pixiv Sketch Guidelines

pixiv Inc. (hereinafter referred to as "we", "us", "our company") establishes the following guidelines for the operation and use of pixiv Sketch (hereinafter referred to as "this service").

Article 1.　Provisions

Since these guidelines are guidelines set independently by our company, they are arbitrarily changed at our discretion as a result of changes in society and the environment.

Article 2.　Addition of age restriction

Images, titles, and their descriptions are all treated as a part of a work. Hence when adding restriction levels or removing any artwork, the service's management team will check all related information stated in the "Report Abuse" function beforehand. If the work is deemed problematic, it will either be deleted or given an age restriction label. Any malicious conduct prohibited by the rules below will be dealt via the deletion of user's ID. Please be aware that you will not receive any answer on why your ID was deleted.

Article 3. Prohibited Acts

1. Submitting multiple prohibited works, whether or not said submissions were done all at once or one at a time.
2. Adding tags or comments which are defamatory, or which would cause economic or mental harm.
3. Posting user IDs or image IDs from this service on other websites for defamatory purposes.
4. Using crawlers and other programs to gather or farm works.
5. Anything that places extreme, excessive, or undue burden on the server(s).

Article 4. About age restricted broadcasts

This service requires users to set an age restriction for all those contents that might be considered inappropriate for those under 15 and 18 years old. Please use great care when setting age restriction tags when submitting any works if the following conditions apply:

1. R-18: you broadcast features contents that might be inappropriate for viewers under the age of 18.

   • Expressions that directly or indirectly evoke sexual intercourse

     • Description and depiction of sex acts and masturbation
     • Nudity, exposure of genitals
     • Description and depiction of obscene acts even if the characters are wearing clothes
     • All those contents that imply, express, imitate and suggest sexual arousal and that don't apply to R-15.
     • Description and depiction of ejaculation and other excretions

   • Excessively violent and disgusting scenes, cruel or violent contents

     • Exposure of damaged human body, brain and internal organs
     • Anti-social expressions, such as suicidal behaviors, murderous behaviors and sexual crimes

2. R-15: you broadcast features contents that might be inappropriate for viewers under the age of 15.

   • Sex-related scenes
     • Exposure of underwear (including transparent clothes, stocking, tights)
     • Excessive skin exposure
     • Characters wearing revealing clothes that emphasize chest and hips
     • Objects associated to sexual acts such as condoms, sex toys, collars
   • representations of violent and fearful scenes
     • Fight scenes that include bloodshed
     • Body restraint

Article 5. Prohibited Works

The following works can be considered potential candidates for deletion:

1. Images containing defamation, threats, or that cause economic or mental harm.
2. Images displaying genitalia.
3. Images displaying foreign objects in genitalia.
4. Images containing needlessly warped or distorted depictions of sex.
5. Images containing shockingly or disturbingly strong violence.
6. Images promoting needlessly extreme ideas.
7. Images glorifying or excessively fostering antisocial conduct.
8. Images with an unfavorable depiction of any ethnicity, belief, occupation, sex or religion.
9. Images displaying the actions of religious cults or political extremists.
10. Images which contain inhuman cruelty which are exaggerated to be needlessly shocking.
11. Images which might turn such cruel or shocking content into a meme.
12. Images which contain clearly sexualized depictions of young children. *If censorship (such as mosaic or pixellation) is used, exceptions will be given to the extent that popular wisdom allows.
13. Images mainly based on live-action/three-dimensional objects
    • Cosplay self-portraits
    • Photographs portraying scenery
    • Photographs portraying 3D subjects such as figures
    • However, the following cases do not apply
    • Images where the photograph isn't the main subject of the picture, such as images using photographs as background
    • Images where a sufficient amount of processing has been performed and that can not be judged as a photograph
    • Photographs taken of illustration-based works
    • Images of illustrations drawn on paper and other objects
    • Images of goods created using illustrations
    • Images that contain self-made illustrations
    • Images where illustrations are expressed with the use of cutouts, tapes, etc.
14. Text-based images
    • However, the following cases do not apply
    • Images that include illustrations on top of text

Article 6. About censorship (mosaic processing etc)

1. Censorship and mosaic processing must be operated regardless of the artwork quality and must be based on visual judgment
2. It must be operated so that it's impossible to retrace and recreate the original illustration
3. It includes contour lines
4. Censorships that don't completely obscure inappropriate contents (i.e. transparent ones) are not considered valid
5. Mosaic processing must be operated according to the following:
   • Square mosaic of 4x4px or more. If the image is 400px or more, pixel squares must be calculated according to the size of the canvas (canvas length x 1/100).
6. Censorship by applying a thick layer of color is permitted as long as it covers all inappropriate parts.
7. Censorship by applying white liquids and any other kind of censorship is permitted as long as it's applied to all parts that need to be concealed.

Article 7. Example of contents that require censorship

1. Genitals or parts reminiscent of genitals
2. Sexual acts, acts that resemble penetration
3. Depiction of anuses and acts that resemble penetration
4. Unnecessarily detailed and excessively expressed cuts, lacerations etc.

Article 8. Additional clauses

• Revised July 09, 2018
• Established September 25, 2015