News The Future of the Fan Art Forum Challenge

[Michael]

Hey friends and denizens of the Fan Art forum!

I've been thinking a lot about the monthly forum challenge lately and would love to get your input on some of these thoughts. The challenge has been a constant almost since the beginning of this board and has been running for almost twenty years at this point, which in internet time is a certified eternity. It's a veritable board tradition at this point and I know it means and has meant a lot to all people frequenting this part of the Trek BBS. It means a lot to me as well.

However, the reality is that over the last couple of years, and especially in the last couple of months, participations has dwindled to a point where I wonder if it makes sense to keep it running the way is has been running for two decades. I know, participation numbers have always ebbed and flowed in the course of a year, it's a natural thing, but overall it seems there's less and less people finding time to be engaged in these.

This goes hand in hand with the fact that overall the numbers of active posters have been growing less and less as well. Part of it, I think, is because classic 90s style online bulletin boards have gone out of fashion in favor of social media, naturally. Many artists – especially younger ones – gravitate more towards sharing their fan creations on Twitter, Instagram and the like. I'm genuinely thankful for everyone that's been keeping around and still posts their art. And as a mod I try to do everything I can to make this a comfortable and welcoming environment for artists of every kind to share their work.

So even though I'm aware of this reality, I wonder what could be other reasons why we have seen such little interest in the contest lately. What are some hurdles people see when they think about participating? Is it just the specific themes we had? Are they too specific, too complicated, too challenging? Or are the requirements for an entry themselves too strict? Is a month too little time to enter something for the contest?

I'm genuinely curious what y'all think about these questions and I hope you'll share your thoughts and suggestions below. I will postpone setting up the new contest for a couple of days to see if we can figure out a way together to improve them.

Off the top of my head I was wondering what you would think about these suggestions:

1. Should we maybe vote on new contest themes, to find themes that interest a greater number of posters?
2. Should contests maybe run quarterly or even longer to give more people a chance to work on an entry?
3. Should we try to relax some of the rules for the contest; i.e. the entry having to be created during the month of the contest?
4. Should we maybe have no theme whatsoever for the contests and people just get to enter their favorite work of the month?

Please let me know what you think!

 

[aridas sofia]

Should we maybe vote on new contest themes, to find themes that interest a greater number of posters?

Yes

Should contests maybe run quarterly or even longer to give more people a chance to work on an entry?

I’d be careful about this. If you let a contest run too long, it runs the chance of becoming just another dusty old, pinned thread. It needs to remain pertinent, maybe by posting weekly overall updates, encouraging people who are working on something to create their own individual WIP threads, conducting short “meet and greet” with participating artists, etc.

Should we try to relax some of the rules for the contest; i.e. the entry having to be created during the month of the contest?

Yes. This doesn’t preclude the possibility of having a “must be made this month” contest once a year or quarter.

Should we maybe have no theme whatsoever for the contests and people just get to enter their favorite work of the month?

I think this might be a good idea at least once a quarter, or perhaps even every other month.

Another idea might be twice a year to have a series-specific contest. At least one of the two should be targeted at whatever series-specific forum has the most activity. The other contest could rotate among them, or be speculative about an upcoming series or movie.

All in all, I think these contests generate interest in the forum. However, the topics have gotten a little stale. You’re right about the trend to social media, but that looms for the entire BBS- hell, for the internet generally. It’s like the reality that everybody is going to die someday. Let’s just have fun while we’re all here!

 

[Starscape]

@Michael how about adding a poll to this thread to see how many posters would be interested in participating in a revamped Art Contest? The Art Forum is rather quiet these days, are their many willing participants still visiting?

Picking up on one of @aridas sofia's points, I've wondered if it would help if we could get some conversation going in the main contest thread. Encourage people to suggest ideas for entries within the theme, even if they aren't entering themselves. I'd been thinking about that for a possible theme one month - "Create an entry on a theme suggested by someone else" - (hopefully) lots of people post ideas and the artist can pick from one of those - as a way of engaging more people in the process and getting ideas flowing.

Maybe have contest that are a bit less intimidating time-wise: A quick sketch contest or "what every you can do in an hour" contest? Make it a little more fun, more immediate?

 

[Finn]

I think I'd keep it going, maybe every another month. I remember that contests would go forgotten for weeks or even months sometimes, when Ptrope ran the Fan Art contests, especially when he was frequently absent before Michael took over. I think things are actually a bit better than back then. Yes, it's not exactly a busy contest but ah well.

 

[Santaman]

I indeed think that you should have somekind of "target" time for a contest but that you will extend it so that people who have something come up in real life still can particpate, or maybe even try and set a deadline with all artists who enter one of these art contests, think that would be fair.
As for the kind of contests, yeah, try and vary that, do some traditional ones and throw something else inbetween from time to time.

As for me, well since I am a talentless hack I'll just cheer you on from the sidelines.

 

[Cyfa]

I wonder what could be other reasons why we have seen such little interest in the contest lately. What are some hurdles people see when they think about participating? Is it just the specific themes we had? Are they too specific, too complicated, too challenging? Or are the requirements for an entry themselves too strict? Is a month too little time to enter something for the contest?

- Speaking for myself, usually the only hurdles that prevent me from participating are my frame of mind* and/or available time after work/family/real-world life stuff. There have been very few themes for which I haven't had an idea (eventually) even if I never actually got around to submitting something.
As for the time limits, I'd prefer to keep them to no longer than a month - I usually leave everything to the last minute, so having three months to come up with something just means I'll do nothing for 12 weeks then scrabble around in the final week (or final couple of days!) putting something together! Although, I realise that not everyone is a Last Minute Larry like me

. . .

Ideas that have been put forward already that I like:

"Should we try to relax some of the rules for the contest; i.e. the entry having to be created during the month of the contest?"
Yes. This doesn’t preclude the possibility of having a “must be made this month” contest once a year or quarter.

"Should we maybe have no theme whatsoever for the contests and people just get to enter their favorite work of the month?"
I think this might be a good idea at least once a quarter, or perhaps even every other month.

Another idea might be twice a year to have a series-specific contest. At least one of the two should be targeted at whatever series-specific forum has the most activity. The other contest could rotate among them, or be speculative about an upcoming series or movie.

Maybe have contest that are a bit less intimidating time-wise: A quick sketch contest or "what every you can do in an hour" contest? Make it a little more fun, more immediate?

As for the kind of contests, yeah, try and vary that, do some traditional ones and throw something else inbetween from time to time.

. . .

One thing I'd like to change would be getting rid of the voting - Perhaps not for every challenge, though. There could still be a specifically themed quarterly contest with voting, for example, but all the other challenges whether monthly, daily/weekly "pop-ups" (like @Starscape's "what ever you can do in an hour" idea) could end with a gallery as they do now, but somewhere that can invite discussion and critique rather than it being a contest of popularity.


* Which is the main reason why I haven't been around for the past couple of months or so. Hello again, Everyone

 

[BK613]

I wonder if the fact that we have some new Trek to watch has any impact here. I know that since October I've been using at least some of the time that I spend here doing that instead. For example, I mentioned that I might participate in the Jan contest; I watched Discovery, Prodigy, and Picard instead.

 

[publiusr]

Every 2-3 months. Everyone is broke and works two jobs it looks like.

 

[Starscape]

- Speaking for myself, usually the only hurdles that prevent me from participating are my frame of mind* and/or available time after work/family/real-world life stuff. There have been very few themes for which I haven't had an idea (eventually) even if I never actually got around to submitting something.
As for the time limits, I'd prefer to keep them to no longer than a month - I usually leave everything to the last minute, so having three months to come up with something just means I'll do nothing for 12 weeks then scrabble around in the final week (or final couple of days!) putting something together! Although, I realise that not everyone is a Last Minute Larry like me

I can relate to a lot of this too. (And welcome back @Cyfa!)

I, too, am unsure about extending the length of each contest partly because I'd probably end up doing a last minute job whatever the length of time, but also, occasionally, a theme doesn't click with me and that would mean sitting out of the contest for months. One solution could be to have multiple themes over a longer time. Or, if like @Cyfa suggests we cut down on the voting, each month we could have a new theme and then every 3 months, or so, we could have super-poll of all the entries from those months.

Ending the "Winner chooses the next contest" rule seems like a good way to go to get some fresh ideas for themes. Although, voting on the each theme feels like an over complication and risks bogging down the transition from one contest to the next. Perhaps, we could have a rota for choosing each one instead?

 

[Admiral2]

I know I'm horrendously late to this conversation, but technically it's still an open one and I'd like to get my opinion in before it closes, and it's this: the contest has effectively been stalled since January at this point anyway. The simplest answer is to make it official. If participation has dwindled that much because of so many factors, let's just be done with the contest. It had a good run, but nothing lasts forever.

I'll be honest. The main reason I'm so willing to Thanos-snap the contest out of existence is because I utterly reject all the suggestions in this thread concerning "fixing" the contest, especially the idea of removing the choice of the next contest theme from the winner, followed a real close second by removing voting. Think about this seriously: The choice of the next contest theme is your reward for winning the previous contest. What else do you get from winning?? And how do you determine a winner without voting? Does Michael choose one using summary judgment? If you eliminate the prize and eliminate the vote you don't have a contest, so what exactly are you fixing?

The other reason I advocate elimination is the forum front page. Maybe contest participation has dwindled, but participation in the forum itself seems to be rolling along nicely. There are plenty of new posts and plenty of regular posters, driven by new art contributed by artists creating what they want when they want, which apparently is what the majority of forum members prefer. Fair enough. Let's leave it at that.

Like I said, I'm late to this discussion, but the way I see it it's trending toward only one conclusion anyway. Let's just accept it and move on.

 

[Michael]

I will postpone setting up the new contest for a couple of days …

Make that “months”.

I am so sorry for leaving this hanging like this for so long. I don't have any good excuse other than work life and personal life getting in the way of being more involved in forum matters in general. It sucks, but that's the way it is, unfortunately. And reading some of your responses, these kind of hindrances might ironically be also the reason for why general interest in participating in the contest had dwindled.

But first of all, thanks for everyone's thoughts and suggestions! It's interesting to read how differently people see the contest and what they are getting out of it. I appreciate everyone giving their perspective.

For me personally I always saw it as a nice way of flexing my creative Trek muscles every couple of weeks; get inspired to create something I would otherwise not have created. That in itself was always “reward” enough, so while choosing the next contest theme is a cool bonus, I don't consider it essential for me. And if it helps generating more interest from more people, I'd be for trying out determining the theme together.

The voting for a winner I see more as a pragmatic tool to determining who's choosing the next theme and starting the new thread, but also to get other forum members, who don't and possibly won't ever submit something of their own, involved in the activity. I never really considered it a “contest of popularity” per se. So while I'd find it easier to go with the idea of determining a consensus theme, I'd have a harder time getting rid of the voting aspect.

Of all your suggested ideas I like the thought of limiting the scope of the submissions in terms of time-involvement the most. I don't think we ever specifically established in any of the contests how complex, elaborate or time-intensive a submitted work would have to be, but I think the runtime of a month alone always kind of implied it had to be something big. So if we just make it something like a doodle or sketch, something a little smaller in scope, I would personally welcome that.

So taking all of your suggestions into account and as a way to go forward with the contest (even if yes, maybe this just is the beginning of the end for the contest), I suggest to try out the following:

1. Let's collect some ideas for a possible new theme in this thread here.
2. Let's vote on it and see which one strikes the fancy of most people thinking of participating.
3. Let's encourage people to not think too “large” with their entry, although every kind of effort is welcome, of course.
4. Depending on when we've settled on a theme, let's use the next couple of weeks to work on our individual entries.
5. Let's have a vote on which entry is favorited and who's declared the winner.
6. Let's reconvene and see what we think.

Wanna try it like that?

 

[ashleytinger]

I like that idea

 

[Santaman]

Yeah, I think that would work @Michael
As usual I will cheer everyone on from the sidelines.. because I am a talentless hack but I enjoy seeing wat everyone is coming up with during these contests.

Maybe a good idea for run times.. they could be tied to the subject of a contest? I mean "design a coffee cup" is of course different than "design an entire alien city" for example.
Maybe people who participate can throw in a guestimate of how long they think they would need.

 

[Cyfa]

There are some great ideas in the "Can I suggest an Art Contest?" thread - here are a few that I'm partial to:

From 2021

I came here to suggest an art contest....only to find that I made the same suggestion in 2005.

"I'd like to see some of the non-humanoids from the Star Trek books, or those only mentioned in the canon, brought to life."
^^^ THIS

I'd love to see the aquatic Federation member Alonis, any of the non-humanoids from the DS9 Relaunch Mission Gamma tetralogy, or those from the Titan book series, among others.

One of mine from 2019

Fairy Tale Trek

- While I haven't seen SNW yet, I've seen pictures from one of the episodes in which the crew seem to be acting out a fairy tale, so I thought a theme along those lines might be fun as well as topical.


From 2009

Here's an idea I was thinking about. In Fantastic Four 2, they introduced the Fantasicar, which was "built" by Dodge, and even contained familiar Dodge traits, such as the front grill and logo. My suggestion would be to create a Star Trek craft belonging to a particular car maker (Dodge, Ford, Chevy, etc). The craft would need to contain visual traits that make it identifiable as a particular brand.

From 2008

I just had a weird idea...

We've seen Marauder Mo, we've seen Toby the Targ, we've seen Flotter...what other kinds of children's toys and characters might exist in the worlds of the Trek galaxy? The Federation's certainly full of room for creativity, but there's a whole galaxy out there, and you never get that sense more than when you're a kid...

I thought it might be nice to have a contest that pushes people out of the shipbuilding paradigm...

I like the suggestions of a week or two to work on our entries, and that they can be sketches or doodles if not a finished piece.
And I must admit, without the Trek Art Challenge, I just haven't had the impetus to do anything creative, so I'm glad that it looks like it might be coming back. (Other than a couple of sketches, my last proper art was for last year's Hallowe'en challenge!)

 

[Admiral2]

For me personally I always saw it as a nice way of flexing my creative Trek muscles every couple of weeks; get inspired to create something I would otherwise not have created. That in itself was always “reward” enough, so while choosing the next contest theme is a cool bonus, I don't consider it essential for me.

If that's true, then it's not just non-essential, it's entirely unnecessary. You can find inspiration anywhere, and act on it at any time, without the constraints of a contest. Waiting for the contest is just wasting time you could be using to pursue your art and your chosen reward on your own.

The contest is not supposed to be the incentive. The contest is the competition to win the incentive, which is the prize. The prize is what you offer to entice people to enter the competition, and part of the enticement is usually that the prize is something the contestants can't readily get on their own. The right to challenge your fellow forum members to craft art to your specifications is a prize that's not readily available to anybody without a contest.

And I'll say again: If you're going to turn the contest into a reach for personal best and determine the topic by committee from now on, you don't have a contest. There's no point in bothering to call it that.

The voting for a winner I see more as a pragmatic tool to determining who's choosing the next theme and starting the new thread, but also to get other forum members, who don't and possibly won't ever submit something of their own, involved in the activity. I never really considered it a “contest of popularity” per se. So while I'd find it easier to go with the idea of determining a consensus theme, I'd have a harder time getting rid of the voting aspect.

Why? Going with the consensus theme makes it easier, because it takes the decision out if the winner's hands, and therefore makes voting for a winner superfluous.

Of all your suggested ideas I like the thought of limiting the scope of the submissions in terms of time-involvement the most. I don't think we ever specifically established in any of the contests how complex, elaborate or time-intensive a submitted work would have to be, but I think the runtime of a month alone always kind of implied it had to be something big.

No it didn't. The only thing the monthly schedule did was establish a regular deadline. The complexity of the entries submitted has always been up to the entrant. Nothing has ever been implied.

So if we just make it something like a doodle or sketch, something a little smaller in scope, I would personally welcome that.

Artists have submitted simple pieces before. I certainly have. Again, it's always been up to the entrant.

So taking all of your suggestions into account and as a way to go forward with the contest (even if yes, maybe this just is the beginning of the end for the contest), I suggest to try out the following:

1. Let's collect some ideas for a possible new theme in this thread here.
2. Let's vote on it and see which one strikes the fancy of most people thinking of participating.
3. Let's encourage people to not think too “large” with their entry, although every kind of effort is welcome, of course.
4. Depending on when we've settled on a theme, let's use the next couple of weeks to work on our individual entries.
5. Let's have a vote on which entry is favorited and who's declared the winner.
6. Let's reconvene and see what we think.

Wanna try it like that?

Honestly? No.

You won the last contest. You choose the next theme. Let those of us who are willing compete for the right to choose the following theme. Let that contest winner choose the following theme on his or her own That's the contest.

If the consensus is to follow what's listed here, the contest is already dead. I'll just say goodbye and move on.

 

[aridas sofia]

Let the contest be decided by a vote of the board, and let the prize be for the next month to render the winner’s name in gold letters and change his rank to the contest he won, ie “Art Contest Winner, Dec 2022”

 

[Michael]

Thanks for collecting those suggestions, @Cyfa! That's very helpful. I want to encourage everyone to submit their ideas.

(And I hope you'll get to see Strange New Worlds soon. I have a feeling you'll love it just as much as I am. )

I like the suggestions of a week or two to work on our entries, and that they can be sketches or doodles if not a finished piece.

I thought we'd still go for a month, but you know, I'm willing to try almost anything at this point. So, sure, let's try it with a two week period for this one.

And I must admit, without the Trek Art Challenge, I just haven't had the impetus to do anything creative, so I'm glad that it looks like it might be coming back. (Other than a couple of sketches, my last proper art was for last year's Hallowe'en challenge!)

Yeah, same. Apart from some doodle while being on a Zoom call I practically did nothing Trek Art related these last couple of months.

If that's true, then it's not just non-essential, it's entirely unnecessary. You can find inspiration anywhere, and act on it at any time, without the constraints of a contest. Waiting for the contest is just wasting time you could be using to pursue your art and your chosen reward on your own.

The contest is not supposed to be the incentive. The contest is the competition to win the incentive, which is the prize. The prize is what you offer to entice people to enter the competition, and part of the enticement is usually that the prize is something the contestants can't readily get on their own. The right to challenge your fellow forum members to craft art to your specifications is a prize that's not readily available to anybody without a contest.

And I'll say again: If you're going to turn the contest into a reach for personal best and determine the topic by committee from now on, you don't have a contest. There's no point in bothering to call it that.

Why? Going with the consensus theme makes it easier, because it takes the decision out if the winner's hands, and therefore makes voting for a winner superfluous.


No it didn't. The only thing the monthly schedule did was establish a regular deadline. The complexity of the entries submitted has always been up to the entrant. Nothing has ever been implied.



Artists have submitted simple pieces before. I certainly have. Again, it's always been up to the entrant.


Honestly? No.

You won the last contest. You choose the next theme. Let those of us who are willing compete for the right to choose the following theme. Let that contest winner choose the following theme on his or her own That's the contest.

I think you must have kind of read me wrong, because most of what you're quoting and arguing against was just me stating my personal preferences. I wasn't trying to dictate this on you guys or anything. And I completely got you the first time you said the contest doesn't make sense for you without voting for a winner who then choses the next theme, so no need to go through all that again. But, you know, the way you want to do it is exactly the way the contest has been done for years, while participation has dwindled. As we already established there's a lot of things factoring into this, but at this point what I want to do (and what most others here seem to agree with) is trying to tweak it and see if we can generate a little more interest. We might end up with running the contest exactly like before, who know's? But where's the harm in experimenting with it for a bit?

If the consensus is to follow what's listed here, the contest is already dead. I'll just say goodbye and move on.

Well, if that's how you feel it seems there's nothing left for me to add but “Goodbye!”

… let the prize be for the next month to render the winner’s name in gold letters and change his rank to the contest he won, ie “Art Contest Winner, Dec 2022”

You know, that's actually a pretty cool idea! I don't know how complicated it would be to implement, but I guess it doesn't hurt to ask: @EricF, do you think something like that can be done without too much hoopla and extra work for you?

 

[aridas sofia]

It’s not as if the winner won’t have a say in the next contest. Set up a thread and take suggestions. The winner can make suggestions, and everybody viewing the thread can give his or her suggestions the consideration they think they deserve. Set up a ballot and pick the next contest.
All that should be able to be done in a week.
In the meantime, the winner gets the special moniker until the next winner is chosen.

 

[Starscape]

@aridas sofia, I really like that idea of the rank change as a reward for a challenge win.

Here's a few ideas for challenges.

A couple of potentially simpler/quicker ones:

Hats - We don't see many hats in the Trekiverse, so why not design some?

Design Evolution - Show us your design evolution process (possibly just quick sketches) for something Star Trek, be it a ship, alien race or piece of equipment. (We've had something like this once before, but it could be worth revisiting)

A little more indepth challenge:

Pre-warp History - show us what you think life for an existing alien species was like some time before they developed warp-drive. (e.g. what was the Vulcan equivalent of the Model-T Ford, who was the first Andorian to circumnavigate their planet.)

I like the "Trek Toys" idea and also @Cyfa's "Fairy Tale Trek", too.

I'd like to hear some ideas from poster that don't usually enter the contest (no offense to the usual crowd), the more poeple we can get involved and that feel involved in the contest the better it'll be.


I hope we can get the Art Challenge back on it's feet, I've missed it the last few months. Sometimes it's the only thing that'll movitate me to get creative and it's a nice way to be able to contribute something to the community here.


As an aside (i.e. don't listen to him he just talking wild again)
I don't know if this idea has any merit as a replacement to the challenge or something we could run parallel to the monthly challenge... but how would people feel about a Quick-Fire Art Challenge run like a Game thread? The OP picks a topic, an another poster creates and posts an image based on that and also chooses the next topic and so on...

 

[Cyfa]

And I hope you'll get to see Strange New Worlds soon. I have a feeling you'll love it just as much as I am.

- Your feeling is almost certainly going to be right going by what I've seen already. I'm waiting for the whole season to be available here before subscribing so I can watch it all at once - I can barely wait!

I thought we'd still go for a month, but you know, I'm willing to try almost anything at this point. So, sure, let's try it with a two week period for this one.

- Sorry, I didn't make myself clear: I meant that it would be nice to have some additional challenges that only last a week or two (like Starscape's Quick-Fire suggestion) alongside the regular/monthly one

Design Evolution - Show us your design evolution process (possibly just quick sketches) for something Star Trek, be it a ship, alien race or piece of equipment. (We've had something like this once before, but it could be worth revisiting)

- I like this! It's nice to see how people get from initial ideas to the finished article.

I'd like to hear some ideas from poster that don't usually enter the contest (no offense to the usual crowd), the more poeple we can get involved and that feel involved in the contest the better it'll be.

- Absolutely! If the art challenge is to continue, it needs to be as accessible and 'tempting' to as many people as possible.

I hope we can get the Art Challenge back on it's feet, I've missed it the last few months. Sometimes it's the only thing that'll movitate me to get creative and it's a nice way to be able to contribute something to the community here.

- Hear, hear! Contrary to a previous poster's thoughts/opinion, the Art Challenge for me is exactly that: a personal challenge, not a contest against others or to win something. While a 'win' is nice (if sometimes overwhelming), it's the challenge itself that means the most to me as it provides inspiration and stimulates my creativity (similar to what Michael said upthread) - and I need some sort of boundaries/deadline otherwise I'd never do anything (because 'there's always tomorrow')! However, we're all different, so hopefully the 'New and Improved' Art Challenge - in whatever form it takes - will be something that a lot of people can get behind.

I don't know if this idea has any merit as a replacement to the challenge or something we could run parallel to the monthly challenge... but how would people feel about a Quick-Fire Art Challenge run like a Game thread? The OP picks a topic, an another poster creates and posts an image based on that and also chooses the next topic and so on...

- This sounds great! I like it as a supplement to the monthly challenge and will be a good place to show off our sketches and doodles. Perhaps every so often, those people who were working on something but got pipped to the post by someone else can put their unseen art together in a collage or something?

Inspired by Starscape's Quick-Fire idea, what about an 'exquisite corpse'/picture consequences style game running alongside the main challenge? Say, for example, the first theme is 'Starfleet starship' - someone would draw a bridge, the next a primary hull, the following person would draw a secondary hull, then nacelle pylons, then the last person would draw nacelles. Then someone with a working knowledge of Photoshop (or similar) - i.e. not me, although I could possibly fumble something together in Paint - could put all the parts together and post the finished ship? The theme could run for a month so there'd be a fleet of mismatched starships at the end of it. Then the next month could be 'alien' or 'uniform' or something.
I'm imagining quick sketches for each stage in the game rather than detailed masterworks, something that doesn't take any longer than 5 or 10 mins to do - just something fun!