IF Cover Art Drive

From IFWiki

The IF Cover Art Drive was organized by Emily Short to encourage the creation of cover art for existing IF games, in the hope of making the IFDB and the IFWiki more attractive and less pure-text, and making it easier to showcase IF on independent game blogs and websites, magazines, and other venues that are starting to show an interest in IF.

Artists had to send their cover art images to the organizer, who collected them on Flickr. The authors of the games then decided if they wanted to use them or not.

To avoid the creation of too many rejected images, authors could explicitly state that they wanted or didn't want cover art for their games.

This was not a competition, and there were no prizes other than the approval of the game authors about submitted artworks.

Dates

  • February 3, 2008: The idea is first suggested by Emily Short in a comment on her blog.
  • February 25, 2008: The IF Cover Art Drive is officially announced.
  • April 30, 2008: Deadline for sending the cover art to the organizer.

Rules summary

A more detailed version of the rules is there.

Rules for game authors

  • Authors can explicitly opt in if they want cover art created by the IF Cover Art Drive artists for their games, or opt out if they don't.
  • Authors can accept and adopt images created for their own games, or reject them. They can do it at any time, including before the April 30 deadline.
  • Authors can put the images they accepted on their websites or wherever else they want them to appear, including in their games (with blorb). They can also ask the organizer to put the images on the IFDB, if they don't want to do it themselves.

Rules for artists/designers/illustrators

  • Artists will send the images they created to the organizer, Emily Short.
  • Artists must own the copyright of the images and their components, unless the images they used are public domain, or they have secured the reproduction rights, such that there should be no negative legal ramifications to posting same on Flickr and later on IFDB and other webspaces.
  • Artists must accept that the game authors can adopt the images and use them in promoting their games, without any further rewards.
  • Artists must also accept that the game authors can reject the images, for whatever reason.
  • The suggested, but not obligatory, format of the images is square and 960 pixels on a side.

Rules for bystanders/Wiki maintainers/etc.

  • They can post (preferably constructive) comments on Flickr.
  • After (but not before) an author has accepted a game’s cover art, they can add that art to other wikis, etc., as appropriate.

Spanish version

An equivalent to the IF Cover Art Drive for games in Spanish is organized by Eliuk Blau. See this deviantART page and this thread on the Spanish forum for more info.

Links