Hello Everyone! It’s sereneFalconer here with an announcement for all of you! 

SURPRISE! I’m back from my break, and I’ll be hosting Secret Santa this year alongside @Psychogoldfish (who will be helping us make sure everything is running smoothly). 

Today I’m going to give you all some details so everyone can be ready for registration, including when registration starts, when Secret Santas will be assigned, a brief overview of important rules, where you can ask questions, and who you can approach with any concerns. This is basically your 8 day warning, registration is coming up! Get excited! 

Registration for Secret Santa will be open from November 21st to November 30th. During registration you will submit a character reference along with any details you would like your Secret Santa to know about. 

I will make a new post with a link to the registration page. Feel free to give me a follow to get notified when it happens!

You will find out who you are drawing for on December 1st. This is when you can start working on your gifts.

All submissions for Secret Santa need to be submitted by December 24th at 11:59 pm (Eastern Standard Time) so everyone can receive their artwork on Christmas day.

Anyone who fails to submit on time will most likely be added to the naughty list, and excluded from future events.

We will have backup artists on standby to make sure everyone eventually gets a gift.

Now that there’s a general timeline, let’s talk about some things to keep in mind while you prepare for registration. 

You MUST be scouted in the Art Portal in order to participate in this Secret Santa event. This requirement was introduced last year, and this year is no exception! 

@LegolaSS will be hosting a separate Secret Santa event for un-scouted users. Give them a follow to be notified when that starts! (We’ll also be linking it on the registration page.)

You will need to submit an ORIGINAL character for your Secret Santa to draw. While your character can be derivative of other popular characters, it should have a lot of originality to it. You can not submit things like “Sonic the hedgehog, but he’s green”, or “A pokemon, but I added big teeth”.

Your character has to be in the art portal. You can add as much information, reference sheets, etc, as you like, you will need to link to an example of your character that’s been submitted to the Art Portal, to prove they are your character. If you have a character that’s never been posted to the portal, now’s a good time to do so.

Characters MUST be family friendly. It’s important to remember that another person is going to be drawing your character, and you don’t know who that person will be. NSFW Artwork or characters are not allowed in this event. We are also drawing a hard line at anything that even borders on being fetish art. This includes, but is not limited to, overly sexualized characters, and anything that is clearly associated with a kink.

Characters should mainly be human in appearance. We don’t want to see complex mechs, weird creatures with 100 appendages, or anything that might be difficult for character artists to render. We also don’t want any animals, basic objects, or anything else that’s not truly a character. People signing up for this event want to draw fun characters.

Anthro characters are allowed, but not full-on furries. Again, we have to consider what people will be comfortable with drawing. If you have a cute cartoon bunny girl that you could easily see in a children’s cartoon, we would allow that. If you have a yiffing fox boy with weird wet spots and drool, we are not accepting it.

Your character profile should relay the level of effort you plan on putting into your gift. We’ll be using these profiles to group artists into groups of similar skill levels. If you are an A-class artist, but only plan on spending a day making your gift, make sure the character sheet you put up isn’t your absolute top quality work, so we can get you into the appropriate group.

The full list of rules for the event will be available when registration begins on November 21st, please make sure to read them IN FULL when they become available so you don’t miss anything. 

If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to reply to this post!

You can also join the Secret Santa Discord server and get help there.

EDIT- Secret Santa Discussion Thread is now LIVE! Go there to post some of your recent artwork if you need some help getting scouted!

Here’s the official listing of all the rules!!

We have an awesome team of helpers to make sure this goes smoothly-

There’s me, @sereneFalconer - You can call me the “head elf” this year. I’ll be organizing the event, recruiting helpers, and providing all the news and information you need.

@Psychogoldfish - Josh is running things on the back end and making sure everything functions with the system as well as providing general guidance to the team!

@LegolaSS - Legola is one of our wonderful helpers, who will also be running a separate Secret Santa event for anyone who isn’t scouted. Follow him for more details if this interests you!

@Oddlem - She’ll be helping with all the sorting and answering questions, as well as making this year’s promotional banner!

@Wizardofrank, @Raviolibox, @queen-evvvvve, @loopykins, @skoops - The rest of our helper team! They will be helping us sort artists, answer questions, and manage the event when the time comes.  

I couldn’t ask for a better batch of helper elves! They’re all freaking awesome so please give them some love when you’re able!

Finally, we have a few backup artists on standby in the event someone doesn’t get a gift. If you are interested in being a backup artist, let me know. We’ll be recruiting backup artists when we have a clearer picture of how many gifts need to be completed. Be aware that you may not be selected if we don’t need extra help.

So with that said, y’all better start thinking about what characters you want to submit, and we’ll see you next week for registration!