky anal ways.

[uminomamori.livejournal.com]

Someone has way too much time. This has been happening to a lot of people, luckily not me yet. I only update once a year or so. They always had too many rules about what was fantasy and now they've gone nuts. As far as I'm concerned a guy in medieval garb with a sword is usually fantasy everywhere else.

[tarlia.livejournal.com]

I'm listed as suspended, although I asked for a delete the last time the back-ups hiccuped and produced everyone's deleted galleries. On the one hand, no one can register under my old uid. On the other hand, nobody knows who I am anymore so what's that big ole SUSPENDED implying?

;-)

[thrivis.livejournal.com]

Is there a way to contest these at all? Like, talk to a person about them or is it do or die? o.o;

[brightling.livejournal.com]

That's really... quite painfully sad.

There's cleaning up galleries and then theres this.

I read someones summary of the situation awhile ago that struck me as being very accurate. Elfwood started out inclusive - anything that could be considered interpretable as fantasy was accepted. Now it has become exclusive - and anything that can be interpreted as not being fantasy will be strictly denied. Thats a lot of grey area that just shifted from perfectly acceptable (historical/fairy tale knights and princesses for example) to suddenly being taboo content.

It was that inclusive nature to the fantasy of Elfwood that I found so agreeable. I too have some distinct issues with where they are beginning to draw further lines in the sand. :/

[mebird.livejournal.com]

Eeek, that's just screwed up.. those reasons are like WTF..

I thought Elfwood was looking up and now I see it's hit the pits.. that's just totally wrong, just so F***ed!

And as for time, they sure gave you time to work it, yeah pal, fix it or leave.. well I'd say leave.... they don't deserve you lovely work, also all the generous time you have worked with them, help make things better... I thought the ERB was bad...

So sorry to hear this.. yeeks haven't heard about my own gallery yet..

Elfwood has jusmped the shark to many times now, it's lost the plot on fantasy...

*HUGS*
Marie B

[chamois-shimi.livejournal.com]

Clearly, it's time for a new project!

Er, no, forget I said anything. That's like waving a red flag in front of the bull, isn't it?

No,nononono, you don't need any new projects!

[jenelycam.livejournal.com]

Um....what the flip? That's just retarded!!

*HUGS*

[pixiewildflower.livejournal.com]

I've heard so many bad things about Elfwood, I never attempted to join there. LOL!

[fireborn.livejournal.com]

Wow. I hadn't paid attention for a very long time--what the hell is the logic behind this? Signal to noise ratio always decreases with size (hell, look at LJ) but trying to force the ratio higher is, uh. Not exactly the best way to go about it, generally.

[calcamp.livejournal.com]

yeah, they've always been like this as far as I can tell.
I gave up on them years ago when they rejected a painting as "not fantasy" because the figure had a cowboy hat and revolvers. Apparently the spell-fire he was throwing around was typical of the historic old west. *rolls eyes*

[uneide.livejournal.com]

EXCUSE ME??? What the HELL were they smoking? *wince* You know, years ago I used to be a mod in the place. And then seeing the assinine rejection reasons and power-drunk jerks... wow. I can't believe its come to that point.

[curvature.livejournal.com]

I can see why they might have missed the crystals in the first one but the name of the piece should have cleared that right up.

I don't get the reasons for any of the other images, particularly the last one - what was the reason they gave for that?

And telling you that the other one needs cropping? that's just weird. That rule was to stop people submitting a whole blank page with a little image at the top, not to make people have everything dead centre with no white space at all.

Every time I read something like this it reinforces my reasons for leaving Elfwood. I don't think I'll ever go back.

[hailerro.livejournal.com]

I looked at your pix and my guess on the last one is that they're trying to say you imitated Amy Brown...not that the styles look close but the composition of the piece. And again that makes no sense because there's no copyright for composition.
This is all just so very stupid. And yet it explains to me why my artist friend Aimee's gallery suddenly went from twenty or thirty pieces down to just five. I love her work but I can see them hitting her up for the white space and the 'non-genre' stuff because she's not all fairy and knights (she's werewolves, and sometimes DiscWorld, and a whole lot of other ideas the imagination can come up with).
Elfwood is now dead to me.

[frigg.livejournal.com]

Weeeell, at least they gave you ample warning and time. *snort*

[baba-studio.livejournal.com]

Oh dear.

Well, I foolishly uploaded one image to Elfwood (I think it was Elfwood) about three years back. I marked it clearly as a spread from a book (left and right pages) and got it turned down as "uneven lighting". I mean, for crying out loud, the whole point was that the light was red on one side and blue on the other.

The book was Vampuss and it's recently sold 20,000 copies in its Russian translation (and Russian publication - it got picked up by a specialist mass-market fantasy publisher). So - hmm, what does that tell you? At the time I was just surprised that whoever was looking at stuff obviously didn't understand what a book spread is. So I never went back. It all felt really amateurish to be absolutely honest about it.

If I were you I would walk away because it's usually better not to get tangled up in something like this. But then, I don't know the people or understand the social side of it. It may have some very good sides that I don't appreciate.

I read your post there. Honestly, it's just silliness. Best of luck with it.