Information AboutElfwood |
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Elfwood is a popular web-based Art Gallery devoted to original Science Fiction and Fantasy art and Writing . It was started 1 May 1996 by Thomas Abrahamsson . It is divided into three main galleries:
Elfwood also has a section called FARP (Fantasy Art Resource Project) which includes art, writing, business, general and helpful tutorials and guides which may be useful to the amateur artist.
STATISTICS Hardware Elfwood runs on Linux-based PC's that use the Mandrake distribution. Its main server is a dual AMD Athlon MP2800 with 4 gigabytes of memory and several hard disk drives. HISTORY Elfwood is one of the very first art communities to appear on the internet when graphical browsers began. On May 1 1996 , Elfwood was opened by Thomas Abrahamsson. It was first founded under the name of the "Lothlorien" project and was only aimed at amateur high fantasy artists. The gallery consisted of three artists, Abrahamsson included. As more and more artists joined Elfwood, the Lothlorien gallery expanded and Abrahamsson introduced the Extranet to Elfwood. This allowed users of the site (artists) to manage their own individual art galleries and account information. Previously, all art and changes to the site were e-mailed to Abrahamsson and uploaded manually. After a while, Zone 47 was created for sci-fi and modern fantasy art, and two years later the Wyvern's Library came into existence, for science fiction and fantasy writers. A few months later, FARP ('''F'''antasy '''A'''rt '''R'''esource '''P'''roject) was created. In April 2000 the ERB ('''E'''lfwood '''R'''eview '''B'''oard) was founded; it is responsible for maintaining the rules on Elfwood. In June 2001, Elfwood was closed due to death threats and reopened a month later. In August the FanQuarter area was opened. At the end of 2001 changes to Elfwood were closed so a more manageable system could be created. Elfwood was reopened in February 2002 with a new moderating system. After that, every update has had to go through the Elfwood moderators. Along with the new moderating system came Mod's Choice awards. These awards are designated by a star on the thumbnail and an icon of a phoenix feather on the page of the artwork. Each day's Mod's Choice awards can be found on the Elfwood homepage. In January 2004 the sections known as Zone 47 and Lothlorien followed suit with the Wyvern's Library, merging to create the current SF&F Art area. Along with the change came a new layout for the whole site, as well as revisions to the rules. Elfwood crashed badly on the first of April in 2005. All data was lost and the last backup was from February. The site came back with a timewarp to February and the rules were again revised and rewritten. In May 2006 Elfwood celebrates its 10th aniversary, and to commemorate this the Opus Fantasy Arts Festival will hold the very first Elfwood summit in conjunction with the festival. A guest writer and guest artist will be featured at the summit. Because of the amateur nature of Elfwood, the site is sometimes down due to server or hardware problems. SUB-COMMUNITIES Elftown Elftown , the official Elfwood community, was created in 2002. It is a group of Elfwood users and fans who use a wiki to communicate about their shared interests. Elftown runs on a PC with 1.5 gigabytes of RAM and a search engine on a PIII-1000 MHz PC. Woodworks The Elfwood Ezine Woodworks was started in January 2002 by Georgette Tan, which featured articles, reviews, artwork and tutorials by Elfwood members. Tan later retired as Editor and Megan Larson took the position, leading Woodworks to its final issue in December 2004. CRITICISMS Elfwood came under fire in 2004 when one of its underage artists, Margaret "Katy" Wilkerson, went missing. She was found with a man who allegedly found her through the site [http://elfwood.lysator.liu.se/art/k/a/katynaya/katynaya.html . Elfwood has more stringent rules concerning submissions than other online communities, such as DeviantART ; a piece cannot be on lined paper, each piece is put under review by moderators before being displayed in a gallery, and swearing is not allowed {Link without Title} . Some Elfwood fans consider this a good thing that ensures a certain level of quality in the art they find there. Others criticize these rules for restricting artistic freedom. As of August 31, 2005 the rules have been even further defined. Others have criticized Elfwood for having too harsh of an application system to become an artist or writer on the site. Applicants must take a test that asks them questions mainly about the rules and the user must pass with a certain percentage to be considered for a membership. Some argue that this is inherently un-fair. EXTERNAL LINKS
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