Druchii.net painting contest?

[Crazyhorse]

Well the person who one in expert would only be judge for the next contest, so there would be a judge positon just for the experts who win.

@Lazarus would it make you feel better if Georc was a judge?

I also want to know who voted no?

[Dggrj]

Depending on the number of entries (specifically if it's low) it might not be too insane to just accept entries and let judges say, "This is where we drew the line for the top, middle, and bottom tiers. This is how we ranked them in each tier." So basically rank them top to bottom but tell people for future reference, "That was a beginner entry," except in a nicer-sounding way .

[Lazarus]

@ crazyhorse, I have no problem seeing Georc enter, I always enjoy seeing whatever new project he comes up with, very inspirational. Maybe the position of judge should be reserved atleast initially for those who have done well at GD competitions. My only question is who or what determines what entry belongs in what category? I do think that all judges shouyld have "graduated" so to speak from the expert category. That level of experience should allow them to judge without bias and at the same time offer "compassionate guidance" to those who need a little constructive criticism.

[Crazyhorse]

The ranking system will definatly vary due to the amount of people entered. But at this moment it is still up in the air. So I give everyone a mission find the rules on ranking and judging for other places and link it or type up the rules for the place near you so we can compair and then make our own set of guide lines. I will put up links as I find them.

Under empire style
http://underempire.net/index.php?showtopic=23379

herdstone style
http://z2.invisionfree.com/herdstone/in ... topic=3921

[Madlarks]

So I think everybody (or atleast the majority so correct me if I'm wrong) has decided on every six months (preferably a month before the Herald), three level competition, the restricted categories of Lord on monster mount thing, and finally being moved upwards if you win.

Now the largest problem comes down to who takes care of it all and the skill levels. I have the utmost faith in this community and do not believe anybody would purposefully enter into a lower competition just to win. The matter comes into where to place oneself, I could not decide where I would go. I consider myself to be an alright painting, I make it look good and clean but I would only consider it novice, where as many people could consider it intermediate. To this problem I suggest we have judges.

This enters the problem of who is to take care of the issue. I like the herdstone's way of handling it. One person takes care of it all and posts up the pictures for the community to poll and judge. (three different threads for each level I think would be easiest) Each entry can have up to three pictures, with druchii.net somewhere in there. The judge would then split them up into whatever category they feel the model deserves to be in.

Yes this is going to imply alot of effort and work on the judges part. For the first contest I really cannot say who should be one of the judges, probably a moderator who does not wish to participate. As for the following I think the winner of the expert category (who no longer being able to participate) should be the judge. This may or not be a good thing, if we could find one person who would be willing to do it and have the capability to judge everything properly and fairly then we could stick with him. That is the reason I am not certain on having the winner of the expert category be the judge because that person may not be capable of consistently putting people in the right category.

I would really like to see this get underway so if anybody has any ideas on how to improve on this please let me know.

[Bauglir]

there has been the suggestion to have specific themes for each competition. i'm all for that, but for example if it is a monster or elite regiment category (or any other) how do we make sure people don't submit things they have done a long time ago and probably have invested a lot more time in than others? or is that totally irrelevant?
what i am getting at is: do we make the competition so open that people can submit whatever good minis they have done no matter when, or is the competition to paint a certain kind of mini (monster, cavalry etc) from a "go" within a certain time frame?

also, i am not sure whether this board-wide competition is that appealing for people such as georc who take part in the more prestigious competitions on a regular basis. it might really be the case that they don't have a lot of interest in participating as a contestant, and might actually want to judge instead.

[Crazyhorse]

I don't think it matters when they painted it since you would only put forward one model once or twice a year what difference does it make other than you are probably better now then you were when you painted it in 2004?

If georc (I feel sorry for him as it feel like we are picking on him for being good) wanted to enter I would not say now and if he won all that would mean was he was judge for the next contest and therefore someone alse could win next time. I want to have double the amount of judges needed available so they too can compete in some contests if they wish.

To me the time frame is just a due date, if you have been painting the dragon for two years and now we are just getting to characters on monsterous mounts I will not hold it against you.

-crazyhorse

[Dggrj]

I don't think winners should be banned from participating. At a certain level it will be close based upon judge/public's liking the model, color scheme, etc., and if person A barely beats B that doesn't mean that B couldn't win next time even against A. If anything leaving A in gives B a reason to improve and doesn't cheapen a victory for B later. Where's the pride of dethroning the champ if the champ isn't allowed to compete? Then you're just 2nd 1st, then next time C wins and is 3rd 1st, etc.

Think about it.

[Arquinsiel]

My point about not allowing the winner to compete at the same level is based on my own experiences with the GD. When I got into this hobby the GD winners were painting at a level that I now paint at myself. Now, the level has gone way up from this but a much smaller number of people seem to be reaching that standard. In the end, the group of people I got into this with gave up their hopes of ever doing well in a GD since Jacob Nielsen winning multiple catagories was pretty much guarenteed since 2003 or so. In short: seeing the same names again and again has prevented most of us from bothering anymore.

[Rork]

You could have the winner be a judge for the next competition. Therefore the winners could only ever enter every other competition.

GeOrc should be a judge. He's not just out of our league, he's not even on the same planet. No offence to anyone else here, but he'd win. His projects are inspiring, but it strikes me that his presence would be a demotivator for some people.

[Crazyhorse]

Well the question is still what will the judges do...
Will they gather all the pictures and declare a winner?

gather the pictures organize them put up the top ten to be voted on by the people?

Or just organize the pictures by ranks and just put them all in one thred to be voted on?

If it ends up in a thred I think there should be no names just for professional reasons.

Depending on which version we choose or if we choose another version then the purpose of judges would change and therefore, making a winning expert into a judge would be more of a pain then any good.

[Dyvim tvar]

I think that the competition should be judged by the members of the site as a whole -- there should be organizers ratehr than true "Judges." It would be the responsibilityof the organizers to set the rules, accept entries, and to post the voting threads -- and then sit back and see what happens.

[Madlarks]

Yes I agree that the Judges would not be so much 'Judges' but organizers. Just like in herdstone the man running it would simply organize it and post the poll for people to vote on it.

I think it would be good to have somebody manage each category. One for novice, intermediate and expert. You would send your model into whatever category you think you fit under. If the manager of that category thinks you belong somewhere else s/he will send you along to the proper place.

Right now it seems like the only issue would be what to do with the winners. I do not feel right outright banning a person from participating again, and I even question bumping them up a level. I think that simply making them a 'manager' for the next competition is the best idea. They would manage what level they won at and would be able to participate in the next event. That would give somebody else a chance. Now if two people are constantly winning then we can have a polite conversation with those two folks and say hey can you move up a category or simply not compete, we know you guys are amazing but we'd like to see others continue to win. I hope that nobody on here is so much of a jerk that they would not go for that. Simply cross that bridge when we come to it. Who knows we may be astonished and end up a different winner every time.

Dear GeOrc,

Your works are incredible, they are art. I show your stuff to non-warhammer players and they start drooling. Your skill is legendary and so I would like to invite you to be the first Manager of the Expert category.

[Crazyhorse]

Well there is the question of what if the person cannot be a "manager"? do we just say well you cannot be in the next compition?

I have no problem with the manager idea, But I would want a crew of managers slightly bigger then would be needed so we could have back up managers. Also some managers may want to compete some time so I wouldn't want to stick someone there and have them never be able to get out of the job.

Would we allow managers to vote?
I would want to say no since they would know who sent what in.
However I am open to arguments about that.

EDIT:
I am still thinking that if all the pictures come in and a pannel of 3 judges for each group choose the top 15? pictures then the people voted on the top pics that could help with crowd control if we get a ton of pictures, how many people willl have time to go through say 50 pictures in each of the three catagories minimum?

[Belial]

As I understand it, is the timframe being discussed every 6 months?
My 2 cents are:
Make the comp every two months. This will not only put some more life into this site, but also make sure that "beginnder" are mroe motivated to participate multiple times, at it is not a half year waiting to be told you lost.
Make it a rule that all entries are new. This will mean that there is actually a competition, not just a public applauding of whoever has the nicest showcase. My idea of a comptetition involves a start and a go, not just a halfannual celebration of good painters, who have a lot of work to submit.

[Dyvim tvar]

I think that "managers" should be allowed to both enter and vote. As a practical matter, I don't think there is any way to prohibit specific people from voting in a website poll.

Also, the entries don't need to be anonymous. I don't have any problem with putting names next to the pictures.

Finally, if there are too many entries for a single poll in a particular division/category, we can simply break the voting up into groups, have a week of voting, and then move the top 2 or 3 finishers from each group into the final poll.

[Belial]

Also, the entries don't need to be anonymous. I don't have any problem with putting names next to the pictures.

But it should still be an option, so any insecure painters(like myself ) wouldn't be scared from entering.

[Dggrj]

I agree that if we saw the same people winning everything over and over it would be disheartening; HOWEVER, I have more faith in the d.net community than this. I think people will not be so cutthroat so as to feel that they need to win this every time, mainly because we aren't the GD and we aren't giving prizes (or not much if so). I'm sure our posterboy for uberpainters, GeOrc, wouldn't get much out of trouncing us. However, let's say crazyhorse, Dyvim, and Arq (since you're active on this a lot ) are a good match for each other. Would you be happy knowing that you aren't competing against last time's winner? I'm making the assumption that people will strive to improve until they are all in a tight cluster of skill if we did this well.

And as madlarks said, it wouldn't be that hard if it came to it to say, "Please take a break," to someone who wins everything. Or you create a 4th category, legendary, and it's only used if there are 3+ worthy entrants, otherwise we just pat them on the back and say "You're legendary, and have no competition."

Back to my point: to immediately ban anyone would be premature IMO.

[Arquinsiel]

I think this is crazyhorse's baby, whatever he decides is fine with me, I give him my full support.

[Crazyhorse]

Ok my current thoughts:
Every 4 months (3 times a year is not bad)

Three groups novice, intermidiate and expert

Managers get all links to pictures, put them in druchii.net photo bucket for the contest. Make all pictures anonymous(so those who want to be can be and it will hopefully be more equal).

Finally, just do the managers and people can vote on every photo, if we get a ton of people in my mind more than 200 or 600 contestants in each group we would have to use the hybrid model. aka 3 judges in each group narrow it down to 15 to 20 pictures.

So I need to know how many people would like to participate in the competition before I can choose one of the two options I like. Also all numbers are up for debate.

Thank you Arquinsiel for the backing.

-crazyhorse

[Dyvim tvar]

if we get a ton of people in my mind more than 200 or 600 contestants in each group we would have to use the hybrid model.

From past experience observing this kind of contest elsewhere, I don't think you have to worry about getting anywhere close to this number of entries. 10-20 per division is far more likely.

That brings up another point though -- we need a limit of one entry per person.

[Mdk]

I'dd like to help crazyhorse out here since I am a P&M mod aferall and falls under
my juristiction . But seriously, I can get an standard for photo's I can upload.
All the same backgrounds, all the same color matchtings etc. I even can create
the special "Medals of hounor" if you like for prices to win. I like the idea of 3
diffrent levels and I do have an idea of how to set them aswell. If all contestens
first paint one spearmen the best they can you can dive them in 3 groups.
Voila!

Voting doesn't have to be an problem aswell. I, how ever think it should be
anonymous. It is an fair contest afterall. But than again, anonymous is rather
fickle since everyone knows everybody's work. I think we need expert
judges to, like 1 part Georc, 1 part Lion of Flanders and 1 part d.net members.
Perhaps we can lure GW in ths aswell .

One more idea though. Isn't it an idae to organise a cometition for each season?
That way you have a competition every 3 months, and it will provide a nice
theme to. (And I do take in account all the questions like: "How do I create a
good snow effect"?) And besides, while you are paining your masterpiece you can
write an artikle for the "Herald" aswell.

Just a thought ...

[Crazyhorse]

Ok so we probably won't have to worry about an over flow of people joining. Yes one entry per person is a must I have been thinking this yet I have not posted it thank you for bringing it up Dyvim Tvar.

So we seem to have the basics down:
every 3 months
the three levles of competetors
specific things to paint
only one entry per competion
send it to the managers
no names
I am sure I am missing a few but hey thats good for now

Now things I would like to see:

How long would it last?
I am thinking 2 week warning so there is time to organize and pm and post everything then 1 or 2 weeks of voting.

What should the first model in question be? I want to say Druchii characters.

THE TEAM
I would llove to know who officially is willing to be a manager.
Also I am thinking of having the term manager be turned druchii. Maybe something like "Slave Master"? I will change the name if we get another more popular one.

Slave Masters
crazyhorse
madlarks
MDK

-crazyhorse

[Dyvim tvar]

I think more than 2 weeks is needed for people to paint and submit their models. I would say 4 weeks at least and then a 2 week voting period.

MDK appears to have volunteered to be a manager . . .

I would prefer to be a participant at this stage

[Dggrj]

How long would the notice of theme be up? This seems to me like the kind of thing where we should give people as close to 3 months (if that's how often they are) as possible to paint. 2 weeks definitely no good, too short!