e621:mascot guidelines (locked)

So you want to draw an e621 mascot? We're flattered!

Here's some rough guidelines for mascots:

• Finished art of decent quality (e.g., colored, shaded if applicable, no sketches) is preferred. Basically it shouldn't feel out of place with the other mascots.
• Keep it tasteful and SFW (e.g., no genitals or exposed breasts). As a general rule, I'd also avoid questionable poses.
• Avoid copyrighted stuff for simplicity (e.g., Fluttershy, Krystal, and so on).
• If you are not the artist (e.g,. you are a commissioner/character owner), explicit permission from the artist is required.

Technical guidelines:

• The image should have a transparent background, meaning the image should be saved as 24-bit PNG with transparency (an alpha channel).
• If you are unable to use alpha channels/transparency, a solid background color is also acceptable. #012e56 is the best choice, but it won't look right on anything but the default theme.
• Avoid anything in the image being cut off by the image borders as it won't look good. Backgrounds are fine, as long as they end or fade out before reaching the image borders.
• The final image will be between 350-800px wide, and 650-1000px tall. We can scale the image down ourselves, so feel free to submit the image at any size bigger than that.
• The search box on the page will start about 350px down from the top of the image, so any important details should remain above that line.
• We will generate the blurred version of the image by applying a Gaussian blur with an 8px radius (don't do it yourself, we will do this for you).
• (optional) If you could also provide us with the source file (.psd, .xcf, .pxm or other equivalent), it would be very much appreciated. It's not strictly required, but it helps us do minor adjustments/resizing (for display purposes) quickly and cleanly without having to worry about altering the actual content.

Note: This list is incomplete and somewhat unofficial.