Joining Process
Go over your gallery and select three (3) finished deviations clearly in theme with palaeontography and with different subject matters. These works can be clean line art and shaded or colored drawings in any style that doesn't distort anatomy. Clicking the "Join Us" button on the group profile a comment prompt will appear. Place there the links to the deviations you chose. 
Requests not abiding to the above will be summarily declined. The moderators will only evaluate the works presented on the request. Invites are irrelevant to this process: this option will be used to query deviants who change accounts if they want to keep their membership.NB: The Group moderators, as they are, for all intents and purposes, ignorant of your palaeontographical background (even if they know you personally), expect the works put up for appraisal to show such background clearly. A good level of artistic accomplishment, scientific knowledge and reference research in line with the examples presented in the gallery is what we're looking for. The latter two requirements will more often than not trump the first.
As the moderators don’t expect people to be born taught in relation to palaeontography or art in general, they will reserve the right to critique the works linked to in the joining request or selected by them as your best examples. These critiques, due to time restraints in the moderators’ lives, will be succinct and to the point, and are meant as a helping push in a good direction, whatever it may be.
Prospective members can can self-evaluate their work by checking the Reference and Cheat Sheet sections if they do so wish.
As the Group moderators may at times have a variety of impediments to do a regular monthly upkeep on it, expired requests will be considered valid for evaluation purposes. If you are accepted as a member from an expired request you will have to send a new one to make things official, though.
If your joining request is declined, feel free to try again with new work. We do expect our advice not to go unheeded, otherwise a request thus found unsatisfactory will be summarily declined. If your joining request is accepted you may submit a total of three (3) deviations to the Group. You can indicate up to three (3) of those linked in the joining request to be submitted to the Group gallery. You may at any time remove old submissions from the gallery (see here for the details of the process) so you can add new ones at your leisure. No favourites will be awarded either to Group members or non-members. The Group would appreciate that its members would also help publicizing the Group either by adding the Groups widget to their profile or placing the name or icon of Paleoartists on their journal or comment signature.Deviations with any the following characteristics will not be accepted for any of the previous points:
Scraps. It should go without saying but we don’t go over your scraps gallery. Traditional works that show little or no posterior digital processing to clean extraneous lines, smudges, spots, stray objects caught in the scan. Clearly little or no contrast correction to images and digitally reassembled work that shows the seams clearly will have them turned down also. Any work that shows signs of having reused material, photographic or otherwise, altered or not, without any clear indication that either you are the owner of the material, that you secured the rights to use that material or, finally, that the creator of the material waived all interest in the material. The Group moderators are not interested in the ruckus caused when you get caught.]
Photographs, screenshots or renders of objects, physical or virtual, that were not self-made. Original work and interpretations are the keywords here.[
Fanart in any kind or form. While we all are inspired by the beautiful art done by professional palaeontographers, the Group moderators would rather see original interpretations. Fanart includes blatantly imitating the style, colour schemes or poses used by a given artist, as well as work based on fictional depictions of prehistoric creatures in movies and documentaries, such as Jurassic Park, Dinotopia (books, movies, TV series), Land Before Time, Walking With… series (Walking With Dinosaurs, Walking With Cavemen, Walking With Prehistoric Beasts, Walking With Monsters), Prehistoric Park, Sea Monsters, etc… Work with an unidentified subject. No matter how iconic a species may be, in scientific illustration you should always append taxonomic identification so people can verify your work. Work based on unpublished specimens pertaining to undescribed species. As verification on these tends to be very difficult and there are issues on publishing online before any such specimens are described on a pertinent venue these are best left out of the Group's gallery. Anthropomorphic, speculative or fantasy creature designs of any kind. This Group is about reconstructing actual scientifically described prehistoric lifeforms by themselves or in their environment not sundry personal projects.Group Affiliation
Groups that want to affiliate with Paleoartists should have similar scientific and artistic standards. This will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
IMPORTANT: The moderators' judgement has priority over the text above. Any changes to these rules are made without further notice and are retroactive.
Inverted bold brackets "][" indicate new text.
Go to a deviation you've submitted to the Group and want to remove from it. Click the "Edit Deviation" button.
