Community Artists' Home Page | Why be a Community Artist? | What do the Community Artists do? | Community Artists' Code of Conduct | Volunteer to be a Community Artist

This page is OUTDATED!.

You can find the Community Artists here.

The Community Artists are entrusted with the task of illustrating some of the best entries that go into the Edited Guide, as well as selected Community-run areas of h2g2. Don't be put off if you haven't got much experience of this sort of thing - it would be great to hear from you anyway. However, do remember that designing illustrations will take up some of your free time on a fairly regular basis.

How to Join the Community Artists

If you'd like to join this volunteer scheme, you can register your interest by starting a new Conversation below. Please give us details of your h2g2 Researcher number and your h2g2 nickname in the title so that we can find your details quickly.

We usually set a basic art test, but if you fancy having a go at a graphic for us, possibly the best way to go about this would be to find an entry in the Edited Guide that doesn't already have a graphic. Try to make sure your illustration is appropriate for the subject and tone of the entry (for instance, don't do a jokey cartoon on an entry about a historical tragedy). The finished illustration will need to be 200x200 pixels and no bigger than 20k in size.

Once you've finished, upload the graphic to your own webspace, or a file-sharing site like Flikr or Photobucket, and we can take a look.

What You Will Need as an Artist

There are a number of requirements essential to becoming a Community Artist. These include:

• At least a couple of hours of free time every month.

• Some artistic ability (ie, you need to be capable of more than just photo manipulation).

• Access to a computer of some sort - ie PC or MAC. Sadly, due to the way we handle art files, we currently cannot accept volunteers who only have access through digital cable/satellite boxes (such as
  Digiboxes) or handheld devices (such as PDAs or mobile phones).

• Some kind of computer art package, for example Photoshop, Paintshop Pro or Gimp.

If you feel you have the skills we're looking for, please apply by starting a new conversation in the forum at the bottom of this page. One of our Artists will eventually come along and invite you to take part in the next stage - the Art Test.

Other Schemes

Don't forget that there are five volunteer schemes in total - pick the one that's right for you!

• The Scouts run the Peer Review scheme and pick the best entries that come through it, ready for the Sub-editors.

• The Sub-editors take the recommended entries from the Scouts and turn them into beautiful, flowing prose, for inclusion in the Edited Guide.

• The Aces are the upstanding members of the h2g2 Community, greeting new Researchers, helping to keep everyone happy, and generally being wonderful people.

• The Gurus help to run the Feedback areas, answering any questions people might have about h2g2.

• The visually creative and marvellously talented Community Artists illustrate entries, design new smileys and generally bring beauty and glamour to h2g2.