After browsing through all of the icon sub-galleries, I think there may be a bit of confusion as to where some icons should be submitted. You may have noticed that the icons gallery has gone through some slight changes. Hopefully this submission guide will help answer any questions you may have about what's going on in the icons tier of deviantART.

Below is a list of all of the sub-galleries in the icons tier of deviantART, along with brief descriptions for each. These are the guidelines to use when submitting icons.

(For all icon galleries, compression of icon sets for downloading is always acceptable.)




This category was formerly known as Deviants. Here you can submit any avatar for personal useage. This is also the place to submit deviantART user avatars, which are the "buddy icons" associated with deviantART accounts. There isn't really much reason to submit your own deviantART avatar to this category since you can upload it directly from your harddrive under your user settings. However, if you are making a Deviant avatar for another user, then this is the place to submit it. As far as dimensions for Avatars go, they shouldn't be anything out of the ordinary. The normal dimensions for avatars are usually 48x48, 50x50, 96x96, and 100x100.

^{NOTE: Hotlinking (directly sourcing an image stored at deviantART in an image tag off-site) is not permissible, and avatars uploaded for this purpose will be removed. For information regarding deviantART's avatar policies, click here.}





This category was formerly known as AIM Buddy Icons. Icons submitted here are designed specifically for individual useage with chatting programs like AOL Instant Messenger, MSN, etc. Buddy Icons should be in .bmp, .jpg, .jpeg, or. gif format. Different instant messaging services allow different dimensions for their buddy icons, but the most common are 48x48 and 96x96.

^{NOTE: It is okay for others to use buddy icons, however they are usually a personal thing.}





E-Icons is a program that allows you to customize various system icons on your computer. All E-Icons themes submitted here should be compressed, including an .icl file and an .eit file. To learn more about E-Icons, visit its website.





Emoticons (smilies) are icons such as , , and so on. Emoticons generally have the .gif extension. There are not too many guidelines for submitting emoticons, but anything submitted here should not be too large in dimension. The only exception to that rule is if you are submitting a screenshot for a pack of emoticons that you are making available for download.

<sup>NOTE: deviantART is given permission to use anything submitted into the emoticons gallery as an icon in its useable collection (providing credit to the artist) unless the artist specifically denies that automatic assumption in the description of their submitted emoticon(s).





"IconPackager is the world's most popular way to change all the icons on your Windows PC all once." - Stardock Corporation</sup>

IconPackager files are those with the .ip and .iptheme extentions. However, .ico's, .png's, and .icl's may also be submitted to this category.





Icons submitted here are for the MP3ext application. Dimensions of these can be 16x16, 32x32, 48x48, 64x64, 72x72, 96x96, and 128x128 and can be submitted in .ico format. Themes can also be submitted with .icl or .mp3theme extentions.

<sup>To see the features of this program, click here.





"ObjectDock is a program that allows you to have a nice animated launchbar/taskbar on your screen that reacts to your mouse when you mouse over it." - Stardock Corporation</sup>

All icons submitted to the ObjectDock gallery should be in .ico and/or .png format. No ObjectDock backgrounds or themes should be submitted here. Just icons.





These are icons that can be downloaded and used on your operating system. Included sub-categories for OS Icons are *Nix, Mac OS, and Windows.

*Nix: These icons are for Linux/Unix based systems. Icons for these systems are usually either in .png, .tif(f) or .xpm format, with dimensions of 16x16, 32x32, 48x48, 64x64, 72x72, 96x96, and 128x128.

Mac OS: When submitting icons to this category, they should be in .icns or .png format (.sit or .dmg for libraries). All Mac icons should be one or more of the following in terms of dimensions: 16x16, 32x32, 48x48, 64x64, 72x72, 96x96, and 128x128.

Windows: Windows uses icons with the .ico (and .icl for libraries) extentions, except for Windows XP which can use .png's as well. All Windows .ico icons should be one or more of the following in terms of dimensions: 16x16, 32x32, 48x48, 64x64, 72x72, 96x96, and 128x128.





The Miscellaneous gallery is for any icon that does not fit the description of any of the categories above. Please limit the size of these icons. If after reading this you are still not sure where to submit your icons, submit them to this category.





All deviants will be given until Saturday, February 7th, 2004 to move any icon(s) of theirs that they believe is/are in the wrong gallery. After 2/07/04, any icon(s) found in improper galleries will be moved or deleted and deviants will receive section violations, so don't say you haven't been warned. I highly recommend that all deviants who have submitted anything to any icon sub-gallery double check and make sure that they are in the proper ones. This is being done simply so the icons gallery can be cleaned up.


If you are an iconist and believe that I left something important out of a description (or improperly described a section), please note me with the proper info.


I hope that this has been useful and informational for both iconists and non-iconists alike. Of course if you ever have any questions, feel free to contact me.


^hprince329