SOTW#38 Discussion thread

Oderint Dum Metuant
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I wholesomely agree.

you are smart
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It’s a very tongue-in-cheek theme that I think you’re taking way too seriously. You’re not meant to show what it would be like if you were making sigs at 5 years old, but it’s more of a self-parody of your own existing style by using simple methods like paint. A quick google search for “by ____ age 5” will yield people drawing historical events in the same manner.

It’s not meant to be a theme where you pretend you’re actually 5 years old, but a theme where everyone can actually enter and feel that they have a chance.

That is my dream.

The Magnificent Bastard
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Everyone does have a chance, we have had a large variaty of winners throughout the competitions, even some paint entries have won.

The themes are best suited to apeal to a large variaty of members and not predjudice upon those who the comp was originally intended for. The variaty of topics and the advanced level of some of the contestants and their work has encouraged others to grow and expand their body of work and become better artists and designers. This wouldn’t have happened if we kept things all 'lame' and catered for the inexperianced and beginners.

Its the way it has worked before and it would appear from the feedback I have been reaing about the comp since ou have taken over, that members are not too happy about the direction you are taking it..so perhaps you might wish to listen and take note of what has been said and sugested by the members as it is the members and the contestants that make this compatition possible. Without them, there is no SOTW....

you are smart
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I have not recieved any real complaints about the direction I have taken SOTW until this competition, save for someone complaining that they wanted some gay super-specific theme, and since only one person asked for it, I wasn’t going to do that.

yes, there are a variety of themes, and I see no reason why every theme should have people making signatures that look the same as they do every week. This was evident during the anonymous voting week, when it was very, VERY easy to tell who made what sig, because they looked the same as every other one. I wanted to try something different this week, give people a chance to break away from that and maybe have some actually fun, parodying how seriously people tend to take making fucking signatures.

A sig is just a signature, which is a block of text or an image that goes in the “signature” area of your profile page. That does not mean at all it has to be some elaborate fancy thing you spend 5 hours on, using renders, c4ds, and brush packs that other people made.

I do not consider the competition to be some gay uber-artistic thing for people to “expand their talents” or whatever. That sounds really boring, like an advertisement for an art school. This is a contest for people who make small images in photoshop or MS Paint, nothing more. My main concern is keeping it so that everyone involved can have fun (which is why I denied the theme suggestion from Skull_Kid, since people who don’t watch FMA would not be able to enjoy themselves).

Now if people don’t like the theme, then I’ll openly admit I didn’t do my job right. However, this isn’t some kind of tree-hugging “let’s all expand our talents” kind of bullshit. If it was based on artistic merit alone, a lot of the winning sigs would not be winners right now. The voting is based on which one you enjoy the most, and you do not need photoshop and a degree in graphic design to make people enjoy themselves. You just need a medium and an imagination to apply to it, which was what I was hoping to trigger with this theme. However, I guess you guys don’t like utilizing your imagination too much, and prefer to go through the same basic steps you use to make every entry of yours, which I’ll bet has become instinct at this point.

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Hi.


I applaud Atresac for attempting to try something different with the themes this week. You never know when something might be a hit or result in some interesting signatures.
The fact that many SOTW potential participants did not like the idea is unfortunate but that’s fine, you never know what will appeal to people until you try.
The fact that some MvC members are being so critical of nothing more but a new idea is cowardly and pathetic.

I don’t understand how the SOTW competition has been going downhill since Atresac took over. Since, maybe you’ve all forgotten but it was DEAD for some time before Atresac took over. If there’s some things that the majority of SOTW participants want to change, ok. Let’s discuss what those might be and make the changes.

If the SOTW competition is so fragile that an unpopular theme one week will destroy the whole competition, then something is more fundamentally wrong. I however don’t believe the competition hangs by such a thin thread.

I understand that members want to continue to improve their specific skills in sig making and show them off in competitions. A stylized theme doesn’t mean that those skills go to waste, instead it offers an opportunity to use them in a very different and creative way.

I wish everybody would get their heads out of their asses and lighten up. I for one am going to go for a walk because it’s a beautiful day. I will find creative inspiration away from the computer today.


Peace, Tree out.

The Magnificent Bastard
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good for you, but a single shitty sotw can break the competition. ever wondered why it stopped?

It was because people stopped entering because they didn’t like the theme. Some members only really bother coming on for the sotw comp and if that is of no interest, they quickly go elsewhere bringing the comp down with it and also losing forum members too. I may seem fickle and tight arsed about it, but having run the competition for 30 or so incarnations I think I know what goes on with it and how the members react to shitty themes. One uninspiring theme can cripple the competition.

The internet is a big place and members DO go elsewhere if they do not get what they want here.

Thats the breaks. Oh and as for Atresacs comment about the merrits of the sotw comp, People have actually been paid for their efforts in such ventures as sig making through transfering their skills into web design, logo making and online comps. Indeed there is a great amount of ways to make money from getting proficient at design. Also, I don’t see whats wrong with people spending ex amount of hours on a sig. It represents a sense of achievement and worth that they can create something they like and is liked by others. Its caled self improvement and perhaps if you weren’t being so negative about some people talking it serrious, you might actually see the merits of their efforts.

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Well, it is always good to try new things. And with the attendance at an all time low on this forum I don’t think one “crappy” Sig o the week idea will hurt forum turnout, I actually liked the fact that watermelon man put a new twist on the comp with this idea, it’s just that the overall idea didn’t appeal to me as a signature I would like to make. I may not be in this type stuff to get a paycheck but I do like getting better and making sigs for other people.

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it was a good theme because now i am a sig maker

you are smart
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This is a fucking competition on a forum in the backwaters of the internet. Not only is “sig” not defined strictly as what I think you wish it was, but this is just a contest.

Riddle me this: if you want to be good at something, do you just enter the contest? To relate it to sports: you don’t try to get better at baseball by going into the world series. By that same token, you can’t just keep entering this contest if you want to better yourself. If you want, just make a new image! It’s not hard to do something of your own free will. Hell, I used to make sigs, photo manipulations, and the like in my spare time pleanty of times a day, and I never entered them in a competition. Why? Because I enjoyed doing it.

So if your concern is people wanting to get better at what they do, they shouldn’t fucking be waiting on an online contest to do so, unless what they’re trying to do is be popular on the internet, which isn’t the foundation of the contest.

As for your concern with a shitty theme ruining the contest, I assume you are referring to the otaku theme thing on #30. Let me ask you something: did you notice anything different about that week? How about the fact that it lasted a month? All it takes to keep anything going is consistency. When the contest was abandoned, people stopped caring. Instead of moving on, they left the thread up.

I started taking over on #31, that week we only had 3 entries, but I still made the voting thread. The following week there were 7 entries, and the week after, 11.

A bad theme is just that: a bad theme. There’s no way of knowing how people will respond to the theme until it’s been posted. Even if there were only 4 entries in my contest, I would make the voting thread, and continue on with a new one next week, and if people like it, they will make sigs. That’s something neither I or you can control and it’s not that hard to see.

tl;dr: if people want to better themselves, they don’t need the contest.

bad themes don’t ruin the contest, inconsistency does.