UPrinting 'Summer Summary' Design Contest

The best idea I have heard so far is having separate submission and voting periods so that submissions made the earliest are winning because they are the best and not because they are made early in the contest and have the longest time to accrue votes. I also think that running tiered contests based on skill level is a good idea. Part of the question then is what level are you?

Prax suggested the possibility that if you win a contest you go up a skill level. Sometimes contest winners have relatively simple cute designs that could be created by someone with a beginner to intermediate skill level. It would be unfair to expect them to compete at the advanced level just because they won a contest. In terms of myself, I would either be at a beginner to intermediate level. I am just starting to get the hang of Seamless Lite, despite having been on here for a year (due to lack of time related to my job).

I have noticed that there are many CL members whose trade is the art/design field. Would it be fair to suggest that they be placed in the advanced category given that they have professionally trained in this area and likely have the greatest skill level and experience with various software programs (SS, Adobe, etc.)? A possible exception would be those who are just starting out in the field and learning themselves. This also is not meant to exclude those lovers who are not in the design field but have made this their long-time hobby - they too could place themselves at the advanced level if they feel their skill level is advanced.

Wouldn't this mean that we'd have to run design and palette contests in different manners? Creating palettes doesn't seem to require a skill level, but an understanding of colors and how to combine them harmoniously, and people seem just as unhappy about the outcome of those as they do the design contests. So how would that work out?
This all seems complicated. It would require a lot of work for the CL team and from what I've heard, they're understaffed.
This all looks nicely on paper (or a computer screen :P) but when it comes down to it, how would it even work out? If entries are anonymous, how would the winner claim their prize? Unless we're going by IP addresses, there would be no real way to prove that you are the creator of that entry. Or are we meaning that the entries would only be anonymous to other CLers but they'd be attributed to our accounts and the staff would know who submitted the entries?
Blah. There really is no easy way to handle these contests. >_<

I don't see that anonymity would hide the entrants... you just submit as usual, and code on the site would prevent the names and attendant palettes/templates from being displayed/linked on the contest entry. But still in a database for admin.

I do think I'm seriously confusing myself. lol

eighteyed wrote:

I don't see that anonymity would hide the entrants... you just submit as usual, and code on the site would prevent the names and attendant palettes/templates from being displayed on the contest entry.

Another change I would like to see is how many entries per page in the voting process. In the Gelaskins Hardcase Contest, for instance, towards the end of the entries, there were 67 pages of entries, 15 entries per tag search page, which amounts to approximately 1005 entries (didn't look to see how many total on the final page, and don't know if any were deleted after the contest). Yet the random search page displayed only 9 entries at a time... how many times did you have refresh to see the whole contest outside of the tag list? I would think 100+ times, before considering the randomizing returns the same entries time and again before introducing a new one, and makes you reload that many times more. What voter outside the site is going to sit through hundreds of reloads? How many are that committed without having a personal stake in the contest?
I personally would like to see many many more entries per page. How could you do that?
Maybe you are optimizing for viewing on phones and ipads as well, and I realize different contests have different shapes, but just to continue the example of the Gelaskins contest, if, say, 25 or more small thumbnails were shown, you'd still have a good idea of what the entry looked like, to know if you'd seen it before, wanted to see again. You could choose to click to enlarge for better examination and voting, and get done with overview of the whole contest in less of an ordeal. Heck, if all the entries mounted anonymously at the same time, you might have to randomize only once per contest viewing, and could just scroll through the list. That would be much less painful, in my opinion.

I think that the most important thing about instituting a tier system is to make sure that we have no 'ringers' entering below their weight class. Tier systems are usually present in racing and other sporting events - where there are pretty stringent limits that define your tier. I do not believe we can duplicate or enforce that level of rigor here.

When I read the comments from previous contests, I see a lot of concern about 'fairness' - which I think is primarily about giving everyone a chance to win. I therefore suggest that winning is actually a pretty good metric for separating people, and one which is already in the public record - It isn't to say that a person who wins one contest and then 'loses' the next can't be moved back down a tier for a better chance next time. ...It just means that other people who haven't won yet have more of a chance the next time around.

...It's actually pretty tough to argue another metric, IMO. They exist, certainly - but would take a tremendous amount of time and effort to institute and maintain.

Re: Training
I personally have no official design or graphics training of any kind - other than three hours in Corel Draw over a decade ago. :P ...Also - it would unfortunately be very easy to misrepresent yourself as having less training than you actually do in order to win, part of the 'ringer' argument.

Re:Seamless Studio vs. Seamless Lite
Three of my entries were near the top in the Print Runner Bookmark contest. Two were made in Seamless Studio using my own custom shapes, but the third was built in Seamless Lite, back before Studio even existed.

...I want more people to have a chance of winning. ...But I also believe that the idea of a contest - and these are contests, not lotteries - is that we all aim to refine our skills and improve the quality of our own work. There are a lot of people here on CL who do better work then I do - either their style is more distinctive, their compositional skills are more refined, or they are otherwise just plain better than me. :) ...It makes me briefly depressed, and then it makes me work harder. :P

...It is practice and repetition - the fabled 10,000 hours - which make us better than we are when we begin. When I started making templates here, they were really basic, and, frankly, not very good at all. Click here to see for yourself.

So I think that the added difficulty of being temporarily bumped into a higher weight class should inspire people at any level to improve and polish their own craftsmanship - and it certainly makes things easier for others who are still awaiting their chance in the spotlight.

Isn't that the point? :)

eighteyed wrote:

Another change I would like to see is how many entries per page in the voting process. In the Gelaskins Hardcase Contest, for instance, towards the end of the entries, there were 67 pages of entries, 15 entries per tag search page, which amounts to approximately 1005 entries (didn't look to see how many total on the final page, and don't know if any were deleted after the contest). Yet the random search page displayed only 9 entries at a time... how many times did you have refresh to see the whole contest outside of the tag list? I would think 100+ times, before considering the randomizing returns the same entries time and again before introducing a new one, and makes you reload that many times more. What voter outside the site is going to sit through hundreds of reloads? How many are that committed without having a personal stake in the contest?
I personally would like to see many many more entries per page. How could you do that?
Maybe you are optimizing for viewing on phones and ipads as well, and I realize different contests have different shapes, but just to continue the example of the Gelaskins contest, if, say, 25 or more small thumbnails were shown, you'd still have a good idea of what the entry looked like, to know if you'd seen it before, wanted to see again. You could choose to click to enlarge for better examination and voting, and get done with overview of the whole contest in less of an ordeal. Heck, if all the entries mounted anonymously at the same time, you might have to randomize only once per contest viewing, and could just scroll through the list. That would be much less painful, in my opinion.

I am now just using the pattern search (based on the contest tag) to view all the entries in order. I hope we can do this for every contest :)

Prax, I find myself agreeing a lot with what you have said, especially about bumping a winner up a level. Isn't that the point a lot of times in life? You won't see an Olympic athlete competing with a beginner. If they are on that level and have won many competitions, it is natural for them to move up to the next level. From what I'm gathering we are all agreeing in the fact that what it takes to win these contests is skill, and practicing this skill to make it better.

I hear you, Edith!

Personally, as an alternate solution, I really like the idea of limiting the number of entries per person to between 3-10, depending on the contest.

I think it really balances out to be more fair overall, and makes people choose from among their best works, resulting in a much higher standard of entries.. ...In this contest, there are still fewer than 300 entries, which is quite a reasonable number to sort through. :)

eighteyed wrote:

Another change I would like to see is how many entries per page in the voting process. In the Gelaskins Hardcase Contest, for instance, towards the end of the entries, there were 67 pages of entries, 15 entries per tag search page, which amounts to approximately 1005 entries (didn't look to see how many total on the final page, and don't know if any were deleted after the contest). Yet the random search page displayed only 9 entries at a time... how many times did you have refresh to see the whole contest outside of the tag list?

I am now just using the pattern search (based on the contest tag) to view all the entries in order. I hope we can do this for every contest :)

I myself prefer this view. Especially because I can see who the competition is in what order. However, the tag search feature does not allow you to see the entries in the shape of the contest item.... well, I guess you can click to see entry from the search page. It makes a difference, to see the entry's shape.

I personally would prefer not to tier the artists, but the entries. Say a contest has 2335 entries. I'd rather take the top 200 entries after a period of voting, wipe the totals, and have a revote on the subwinners. I think you could tier, if you wanted, according to who made what percentile in total votes, over the course of a few contests.

Speaking of skill level....
Can someone please tell me how you can draw an irregular shape and easily have that entire shape filled with one color? This is something I can do in simple drawing programs but I have not been able to figure this out all summer in SL or SS. The only way I have accomplished it is by piecing existing shapes of one color together to form the irregular shape, and then outlining in black. However, when you have too many shapes and layers, SL and SS give me trouble saving what has taken me hours to complete. Also, shapes I have saved no longer paste correctly when I go to use them again. I have posted some of these questions in the forum awhile ago but have not gotten a response that has really helped me address these issues yet (I do thank those who have responded though).

I too want to make custom filled shapes. Another thing I would like is to be able to delete selected parts of shapes. I think the problem is you can't, in Seamless, hence no advice.

I think eighteyed's suggestion of tiering based on scores over multiple contests is the BEST idea. This is what is done in sports...I think :) This would fairly separate lovers who win on a consistent basis from lovers who win rarely and often rank in the middle of the pack from lovers who have yet to win. This gets my vote :)

The problem is... what kind of contests do you devise for the middle and lower tiers? Does Colourlovers have placement contests with no prizes just to divide everybody up? Are companies going to want to sponsor contests for middling and lower entries? How can you tell when you're ready to advance if you're in a lower tier contest?

amyanneerickson wrote:

Can someone please tell me how you can draw an irregular shape and easily have that entire shape filled with one color? .

Unfortunately, this is something you can not do within the current build of Seamless. You would have to create the shape in another vector program, like Inkscape (which is free) or Illustrator (which isn't), and export the shape as an .svg file into your custom Seamless Studio shapes.

I'd be happy to run you through the process with illustrator, but I can't help much with Inkscape. :)

sunset field by ShiversTheNinja
www.COLOURlovers.com

loveburst2 by ShiversTheNinja
www.COLOURlovers.com

loveburst3 by ShiversTheNinja
www.COLOURlovers.com

Hello again. A newbie, skimming the important brouhaha and noticing some of my fave artists' names in the discussion ... and a new one, whose contest entries in this thread were mysteriously listed as if I had posted them. wtf. Deleted.

One comment about voting. I had been here before but didn't dive in until the Moo card contest. The Moo "random entries" seemed to cough up the same entries and/or same pages of entries on repeated visits, which appears to favor voting for whoever comes up earliest. How "random" is it, really?

Again, I think creative culture and employment issues are more crucial than infighting over open source, but thought this worth mentioning in the current discussion ...

Thank you!

So i am one who has more than 3 entries, it just happened...???
So so i did deleted some ...???
And left 3 my favorite ones :)
I think its fare ...not that i´m in competition at all :D
Good luck !

DarkGarden by Rips
www.COLOURlovers.com

Falling... by Rips
www.COLOURlovers.com

LisaBelle by Rips
www.COLOURlovers.com

Love the first one !!! Really nice work American Women !

American Women wrote:

by

by

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I've re-read some comments, and I think we are on our way to changing the way contests are run for the better. If something isn't working, work together to change it! I myself have had frustration over repeat winners... but after reading comments, I need to step up my game. Likewise, those repeat winners need to be willing to work with the rest of us... share the wealth, not just say oh, well you need to practice and spend a bunch of time and money doing this or doing that. :)

How do you mean, takeovercontrol?

those repeat winners need to be willing to work with the rest of us... share the wealth, not just say oh, well you need to practice and spend a bunch of time and money doing this or doing that. :)

@RIps, what a great gesture!
-------------------------

The problem is... what kind of contests do you devise for the middle and lower tiers? Does Colourlovers have placement contests with no prizes just to divide everybody up? Are companies going to want to sponsor contests for middling and lower entries? How can you tell when you're ready to advance if you're in a lower tier contest?

*in case it doesn't show, I don't like the answers to any of these questions. I think dividing people up is bad, people should work to rise to the top, not segregate into safer levels. In pro golf, you don't make the cut, you don't make the tournament. That's why in a former contest forum I wanted a qualifying round. It's not that I want to exclude people of lower skills. I think we leave them on the hook too long. I want them to have some goal to aspire to, and a clear direction for them to head. Towards excellence. I'd be happy if we started a group library, with tutorials and vector links. But we haven't got time to hand hold people and teach them vector graphics.

In fact, I'd like to see a contest of the year, wherein a Judge outside Colourlovers picks a contest winner based on their overall contest entries that year. But maybe that's just me. I've only won 5th place in one contest. It was a palette only contest. People beat me all the time, but I'm working on it.

Thank you, eighteyed.

eighteyed wrote:

But we haven't got time to hand hold people and teach them vector graphics.

As for repeat winners "sharing the wealth", there is no way to do that other than sharing advice on how to win and how to improve. To expect more is unreasonable. It seems that "sharing the wealth" might mean no longer entering the contest so we're no longer competition. And, to be honest, I'm not willing to limit my experiences because someone is unhappy.

Hmm, perhaps I should have had my morning cup of coffee before posting as I didn't make much sense there. I'm sorry.

Maybe the thing that irks me the most is repeat winners coming out and saying, oh I won but the joy is gone because I'm getting criticized for winning multiple times. So? Feel proud that you've won more than once, no matter what anyone else may say. Don't you think singers, writers, etc get criticism as well? It comes with being a winner, and no one likes a sore winner anymore than they like a sore loser. I hate to crack open the popularity argument again, but it comes with being well known. Don't you think Madonna, for example, sells records because she is, in fact, Madonna? She has hardcore fans that would buy her records if they had nothing more than a keystroke of a piano. Likewise, the same goes for lovers that have many followers or are more 'well known' around the site, they get votes because they are who they are.

I'm not suggesting any of the more gifted 'hold hands' of those that aren't as talented as them, maybe the site itself could provide easier to understand instructions for seamless light, or links to websites that would be helpful. (is that already done? sorry, just thinking out loud).

Just going to have to agree to disagree on this.

OrigamiMei wrote:

Just going to have to agree to disagree on this.

How constructive. Thanks for the input.

Thanks for lending a helping hand prax.
I apologize that this was overlooked in the forums @amyanneerickson

praxicalidocious wrote:

amyanneerickson wrote:

Can someone please tell me how you can draw an irregular shape and easily have that entire shape filled with one color? .

Unfortunately, this is something you can not do within the current build of Seamless. You would have to create the shape in another vector program, like Inkscape (which is free) or Illustrator (which isn't), and export the shape as an .svg file into your custom Seamless Studio shapes.

I'd be happy to run you through the process with illustrator, but I can't help much with Inkscape. :)

I'm trying to refrain from being nasty and would appreciate it if you would do the same.

takeovercontrol wrote:

OrigamiMei wrote:

Just going to have to agree to disagree on this.

How constructive. Thanks for the input.

Apologies for the lack of advice...

Let me just say simply that yes, there are limitations to working in both SS and SL. You cannot delete part of a shape, unless of course you had pieced that together and are capable of un-piecing it - which would be most obvious.

Are you referring to maybe a shape that you have combined from pieces and you wish to un-combine?

eighteyed wrote:

I too want to make custom filled shapes. Another thing I would like is to be able to delete selected parts of shapes. I think the problem is you can't, in Seamless, hence no advice.

OrigamiMei wrote:

I'm trying to refrain from being nasty and would appreciate it if you would do the same.

takeovercontrol wrote:

OrigamiMei wrote:

Just going to have to agree to disagree on this.

How constructive. Thanks for the input.

Then don't say anything, how about that? I'm entitled to my opinion just as much as you are. I'm sure you would love for things to stay status quo, as that is what the bulk of your arguments are pushing for. I'm glad you have a talent that you have worked for and refined. Good for you.

You're well entitled to your opinion, but you're sure as hell not going to tell me not to voice mine.
I wish you a lot of luck in your journey in life. You've been offered advice that you don't want to take. You want things handed to you, and well, that's not how life works.

I hope you feel better soon (I do mean that!)
Mei

takeovercontrol wrote:

OrigamiMei wrote:

I'm trying to refrain from being nasty and would appreciate it if you would do the same.

takeovercontrol wrote:

OrigamiMei wrote:

Just going to have to agree to disagree on this.

How constructive. Thanks for the input.

Then don't say anything, how about that? I'm entitled to my opinion just as much as you are. I'm sure you would love for things to stay status quo, as that is what the bulk of your arguments are pushing for. I'm glad you have a talent that you have worked for and refined. Good for you.