Re: A Challenge For Everyone - Please Read & Comme I wasn't confining my comments to 3D artwork, I deliberately used the more generic term, "CG" for "Computer Generated." I would hazzard to say that the overwhelming majority of work we see in this forum is CG of one sort or another as opposed to "traditional artwork," i.e. hand-drawn or painted and scanned into the computer. But even if we only look at 3D, it still accounts for far more than its fair share. Still, nothing is absolute and I never meant to imply that it was. On ballance, I think 3D/CG has an advantage in this forum but there definitely are exceptions.
Re: A Challenge For Everyone - Please Read & Comme I don't come here that often anymore, but of the 11 or so contest this year, how many have been won by CG and how many have been one by other medium? Also there is nothing preventing someone from making a contest CGI only. I don't think anyone would have a problem with that either.
Re: A Challenge For Everyone - Please Read & Comme Oh, I absolutely would have a problem with that. It would be even more restrictive and discriminatory than I think that the December contest is, because quite aside from the question of skill the complexity and the potential cost of the artist's tools would be a real stopper for artists who aren't already doing CG. With the December contest, at least those of us who prefer CG have probably got some experience and access to scissors, paper, clay, glue and glitter. I doubt that there are many CG artists who didn't paint or draw or sculpt or build model kits before they started doing CG art, and I'll bet that most continue to work in other media.
Re: A Challenge For Everyone - Please Read & Comme Dennis, I don't remember you ever even entering one of these art contests, why so vocal now?
Re: A Challenge For Everyone - Please Read & Comme I don't like cheating, I don't like pettiness, and I don't like deliberate unfairness. There are other things I don't like either. There have never been these problems with this contest before because apparently the artists have cared more about doing their thing than about winning a little competition. That seems to me to have been a good thing. I do participate in this forum. Since I've never entered one of these contests, as you say, my opinion however limited is certainly not biased by concern that I might not win one now.
Re: A Challenge For Everyone - Please Read & Comme Because his opinion was asked, along with the rest of the board. The concensus seems to be that restricting the medium is a bad thing, whilst some restriction in the theme of the challenge is considered to be forcing people to think outside of the box without forcing them completely out of their area of expertise.
Re: A Challenge For Everyone - Please Read & Comme I think this pretty much sums it up; although, I would still caution people to be careful about getting too specific with their themes and topics. Some specificity is a good thing and provides focus for the challenge, but too much just forces people to squeeze minor variations out of essentially the same template. This has been my objection to many of the contests over the past two years and goes a long way toward explaining why I've only ever participated in one of them. I remember one contest from a while back where where the challenge was to design a ship of some kind. I don't remember all the details, but so many of the ship's characteristics were already laid out in the requirements that there wasn't much designing left to do. Taking it to that extreme is what I would call being forced to think inside the box, which is probably as bad or worse than being forced to work outside your chosen medium. Topics that provide focus and direction for a contest are all well and good, as are topics that are a little more difficult and out of the ordinary, but you have to leave room for individual creativity or it just isn't worth it.
Re: A Challenge For Everyone - Please Read & Comme I don't think there is a concensus at all. I think basically you have a group of people that feel very strongly about not limiting the medium, I think everyone else is pretty much indifferent because at the end of the day, the vast majority of work in this forum will still be 3D. In the end it is the moderator's decision to make. So whatever he/she feels is best is the way that it will go.
Re: A Challenge For Everyone - Please Read & Comme Why should be leave this up to the moderator? Although Vektor is, I'm sure, a nice guy, how can this be left up to him?
Re: A Challenge For Everyone - Please Read & Comme ^^ Better to him than to me, the moderator . In the end, it shouldn't be up to the moderator, anyway; it's not my forum, it's yours. The best I can do is help keep the peace and add my counsel, wise or otherwise. But the challenges are by and for the members - they aren't a function of the board itself, and it would be presumptuous to tell the members how they "must" conduct them.
Re: A Challenge For Everyone - Please Read & Comme Oops, sorry! I was thinking about the old moderator!
Re: A Challenge For Everyone - Please Read & Comme hey, now. i'm pretty sure that he's younger than i am!
Re: A Challenge For Everyone - Please Read & Comme I like the basic guidelines Vektor drew up, with the modifications provided. Topic should be just that, a topic, and this month's contest seemed to take things to a slightly pettier level. If the EXACT SAME contest was suggested, with the stipulations that it had to be shown in a christmas scene / hanging from a tree, and look home-made, then people could have physically built things, drawn things, or done CGI work and inserted into a CGI tree, and no one would have had the slightest problem with it. Problem started with restricting HOW people could do things instead of the THEME for WHAT they could do... And the thing with duals is crazy to the point of rediculiousness. Why bother? Pathetic, really. It's a contest for fun, don't cheat. Only thing you gain is a slight feeling of power for a month as you dictate down your own rules. It's for FUN.
Re: A Challenge For Everyone - Please Read & Comme I'm going to say something here that I hope dosnt start another war, but when it looks like for the second month in a row the contest is going to be won by an entrant who built his model before he even knew there was a compition, once more we need to have it laid out firmly in the rules that; A) there needs to be a wip thread from the begining of the month to show that work has been done during the month, and the entry was built for the compition, not either before it, or in parrell with it but unaware of it. B) that people cant enter in the last week of the compitition, the newer a thread is, the more it sticks in someones mind come poll time, this gives someone that has entered their entry a few days before the poll an advantage over those that did theres weeks ago, and have their threads bumped down, often off the front page alltogether. I have nothing against people joining the board just to enter these compitions if it adds to the group of artists that contribute each month, but it would be nice if they did that in the first three weeks of the compition, so they could compete with us fairly, rather than turning up at the last moment with a completed entry, especially if that entry was not created for the compition, but just coincidentally fitted the terms of conditions.
Re: A Challenge For Everyone - Please Read & Comme I agree that defining the entry must be created during the month might have a place in the challenge rules, but I honestly don't really mind. However... I don't agree WIP threads should be mandatory. While in some entries it's fun to watch the progress and it actually adds to the final result, in other entries it's just the opposite - WIP ruins the final result. I think it should be left up to the submitter. As for not allowing anyone to enter during the last week of the month... Speaking as someone who sometimes only start working on the entry during the last week of the month, I can tell you firsthand that I really don't do it with the intention to stick it fresh in people's mind. It's more of a combination of when an idea is set and the time allows sort of thing. After all, say someone starts a WIP thread ("enters") at the beginning of the month, then updates until posting the actual final entry, like, 2 days before voting starts - what's the difference? And if someone posted a complete entry 2 weeks before voting and it had drifted off the first page - they can always click the "bump" button. Not only that, but people are actually told to bump their challenge threads (or repost if they can't find them) before submission period closes. And all the entries are represented equally in the final poll. After all, this is a [/i]monthly[/i] challenge, not a "first 3 weeks of the month" (or the "2 weeks between when voting ends and a new challenge is set until a week before the end of the month") challenge.
Re: A Challenge For Everyone - Please Read & Comme I guess I go on ebay too much, because I picture it as a handful of people slugging it out over the course of a long auction, each bidding to try and win, only to be sniped at the last second by someone who puts in a high bid just before the auction ends, with no time for anyone else to raise their bids.
Re: A Challenge For Everyone - Please Read & Comme Yeah, but we're not in eBay anymore... here you can't just throw a high bid in the heat of the moment. It takes time to develop and usually doesn't even have anything to do with the previous "bids". I'd say you're safe
Re: A Challenge For Everyone - Please Read & Comme But you can only bid with the money you have, most people are only bidding with a months money, some could be bidding with money saved over a much longer period. In that case they can always be counted on to make a higher bid.
Re: A Challenge For Everyone - Please Read & Comme Then why would they wait until the very last week of the month to bid? I just don't think that people who only bid their weekly allowance can't meet the reserved price, that's all.
Re: A Challenge For Everyone - Please Read & Comme One thing to keep in mind here is that, no matter how high your "bid," it doesn't mean you win the auction; that is still up to the 'jury.' I've seen pieces here that I thought were absolutely outstanding that didn't win - not to say that those that did win weren't worthy, although if I were to single any out, I'd admit that my first win was a weak piece. Sometimes, people just have to like the color of your money, not the amount of it. On topic, I wouldn't want to make a WIP thread a requirement. Not everyone has that amount of time, and not everyone has that sort of workflow; sometimes, my own ideas are best when they come at the last minute (and sometimes, they really need more time! ). I do agree, though, that it would be preferable that entries are created specifically for a challenge, rather than pulled from our backfiles, but there's no effective means of policing that, unless we're going to provide partial beginning points to entrants, from which they have to derive their final work, and I don't see anything like that ever working, either. As I mentioned elsewhere, we function largely on the honor system here, and people should respect that, from start to finish.