Curator: Dan Minut
We had some severe server problems, and it appeared that everything was back up and running, but currently, uploads do not work. In other words, if you try to save your drawings on the server, you'll lose them.
I should have everything working properly in a day or two.
The Free Paint Oekaki BBS is a page for anyone who would like to strutt their artistic stuff. You can also leave comments and have discussions on the board. No profanity or nudity, please. Anime styled artwork preffered, but not required. The operator reserves the right to remove any post or picture without warning or review.
What's different?
Lots of stuff! ^.^ First, the main BBS scripts have quite a few new features including the ability to have user icons, better management of posts and the ability to ban ip's in case of abuse. More importantly, users have the ability to choose from 4 different paint programs. The most feature filled includes the ability to record animations of your brush strokes, multiple layers, better brushes and a whole slew of other things.
What happened to the old pictures?
They're currently offline. I'll be building a script so you can view them as an archive after I go through and prune the list a little. Look for a link at the top to the archive in the near future.
I got banned! What do I do?
E-Mail Me and explain your situation. I'm a pretty reasonable guy and if you promise to not repeat whatever it was that made me ban you, then I'll give you another chance. Check out the rules below to see what is and is not acceptable behavior.
This is the old Oekaki Map page that explained what each button in the old paint program did. The new one is pretty similar, so you'll just have to experiment until I can make a new version.
No nudity or obscenity. Mild swearing is fine, but I'd appreciate it if you'd keep it toned down. Any obscene posts will be removed and the poster banned if the image was explicit. There are a lot of younger artists on this board and I'd like to keep the environment appropriate for them.
I appreciate honesty, but not abuse. If you must make negative comments on another artist's work, please be constructive. No, sorry, "This sucks," doesn't count as constructive critisism. When I find a comment that is abusive, I will delete it. If you continue to make abusive comments, I will ban you.
Do not flood the boards. Please take your time while creating your post. Sketching and playing around is fine, but don't post multiple quickie sketches in a row. If you'd like to make several sketches, simply erase the one your currently working on and start again. I will delete all but the first post from a person I deem to be spamming the boards. If your behavior continues, I will ban you.
Anime content is not required. While I certainly welcome artists to post in the anime style, it is not required. Any style and (non-obscene) subject is welcome. See additional notes below.
Posts will be purged periodically. In order to keep the board manageable, I will delete older posts as I see fit. I usually keep posts I find to be above average and I also tend to delete all but the best neo-pets styled images. I don't usually delete anything in the first 10 pages (100 posts) of the board so there is plenty of time for people to see and commment on your work.
One Icon per person. If you wish to add a new icon to the board, please delete any previous icons you were using. Also, I'd rather people post their icons as exclusive use only. Same rules for obsenity apply here as well.
Refrain from posting text only. You can post text only messages with the "Write" button at the top, but I ask you to not do so unless you feel it is important.
What is an “Oekaki”?
The word itself is Japanese and if Babel Fish is to be believed, it roughly means “Picture Scratching.” If you were to search the internet, however, you would find that it most often refers to a site that uses a Java applet called Paint BBS. Quite simply, Paint BBS is a program that allows you to draw a picture and save it directly to a website.
I just went to the Oekaki page and all of the text looks like funny little squares! What's wrong?
All of the software that drives the Oekaki pages is written by a Japanese author. Unlike English, most languages require more than a handful of letters to write. Because of this, many languages, Japanese included, requires a special type of font to display properly. Even though all of the text is displayed in English, it is actually written using this special font. Some browsers do not properly auto-detect the language on the page and will try to display the text using a standard English font. To fix this, simply choose Japanese as the language to display these pages in. In Internet Explorer, this can be done by right clicking on the page and selecting language. In Netscape, you will have to navagate the menus to find the option. If you're having trouble finding this option, consult the help files or website of your browser to find out how to change languages.
How come there's Japanese on page x?
I'm still working on translating the scripts that run the site... I'm afraid that I've missed a few spots.