Community Artists' Home Page | Why be a Community Artist? | What do the Community Artists do? | Community Artists' Code of Conduct | Volunteer to be a Community Artist

The Community Artists are entrusted with the task of illustrating some of the best entries that go into the Edited Guide, as well as selected Community-run areas of h2g2. Don't be put off if you haven't got much experience of this sort of thing - it would be great to hear from you anyway. However, do remember that designing illustrations will take up some of your free time on a fairly regular basis.

How to Join the Community Artists

If you'd like to join this volunteer scheme, you can register your interest by starting a new Conversation below. Please give us details of your h2g2 Researcher number and your h2g2 nickname in the title so that we can find your details quickly.

We usually set a basic art test, but if you fancy having a go at a graphic for us, possibly the best way to go about this would be to find an entry in the Edited Guide that doesn't already have a graphic. Try to make sure your illustration is appropriate for the subject and tone of the entry (for instance, don't do a jokey cartoon on an entry about a historical tragedy). The finished illustration will need to be 200x200 pixels and no bigger than 20k in size.

Once you've finished, upload the graphic to your own webspace, or a file-sharing site like Flikr or Photobucket, and we can take a look.

What You Will Need as an Artist

There are a number of requirements essential to becoming a Community Artist. These include:

• At least a couple of hours of free time every month.

• Some artistic ability (ie, you need to be capable of more than just photo manipulation).

• Access to a computer of some sort - ie PC or MAC. Sadly, due to the way we handle art files, we currently cannot accept volunteers who only have access through digital cable/satellite boxes (such as Digiboxes) or handheld devices (such as PDAs or mobile phones).

• Some kind of computer art package, for example Photoshop, Paintshop Pro or Gimp.

If you feel you have the skills we're looking for, please apply by starting a new conversation in the forum at the bottom of this page. One of our Artists will eventually come along and invite you to take part in the next stage - the Art Test.

Other Schemes

Don't forget that there are five volunteer schemes in total - pick the one that's right for you!

• The Scouts run the Peer Review scheme and pick the best entries that come through it, ready for the Sub-editors.

• The Sub-editors take the recommended entries from the Scouts and turn them into beautiful, flowing prose, for inclusion in the Edited Guide.

• The Aces are the upstanding members of the h2g2 Community, greeting new Researchers, helping to keep everyone happy, and generally being wonderful people.

• The Gurus help to run the Feedback areas, answering any questions people might have about h2g2.

• The visually creative and marvellously talented Community Artists illustrate entries, design new smileys and generally bring beauty and glamour to h2g2.