03-11-2012, 03:36 AM
I think you should do the challenges once a month and people should have the whole month to do them. Yes, two weeks is plenty of time to do an illustration if that's all you're doing in those two weeks, but the thing is most of us have other crap to do. I would've loved to do the Monster Hunter challenge, but I had other work I had to do in those two weeks and I couldn't do it all. I had to choose between doing something for fun or doing something that will make me some money. I chose the latter. I didn't even attempt the Monster Hunter one because I knew it would take a long time and I didn't think I could get it done by the deadline. If I had had a month to do it, I would've at least made the attempt. The reason why I did the action figure one was because it was fun and because I knew I could get it finished in a few days. The other challenges would take far longer so I didn't even try. Plus, I don't particularly care for Miyazaki's movies and I hate Zelda, so there was that, too.
The reality is that we aren't getting paid to do these challenges and they are very time consuming to do. Only a handful of people are even going to get any kind of recognition for doing them. The vast majority of people that do the challenges get nothing from doing these except some practice and some fun. The action figure challenge was fun, so I did it. The Monster Hunter challenge sounded fun and I wanted to do it, but I just didn't have enough time. The Miyazaki and Zelda challenges weren't going to be fun for me so I didn't bother. I don't care about those properties and spending weeks of my life working on illustrations of them wasn't going to be worth it to me.
That brings me to another suggestion: be less specific about the subjects. Instead of doing a redesign of 'Zelda: Wink Waker', do a redesign of any game of the artists choice. I hate Zelda and I didn't want to spend two weeks drawing a Zelda picture. Give me the option to choose my game to redesign and I'd be far more willing to do the challenge. I was watching 'Return of the Jedi' the other day and was thinking about how bad the design of the Ewoks were and how if they were more like chimps instead of teddy bears, people would've liked them much more. I thought "Redesign the Ewoks" would be a great Bloodsports challenge, but then I thought "What about people that don't give a shit about Ewoks or Star Wars? Why would they want to do that?". I realized a better challenge would be "Redesign a creature or character from any movie" so people could choose to do whatever they wanted. With the action figure challenge, you gave people three different properties to choose from and on top of that, people still had a lot of freedom to design whatever kind of character they wanted. That's why it was successful. Telling people to design a Miyazaki poster is great for Miyazaki fans, but for people that aren't fans, it becomes a chore. So, we think "Why bother?". The Monster Hunter challenge was a great idea because people had a lot of freedom to do whatever characters and creatures they wanted. The problem with it was time. We had to design two versions of a guy, front and back and a monster, too. I think if people had a month to work on it, a lot more people would've at least attempted it. I know I would've.
The reality is that we aren't getting paid to do these challenges and they are very time consuming to do. Only a handful of people are even going to get any kind of recognition for doing them. The vast majority of people that do the challenges get nothing from doing these except some practice and some fun. The action figure challenge was fun, so I did it. The Monster Hunter challenge sounded fun and I wanted to do it, but I just didn't have enough time. The Miyazaki and Zelda challenges weren't going to be fun for me so I didn't bother. I don't care about those properties and spending weeks of my life working on illustrations of them wasn't going to be worth it to me.
That brings me to another suggestion: be less specific about the subjects. Instead of doing a redesign of 'Zelda: Wink Waker', do a redesign of any game of the artists choice. I hate Zelda and I didn't want to spend two weeks drawing a Zelda picture. Give me the option to choose my game to redesign and I'd be far more willing to do the challenge. I was watching 'Return of the Jedi' the other day and was thinking about how bad the design of the Ewoks were and how if they were more like chimps instead of teddy bears, people would've liked them much more. I thought "Redesign the Ewoks" would be a great Bloodsports challenge, but then I thought "What about people that don't give a shit about Ewoks or Star Wars? Why would they want to do that?". I realized a better challenge would be "Redesign a creature or character from any movie" so people could choose to do whatever they wanted. With the action figure challenge, you gave people three different properties to choose from and on top of that, people still had a lot of freedom to design whatever kind of character they wanted. That's why it was successful. Telling people to design a Miyazaki poster is great for Miyazaki fans, but for people that aren't fans, it becomes a chore. So, we think "Why bother?". The Monster Hunter challenge was a great idea because people had a lot of freedom to do whatever characters and creatures they wanted. The problem with it was time. We had to design two versions of a guy, front and back and a monster, too. I think if people had a month to work on it, a lot more people would've at least attempted it. I know I would've.