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logsdrawsthings · 7 days ago

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Seeing as we have a bit over a month until the fight begins this year I think it’s time to release this from the drafts so I don’t have to copy paste the full thing lol…

So you want to know how ArtFight works

Well, here you go. This is more or less a copy of a post I was using a lot last year as well, just slightly updated. It's a little long so I'm keeping most of it under the read more

What even is it:

ArtFight is basically an annual art trading event in July, focused around players' original characters (fandom-based or otherwise) - although it might be more accurate to say art gifting, as you aren't necessarily organising individual trades where you make arts for User X and User X has already agreed to make art for you.

ArtFight includes most forms of visual art (no music or writing), both digital and traditional, but of course most people like to draw so you might see me refer to drawing in the rest of this post out of habit, even though it isn't limited to that. There are two teams, and when you submit art you earn points for your team! There isn't really a prize, just bragging rights I guess.

Where and when it’s hosted:

ArtFight is hosted on its own website: https://artfight.net

You’ll have to upload your characters there in order for them to be attacked - if you don’t have a character on the site, you can’t be attacked, but you can still attack others. A few people choose to remove or hide all of their characters specifically so they only give attacks instead of getting.

Technically you can upload a ‘character’ that is just a link to something like Toyhouse where you’ve got other characters hosted, instead of putting that information specifically on ArtFight, although there are some people who are less inclined to attack characters that require them to go off-site for information.

You can upload characters and edit their profiles, and bookmark other people's characters that you might want to attack later, at any point during the year, but the event itself is only open in July (specifically, noon on July 1st MST until noon on August 1st MST) - so that month is the only time you can submit attacks.

How to join:

First of all, make an account on the site!

Second, even in July, you can’t play (ie, submit/receive attacks) until you get on a team. That means that if you decide not to participate one year, nobody can attack your OCs against your will either, since by not choosing a team you simply won’t have made yourself available as a target.

How do you get a team, then:

Well, you can’t yet.

You’ll notice that if you make an account right now your username is greyish-brown, indicating that you aren’t on a team. A lot of users currently have purple or teal names, which represent the teams from last year (Stardust and Seafoam, respectively). Don’t worry, you aren’t being held back from anything - those team colours don’t mean anything for this year! The themes for the year should be announced in June and then team picking will become available.

What if you’re late to join the fight:

No worries! On my first year I only heard about it a couple days into the fight and thought I was too late to start… and then I realised halfway through the month that I was not, in fact, too late. You can make an account and join a team right up to the last day of the fight, so don’t feel scared of a late start! You won’t be prohibited from joining and you can still probably get a lot done. There’s no minimum number of attacks required, unless it’s just a goal you set for yourself.

The only thing about joining late is you’ll have missed out on the ‘early bird’ team picking - you’ll just be randomly assigned to a team instead of getting to choose. That said you’ve got two chances each year to ‘reroll’ if you prefer the other team. Personally, so far I’ve been excited to get randomly assigned (well, except last year. I saw purple and I wanted purple lol).

What the team themes do:

…nothing really, they’re just for fun. Each year the theme changes and like I said above, we’re still a while away from hearing what they’ll be for this year.

You aren’t required to make your OCs or profile or anything match the theme, although some people do like to just for fun. One type of OC you might see is the ‘ArtFight sona’, which is, y’know, a sona inspired by your team for that year, uploaded as a character to be attacked.

Submitting a character:

At the top of the site there’s a button that says ‘Submit’, and then gives the option of ‘Submit a Character’. That button’s available year-round, during and outside of the fight.

ArtFight’s a bit finicky about image sizes, which can be annoying when uploading characters. When you’re uploading a character initially you can only add one image, but if you then go to edit the character you can add more images, up to 6 total. There is a description space for each character you upload where you can write information about their lore, design notes, etc, so you don’t need to squish all of that into images.

Like I said up above you can technically link off site instead of writing a profile for a character on the site. You can also put multiple characters in one slot on ArtFight, if you consider them a package deal.

Personal opinions/advice for uploading characters

You don’t necessarily need a full reference sheet, but at least having a fullbody artwork makes it a lot easier for people attacking. There are some people who won’t attack without a reference sheet, and others who won’t attack unless you have some non-ref sheet artwork to show your ‘investment’ in your own character, but honestly most people are just there to have fun and won’t mind as long as they have an idea of how to represent your OC - honestly, just put what you want to and what you think is worthwhile, the people with 'rules' about this stuff all have different rules and you don't have to abide by them.

Make sure to use the tagging system! A character can have up to 10 tags which make it easier for people to find them - it's not required, but it helps a lot. Some good things to include would be like genre/aesthetic - ‘fantasy’, ‘steampunk’, ‘superhero’ ‘modern’ - and, in the case of fan OCs, the original media. Tag if they’re a human or another species, and tag if they’re anthro or feral for furry characters. And if they have some distinct feature or motif tag that too! Maybe tag a distinct theme colour if they have one. You might not be able to fit everything in that tag limit, but those are ideas.

I’ve seen someone ask how many characters is a good number to have. Honestly, the answer will vary. You can have up to 100 at a time on the site but some people use that ‘link to Toyhouse or somewhere else’ idea to functionally add more. Personally, I’d say it’s just nice to give people some options when they want to attack you, so at least two or three… past that put as many as you like. But also, if you just have one blorbo you really want art of, there's nothing wrong with only uploading that one guy - and there are even a few users who only want to attack others for nothing in return, so they don't upload any characters

You can re-order your characters in the ‘manage characters’ page. A lot of people make sure that the characters they’d prefer to get art of are at the start of their list, and of course it’s handy to group characters from the same setting together.

You can also set your character ‘permissions’, which are your rules or preferences about attacks you receive - you have global permissions that apply to all of your characters by default, and character-specific permissions that note unique rules or exceptions you’d like other users to keep in mind when creating art for you. Common things to mention in permissions might be if you’re okay with being included in “mass attacks” (I’ll get to those later), if you’re okay with artistic nudity for your characters, if you like their outfits to be changed, etc

Submitting an attack

An ‘attack’ is an art piece of another user’s character or characters - making attacks is how you earn points for your team. Again, use that ‘Submit’ button at the top of the page, and then choose ‘Submit an Attack’… Bear in mind that this option is only there during the Fight and only if you’re on a team!

Each character on the site has an ID code, which you’ll paste in when submitting an attack, to indicate what character it depicts. Then you’ll have to rate your attack in a few categories: Basically, you’ll give yourself points. When submitting an attack you’ll have to rate it in a few categories: how much of the character is visible? Did you use clean linework? Is it fully coloured and shaded? Is there a background? All of this works into the score that the site will display. The site has guidelines for attack rating with examples, but they change a little from year to year so you’d be better off looking for those than me trying to explain it here.

Friendly fire:

You usually attack the opposite team… but you can also attack people on your own team. It’s just worth fewer points - 20% of an equivalent attack on the other team, specifically.

Revenge:

When submitting an attack, if the recipient is somebody who already attacked you this year, you’ll see an option to mark the attack as revenge. It doesn’t impact the points, but it means that the two attacks will have a link to each other at the bottom of their pages.

Users can create revenge chains by repeatedly revenging each other. Some people make it a goal to create a long chain, others would rather leave it at one and done so they can focus on other people as well. There’s no obligation to take revenge, so don’t feel pressured.

Revenging is fun, but I’d recommend against saying that you will always do it. If you wind up getting burnt out or just get more attacks than you can deal with you might wind up breaking that promise.

Mass attacks:

Mass attacks are attacks that feature multiple characters - of course, more characters means more points! You can include your own characters in these, too.

Unlike revenge, mass attack isn’t an ‘official’ term and there isn’t anything to select when submitting an attack that will label it as a mass attack. You’d just keep adding more characters to the attack by the same method as normal - put in their ID and mark fullbody, halfbody or simple shaped for each one.

For a mass attack you designate one person as the main recipient; they’ll be the only person who can officially revenge it, although the others might still decide to attack you back as thanks.

If the main recipient is on the opposite team, you’ll get full points for the attack, regardless of the teams of the other characters in it. And likewise if the main recipient is on your team you’ll still only earn 20% regardless of the other characters.

There’s an upper limit of 100 characters per attack.

Finding characters to attack:

The first place to look is that ‘Browse’ button up at the top of the site. That can take you to a random character’s profile, or a random user’s profile. You can see all the most recently uploaded characters. And best of all, you can search for characters by their tags, like I mentioned.

Last year, Artfight changed the tag search slightly. It used to be that it would display a 48 randomly-selected characters from the tag, but nowadays the selection will be a group that were uploaded around a similar time to each other (what time will still be random with each time you search), which means that it might not display as many characters as it otherwise could. Keep retrying the search to see if anything new comes up!

And honestly, just trawling through the site, from the profile of someone who was included in a mass attack with you to an attack they made on someone else to a user that person was attacked by... something is bound to catch your eye

#artfight #artfight explained #artfight 2025

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