Kamishibai FAQ

We review all stories before they are posted on Otaku World. Part of this review is to make sure the quality of the stories as posted on Otaku World meets a minimum level of standards.

To better clarify our review policies, we have created the Kamishibai Story Guidelines, which more formally specifies what we are looking for in a story and why we might reject that story. Please read these guidelines carefully.

We do have a policy concerning the size of stories which is spelled out in the Kamishibai Story Guidelines, Section 4a, but here is more information for when your story archive is too large.

How can you tell if your file will be too large? Archive the entire story, art, sound, and music into a single zip file. If the size of that zip file exceeds 7 megabytes then it is too large.

What can you do if your archive is too large? There are couple of things you can do. One, make sure all of your art is 256 colors and sounds are 11KHz or 22KHz mono (Kamishibai won't really play stereo properly except on some systems). The two biggest problem areas are using 16 million color art (which doesn't compress very will in a zip file) and using 44KHz sounds (22KHz is fine for virtually all uses). If reducing the art color resolution and sound resolution doesn't do it, break your story up into two parts and submit each as a separate chapter.

We realize you want your art to look as good as possible, especially if you do any kind of rendering, and you want your sounds to be as clear as possible. Please remember, however, that Kamishibai was not created as a showcase for fancy animations and tremendous sounds. It was created to tell stories with some pretty pictures, a few well-placed sound effects, and background music. Animations can be used but should be used sparingly. Concentrate on telling a good story and use the pictures and sounds to enhance the story, not the other way around.