"Wren I -do- have a gallery there. I have taken part in it. and the work that was accepted from me was..GUH the only reason I keep my gallery there now is to link to renderosity.
-I- haven written to the editors but when you submit a piece and it is rejected in record time I am talking about under five minutes and it is rejected sorry but that doesnt seem on the up and up to me. It is not sour grapes as that thread says. it is just plain and simple someone that has given up even trying to expand their gallery over there."

My apologies, i did not mean to imply that you personally made these accusations or that you were one of these people who refuse to become a part of the community. I thought i had made it clear after my initial response to you that the rest of my statements were referring to the post at Epilogue. I'm sorry i didn't make that clearer.

I will say though that just because you can't seem to get your recent work into to Epilogue doesnt mean you or anyone else for that matter are being discriminated against. I looked over your Renderosity gallery (not every piece but a random sample of your most recently posted work) and can see some rather obvious flaws that would prevent some them from being accepted at Epilogue. That's not to say any of them are "bad", they are in fact quite lovely, but most of the ones i saw that met the fantasy/sci-fi genre requirement had issues that could be resolved to make them much stronger pieces.

In particular there seem to be some lighting and composition weaknesses that distract and detract from the overall images. Epilogue editors are trained to see those shortcomings and when they do, those pieces get rejected.

Now granted, i don't know the specific rejection reasons given on the individual pieces you've had rejected, but i would venture to guess that you've gotten the "not epilogue quality", "images look flat/pasted" and "obvious use of digital tools" more than once. "Not Epilogue quality" is the one that seems to piss the most people off, mostly because they don't understand that all that particular rejection reason means is more than one area needs work.

Anyone that has ever bothered to post a rejected image in the Work In Progress forum with that reason is usually very quickly assured that the editors can only select one rejection reason from a drop down menu and that "NEQ" is given when more than one of the reasons on that list applies to the image. It doesn't mean the image sucks, just that they couldn't pick more than one reason and more than one area needs work.

In the case of what i saw in your Renderosity gallery, i would guess that most your work was rejected for having a combination of lighting issues (which often results in objects appearing flat/pasted) and unrefined details as some of your textures look chunky compared to your figures, which are very well done. That lack of refinement on those elements could also get you the "digital tools" tag. So it certainly doesn't mean your work is bad, just that it still needs a little more work to be considered "Epilogue quality". There is no shame in that. All artists must learn to push themselves and improve, it's what helps make us grow.

No one likes rejection. Heck, the first dozen pieces i submitted to Epilogue were all rejected within about 15 minutes. It took me almost 2 months to get my gallery moving and i still get pieces rejected from time to time. When that happens, i usually rework the image until i get it in. But i accept that as part of Epilogues high standards of quality. Just because i am a published, professional freelancer doesn't mean that every image i do is a masterpiece. And i have to say that, professionally speaking, it's very nice to have some form of higher standard with which to compare my own work against that goes beyond what my clients might expect (most of whom are not artists and would like just about anything i scribbled down). I want to produce the best art i possibly can, and having that goal of making it "Epilogue quality" has really helped me move closer to that goal.

Epilogue isn't for everyone, but i don't think that gives anyone the right to sneer at those of us who expect more from ourselves than the average piece of art or to accuse that community of being snobs simply because they expect more from themselves than the average piece of art.

Now i think it's already been clearly addressed in the Epilogue thread, but i'll say it again: Epilogue does NOT discriminate against any particular medium. Anyone who takes more than a 5 minute look through the galleries there will be able to see that for themselves. I've seen works in Epilogue galleried created with every medium and in nearly every style imaginable. Anyone who says they discriminate based on medium is hugely mistaken. Plain and simple.

As for complaints about their standards being too high, well, i am afraid that's just a matter of personal opinion and will never truly be resolved. I personally think their standards are just fine. But then my work gets accepted more often than not. Perhaps if i got rejected most of the time, i'd think they were too high too. But unlike those who would whine about Epilogue being "unfair" i would get my skills up to par. Come to think of it, that was exactly what i did...go figure.