The HiRezFox FAQ and TOS
v1.05 Updated: 25-Jun-05
Image (c) Scott Kellogg
v1.05 Updated: 25-Jun-05
Note also that the legal Terms of Service are at the bottom of this document.
What is HiRezFox?
HiRezFox is an ftp and web server for selected artists to store original high resolution versions of their own artwork (including rendered or kinescoped animations) for inclusion on their home pages hosted on other services such as the excellent comicgenesis service.
Those services typically require image files on their servers to be very small to save money on storage and bandwidth costs. The trade off of image quality vs. image size is grossly skewed toward minimum file size mainly for economic reasons.
HiRezFox gives web artists a way to have the excellent web automation features of a comicgenesis etc. and still be able to share their work in a high resolution format.
Accounts on HiRezFox are either by invitation or application by interested artists. Please see the details below for more information on this.
What are the minimum image specifications for HiRezFox?
- No image smaller than 800 pixels wide.
- Comic strips work great at 1024 pixels wide, art at 1280 pixels wide.
- Use 16 bit color except for B&W works. Grayscale work should be 16 bits if the source material warrants it.
- Maximum file size of 1MB.
- All posted images are to be your Original work.
- Photos are not allowed except for background or pastiche purposes for your original art. Rendered and hand drawn backgrounds are far preferred, photos are the lazy way to a backdrop. Please minimize their use.
What about animations?
- Original animations of all kinds (Flash, MPG, whatever) are welcome here.
- Keep animation files under 5MB please. If this is too small, Email me.
- VidCaps of other people's work (anime, cartoons, &ct) are NOT welcome.
All I ask in return for this service to you is a link on your main home page to www.hirezfox.com. I will be providing some buttons for you to use later, but for now, a simple text link on your main page is all I request
How are artists selected for inclusion in the HiRezFox family?
There are two primary criteria to have your work posted here, and I'm afraid one of them is purely subjective.
A good review of the artists that I have on the HiRezFox Links page is essential to understanding what I will likely find spiffy and worthy of inclusion here.
Anthro furry art work and web strips are the initial over-riding theme. A theme however is not a rule. In fact there are no rules beyond your work must grab me by the ears and somehow rock my little slice of reality.
Web Comic Artists take special note: Killer art skills are not required. You may not be Rembrandt, but if your story and your writing both grab me, your more than likely in.
Simpler line drawings don't really gain anything past a certain point when viewed in higher resolutions. HiRezFox exists to restore lost visual detail for more complex artwork.
Hopefully having HiRezFox available to you will encourage you to increase the amount of detail in your work as you can finally be confident that fine detail will be seen by viewers of your work instead of being .JPG'd to death.
The presence of your work on this server means you are an Artist of Merit in my eyes. I'm neither your parents, nor your pastor or your muse. It's your name on the work, not mine. Go for it.
One caveat: Anything that has a law enforcement officer knocking on my door will have one knocking on yours post haste as I will pro-actively cooperate with any law enforcement agency on any investigations.
The only realistic scenario I can think of here is the unauthorized use of a copyrighted character that ruffles corporate feathers somewhere. Keeping your art all original neatly avoids that problem.
Grumpy guys like you don't even phase me, so how do I join?
Assuming I haven't Emailed you with an invitation first, You must first have a functional web site for the lower resolution versions of your work before I will create a HiRezFox account for you.
Send Email to allenwoolley-AT-yahoo.com, minding carefully the completely odd-ball spelling of my name with a subject of HiRezFox Join Request or something similar.
Include any appropriate URLs to your work. Please don't send me attachments.
I will review your site and Email you a note letting you know what I think. I will be honest and forthright in my opinion. Please don't mistake my opinion for facts or a personal "dis". I am after all just one loud mouthed guy with a small net pipe and a hip pocket full of opinions.
Should I not wish to host your artwork or strip at this time, Thou Shalt Not Panic, instead have some fish and buzz me again in six months time when you have something new to strut.
HiRezFox should NOT be your primary image server.
I will do my best to keep your art work available as reliably as possible, however I am doing this on essentially a $0 budget. Some down time is inevitable. This means that the HiRezFox server should NOT be your primary image server.
Instead use HiRezFox only as your high resolution image server for those fans of yours with the inclination to really drill deeper into your work. Note: This is changing, as HRF has started to become the primary host for a number of artists.
If you are one of these artists, please keep a local backup of all your web pages and content in case the HRF hard drive goes explodey.
There are plenty of free and excellent services out there like http://www.comicgenesis.com etc. for web comic artists and http://www.vcl.com and http://www.furnation.com for pure web artists to post their work on in lower resolutions.
Use one of those excellent service for your main home page and reserve the HiRezFox for your core fans and other artists use.
I do not a guarantee a 7x24x365 up time. If / when the server or ISP connection goes Poof! on us, please just Email me letting me know that an Oh Shit has happened. Do refrain from sending me any email with a KazynskiCo(tm) ticking attachment and I'll get on it as soon as I can.
If some small amount of random down time is unacceptable to you, I'm afraid that the HiRezFox service is not for you.
How to use the HiRezFox server:
So called "off site" links are not only allowed, they are the preferred way to use the HiRezFox server. In diagram form it looks like this:
I prefer to only host the images here if possible. Keeping the home pages off the server simplifies administration immensely for me. The HTML syntax to use looks like this:
<img src="http://www.hirezfox.com/myart/image/picture.jpg">
This means that you can build your high resolution link, portfolio or history page on some other server that normally won't allow large images, and then pull the images themselves from HiRezFox transparently.
You can get clever to the extreme here using a Java menu applet of your own connivance or just about anything else your imagination desires.
If you have a home page on the HiRezFox server (only a very few artists will have these), place a link to http://www.hirezfox.com on your strip or gallery home page and your users can drill down from there. Please don't hot link directly to your own home page, I'd like as many people as possible to have a chance see those artists that have home pages here.
You use comicgenesis or one of the other trick web comic automation services out there for your usual strip. You quickly discover however that your seriously constrained artistically by the small file sizes required, but at least the strip is out there and the automation services rock 'n roll.
So what you do is create a second page either on KS or elsewhere that has a calendar type listing of your work, except instead of pulling images from the comicgenesis server, you pull them from the HiRezFox server.
Note that there are no advertisements on HiRezFox, so it's very simple to pull the images into an ad free page if you so desire.
In addition to your normal VCL or Furnation pages, create a thumbnail page that links to the HiRezFox server instead. Use the syntax as above to pull the image off HiRezFox.
HiRezFox runs the Autofox website automation software. Autofox is a perl script that is run by the server's cron daemon. See the Autofox home page for details and documentation.
How long is my account good for?
It's "good" for as long as your strip or artwork are kept "fresh". This is primarily a service for active artists, not an elephant grave yard. Should a strip of yours come to an end or you decide to bail on the web as a way to publish your art work, I will eventually, after Emailing you or your Emailing me, remove your work from the HiRezFox server.
It is *your* responsibility to keep me informed about your current Email address. If your strip or gallery "goes stale" and your Email bounces, I will pull your work offline anyways and you won't know until the deed is done. This is not my fault, so keep me plugged in please.
The server is a 1GHz PIII Dell 4100 running Redhat linux v8 and Apache 2.0 with all the current security patches available applied to it. The server and all the network equipment are connected to a 1200KVA APC UPS good for ~60 minutes of run time in case of a power outage.
The internet connection is a nice 512Kbit uplink business class cable modem connection.
Bummer, hate to loose you but ya gotta do what ya gotta do. Simply Email me and be a bit patient. I'll usually acknowledge your request to bail out within a day or two if possible and pull the trigger on nuking your account and data files a day later.
I will purposefully drag my feet for about 24 hours, just to give you a chance to chill and think about it, then bang, it's dead dead dead.
Copyrights
- You retain ALL copyrights to your work.
- Your use of the HiRezFox server means you acknowledge it is not my job to hunt down or go medieval on those who are ripping you off by copying your work from the HiRezFox server.
Backups
- I periodically burn CD-R backups, create LAN disk image backups and may create tape backups of the HiRezFox server data files, which naturally includes your artwork as well as everyone else's. The backups are only used for data recovery and archival purposes, they are NOT used to distribute or otherwise burn copies of your artwork for other people's use.
- I will NOT create copies of any files for anyone other than the artist that created them. Third party requests will be refused, even from direct relatives.
- Should you have a disaster of some sort on your own PC and wish me to burn you a copy of your work, I will happily do so for you if you send me a blank CD-R or two and return postage.
- Note that by using the HiRezFox service you grant me permission to maintain any and all backups that may contain your data for an indefinite period of time and you agree not to have a cow about this. I reaffirm my pledge to not distribute or otherwise spread copies of your work from the backups w/o your explicit request or permission.
- I WILL create copies of any and all files of interest for properly authorized Law Enforcement Officers or Officers of the Court.
Privacy
Complete and total. I won't give out any Email address' or other personal information to anyone without a badge in their wallet.
Security
All internet connected servers are vulnerable to attack. I make it a practice to apply the latest security patches in a reasonably timely manner, but I can make no guarantee that the server is secure. You agree to not keep sensitive information on this server and hold me blameless in case you did anyways and the server got hacked and your information was compromised.
Policy Changes
Check this page periodically for the current legal policies and terms of service, as it is the authoritative document and may change without notice. I don't expect to have to change much once it's hammered down, but check this section occasionally anyways, as it's good to be fresh on this information for everyone involved.
Your use of the HiRezFox server means you agree to all these terms.
If this sucks too much for you, then don't ask for an account. Simple no?
The term HiRezFox and all contents of this web site not otherwise
copyrighted by third parties is Copyright (C) 2002-2005 Allen Woolley
All Rights, including World Rights Reserved
