Character portraits, also commonly referred to as avatars, are not a must, but a good portrait certainly makes things look better, and might also help other players picture your character. On this page, you should be able to find all the information you need regarding character portraits.

here can I find a suitable character portrait?
If you are good enough at drawing, you could always draw one yourself. Alternatively, you could commission one from an artist for a small fee. We have several members on the Development Board who are artists; you could try contacting them to see if they are interested in taking on such a commission.

There are also many websites on the internet that provide avatars for use in RPGs such as ours. We have listed a few such sites here.

Important note: The Santharian Dream does not hold the copyrights to any of the pictures on the sites listed below. If copyright issues are not addressed by the site itself, be sure to contact the artists themselves to ask for permission to use the picture. Don't worry, artists usually don't bite!

If you know a of good resources site which could be added here to this list, feel free to inform the Administrators.

Where should I upload the picture?
Before you upload the picture , make sure they fit the following requirements:

Portrait Requirements:

• The image must be less than or equal to 15kb (kilobytes) in size.
• The image must be square, with a maximum size of 70x70 pixels.
• The image must be in GIF or JPG/JPEG format.

It is generally advised that you upload the picture to the Santharian server, though you can of course upload it to some other place. If you choose the latter, make sure it is a reliable and does not experience much downtime.

The reason we advise you to upload your portrait to the Santharian server is quite simple: If you do so, you won't have to worry about whether the webspace the picture is on is reliable or if linking to pictures on this sever is allowed at all (e.g. Many free webspace providers will display an ugly replacement picture instead in such situations). If the picture is on the Santharian sever, it will display without any problems - unless the server is down, which seldom happens, and during which the RPG forum will also be inaccessible anyway.

There are two ways to get your picture uploaded on the Santharian server:

1. In the "Forum Profile Information" page of your profile, select the option "I will upload my own picture". Then enter its location on your computer into the space on the right (you may use the "Browse" option to make this easier), and click the "Change Profile" button at the bottom pf the page to upload and display it.

2. You can send the picture to an Administrator, who will upload it to the site for you, as well as add the gold frame that many portraits on the site have. You should also mention your character's name, so we know who the portrait is for. However, note that this will take more time than the previous method; you should give the Administrator a day or two to get it uploaded.

Can I link directly to the picture on the page where it was found?
No. Aside from the fact that many webmasters don't like this sort of direct linking, the site owner might also to move the pages and pictures to other folders or close down the site. This will leave you with a dead link for your character portrait at all the posts you've made so far. We don't really want this to happen, do we?