Community Profile

Rules and Guidelines


Please read the following rules carefully. Violation of these rules will result in banning or not being able to participate.

How this all works. The purpose of this community is to do art and/or stories and get free art or stories back from fellow artists and writers while practicing your drawing (or writing) skills. Each month nimade will post a roll call sheet where you can sign up to do a drawing. You will be paired up anonymously with another person, and you will then have a month to draw them a picture of the character(s) they posted for that round. In the meantime, another anonymous member will be drawing a picture for you!

Secret Santa is Secret! Please keep in mind that each month's pairings are random and anonymous. Contacting your Chosen One will give away the surprise, so remember to post anonymously (you can do this by logging out of LiveJournal), or go through nimade

Roll Call Sheet When one of the moderators posts an entry asking for roll calls, you will need to use the roll call sheet template attached to the post. Try your best to keep your entry neat and use proper grammar

You must complete a drawing/story for your Chosen One within the time allotted. Generally this is three weeks to a month. Character descriptions are submitted near the end of a previous round in response to a roll call post. Roll calls may stay up for a couple days to a week. At the end of the roll call, e-mails are sent to participants, notifying them of their assignments. A due date, generally the end of the month, is posted at this time. Rounds end on the posted due date at 11:59 PM Pacific Time.

If you do not complete the art by the due date, you will be blacklisted. To be removed from the blacklist, you must complete the art you owe to again be able to participate in the exchange

Post your work to the community whenever you finish it, hyperlinked or behind an lj-cut so that it doesn't spam people's friends lists. For help, see the answers in the LiveJournal FAQ on hyperlinking and lj-cuts. Posting the image(s) directly (using an img src tag) is allowed, but not encouraged

RESPECT other artists and writers! Someone took the time to draw you a picture or write you a story. Whether it's the BEST EVAH or not, acknowledge that. This is not a quality checked community and we respect all kinds of artists here. When art of your character is posted, comment! At least say "thank you", and no whining about what's wrong with it. Constructive criticism -- if asked for -- is permitted, but please don't critique others' art without an invitation first. This is a gift-art community, not an artist's critique forum. There are other places for that. Since everyone has busy schedules and might happen to be gone when their artist posts for them, don't freak out and assume your art is hated if you post and your Chosen doesn't reply right away. And sometimes, it just gets missed. Notify them when this happens.

Their art is their art. Even though they drew your character, the artist has full rights over the image, and can do whatever they like with it, and post it to any gallery they choose. Do not use or re-post the artist's work without their permission first!

Put effort into your drawings. Cardinal rule: Draw as you would like to be drawn

This community does not discriminate based on artistic skill. However, you must put time and effort into your drawings regardless of your skill level. Work submitted should be clean and complete. Clean up your scans. Do not post poor quality digital photographs or bad scans. Same goes for writers; each month you'll get the opportunity of a beta and we highly encourage you to seize this if you're not completely sure about grammar and the like

If you expect that the art you received is far below the artist's usual ability, speak to a moderator of the community about it. If you receive art that you think the artist skipped out on, or did not put effort into, do not comment on the artist's post saying so. Contact the moderators, and they can compare the art to past pieces. If they deem it necessary, they will ask the artist to redo, clean up, or change the piece. But this rarely ever happens so do not worry, my friend!

You must post a valid, working e-mail address with your roll call. We need your e-mail to be able to send you your Chosen One's information. A post will be made when e-mails are sent out; if you don't receive yours, it is VERY IMPORTANT that you reply to that post and say so. If you can, offer a different e-mail address to send to.

If you need more information or need to communicate with your Chosen One, post anonymously to their original post or character description comment. In most cases, unless LJ is acting up or they have their account set to not e-mail them, this will be a reliable way to get a hold of them without revealing your identity. If this doesn't seem to be working, e-mail me at [serpentnimade (at) gmail.com] and I will try to get the message to them


Have fun! :)

If this is not the kind of art exchange you’re looking for there are several more here on LiveJournal dedicated to other subjects:

100x100xchnge - LJ user icons, all types of characters permitted
gryphon_xchange - Gryphons of all varieties
anthrosketchxch - Sketches and rough art, furry and anthropomorphic characters only
wow_artxchange - Art exchange for WoW characters
animeartxchange - Art exchange for Original Anime Characters
char_shuffle - Human and humanoid characters only

We are always looking for suggestions and comments to make this community the best it can be. Please feel free to leave us a comment, or contact one of the mods if you have any questions!