1.

 Registration is not necessary, but does give significant advantages over anonymous usage.  We don't-- as of yet-- dissuade anonymous viewers of the HCP Galleries.  We do need to point out, however, that in the interest of keeping the gallery up and around, we may at some point have to make galleries that display adult themes (the ASFR ones, natch) viewable by registered users only, or make the galleries viewable only with registration if bandwidth becomes a recurring issue, as it did on the Sticky Site.  We don't WANT to, but if an issue crops up, we want you to be warned.

Besides, registered users get many more benefits than anonymous viewers.  Anonymous viewers cannot rate the images they do see, and they may not save favorite images into their own personal gallery, send e-cards, or upload images or stories, among other things.  Registration is free, easy, and ordinarily only has to be done once.  And it entitles you to a crapload of filespace for your Hub City creations.  It's worth it, in other words. 
 

 All uploads should have a Hub City theme to them.  One of the things we're trying to establish here is that this isn't just a base add-on to the Gorgon:Art group and site; this is an area for focusing on the superheroes, heroines and other personages of Hub City--  as well as their adversaries.  We're letting our hair down a bit-- stories, colorizations and photomanips are both allowed and encouraged, and you can feel free to create new heroes and villains... but all uploads, regardless of type, still need to fit a Hub City setting/theme... and yes, we will likely tend to allow for a lot of latitude as far as what we consider a Hub City theme... so as long as it's not abused.
 

 Please try to place your uploaded files in their proper area according to art medium and content.  We've done our best to categorize three specific mediums and two distinctions of each.  The mediums-- Hand-drawn art, 3D art, and Photomannipped/Colorized art-- are fairly self-explanatory.  If you colorized or otherwise photoenhanced someone else's line art in Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro, place it in the Photomanipped area, natch!  In addition, each medium has two galleries based on content... one for inanimation (ASFR) art, and one for images that aren't specifically ASFR-style.   In addition, there are two areas to upload stories-- one for ones dealing with characters' origins, one for other Hub City adventures.

When you choose to upload a file, using the UPLOAD FILE link at the top, you will first be given an area to browse for the file on your hard drive (or remote link to it).  Once the upload has gone through, you will be given the opportunity to PLACE your picture/story into a folder via a pulldown.  THIS is where you will decide where your upload(s) goes. 

Of course, the admins of the gallery can change the gallery that a file is uploaded to, if worse comes to worse.
 

 In the Hub City Gallery, manipulations and colorizations are welcome, provided that they relate to Hub City themes.  If you have a colorization of someone else's line art, a photomanip of a model made up to look like a Hub City heroine, or an inanimation picture based on Hub City themes, you can feel free to upload that into the Photomanipulation/Colorization folder.  In fact, we encourage it!
 

 Story uploads are allowed in DOC, RTF and TXT format only.  This isn't our call here, because I personally prefer HTML.  The Coppermine Gallery we use has its own restrictions, and because of the possibility of Java miners, DHTML, PHP and XML scripts that could crash the gallery (and users' internet connectivity) which can be embedded into HTML, Coppermine does not allow HTML file uploads inherently.  So for us, the choice was either A) work up a hack for that.  If we did, the gallery admins would have to review and decode EVERY uploaded piece to the gallery before it could be viewed by everyone, just to make sure nothing with suspicious coding occurred or B) forget HTML for now.  If we did that, we'd still be able to allow uploads in realtime without admin approval, and just keep to fairly innocuous text document formats for stories. 

We chose the latter.  Users who use other word processors than Microsoft Word should still be able to use RTF or TXT formats, and browsers that are not MS-Word integrated should still allow those files to be downloaded without difficulty.  There are freeware and shareware word processors available at www.download.com if you need a program to craft or read RTF files.
 

 Don't worry; the Gorgon:Art Group and Archive are both alive and well, and we don't have any intention of phasing them out.  When the G:A group started, we didn't have any intention of making it a place centered on comic-book style art... it just worked out that way, and we were (and are, obviously!) thrilled by it.  We spearheaded the Hub City Project and this gallery because of our own love of creating heroes, heroines, villains, and comics on the whole.  We figured that this would help alleviate a little of the bandwidth on the G:A group, as well as provide a little something special for people who enjoy the adventures we've done so far in Hub City.

Still, we understand that not everyone likes the superhero genre, and some of those who like the superhero genre prefer established comic book characters.  And there's nothing wrong with that... we like those styles, too!  And that's why the G:A group will still be around for the foreseeable future, provided Yahoo doesn't blow it up.  Because that way, everyone gets the best of both worlds, and can post to either... Hub City stuff here, Self-created work at G:A.