creative freedom seems like a must to me, I find it really exciting not to only show technical skills, but ideas and style too. This WIP was spot on on this aspect.
the wip were great. It really gave a sense of community, I’m very happy to have “met” poeple this way. I was regularly getting motivated by the feedback. Looking back, it was my favourite part of the challenge.
PS thanks @joseph for systematically liking the posts, giving them visibility but also giving me reassurance that someone cared (I imagine not for all messages, but leave me with my illusions )
if you offer attendance to an event again (which is an awesome idea for community building), please make sure to be clear about the need for participants to get their tickets in advance, or reserve more in advance on your side. Not whining, but it has sincerely been one of my biggest disappointments this year not to be able to go at all because of the sold out thing I was so much looking forward to meeting like minded people IRL
putting my own feelings aside, I think that there were too little room for recognition this time. 2 people get the feedback, and the rest stays without any feedback. Given the timeframe (2 months), it is frustrating to work so long for no feedback.
Maybe there needs to be a relation between the time allocated to the challenge and the number of winners? Short challenge, easy, 1 winner, long challenge a range of “winners”
I feel like this is more about feedback and recognition of the work than the prizes themselves. For example, I would have loved to receive feedback or to see a more extensive “ranking”, without any prize. For all the non winners, exposure and feedback is the prize.
sketchfab has provided a lot of feedback on the models, that was really cool. I loved the comments, the master staff looked at those, some have been staff picked and @bartv thanks for the card, it’s great! So definitely great points for the partner here, they weren’t “just” paying
Overall, that was an awesome challenge, and I think the quality was really there. Would be great for all participants to get some sort of feedback though. I know it takes a lot of time, but it also took a lot of time to make the entries.
Thanks again for this one, and looking forward to the future ones.
Some frustrations I’ve noticed in several that I’d like to see avoided (although your response last time was great, better if it hadn’t happened in the first place): Be clear about the challenge’s goals and expectations up front. Like, don’t say “this is a Blender challenge!” and then part-way through, when most participants are making grease pencil stuff or rendering BlenderSwap models, say “I meant a modeling challenge, you should make your own models!” Don’t set up a challenge clearly friendly to abstract art when one of your judging panel is hostile to it (repeated “where’s the narrative?” downchecks, etc). Same goes for toon vs realistic – one is not superior to the other unless you’ve communicated that clearly up front. Don’t prioritize performative effort unless that’s part of your goals: clean, simple stuff that effectively fulfills the challenge requires skill to pull off – if that’s not what you’re looking for?
Communication is key: try to be aware of how the structure of a challenge inevitably says things about the challenge’s goals, confirm or contradict those things clearly. We’re all visual-media artists here, don’t pretend that only verbal/text communication counts. Try to be aware of differing cultural contexts – a lot of us have backgrounds in other artistic media, a grounding in local 3D expectations shouldn’t be necessary to understand a challenge’s goals unless that need is clearly communicated.
And last, be clear both before and during the judging about what’s happening, when results are intended to be posted, etc. Encouraging your participants to give feedback to each other is good – it doesn’t replace feedback from the judges. If you don’t intend judges to give any feedback other than winner announcements, that should also be stated up front.
Sorry if all that comes across as negative, but it looks like the “do this” points have been covered IMHO.
I think you mentioned this before, but I don’t really understand - did you expect us to hold extra tickets for non-winners? You could have just gone ahead and ordered a ticket, and either get it refunded through us or through the Blender Foundation if you had won…
Yeah I can imagine that would be nice. For the judges that would add considerable workload though - right now we only asked them to score all entries based on different aspects, and then to provide detailed feedback on the 2 winners. If they had to give detailed feedback for everyone, it would have been 10x the amount of work, I don’t think I have ever seen a challenge do this.
I’m not entirely sure if you’re referring to the Splash challenge or to something else here? All I can recall in this challenge is some confusion about using existing models, but that was quickly rectified. I don’t think there was confusion about the goals and expectations?
Hmm, as also discussed in the topic above, it’s not common for challenge judges to provide feedback on every individual entry. I’m sorry if you expected that, but it’s simply not realistic.
You asked “What are you looking for in a Blender challenge?” not “What are you looking for in a Blender Artists Forum challenge?” – those were frustrations from several challenges from multiple sources that, as long as you’re asking, I’d like to see avoided. Not intended as crit beyond the scope of your question.
Except some challenges do provide feedback on multiple (rarely all, if ever) non-win/runup entries. It’s hard to take “it’s simply not realistic” when others are doing it. This goes to sensitivity to wider cultural expectations – it’s not that you should be required to do so, but that whether or not this is intended to be provided to some participants in any given challenge would be best stated up front, not just assumed to be “not realistic” and therefor going unsaid.
You are completely right, I should have planned better.
Just to explain more clearly. Once I entered the challenge, I did not look at the conference site anymore. I was keeping full focused on the entry, and of course I hoped to win. I thought there would always be time to care about buying tickets if I don’t win, so keep the spirits up, focus and work!
While you guys are not responsible at all, a little communication stating what you just said right now during the challenge would have been a good reminder for me, helping me not to fall in that trap. As others have mentioned, it is an emotional rollercoaster, so I might not have been thinking too clearly.
I also wasn’t aware of the refunding possibilities, nor whether blender artists had the authority to refund tickets.
As for the solution, not sure. As I said, reminding this during the challenge for distracted people like me would help. I can see that reserving tickets could easily be a hassle.
Now, more practically, had the deadline of the challenge been before the tickets were sold out, there would have been no issue either. The solution might simply be to do that a little more in advance?
Thanks for the opportunity of feedback, that lifts a weight for me. I realize that some of my frustration shows through (sorry for that), but my point is really to feed that back, as I really appreciated the challenge, and I measure the efforts to put this together.
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I was so much looking forward to meeting like minded people IRL
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Thanks for sharing your thoughts so we can do better next time!