So your post got deleted.

e621 isn't your average art site. As a curated imageboard where uploaders do not necessarily get to claim ownership of their posts, there are often cases where an upload is deleted in spite of the community or artist's wishes. While there are a myriad reasons that posts get removed from public viewing, this particular page will cover deletions related to things such as artistic quality.

Self-Uploading and Related Issues

e621 is not a traditional art gallery like FurAffinity and other sites, but a curated imageboard with a focus on furry artwork. As a result, uploading, post ownership, and other such things are all treated very differently.

While artists can and do find success uploading their own work to e621, newer artists, artists unfamiliar with imageboards, and artists who do a wide range of content, might encounter some issues while self-uploading.

• It is harder to objectively judge one's own work. Your emotional attachment to a piece might make you view it as your magnum opus, or simply have you overlook or excuse certain flaws ("it's my style" is often mocked across the internet as an example of this), but post approvers go through many pieces that display various subject matter and levels of artistic proficiency.
• Approvers can and will contradict another: immediately approving something that has votes of disapproval, deleting a post that was mistakenly approved despite breaking the terms of a CDNP, and deleting/restoring a post based on the presence or absence of nonhuman features. Despite some clearly wishing it were otherwise, we're all humans.
• e621 staff will delete amazing pieces for the sole reason that they appear to be off-topic. Even similar imageboards (Danbooru, Gelbooru, etc.) which view furry content negatively will approve such pieces when appropriate.
• Even if you love the site and never want to leave, any humans (and recolored humans like in Steven Universe) you create will need their existence to be continuously justified.
• You, as an uploader/artist, will not have the control over your stuff that a more traditional art gallery site would give you.
• Prior to replacements, most image edits would have to count against your upload limit, since there were limited solutions: delete the old version, delete the new version, or approve both as alternates. Even now, though, replacements are not something every user has immediate access to.
• With Pixiv as the only major exception due to a heavily limited number of tags and the ability for users to edit tags, you are the final arbiter when it comes to the post's presentation. Gender tags are a point of contention that some have elected to go DNP over, you can enforce a description and title of your choice, things like that.

If you are not confident in your ability to get consistent approvals, you may instead choose to continue posting to a personal gallery, and growing as an artist. This will enable you to determine if other e621 users like your artwork. Once you notice e621 users uploading your artwork and consistently getting approvals, you may choose to take over the duty of uploading your own artwork, without yourself suffering a reduced upload limit from prior deletions. (Every 4 deletions is a -1 reduction to your upload limit, which determines how many unapproved posts you may submit at once.)

Artistic Issues

Anatomy

Todo.

Composition

Todo.

Software Issues

1000 Hours in MS Paint

post #3307013 post #2254922 post #2121981 post #2030550
These posts are results from ~aliasing ~binary_drawing ~ms_paint search results, which have been approved due to their furry content and display of artistic competency. Some of them are created in Microsoft Paint by the artist's admission, while others merely use techniques that can be replicated in Microsoft Paint.

A sentiment often expressed by budding artists is the idea that they cannot perform due to their tools. Image editors and hardware like Photoshop and drawing tablets do certainly do a lot to improve an artist's workflow, give better options, and allow them to experiment with new things, but these tools are not absolute requirements. There is a wealth of artwork that gets made in tools like Microsoft Paint as a self-imposed challenge, including:

• most posts under the microsoft_paint tag
• long-form webcomics like Ragnarok Wisdom

Determined creators can succeed with Microsoft Paint, but various alternatives exist.

• Krita
• FireAlpaca
• other paid or free tools, including those listed on Wikipedia's Comparison of Raster Graphics Editors.

Conversion Issues

Do I Look Like I Know What a "Jay-Peg" is?

post #3780604
Not all image formats are created equal. PNGs are great for general use, but due to a variety of reasons, artwork may occasionally be saved as a "JPG" instead. JPG is a photo-oriented file format which simplifies the content of an image, displaying a close approximation. For photographs which use a wide range of colors and typically depict real-world scenes, the JPG format usually doesn't cause any issues, but pixel art, flat colors, and other things often found in digital art tend to be subject to compression artifacts which discolor parts of an image. While e621 gives some leeway for visible compression in artwork, it is ultimately better if you can upload artwork in a high-quality, uncompressed form.

If you are an artist or otherwise have access to an uncompressed copy of certain art pieces, exporting as PNG is almost always the best option, and note some sites such as Twitter may forcibly convert your art to a JPG on upload.

Digitizing Traditional Media

Todo.

Lore, TWYS, and Relevancy

While this has been touched upon in an earlier section, there are often cases where, despite the artist's intent to portray a character as nonhuman, that information is not sufficiently communicated to viewers. Characters who are universally known to be elves, aliens, etc., may be up for deletion when they are portrayed in such a way where those characteristics are not immediately obvious. This is an intentional result of e621's Tag What You See policy, which seeks to guarantee that users with or without specific foreknowledge can interact with posts and tags in similar ways.

"Human only"

post #405376 post #173991 post #61265
These posts are grandfathered content, and would otherwise not be permitted on the site under the current Uploading Guidelines.

For particularly prolific artists who create a wide range of content, it is possible that they'll eventually create image content that lacks any apparent relevancy to e621. Posts must be focused on characters who can be visually understood as nonhuman by an observer who does not recognize the character.

• Humanoids with a particularly strong resemblance to humans (such as elves, and cat-eared humanoids) should have some non-removable abhuman feature.
• Animal ears, elven ears, tails, etc. are not relevant if the image content portrays them as removable, or being attached to a removable object such as a headband.
• Fantastical skin tones do not indicate abhumanness on their own.
• Fursuits and similar apparel are not relevant when worn by a character who appears to be human.
• Some exceptions may exist for human-only posts that are artistically related to furry content.
• Transformation sequences split between multiple posts may contain a small number of human-only images.
• "Furry" comics may occasionally have pages that only depict human characters.

Other Deletion Reasons

Todo.