Animation Source Forums

I was actually going to create a topic about this, but it looks like you beat me to the chase. x3

I completely support this idea and have cleaned out my own galleries and characters to strictly Balto-related content. This movement definitely needs to be recognized. I will help to spread the word to my friends, and look forward to a brighter future for the sites.

I have suggested some rules that might be helpful if or when we create this new source. Tell me what you think on them. I already posted them on the site news comments, too.

FOR ART
1. Obviously, no sex or violence. This one is a given for every aspect on all the sites.
2. No photos
3. Only contains characters that YOU created or other characters with the original creator's permission.
4. (Going along with 3) No fan art. That goes to the sources. These are your original creations with your original characters. Have fun with them!
5. No tracing, copying, or referencing off of other people's work.
6. Make your art look pleasing. Don't just make a stick figure and send it. XD that's just silly!
7. Try and refrain from things that could be offensive to people. Like things about religion, politics, race, all that jazz.

FOR FANFICS
1. No shorter than a page, unless it's a poem. (But don't just say its a poem in order for yours to be sent)
2. Must be completed when it's sent. You can edit little things and you can surely do parts if the fanfic is way too big, but this is what the editor on the site is for. Make your fic (or part of fic) in its entirety and THEN sent it.
3. Try to be grammatically correct...or at least make it understandable.
4. English please (or French for the French side)
5. Again, try and refrain from possible offensive content. (religion, politics, race, etc.)
6. Use your own original characters for these. (Then I guess they shouldn't even be called fanfics XD) or you can use other characters with the original creator's permission.
7. No plagiarism. Think of your own creative ideas

FOR IMAGES - This one is tricky but I'm gonna try and make it work.
1. You can make avatars/signatures and post them here.
2. You ARE allowed to use screenshots from movies and such, but if they already have a source on AS, then just post it there.
3. No renders. No line arts (that can go in fan art). No tracing from screenshots.
4. You can post your photos here. (photos that you took yourself that is, and NOT just found on google.)
5. Again, nothing that could potentially be offensive.
6. You can use your own characters in these, but not just posted as art. You can make them into a graphic if you want, though. Like with special effects or multiple pictures with a cool quote on it. Something cool.
7. Animated sigs and avatars are not allowed on any of the sources.

FOR CHARACTERS
1. They can be anything existing, or not existing. So...anything. XD
2. BUT they need to have well-thought out bios, personalities, and interests.
3. Each character needs to have a Name (Something you thought of yourself and not just copied from a movie), Personality, History, and Likes/Dislikes. It can have more than this but this is just the basics.
4. Each aspect of the character needs to be at least 4 lines long. That's about 4-5 sentences, if they're not only three words each that is. (The name, obviously, is only one word so it doesn't count XD)
5. NO copying characters from other movies, TV shows, etc. Not even to make it into an animal or object. This means for their bios too, though they are allowed to be somewhat similar, since sometimes people can make mistakes or unintentionally do things, which I have done in recent years.
6. The character MUST be featured in either an art, a "fanfic", or an image. If a year has passed and the character has not been featured in anything, the character will be deleted. (The member will get a week advanced warning.)
7. This is where I suggest that you put the date the member created their character, that way we'll know if a year has passed and no one would have to guess. This will probably be automatically added to the character and not done by the member, for the sake of some cheaters out there.

@Imagine: Sounds very thorough to me. I like it!

Course, a ton of mods would have to be hired to oversee everything and to make sure people are following the rules.

They sound like good rules to me, Imagine. However, I don't think we should call them "fanfics" at all, seeing as like you mentioned, they're for original characters/stories. Fanfiction=FAN story. Maybe "Stories" or just plain old "Fiction" instead? Or maybe even something fancy like "Literature"? XD

Also, you mentioned on #3 of Images that linearts can go in art. Personally, I'm gonna have to disagree with that...unless you're talking about linearts you drew yourself, they would kinda go against both rules 5 and 6, since evem if you have permission, it's still technically not your work, and as far as effort goes, lineart coloring isn't much more than drawing a stick figure, and they get REALLY annoying to see everywhere.

I totally agree with no renders, though (including on the FanSources, quite frankly), as well as just about everything else you posted.

While rendering can get out of hand, I personally don't see anything wrong with them. I view renders as a way for those who cannot draw as a way to... show off their creativity, in a sense. I render because I can't draw and rendering is a way to see my characters and the situations I put them in.

So renders should be allowed, on the condition that they are good, clean and not all messy.

It's not creativity, though. It's tracing.

Oh, yeah I mean linearts that you drew yourself. But I may take away this rule since I don't want colored linearts to be sent here. And looking at all the empty linearts is just...what's the point? XD

Then again, if you and only you color your own lineart I guess that would be okay...

Rendering on the other sites is fine with me, but on a site like this, no. The work has to all be you. Some people may not like that, but there's no harm in practicing with tracing or referencing, as long as you don't send it.

Well, whenever you draw and color your picture, you're technically coloring your own lineart, so...XD Yeah, that should be fine, since it is your own art.

I don't really think it's fair to legislate (so to speak) against a method many people rely on just because it's not "creative enough" (which is a pretty arbitrary approach if you ask me). I've seen some good stuff done with lineart, and not just in terms of recoloring. Putting characters into new settings, tweaking a character's physiology, etc. Anyway, and I feel like I'm saying this for the hundredth time, not everyone has the software, time, or know-how to make fantastic works of art from scratch, or the money to pay someone who does. Lineart makes an effective way to bridge the gap between the experts and the amateurs.


Regarding the questions of unrelated or unused characters, I have this to say. I've worked long and hard to create interesting, original characters people would enjoy, and I've never had any complaints, so I assume I was doing a good job of expanding on the Balto universe in my own small way. Several people like my renders and so forth, inept though they are. And I'm only one of many. I've seen people put in a lot of work on characters who do get used in fanfics and fanart, too many people to begin to list. I don't think it's fair to punish us for the actions of those who have little or no interest in the Balto movies. So I propose the following solution.

1. Appoint character mods. This ideas is already out there, and it's one of those that I think makes a great deal of sense. We have mods to keep teh rest of the site in line, why not the characters as well?

2. Set a limit on unused characters. This may be a bit long for those who want a fast and oversimplified solution, but stay with me here. Since characters can be registered as present in fanfics and other fan material, it stands to reason that they could be regulated much as those other works are. For example, at least 25% of every fanfic gallery must consist of stories involving canon characters. The same, unless I'm mistaken, goes for art and images. So just set up the reverse for characters; have it set up so that if someone has more than X percent or X amount of characters that aren't in any story or picture, they can't load any new characters. Since this is such a hot issue, I could see making the "used character quota" higher than that of canon-related content in other sections - say, 50 or 75%. This would have the added benefit of keeping things tied to the original characters, since in order to produce works featuring all of their own characters people would also have to do stuff with the canon characters too.

3. Mandate connection to the canon characters. Simply put, have a rule to be enforced by the mods that characters in fanart and fan fiction be somehow connected with those in the Balto movies. I won't say how closely connected because I feel that any set number of degrees of separation would be rather arbitrary, but some kinf of connection born out in any stories where the characters might appear seems reasonable. To be fair, this one might be waived for RP-only characters, or it might not. Make your opinion known on this, please.

4. Settle on some rules that compromise. Let's face it. If you ruled out all unrealistically colored characters then Jenna would have to go. So why not just agree on something like no characters with wacky markings (except on MLP Source if that opens up) or really crazy color combos like red, yellow and green? The rules could be flexible according to site, like more color versatility on ADGTH Source (or HTTYD Source since, after all, what rules are there about dragon colors?) and the aforementioned dispensation on MLP Source if that ever opens.

Any thoughts?

Well I finally finished cleaning out all of my galleries including images, characters, and even fanfics! I had a poem in there about a wolf howling out of loss of a mate. I don't even remember writing this to be honest! XD While clearing away all the unrelated stuff, I also deleted all the really old stuff that has no relevence any more, like image requests for users that are gone or render requests for deleted characters.

Anyways, here are my thoughts on the Character Source/Hub idea. Keep in mind that I have read every post on this topic and every comment from the news about this, so I have absorbed a lot of different points-of-view to gain my own opinoin.

1. In general, I am very unsure of the idea. At first, I was all for this, but than I realized what it is really doing. Basically, it's taking all of the "trash" and instead of getting rid of it, is just moving it somewhere else. In my mind, this new site could go one of two ways. It could either become a complete disaster where poorly made characters will take over and the site will just have so many sparkly/demon characters along with boring/overly simple characters that it will just be a headache for any amount of mods to try and control. On the other hand, it could also just be an epic fail where it is very active at first but than quickly looses interest because new members don't want to post their stuff there because of the negative connotation associated with the site and members who previously posted their characters in Balto/LionKing/Spirit/Whatever Source would quickly figure out that their characters won't be as respected as character in Movie Sources. Either way, the site seems useless to me.

2. If this site were to go through, I really disagree with ALL characters being deleted. I understand that members can simply save their work in another source and re-submit it, but that takes time and most members don't want to bother with it. I do think that it would help clear out old characters that are no longer used, but it would greatly upset members with active characters. Deleting all the characters does not only mean recreating your characters, but you will have to re-link all your characters which means waiting for others to post their characters sometimes. Also, members would have to re-tag their characters in images and artwork and fanfictions. Also, ALL members would loose their faved characters and characters they are allowed to used. I agree with DT that it is really unfair to undo the work of "good" members in order to deal with "bad" members.

3. What do I think should be the solution? I think that we first need to have unrelated characters officailly banned from the site. This would obviously need Steet so he can change the rule and remove the "Related to Balto?" option when making characters. After that, the characters should have to be approved by mods first. Which means that at least two or three new mods would have to be hired, maybe even one or two who deal with just characters.

4. So what about the unrelated characters already on the site? Give the members a week or two to delete them themselves. Make a news about the new rule and allow the members the chance to take care of the problem they created. Afterwards is where all of us dedicated members can help out the mods. I think we should help the mods by going through the pages of characters ourselves and reporting those that need to be deleted. The mods will still have a ton of work to do by deleting them all, but at least all those characters that don't belong here will be reported and lined up for the mods to delete. This will save the mods a ton of time looking through the pages themsevles to delete these characters.

5. Also, about the character limit... Do I think there should be one? Yes. Do I agree with some of the numbers being suggest? No, not really. I am a horrible example, but I am going to use myself anyways. After clearing my character gallery, I just have 22 characters. Eight of them are Balto's pups, seven of them are mates to those pups, two are Balto grandpups, and the remaining five are friends of the family. I think that all of my characters are strongly related, but I am over the character limite of 20, which seems to be suggested the most. I personally don't know what a good character limit would be. There are members here who could have 30 characters and use all of them in fan art and fanfiction while there are also members who could have 3 characters and never use them. I think we should just do away with the idea of a character limit and just have a rule that a character must be used in so many fan creations or has to be used in something new every so many weeks. In more detail: (these are numbers I picked from the top of my head, so don't judge them too harshly) When a character is created, it must be used in one fan creation every month, but after that character reaches ten fan creations, it only has to be used in something new every year. In my opinoin, I think this is reasonable enough to please everyone and would help stop the creation of characters just to create them. It would force people to actually USE them.

6. As for roleplaying characters... I don't think they belong on the main site. Unless, of course, you are roleplaying a Balto related character to sort out a story. I have done that. But I don't think you should create a character strictly for roleplaying. Speaking from a forum roleplaying point of view, people who roleplay with characters they created on the main site are not respected by Senior members AT ALL. As for shout-out box roleplaying, I am clueless. I don't participate in it and I never will.

Wow, that was a long post. I didn't think I had that much to say on this subject, but I guess I did!

I too was all for the idea, but after sitting back and taking in the facts, I don't think this is the best solution. This site would be nothing more than a nightmare. Not only with finding a staff to manage it, but also agreeing on how the site should be run. The best solution would to be remove the "not related to Balto" option, and make it so it's strictly Balto related. Of coarse people are going to whine about it, but this is a fan site after all. If they don't like it they can leave.



This is pretty much what I said above. But yes, the characters do need to be checked before being up on the site. That way we won't have all these useless, badly made and stolen characters on the site. As it is, the mods probably spend just as much time deactivating them as they would checking them. The members will complain, but I'm sure that their characters can wait before being used.



I think about 10 or 20 (even 15) would a reasonable limit. I think in the case of being over the limit, those characters can be a off-site character. Meaning, they're on a different site. Like DA for example. You could just place a link to that character in the description, and add these characters in your profile presentation.

The rule could work, but my fear is that, like the ratio, it will be ignored.

I have to agree with Mighty, DT and Black Rose. I, like some of you, was for this idea, but you're right. A site for all the 'trash' as some put it, will be nothing more than a nightmare. However I do agree that deleting ALL the characters is a bad idea.

As far as the character limit goes... Well, a 15 to 20 ratio sounds fair. My problem is the people who create character with a poor connection to a said universe. The connection must be strong, like a bloodline connection first and foremost.

Personally, I would like to have the mods activate the characters first. I used to do that, and frankly, I miss it.

But even if the character hub does go through or not, the Sources have to be purged of anything non related and sparkle. Am I right?

I sympathize with Black Rose on this point. I can't speak for everyone, but I'd probably want about twenty at least as a limit for mine since I have many characters (including a number of human characters, which I understand a lot of people want to see more of in general) and as rose proves, there are some with more numerous casts than mine. I still think that having it set where someone can't submit more characters if a certain number or percentage of their existing characters were unused would make for the best solution to this. It would settle the problem of unused characters without creating a nuisance for those of us who have put a lot of work into developing rich and numerous casts.

Rose, I also noticed your suggestion of requiring each character to be used at least once a year. While it has its merits, it also has its faults. Some characters die off, for instance, either due to events in the stories or old age. And some writers / artists wouldn't be able to crank out enough material to keep all their characters current. I get so busy sometimes that it takes a year or more before I can update a story already in progress. Also, there are those who are not very active on this site or no longer active at all to speak of. Kelev and redwolf03, two of the best writers I know, haven't been on here in ages. And as redwolf has said directly herself (albeit not in so many words), having to draw stories out ad nausiem for the sake of demand can make the stories themsselves lackluster and annoying even to their writers.





Agreed, but what exactly constitutes related characters? I've seen some stories, art, etc. with characters who were biologically related to the Balto cast but had virtually nothing to do with them story-wise, and I've seen some that were not related to them at all but interacted with them or those connected with them quite nicely. Wouldn't restricting the uploading of unused characters and restricting the amount of unrelated content work better?


That seems reasonable to me. I've done a bit of roleplaying, both on the box and in the forums, and one of the roleplays even turned into something. But not on here.

Mightbalto1925 - I just think that characters should not be limited by a specific number. If a person uses their characters and they are well developed, I think those characters deserve to have a place on the site. Having links to other sites can just be annoying and disorderly, especailly if a member doesn't have an account anywhere else. As much as I am for the members who make unrelated characters to go to DA, I don't think that members who respect the rules should have to post their character elsewhere.

Brown Wolf - You are definately right! Whether or not this new site is created, something does need to be done. It's just the deciding on what that seems to be the problem.

Dragon Tamer - Those numbers, like the once a year, were just numbers off the top of my head. I am not very active with my characters and I will probably delete them all or adopt them out when everything gets cleaned up. But I think you got my point, right? I just hate it when members create a character, give it a mate, draw/render one or two pictures of the couple, and then move on to the pups. I don't really have a good solution. Maybe extending the length to something like two to three years? I personally think it should just be the mods call. Perhaps if characters were listed by how often they are up-dated. Like everytime a new fan creation is made using that character, it goes to the top of the list. Then maybe once a month or so, the mods can go through the characters at the bottom of the list and decide whether they should be deleted or not. I know that leaving something for the mods to decide can be a bad idea because of bias and favoritism and so on and so on. I think you're percentage plan is a good idea, but I'm not sure I completely understand it...

As for what makes a character related, I think both of your examples would be considered related. I think characters that are family of canon characters are okay no matter how far away their story gets. I think that maybe their story should contain at least one close connection to a canon character other than the parents, but that can get into many gray areas that would be tough to deal with. Also, I think that even if a character isn't biologically related, if their story entwines with a canon character's well enough, it should be considered related.