TT-Forums OTTDP Graphic Artist Awards - Discussion ONLY

[Raichase]

Please limit yourselves to discussion about proposed rules for a competition, for graphic artists to submit works to, and be judged by their peers.

Things that need investigating are:

1. Submission due dates and voting period.

2. Who will organise and run it? This person may have to be elected by the populace if more than one person wants to - it should not be a popularity contest!

3. What rules will guide submissions?

I will be removing posts and editing posts at will, given the serious nature of the way the last awards ended. Please all keep in mind it is intended as a bit of fun, and not some big serious discussion that will end in tears. The awards are not to proclaim users are "better artists than x or y", or users that are more popular than others. Judge the art based on it's credentials, don't take oppertunity to judge the artists personality.

Again, I will not hesitate to remove parts of, or whole posts, and issue warnings if I believe things to be unfriendly. I think we're all mature enough to discuss it though, so I don't think I will have to

Cheers!

[Raichase]

1. Submission due dates and voting period.

Firstly, I suggest that we have one whole month for submissions, and one whole month for voting. That helps artists to make something new if they want, and it helps those users who want to draw/vote who don't have much time. It also stops things spiralling out of control if most people are not able to keep up - no use having 3 entrants a month, is there?

3. What rules will guide submissions?

I don't know if others want to see a type of topic or challenge applied to each round - it would have to be something broad. Rather than "Something Australian/American/European", it might be along the lines of "Something urban", which could be an suburban station, a skyscraper, a bus, a metro-style train, a tram, a new roadeset for cities, etc.

I'm throwing ideas around, please discuss

[WWTBAM]

How about two topics? One for voting on the previous month and the other for new submissions for the current month. Thats my little bit.

edit. One other thing, I think it might be an idea to forget about April and May's awards and start with next month. The may entries could be included. This is to fix the argument over the the missing months. This post was inspired by George's post in the old thread.

[Rob]

Yes I too think two threads would be the best.
But what about this : in the submitting thread the graphic artists post their entries, and after the 10th (or any other number) submissions the voting starts in the other thread.
This way you always have some decent competition and avoid having to vote between two or even less submissions.

[michael blunck]

edit. One other thing, I think it might be an idea to forget about April and May's awards and start with next month. The may entries could be included. This is to fix the argument over the the missing months. This post was inspired by George's post in the old thread.

In any way, I second robotboy.

We need a clear new start. We don´t need start the fuss of the old thread again. I´m really really disappointed about George, who after having been voted down with the may contest, officially warned by a moderator, and the poll he created in an illegimate way removed by an administrator, still proposes to have that may contest.

That´s not a new beginning for all, but an attempt of him to dominate the contest again. I´m really sorry about him, that he´s so fixed in his views.

And that´s EOD for me.


As for Raichase´s proposal, IMO a voting time of two weeks should be sufficient in any way. That would allow at least a two weeks break in a perpetual contest.

regards
Michael

[DeletedUser21]

I have a contest of nice screenies of your TT game, and that one develops quite nicely! I used 1 week for entering and 1 week for voting.
Last time I checked the topic was still allright.

See! It's not that hard!
If I see the topic derailing, then I give a official X-Warning and that can disqualify you from the contest. So far I never gave one (and I am really happy about that ).

[Seelenquell]

i assume this all is about (o)tt(d)(p)? cause loco is in the tt-forums as well

just curious..

[WWTBAM]

its ottdp look in the ttdp gfx forum

[Raichase]

i assume this all is about (o)tt(d)(p)? cause loco is in the tt-forums as well

just curious..

Whats loco?

Yes, allow me to edit the thread title.

[WWTBAM]

Loco stands for Locomotion.

[Raichase]

Loco stands for Locomotion.

My fault, forgot the emoticon. I know what Loco means, I was joking .

[michael blunck]

allow me to edit the thread title.

Rai, now that you explicitly included OTTD and because there is graphical work in the OTTD section which consists of and/or is based on rendered graphics, let me point out that it makes absolutely no sense to have both, work based on hand-drawn sprites on the one hand and computer-generated renderings on the other in one and the same grahpics´ contest.

Yes, I know that Pikkas av8 planes are based on rendered work as well, but there´s a well-defined border between hand-drawn and computer-generated images.

Proposal: Initiate two separate contests as soon as people would like to participate through rendered graphics. In any way, don´t mix them, the outcome would be more than predictable.

regards
Michael

[Raichase]

Proposal: Initiate two separate contests as soon as people would like to participate through rendered graphics. In any way, don´t mix them, the outcome would be more than predictable.

Based on your points, thats a pretty fair call. I did not know the nature of the graphics in the OTTD sections, I don't understand things there, so I rarely go there.

[michael blunck]

[pixel art vs rendered graphics]

I did not know the nature of the graphics in the OTTD sections

Making 32bpp graphics from rendered models is a WIP there.

To illustrate the problem, let me present two similar pictures, first is last month´s winner, castle Neuschwanstein by George:



The other is a similar castle from the game "Transport Giant", see attachment. (Original picture needed here because copyright is by JoWood Productions Software AG)

Personally, I prefer George´s castle but I´m biased. Surveys showed that more that more than 80% of people prefer computer-generated graphics over hand-drawn pixel art (from no specific reason, "looks better"). Notice however, that the Jowood castle isn´t "state of the art", they have much better renderings of other buildings in their game and those are impossible to top by some pixel art. Unfortunately I didn´t found fitting counterparts except those castles.

I myself won´t participate with a piece of pixel art when having to compete against a good piece of rendered graphics.

Those are just too different classes of art. One of them being more like drawing/painting and the other similar to photography.

HTH
regards
Michael

[George]

1. Submission due dates and voting period.

Firstly, I suggest that we have one whole month for submissions, and one whole month for voting. That helps artists to make something new if they want, and it helps those users who want to draw/vote who don't have much time. It also stops things spiralling out of control if most people are not able to keep up - no use having 3 entrants a month, is there?

I suppose we'd have 6 entries if we have awards for 1 month long (we had 6 in April and 7 in May). Voting for more than 6 entries is hard IMHO. So I hope for about 6 entries every month.

[wallyweb]

As this seems to be the proper place for it, I am copying my proposed rules from my post in that other thread:

PROPOSED RULES

Code: Select all

1. Keep all aspects of the contest within the current calendar month.
2. Open the current contest on the first day of the current month.
3. Allow 2 weeks for entries, with the last chance to enter on the 14th day of the current month.
4. Only the first 8 (or a quantity that the forum can accommodate) entries should qualify for the current month.
5. Surplus entries and late entries should be disregarded.
6. Disregarded entries should not be automatically carried to the next month. It should be up to the artists to resubmit them.
7. Engage one forum moderator who would be willing to change the poll routinely on the 15th day of the current month.
8. The poll should be locked on the last day of the current month and the awards announced.
9. Due to the global nature of these forums, dates and times should be GMT or whatever Owen uses for these forums.

[George]

3. What rules will guide submissions?

I don't know if others want to see a type of topic or challenge applied to each round - it would have to be something broad. Rather than "Something Australian/American/European", it might be along the lines of "Something urban", which could be an suburban station, a skyscraper, a bus, a metro-style train, a tram, a new roadeset for cities, etc.
I'm throwing ideas around, please discuss

I do not think we should make restrictions for art as there were in 2005. I suppose artists have their own guideline, so, the topic is for their last art regardless their subject. I digged it up in march just to make artist be more active As I can see, we got some very amazing thins

I think it might be an idea to forget about April and May's awards and start with next month. The may entries could be included. This is to fix the argument over the the missing months. This post was inspired by George's post in the old thread.

I do not want to forget the April award - I won it

That´s not a new beginning for all, but an attempt of him to dominate the contest again. I´m really sorry about him, that he´s so fixed in his views.

I see at least 3 works that are better than mine for may award, speaking about dominations is at least sounds silly

, officially warned by a moderator,

You was warned too

Proposal: Initiate two separate contests as soon as people would like to participate through rendered graphics. In any way, don´t mix them, the outcome would be more than predictable.

Agreed here

[Dave]

I would like to put forward my name for the running and maintenance of the TTDP version of any graphics competition.

If this involves both TTDP and OTTD I am still prepared to do this.

I've got support from several people so far - michael blunck, George, lifeblood, Ben_K, wallyweb, Ameecher.

That's six people; I'd like to think that a vote of 6 to 0 out of 6 is enough to claim the job, but any other thoughts are welcomed.

In response to the topics thing - I don't think it works like a photo. People should be allowed to be creatively free in what they draw - thus there should be no sort of "topic" (except perhaps for a Christmas theme? Something like that?)

wallyweb's rules are good, but I'd like to throw into the hat my own interpretations, which are similar and in most cases probably the same.

Submissions begin in the second half of the calender month (for hypothetical reasons, say this is January). Thus you'll be entering your January submission in the second half of that particular calender month. The deadline for submissions is the last day of the calender month.

Voting then begins (immediately after the deadline) and continues for fourteen days until the 14th or 15th day of February.

The winner for January is then announced as soon as the polling ends. They take the accolades and so on. Submissions for February's competition can then be made. The deadline for those submissions would be the end of February. And so on.

In response to wallyweb's need for a moderator - if I owned the thread I could remove the poll and create a new one (I think), so this wouldn't be a problem.

UTC is the definite way forward - midnight UTC would be the deadline. I'm ALWAYS up at midnight.

I'm also not sure about the method of disregarding entries - that seems unfair. However it may be necessary, because I don't feel the voting method used in my Railway Photo Competition thread is appropriate for the graphics comp, although other people may disagree - if enough do, then I'll gladly implement it that way.

All this, of course, is subject to whether I am elected as the organiser of the competition.

[wallyweb]

If this involves both TTDP and OTTD I am still prepared to do this.

I like this. As it is, many grf's play well in both but as I rarely scan the OTTD forum I am not aware of what they are offering that may be nice in a TTDX game. Perhaps the artists could identify which game they were designing to.

In response to the topics thing - I don't think it works like a photo. People should be allowed to be creatively free in what they draw - thus there should be no sort of "topic" (except perhaps for a Christmas theme? Something like that?)

Sounds good.

Submissions begin in the second half of the calender month ... The deadline for submissions is the last day of the calender month.

Voting then begins (immediately after the deadline) and continues for fourteen days until the 14th or 15th day of February.

The winner for January is then announced as soon as the polling ends. They take the accolades and so on. Submissions for February's competition can then be made. The deadline for those submissions would be the end of February. And so on.

The reason I suggested to keep all events for a month within that month was to keep things simple and clear and less susceptible to confusion and misinterpretation.

I'm also not sure about the method of disregarding entries - that seems unfair.

This would in all probability be rarely required but I thought it prudent to put it in place just in case there is any question.

[Dave]

Submissions begin in the second half of the calender month ... The deadline for submissions is the last day of the calender month.

Voting then begins (immediately after the deadline) and continues for fourteen days until the 14th or 15th day of February.

The winner for January is then announced as soon as the polling ends. They take the accolades and so on. Submissions for February's competition can then be made. The deadline for those submissions would be the end of February. And so on.

The reason I suggested to keep all events for a month within that month was to keep things simple and clear and less susceptible to confusion and misinterpretation.

Fair comment. It's definitely important for that to be sorted.

So entries from the 1st-14th, and voting to continue until the last day of the calender month, yes?

I'm also not sure about the method of disregarding entries - that seems unfair.

This would in all probability be rarely required but I thought it prudent to put it in place just in case there is any question.

Again a very fair point - I just wonder if the "publicity" the competition has received will make it more popular - I certainly suggest that if OTTD is to be included entries will shoot up.