Elfwood



Elfwood is a popular web-based art gallery devoted to original science fiction and fantasy art and writing. It was started 1 May 1996 by Thomas Abrahamsson. It is divided into three main galleries:


 * SF&F Art (Science Fiction and Fantasy) is the main section (it was formerly divided in two sections, "Lothlorien" for high fantasy art and "Zone 47" for science fiction and modern/futuristic fantasy art).
 * Wyvern's Library is for sci-fi and fantasy themed stories and poetry.
 * FanQuarter is devoted to fan art based on sci-fi or fantasy themed visual media such as certain games, movies, cartoons or tv-shows.

Elfwood also has a section called FARP (Fantasy Art Resource Project) which includes art, writing, business, general and helpful tutorials and guides which may be useful to the amateur artist.

Hardware
Elfwood runs on Linux-based PC's that use the Mandrake distribution. Its main server is a dual AMD Athlon MP2800 with 4 gigabytes of memory and several hard disk drives.

History
Elfwood is one of the very first art communities to appear on the internet when graphical browsers began. On May 1 1996, Elfwood was opened by Thomas Abrahamsson. It was first founded under the name of the "Lothlorien" project and was only aimed at amateur high fantasy artists.

The gallery consisted of three artists, Abrahamsson included. As more and more artists joined Elfwood, the Lothlorien gallery expanded and Abrahamsson introduced the Extranet to Elfwood. This allowed users of the site (artists) to manage their own individual art galleries and account information.

Previously, all art and changes to the site were e-mailed to Abrahamsson and uploaded manually. After a while, Zone 47 was created for sci-fi and modern fantasy art, and two years later the Wyvern's Library came into existence, for science fiction and fantasy writers.

A few months later, FARP (Fantasy Art Resource Project) was created. In April 2000 the ERB (Elfwood Review Board) was founded; it is responsible for maintaining the rules on Elfwood. In June 2001, Elfwood was closed due to death threats and reopened a month later. In August the FanQuarter area was opened.

At the end of 2001 changes to Elfwood were closed so a more manageable system could be created. Elfwood was reopened in February 2002 with a new moderating system. After that, every update has had to go through the Elfwood moderators. Along with the new moderating system came Mod's Choice awards. These awards are designated by a star on the thumbnail and an icon of a phoenix feather on the page of the artwork. Each day's Mod's Choice awards can be found on the Elfwood homepage.

In January 2004 the sections known as Zone 47 and Lothlorien followed suit with the Wyvern's Library, merging to create the current SF&F Art area. Along with the change came a new layout for the whole site, as well as revisions to the rules.

Elfwood had a major crash on the first of April in 2005. All data was lost and the last backup was from February. The site came back with a timewarp to February and the rules were again revised and rewritten.

In May 2006 Elfwood celebrates its 10th aniversary, and to commemorate this anniversary, the Opus Fantasy Arts Festival will hold the very first Elfwood summit in conjunction with the festival. A guest writer and guest artist will be featured at the summit.

Because of the amateur nature of Elfwood, the site is sometimes down due to server or hardware problems.

Elftown
Elftown, the official Elfwood community, was created in 2002. It is a group of Elfwood users and fans who use a wiki, forums and polls to communicate about their shared interests and search for each other. Elftown is also located in Lysator's computerhall and runs on an Opteron 252 server with 4++ gigabytes of RAM donated by its users.

Woodworks
The Elfwood ezine Woodworks was started in January 2002 by Georgette Tan, which featured articles, reviews, artwork and tutorials by Elfwood members. Tan later retired as Editor and Megan Larson took the position, leading Woodworks to its final issue in December 2004.

Criticisms
Elfwood has rules about the theme and quality of the submitted material, which can seem strict to some people; a piece cannot usually, for example, be on lined paper, poorly cropped or in the case of writing, have faulty HTML. Each piece is reviewed by moderators before being displayed in a gallery, and swearing is not allowed. Some Elfwood fans consider the rules necessary to ensure a certain level of quality in the art they find there. Others criticize these rules for restricting artistic freedom. As of August 31, 2005 the rules have been even further defined.

Others have criticized Elfwood for having too harsh of an application system to become an artist or writer. Applicants must take a test that asks them questions mainly about the rules and then the user must pass with a certain percentage to be considered for a membership. Some argue that the test-taking procedure is inherently un-fair.

Another criticism is that moderators must check the sent items before they are accepted into Elfwood. Since the moderators are volunteers who do the work on their free time, it may sometimes take a relatively long time until the items are published. This time is typically between 20-30 days if not longer.