The Energon Pub

News Credits: 4 · by **GrimSqueaker** » Sun Jul 08, 2007 5:31 pm

yippie the fabled Art challenge which was foretold weeks ago has arrived, and it might just be a weekly thing! who knows! So i reckon to keep it fresh the creatively minded of us oughta post up suggestions for future contests here!

News Credits: 1 · by **Dr Buffalo** » Sun Jul 08, 2007 7:00 pm

Designing characters, in certain styles, like "Movie-style Beast Wars"
Or show a picture of a vehicle and make a robot out of it. Just my 2 cents.

by **Pyroclasm** » Sun Jul 08, 2007 7:52 pm

Here's my $.02 from my experiences running art challenges on another board:
Don't make it a "contest", but rather a weekly (or even better, monthly) "challenge". This is for a few reasons:
a) Contest suggests a competition for a prize. If there are no prizes, then it just becomes an "I'm better than you" competition. Which leads to...
b) Competition can create animosity between posters. The feeling that the "other guy posted crap" and "there is no way they should have won if it was FAIR". Which is an issue because...
c) "Fairness" is hard to maintain because entrants are not truly "anonymous". They have a posting history. So no matter how hard judges try, their decisions can be influenced by the participants' popularity & opinions.
d) Often with "competitions" or "contests" within a small community, the same circle of people participate, and often the same couple of people win. Which leads to...
e) Contests discourage those that enjoy making art but think they have no chance to win, whether because of a perceived bias, or because the ones who win tend to be professionally good.

Try making it some sort of "Challenge" with no winner and no prizes, just a theme that people do because it is fun, not because they want to win.

In my art challenges, there is always a random element involved to force the participants to think outside of the box. If you are interested in this concept, I can elaborate.