The Artists' Studio is
a place for you to make your animation available as ecards while
getting visibility for yourself and your work, making money, and
joining a community of like-minded creative folk! See our
FAQ below.
Artist News
The results are in for our Hi-Def Anytime
Contest! .Congratulations to all the winners.
We've relaunched our
Facebook
application. You can send and receive your
cards in Facebook. Give it a try!
We have now officially opened up the ability to create
Photo Inside animations to all artists (2d, 3d
and stop motion animation and live action video)! We've
just posted full documentation, sample animation that you can
learn from, and a tool allowing you to test that everything is
working properly. The documentation is at an open wiki
site which means we encourage you to make comments, changes or
add samples yourself if you like. Visit
http://wiki.hdgreetings.com/artists.
-
Get paid based on how many times your ecard is sent
- Showcase your talent
-
Get exposure to companies wanting to commission work
- Retain copyrights to your work (unless you accept an offer to buy those rights)
- Test your concepts with users
-
Send your own content to friends, family and businesses as a
super cool HDcard. Be one of the few artists to demo
your work on an iPhone.
There are many ways to create great content for HD Greetings - 3d animators,
stop motion artists, 2d animators and graphic programmers can all create cards. 3d animators can use any 3d software, such as 3ds Max, Softimage,
Maya and Lightwave. For 2d artists, any content authoring program can be used including Flash. For programmers, DirectX using C++, C#, or VB.Net can be used.
The reason all of these techniques can be used is that the final format we accept from you is video, which can be output using any of the above methods. See below for details on output format.
Think 'high quality digital video.'
-
Length: 10-45 seconds, ideally 10-20
-
Video format: our first choice is uncompressed AVI (straight
RGB) in a .zip file. Second choices are WMV or MP4 (H.264).
Third choice is to convert any format you have.
- Resolution: the higher the better!
Our first choice is 1080p (1920x1080) or 720p (1280x720).
If this is not possible, our second choice is 720x404 or
720x480. Having the HD resolution allows us to
highlight your work in more places- for example we're
creating an HD-DVD/Blu-Ray disc to feature artists.
If you would like to offer your video at higher resolution
but don't have the hardware, we can rerender it for you if you
send us a .zip file in your submission.
- Aspect ratio: 16:9 is preferred but if you don't have it we'll letterbox for you.
-
Frame rate: 24 frames per second is preferred but we can accept 30fps or 15fps.
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Bit rate (compression): Our first choice is any lossless
compression. Second choice is 2000-15000 kbps, the
closer to 15000 the better.
- Color space/depth: the highest quality you have.
We're really thinking of the above as a "master," from which
we will create different formats and levels for web users based
on their bandwidth connection and computer speed. You only have
to worry about the master- the rest is automated on our site.
We want to remove as many hurdles as possible to working with
you. You retain the copyrights to your content. If a
customer would like to use your content for a marketing campaign
or if HD Greetings would like to buy the rights to your work, we
will make you an offer and you will have the choice to accept or
reject that offer.
We want to make it easy for both users and companies to find
your work! Companies are seeking compelling and innovative
content for viral marketing campaigns and they may
wish to commission a custom ecard. Viral content is fast
becoming one of the most effective forms of marketing for
companies of all sizes, including Proctor & Gamble and
Coca-Cola, and they are devoting more of their marketing budgets
to it.
This is how your name and work will appear on our site:
-
After our beta period, we will prominently feature weekly artist rankings based on
ecard usage and earnings. You will have the chance to
judge yourself against your peers and learn what resonates
with users.
-
We have an ecard category titled
Browse By Artist.
Within that category, we list each individual artist name. Users
can click on a name to see all of the cards by that artist as
well as any or all of the following: a photo, some text about
the artist and his/her work and contact information and a
demo reel. Here's
an
example.
- Your name will be included
on the ecard preview page so that users can find more of your
cards.
We do not allow watermarks because it interferes with the user experience and the enjoyment of the ecard. We think they would be less willing to send an ecard with a watermark.
You will collect 50% of the net advertising revenue
associated with your ecard. You will get a check once your
earnings have reached $100. We expect that the most
successful clips can earn $1000+/month during peak traffic
times.
HD Greetings is paid by an advertising agency based on the
total views of our ads. We track these views by ecard, so
we know exactly how much each ecard is earning on a daily basis.
After our Beta period, we will launch artist accounts, giving
you the ability to check out the stats for your cards whenever
you'd like. In the meantime, we will periodically email
reports. The advertising agency pays us 30-50 days after
the end of the month and we will pay our artists shortly after
that. We will make all payments by PayPal, which is now
available in 190 countries.
We're most interested in concepts, styles and themes that
resonate with users. As we expand our catalog, get more
users and publish rankings, together we'll start to learn what
works. Keep in mind that we want to attract a broader
audience than existing ecard sites. We expect to attract
people who are bored with the existing content and are looking
for something new, something they can be proud to send.
Here are some learnings from existing ecard sites that may
still be helpful:
- Seasonal Traffic: We know that ecard sites tend to get
peak traffic in late November through mid January (driven by
Christmas/ Happy Holidays, Happy New Year and Thanksgiving)
and again in February (Valentine's Day). Halloween,
Easter, Mother's Day and Father's Day are also big ecard
sending holidays.
- Top Everyday Occasions: Birthday is by far the biggest
non-seasonal ecard sending occasion. Other occasions
include Thinking of You, Thank
You and Just Because.
- Styles that Work: 'big hit' cards and viral marketing
content are often clever, funny and character-based. Examples of
successful ecards or viral marketing content include
OfficeMax
ElfYourself,
Jibjab Snowball Fight, Egreetings
Singing Chins cards,
the Purple& Brown
series on Nickelodeon and the Hallmark
Hoops & Yoyo line.
- International visitors: More than half of the traffic to
ecard sites is from outside of the US, much of it from
non-English speaking countries. We welcome themes and
content that that will attract visitors from all countries.
We have now officially opened up the ability to create
Photo Inside animations to all artists (2d, 3d
and stop motion animation and live action video)! We've
just posted full documentation, sample animation that you can
learn from, and a tool allowing you to test that everything is
working properly. The documentation is at an open wiki
site which means we encourage you to make comments, changes or
add samples yourself if you like. Visit
http://wiki.hdgreetings.com/artists.
& If you don't have music for your clips, we can provide it.
Please just let us know if there's a certain style you have in
mind when you make your submission.
If you do have music or other audio, we cannot accept it
unless you have full rights to it.
We're all for adding text if your ecard is clearly tied to a
certain occasion (e.g. it's a Halloween ecard and you want to add
"Happy Halloween") or if the text is an important part of the
overall design. If your ecard could be used for a number of
different occasions, text may limit its usage by tying it to a
single occasion. We will put your ecard in all relevant
categories and users have the ability to create a message of
their choice.
Get in on the ground floor and submit today. We have just launched our beta site and expect our traffic to ramp up quickly. Be one of the first artists highlighted on our site and receive a greater share of exposure to companies interested in creating custom cards!
To get started, please send us examples of your work in one of these ways (in order of preference):
- Email us a link where your content can be viewed
- Email us a file less than 6mb in Quicktime (.mov), Windows Media (.wmv), or Flash (.swf/.flv)
- Use our
Submission Page to upload something larger or in a different video format directly to our server (there is no size limit
but we prefer that you compress them into zip or rar files)
Once your content is approved, we will ask that go to our
Submission Page and follow the 3 step
process for
final submission which includes:
-
Review the Artist Terms of Use
- Submit your file via
the large file uploader (no size limit)
-
Submit some information including (all optional): a
paragraph about yourself including contact info you'd like
to make public, a photo, a demo reel, and title(s) for your
ecard(s)
-
Note: please send audio in a separate file if possible
-
Note: we can provide music if you don't have any
Questions? Ask them
here.