Although DA has made great strides toward improving the dolling community, and making us feel that we have a place here, sometimes it feels as though our *pixel shaders* are being forced to comply to rules and standards set by *real pixel artists* It is offensive to be told that you aren't complying to their standards when we are complying with the norm in the dolling community.

In our community, the addition of terms to a base laid pixel by pixel is a rather common practice. It is there (directly on the image) in a convenient place for any who use the base to see. It provides a reminder of the proper site to link back to when we show the doll and what editing of the base is allowed. It also avoids the complication of people who never read artist's terms of use located on separate pages (or in the case of DA the artist's comments). It also reduces the need for very detailed organization when one collects bases.

The addition of computer generated text (as long as it is not a part of the image composition) in no way determines the techniques used in the making of a base. A digital watermark added using a computer program on a water-color does not suddenly change its classification to a digital piece of artwork.

If our opinions on what constitute pixel art do not matter (because of disagreement with pixel artist and dollers with that classification) quite honestly, I think DA should simply change our categorization from Customization-Dolls- *Pixel Art* to Customization-Dolls-*Pixel Shaded*

If you don't know what i am talking about, go here and visit the journal of or see the article written by at [link]

I also urge our dolling community members to voice their opinions on this matter to our gallery director wrote about this rule in her last news article [link] It is quite the easy little note to miss unless you look for it!