Weekly Art Challenge Announcement [June 1st]

Let's get straight to business.

As I'm going to be pretty busy with Lunar New Year and away most of the time, and there aren't anyone else who can take over, we're basically going to take a break after Challenge #7 and we will continue with Challenge #8 on Monday, February the 10th, 2014. The poll for Challenge #7 will also stay open until we're back with Challenge #8.

Weekly Art Challenge has been a very fun and exciting ride with you guys so far. Never did I think we'd have any more than 5 entries before I started this. So I want to say thank you to everyone who participated in the challenges so far, and I'm really looking forward to seeing your work again in #8.

Also, since I want to encourage participants who are still new to art, I've decided that everyone who has participated in 5 challenges but not won, will receive a participatory appreciation badge. While it is not much, I hope it is enough for you guys to know that your art, bad or not, is always welcome in Weekly Art Challenge. Remember, nobody here really wins but art.

Stay safe, everyone. And happy Lunar New Year!

 

I love the participation badge idea a lot! Especially if it will encourage more people to create each week!


As always, thank -you- for running such a fun art event every week. *^* The break is well earned! I look forward to future challenges and hope your lunar new year is great!

 

I agree with everything Makio-Kuta said here: thank you for running the event and the pretty little badges which are always a joy to look at.

 

What those two said. It's been great to have an excuse to draw random stuff. That's how we all improve, right?

Oh, boo. Why does Arthur have to be the winner of everything? Can't you let, I dunno, Matt or Tom or George win once in a while? (Mal juego de palabras.)

-Wallace

 

It's been fun. I guess everyone needs a little break to prevent art burnout. lol

 

I really like the weekly art challenge, since it personally helps (and force) me to improve on my artwork. But yeah we need break too sometimes, Happy lunar new year too for everyone!

 

These challenges are super awesome, I love seeing everyone's work, and I super appreciate you doing this because they are really very inspiring. All those little pixel art's you make for awards and badges are really sweet too and show a lot of time and effort goes into these fun challenges. I mean honestly who doesn't want a custom badge by Alex/EvilEagles (not sure which to say lol) floating under their name?

So I hope you have an awesome break cuz you deserve it, and a happy lunar new years! 

 

Due to a recent incident, I would like to inform everyone an addition in the rules of the Weekly Art Challenge event.

• Entries must be done completely from scratch by their respective participants. This means no pre-existing stock materials are allowed, regardless of the degree to which they have been altered. Whoever is caught intentionally violating this rule will be subject to the punishment stated in our Forum Rules regarding Credit Theft.

 

It has come to my attention that allowing previously done entries in Weekly Art Challenge may cause negative reactions and discourage everyone from participating. So I would like to make an amendment to the rules of Weekly Art Challenge:

• Entries must be done within the week after the challenge has been issued. No previously done work is allowed. Entries violating this rule may be automatically disqualified without prior notice.

 

Alright. Time for another quick announcement. We're taking a one-week break next week (which is WAC #15) since I'd like to take some time to reassess the current format of Weekly Art Challenge, which is also something I'd like to discuss with you guys about. I generally have 2 questions that I kinda need you guys to be honest with.

#1: What is your criteria when voting for the winning entries in Weekly Art Challenge, or do you just go with your preferences and intuition?

#2: What do you think are the flaws of the current format? What do you suggest?

I'd like to make Weekly Art Challenge a fun and encouraging corner for everyone to do art, while at the same time also a fair little competition so nobody can feel unfair or displeased about. So I hope you guys will help me in making this recurring event a better place.

 

Here are my criteria:

How well does this entry reflect the theme set for this week?

Is there some originality of approach (see, for example, the upside down tree a couple of weeks back) while still recognizably within the theme?

How well has the idea been executed?  (but see my suggestion below)?

As a bonus, is there some visual humor  - obviously this does not apply if the entry is e.g. music, but where it is applicable, it's a nice extra for me.  I accept it may not be a universal liking.

My suggestion is that maybe there be 2 categories; one for beginning/intermediate skill entrants and one for advanced/experienced entrants.  How the pieces were allocated to the categories might get a bit complicated.  I think it would have to be self-selection with everyone being as objective as they can.  That might encourage aspiring artists to enter more, because they would feel that there was a chance for their work to get due recognition instead of almost automatically losing to someone who has had a lot more practice.

 

Interesting.

I judge based on how well the entry matches the set theme in appearance/sound. When the theme is sadness (example), does the picture look like something sad? Does it promote feelings of grief within me? Does the music accurately convey sorrow? All of these are used, along with how much effort I feel was put into the art.

For the most part, I like the system. I would only discourage against having someone win consecutively. If a person wins one week's challenge, they can chill for next week's challenge. That doesn't necessarily mean they can't create something to keep them on their toes, though. =)

 

I'm against that for several reasons.  First this isn't a contest it's a challenge.  We aren't here for recognition since this is a participation based event from what I understood and have seen the past few weeks.  We even get badges just for participating, so nothing is lost if you feel your work didn't get the attention you wanted.

There are sites dedicated specifically to art if we want to get that kind of attention for our finished work regardless of skill level.  People don't automatically lose due to lack of practice or inexperience with the media.  That's a terrible way to look at the time spent with any media.  If you want to turn it into a contest over a challenge, then I'd agree with you it needs to change to a bracketed system.  I wouldn't expect any participation badges then either.  

Secondly enforcing different standards on those with experience makes people less likely to participate.  Having to deal with more work and effort into something that can't be used for a project outside of a week challenge makes it off putting.  Who determines who gets put in which bracket, the majority of those participating?  Or is this after the fact when we see the results?  What if we don't agree with being in that bracket, can we oppose that or are we forced to deal with the decision?  It discourages me even thinking someone is forced to preform to someone else's standards for something that is designed to be fun.  

Recognition is nice, but again the chance of using the work in your project with a random theme is low.  That time might not be well spent for the same amount of reward as someone who gets the same participation driven prize.  We are all going to walk away with the same thing from the challenge in the end, why enforce someone to work harder for the same badge?

Personally I felt everything was fine with the event as is.  I saw quite a few people participate, a record number of people even last week when I first joined in.  I didn't hear of one person who felt neglected or that thinks things were unfair until a mod said otherwise.

 

Generally I'm with palladinthug, on that Weekly Art Challenge is meant to just be a little prompt for artists or art beginners to pick up the pen and start drawing, instead of a contest, despite its appearance. So I'd like to keep this thing rather organic.

The reason I asked was because a few participants said that they weren't very happy about some others using previously finished work to submit. And also, I just kinda had the feeling that some voters weren't judging the submissions based on sound criteria but instead on personal preference and intuition instead. So I'd like us all to come clean about that. And this could also be a subtle reminder as well, that voting for the submissions in WAC isn't as simple as just skimming through the submissions, picking a random one and voting.

 

I like that the challenges have a theme to them but I'm wondering if there is a way to incorporate a technique of art and do a teaching out of it inside the challenges. I'm not sure how this would work because you would either need tutorials or masters teaching those in between. But, I very much would like these challenges to be an opportunity to push myself and learn my tools and software more. 

 

Entries should not be allowed if they were worked on/completed before the challenge was announced, in my opinion. It takes the pressure and, well, challenge out of it. "Greek Mythology? Hmm...I think I have a picture of a temple I sketched up somewhere" offers NO "challenge" to an artist. However, if you really want to share it with people, maybe consider starting a thread in the Art, Literature and Music forum. That way, you can put up all your old work - not just that temple you made.

As for my voting criteria, I have a few things I keep in mind before I vote:

• Is the entry appealing to my eye?
• Does the entry invoke an emotion? (Be it laughter awe, etc. But not "ugh.")
• Are there at least 3 entires that are both more appealing to me and invoke more emotion? If so, I will vote for them (I try to limit myself to a maximum of three votes per challenge).
• Is the entry mine? If so, I won't vote for myself.

That's how I determine which entry should win. If I think it's good, then I will vote for it. If I don't, then I won't vote for it. I guess you could call that "picking favorites" or "intuition," if you want. I pick my favorite entry and use my sense of what looks right and wrong and vote based on that.

And finally, I don't think there is anything wrong with these art challenges. They aren't contests - if they were, it would be called "Weekly Art Contest," not "Weekly Art Challenge." The point of a "challenge" is not to compete. It's to complete. (Sick slogan right there.) However, I still like the idea of voting for your favorite entry. Badges are a good way to encourage people to enter them - people like getting something for something. And a voting system also provides drive.

-Wallace

 

The important question is though, does the entry invoke the RIGHT emotion? There's a reason why we have a theme to begin with. If the challenge asks for a sad scene and you vote for the entry that makes you laugh the most then that's just funny. Adherence is a very crucial criteria, even more so than "looking good" in my opinion.

Also, to address Clydous' suggestion on disallowing consecutive wins: I can kinda see the point you're getting at here but at the same time I feel it'd be a bit ... unreasonable. Does anybody else have any problems against people winning consecutively?

 

Hmm.  Consecutive wins are tricky.  I'd be in the position of sharing myself, but that's just me.  

I also agree on Wallace's scenario of not voting for myself.  It's not an election or a contest.  I'd really like to think people would be generous and allow others the chance to get a turn, and that is purely my opinion.  I trust people to make the right decision.  Again nothing is at stake here.  You can walk away with all the votes, and still feel someone else deserved it more.

I'd really leave it up to your judgement in that case.  I'm too much of a nice guy to handle thinking someone would eat up all the imaginary badges.  Then again I was sadly mistaken come online gaming when people do that for no legitimate reason.  I can't judge a person's character by the work they produce or their style.  After a while of coming to know their results, I can tell if they posted something that wasn't theirs though.  Worst case if someone is upset by a consecutive winner allow them to challenge directly with a face off.  If the winner is that determined to keep it, they can do a 24 hour challenge.

 

Well, yes...


but you see, there is the inherent problem when it comes to public votes (even in judges votes, to an extent sometimes), where people vote based on their personal biases... for example, in "Script contests" on the wc3 community I've been, the script part is never looked at by the general public, instead they vote solely on which one "looks awesome" (in terms of visual effects and the like)


and because of that, winning has two parts, judges vote and public vote (it's like 70% judge, 30% public)... which to an extent keeps things in order (especially since judges votes have a written breakdown based on criteria and so the public can see why the judge has given the vote/score), but not that much...


but then again, doing that in these "for fun challenges" which I think the main purpose is to encourage us to create things is kind of overkill IMHO.

 

I agree with this, too. Blatant disregard of the theme is something I forgot to mention. However, this is a two-way street: sometimes we find things funny when they aren't supposed to be – shows like Wipeout, AFV, etc. take full advantage of this. I dislocated my knee – that wasn't very funny. But, now that it's over, I can have a good laugh about it.

Invoking the "right" emotion is tricky, especially for themes that have nothing to do with emotion. Sometimes we get a theme like "Love" or "Despair," but even then it's hard to tell what would win. A winner for the Love challenge could invoke feelings of "D'aww!" or "" and either one could win. (Those are tears of joy, by the way. Think the beginning of "Up.") On the other end of the spectrum, despair can be anything from "Oh my gosh, I'm so happy that isn't happening to me right now it's funny" to "Oh my gosh, I never want that to happen to me" and again, either could win. Different emotions, different entries, different winners. It all depends.

Personally, no. And I have a feeling some people will just not vote for someone if they won the previous challenge ("I really like this entry, but this one is good too...I could vote for both, but this guy won last time, and the other person doesn't have a badge..." is something that comes to mind).

It's also a question of ethics on the (arrogant) artist's side: if you think your entry is far better than the others, (1) you're a jerk and (2) you should give other people a chance. There are three basic rules that I like to keep in mind for the challenge:

1. It's not a contest.
2. Be courteous.
3. Don't let opinions of people get in the way of your opinion of the art.

This would fall under rule #2. If you've won the past 3 challenges, maybe it's time to take a chill pill, relax, and congratulate someone else for a change. Personally, I've never even gotten a vote from anyone. Does it get me down? Of course not! It just means I have to do better next time. See rule #1.

-Wallace