Hee!

[telophase]

Last night I made a news entry at DA for the AutoShoujo Cover Contest, and I'm really enjoying the comments to it, because so many of them seems to be on the order of "I wasn't going to do it, then I got [insert title here] and now I HAVE to do it!" XD

Comments

[nijibug]

It would be my pleasure to get more people to plug this contest, but I won't unless I have your permission to do so. I recall you didn't want to be inundated by entries. xD;;

[telophase]

Eh, go ahead. I may regret it in the end, but at least we'll have fun on the way. XD

[mscongeniality.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've got one of those. I am, however, being utterly stymied by my lack of artistic ability.

I know it's supposed to be your own work, but are traced elements allowed at all?

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I think it depends on the elements traced - if it's in the public domain, it's from a photo you took, or you've got permission from the person who owns it, I wouldn't mind.

ETA: I added a slightly expanded answer to this in a FAQ at the bottom of the announcement on DA (http://telophase.deviantart.com/journal/25604328/).

[mscongeniality.livejournal.com]

The main element was a photo of lilies from Wikipedia that appears to be under a CC license. I also pulled reference points to make sure the face I was drawing wasn't mis-proportioned but I can re-draw that more easily than I can the lilies.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Cool. :D

You're not at risk for this, but I mostly want to make sure that someone doesn't grab a screenshot from some anime and trace that. I'm not actually too concerned about random elements from photos found online, but thought I ought to officially draw some boundaries so I don't have to say "Yes, I said you could trace photos, but not THAT photo!" to someone who doesn't draw the fair-use line where I do. Gah, it's a tricky situation!

[mscongeniality.livejournal.com]

As someone who doesn't do this on a regular basis, I didn't think to check first before going all grabby grabby with my references. So, yeah, spelling out is probably not a bad idea. :)