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 and claims to be the largest science fiction and fantasy art site in the world. 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.

History
Elfwood was originally founded on May 1 1996, by Thomas Abrahamsson, under the name of the "Lothlorien" project and was aimed at amateur high-fantasy artists. At the time, its gallery consisted of three artists (including Abrahamsson), and all submissions and updates to the site were managed directly by Abrahamsson, with the individual users e-mailing Abrahamsson with their requested submissions or changes. As the Lothlorien membership and gallery expanded, Abrahamsson developed a feature (called "Extranet") allowing Elfwood members to manage their own individual art galleries and account information directly, without requiring webmaster assistance.

After a while, "Zone 47" was created for sci-fi and modern fantasy art, and two years later the "Wyvern's Library" was created for written science fiction and fantasy submissions.

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.

Elfwood celebrated its 10th anniversary in May of 2006, and to commemorate this anniversary, the Opus Fantasy Arts Festival held the very first Elfwood summit in conjunction with the festival. A guest writer and guest artist was featured at the summit.

In September 2007, Elfwood was transformed into a commercial community, adding new features for creating user profiles also for visiting users, tagging of favorite members and works and much more.

Statistics
Elfwood currently (as of December 2006) has around 80,000 daily unique visitors and delivers around 2,000,000 web pages daily.

FARP
Elfwood currently host a sub section dedicated to articles on the creation of Fantasy and Science Fiction art and stories called the "FARP", which stands for the "Fantasy Art Resource Project". It is a free guide to the techniques used by artists and writers of Elfwood in the creation of their work. The name is slightly misleading since the section also contain articles on writing and world creation in general. It also features the history of art, tricks & tips, and so much more.

http://www.elfwood.com/farp/

Elftown
Elftown, the official Elfwood social networking site, was created in February 2002 by Henrik Wallin. The community mainly consists of Elfwood users and random Internet folks, creating an interesting, artistic and unique place in the Internet. Elftown has features such as diaries, a messaging system, a wiki, forums, guestbooks and polls about anything and everything. Being of a mainly artistic origin, the users of Elftown (commonly referred to as "Elftowners") share a wide spread variety of art and styles, including everything from traditional to modern, and much beyond this. With time, Elftown has become more than only a place to share art, but is now known to be host of whatever its users want to share - thoughts, opinions, interests and whatever else there is to chatter about. Elftown is located in Lysator's computer hall and runs on small modern hardware bought by donations from 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. It is now hosted in an inactive state at the main Elfwood site after the domain was finally shut down in late 2006.

Criticisms
Elfwood came under fire in 2004 when one of its underage artists, Margaret "Katy" Wilkerson, went missing. She was found with a man who allegedly found her through the site.

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 profanity and provocative language 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 and simplified.