Over the last two months, we've run a contest that asked you to redesign a team of characters. Prior to that, we asked you to redesign a duo. It was an experiment of sorts, something we thought might be fun to try, particularly in terms of the Avengers contest, as it was, as far as I know, something no other redesign site had done yet.
The contests for the rest of the year will ask artists to focus on individual characters, but we're curious as to whether you'd like to see a team redesign challenge again in the future? Did you enjoy the Avengers contest? Did you hate it? What did you like? What could be done better? Do you think the whole thing was a failure?
We really want your input. Please let us know what you think in the comments about doing team challenges, and anything else you think may make the site better. Thanks in advance for your feedback!
Friday, May 25, 2012
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I think the team and duo challenges, they are tough but you've give extra time for them so it's ok, I would love to see more in the future.
ReplyDeleteI think it was fun. I enjoy things getting changed up now and then. I wouldn't want to try groups every month, but now and then -- especially with the extra time -- is great for me.
ReplyDeleteAgreed, monthly old be too much. If we continue doing the team challenges, it would be something of an annual thing.
Deletewhy not have open year long submission for teams on the side of regular monthly character contests, once a month character + once a year team redesigns... this year could be avengers, next year jla, etc...
Deleteone thing that kinda kept me from the ordeal is the one image for the whole crew, some designs need more then one pose to really show the details on both sides of the characters.
Mario - My only fear is that it would be a year's worth of reminders and whatnot up to that point. That, and/or it would get lost in the midst of the monthly contests. It *could* work, but those are my concerns regarding that method. Thoughts?
Deletewell to avoid the reminders you would need to put something of a side bar with the end date (maybe an automated countdown?)
DeleteBut i thought about it and i believe the solution could be pretty basic but change shotm a bit:
Have One character contests (like Doc Octopus), but people who feel like going the extra mile they can design him as a member of any team they have been part of, instead of backgrounds why not his redesigned palls (some sinister six members?)
Given you'd still be judging the one character alone, what team redesigns can really bring extra are cohesive group costumes, team logos, shared items and technologies.
Correct me if i'm wrong but designing 5 characters individually amounts to 5 separate designs that could have been done one per month. Teams like the Avengers are just bundles of individuals, while the fantastic four have the team look.
I liked the challenge of the Avengers team and thought two months was fair, but I am disappointed by the number of contributors. I thought I'd see a lot more roll in the last few days before the deadline and I'm wondering if there would have been more if people only had to draw one to three of their favorites.
ReplyDeleteAgreed, I thought there would be more contributors, too. And even though two months (plus look-ahead time, if you utilize the calendar), is a lot of time, five characters may be a bit much for a challenge. Three may be a good route, four max (in the event of something like a Fantastic Four challenge). What do you think? Would it also be beneficial to flat-out state the characters to be redesigned in a future challenge, or have a predetermined list to choose from (i.e. "Choose three of the following X-Men: Wolverine, Phoenix, Cyclops, Nightcrawler, Storm)?
DeleteI think narrowing the playing field would help a bit, I took longer sketching redesigns of a whole bunch of Avengers before deciding than I did on the actual final drawings.
DeleteI actually prefer one character a month. Maybe it's my short attention span but having to wait two months to see the results is a bit of a bummer.
ReplyDeleteEven with the "free-for-all" month? ;)
DeleteSo maybe like Mario said above? Do a bit more of an advance notice, and collect submissions over the course of a couple of months maybe if we do two months?
I will be honest, the two-month break was kind of something to give us on the staff a break. Don't get me wrong, we enjoy doing the contests, but up until this point, it had been monthly judging since the Robin contest (including the Superhero of the Year contest, and excluding last December's contest that had no submissions -- which I felt was something of a mistake and the lack of submissions was earned).
I always like the one character a month scheme, because even when I don't know the character's background well, I can pretty easily find what they look like in the comics and compare that to the redesigns. The entire team made it a little more difficult to keep up, but it yielded some pretty awesome team looks and insight into the interplay of the characters. The two-person redesigns were a happy medium.
ReplyDeleteThe lower number of submissions could have just been because of the time of year - you have to compete with the spring weather and college finals. I'd be curious to see what an end-of-the-year team redesign would yield when people are stuck inside anyway and are using up vacation time or are on break.
I didn't factor in school in regards to the submissions, so that's a fair point. I have no idea how many that submit here are students, but it seems reasonable that a fair amount are.
DeleteI agree that the number of characters made it difficult to keep up. There were some here I wasn't even familiar with. The same kind of went for the Birds of Prey contest, too. I knew the core characters and some of the supporting ones, but others I was unfamiliar with. So maybe in the future we'll keep it limited to 2-4 characters, explicitly stated or limited in terms of choice (i.e., redesign three of these six X-Men...).
Thoughts?