CRIMSON CROW - Announcements/Suggestions

[pnate]

Hey Daggers,

So I was talking to StardustLarva and MarjorieDavis, and we thought it would be fun to try a Creature of the Week (CROW) Challenge. Since at least the three of us were into doing it, we are going to start one this coming Sunday. The format will be similar to how we did our CHOW: two weeks per topic, beginning and ending on Sundays. Unfortunately, most likely we won't have a CHOW going on at the same time, unless there is enough people to want both.

Would any of you guys be interested in taking part, and do you have any suggestions for future topics? Are there people who would also like a CHOW going on simultaneously? Please post any points of discussion/suggestions here! Thanks guys.

[Patrick Gaumond]

I'm in! Interest in the chow seems to have waned quite a lot for whatever reason, generally the output was good for a while but it kind of fizzled unfortunately :( It's a shame since the topics were quite good. I thought brainstorm on facebook would be good but it's devolved into a redesign fest, so maybe this can fill the void

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actually now that I think about it, maybe a rotation or variety of topics might be interesting, like brainstorm started with? Rather than one on repeat. Just a thought, I like this idea but it might keep people interested if the topic is more varied

[Adam Lina]

That sounds like a great idea! I'll give it a shot.

[meat]

My record for finishing shit isn't much of an argument builder but I'm more interseted in CROW than CHOW if that means anything at all.

[Fedodika]

Aghhh ill do it! we need moar enthusiasm around here PPLS!!

[Adrian]

Let's dooo eett !
Very curious on how the topics will look.

[Amit Dutta]

Having never finished a chow here, my view counts for crap all, however, I totally second Patrick's view. If youu mixed up the topics each time you might get a more consistent overall participation. That way people who want to practice things other than just character after character, will get a chance, and can be pushed out of their comfort zones.
Saves you having to have multiple threads on the go as well like on CA (CHOW, COW, EOW, IOW etc) that would probably need multiple moderators.

The reason the ChoW died a bit I think was that over the holidays there was a large gap in challenges, so people wandered off onto other things. Keep the model simple. Keep it manageable. Help people engage with it as easy as possible. For all its faults the facebook challenges like brainstorm are simple and consistent, though I think they have become exceedingly boring: Redesign "insert beaten to death IP here".

[pnate]

Thanks all for the input and enthusiasm!

Patrick and Amit - That's true, a varied type of challenge could be really interesting. I think it would definitely get the most people interested in taking part and help us practice the widest range of topics. So like Amit mentioned (and with what's listed on CA's challenge section), we could do: Characters, Creatures, Environments, Industrial Designs, and Illustrations.

So then: what do you guys think of rotating challenge types every time with those 5 topics?

The only issue I can think of with this format is that if you are more interested in a specific type over the other ones, it will be almost 2 months before the cycle will come back to that category, which might cause a big dropoff in interest. We could also just make each challenge one week long, although this might not be possible for people who are busy with other things. Any thoughts on that?

[Amit Dutta]

Oh did I not suggest a 1 week period? My bad, I totally meant to. 1 week to do the final, and 1 week for the vote. In the vote period of the last challenge, the next challenge can get posted. The topics also don't have to be big stories or excerpts or anything. Sometimes even throwing in curveballs like painting some topic as an old school impressionist might have. Or paint a screenshot from the one game you would like to make yourself. Or paint the book cover to your own life story biography. Why does everything have to be so entertainment design focused all the time? :)

[AngeliquevdMee]

Yesss creatures please :D it would be really cool to switch it up a little. I hope I have time~

[meat]

I wuold cut off the Illustration and maybe even Industrial Design. Leaving only Character, Creature, Environment, Wild Card for monthly rotation. Wild Card = anything else goes.

[Fedodika]

yea i'd cut out industrial design, not a ton of people here are even into that! most people on here are illustrators, character/creature artists and a few people do environments but you'd be hard pressed to find someone on here who does industrial design

[crackedskull]

Id make the challenge a month long and add multiple options.

[pnate]

So it sounds like these points stand with most of us:

-Mix up one of the topics as a wildcard (like Amit suggested, something fun and out of left field)
-Get rid of Industrial Design and Illustration (So the cycle would be: Characters, Creatures, Environments, and Wildcard)
-Make the challenge a weekly thing, one week per topic only

Another point I am not completely sure of is the choosing of each topic. We could do like we did with the CHOW, where the winner would pick the next one, if that works for everyone?

Cracked - Do you mean like everyone could pick whether they want to do a character, creature, or environment for the topic? That could work, but that would have to make the prompts pretty generalized. I also think a month might be too long...Anyone have thoughts on doing a long format freestyle like that?

[Ultramarine]

1-2 week challenges with a rotating theme sounds perfect.

[KurtJeremy]

2 weeks for me.
winner picks the next category.

[pnate]

Thanks everyone for all your input and suggestions. I've put up the new challenge here: http://crimsondaggers.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=6108

Please forgive my lameness but I had some fun with creating the banner and the name :)

foxfire1345 - I also am not sure about only a week per topic, but we can try this for a few weeks and see how many people actually are able to do it. I'm assuming most people have work and school, so if it seems like it's going too fast, we can change it to two weeks.

What do you guys think about winner picking the next category? This will mean we will probably end up doing some of these more than others. Would you rather do that, or have it be a regular cycle to cover every type?

[meat]

Lol, I have both work and class and freelance....... I'd say winner of the week can choose to pick next topic of either next week, or next of the same challenge (eg. winner of CHOW picks next month's CHOW topic?), or give it up for the organizer (you?) to choose a topic from Topic Warehouse. This way your collection of ideas won't be depleted as quickly, and people can have more involvement with the continuation of the challenge. They can choose to have one of their visions visualized next week because they're great character artist but not good at environment, or they can choose a well-thought out character challenge topic, as a character artist themselves, for next round.

Once again thank you Nate so much for bringing this to the CD community, you are one of our pillars who works so much in the background both for your own leveling up as well as for bringing the rest of us up!

[Patrick Gaumond]

I think the category should be on a cycle and the topic in that category should be chosen, just to avoid doing the same thing over and over again. And maybe the WOW topic could be based off of a madlib or something so that its really crazy... idk just tossing ideas : o

[Adam Lina]

Yea, what Patrick said.