Hello and welcome to a new feature that you may see around every now and then. This is here to get your ideas on how to improve Artist's Easel and the features that are put on here. For the first 'Your Ideas' thread, we will talk about contests.

Since the December contest, some of the Mods have realised that there aren't many active artists here and many don't have the motivation or simply do not want to enter contests. We talked about how we could tweak the contests to give them more appeal and to try and help new artists join in. We came up with a few ideas and we pointed out the issues with the current format of the contests.

These issues were:
  • The Layout of the first post
  • The prizes
  • The judging scheme
  • The interactivity of the contest
  • The contest's approach


We have discussed and felt we have solved a few of these issues. We came up with these ideas:

The Contest's approach and Interactivity.
So the contests we host here are like traditional contests and have no real difference. This may seem boring to some artists who have joined many contests. So, we came up with the idea of tournaments. Artists will sign up and be randomly paired with others, they will then be given a topic to do some art for and those will compete and the winner of that pair will go on to compete with another until we get a final winner. This way, the contests can last longer and will have more variation between them. It will promote artists to think quickly and it will test them and make them do their best.
We would also have a visual representation of the contest stage so it is a lot easier to see who you are up against. Much like a traditional tournament tree diagram.

The other, more minor, general details (apart from the prizes) were not discussed in detail, but I want to know what you want because it will be you we looks, reads through and participates in the contest.

We need your ideas on what you want to see in these features:
  • The First/Main Post
  • The Judging Scheme


Also, we want to know what Prizes you want to see in our contests. We have a few ideas already, but if you bring up some good points, we will discuss and, if they are reasonable and possible, add them to our list of possible prizes.

So, without your help, these contests can not go ahead. We need your ideas and we need you to help us discuss and improve our contests here in Artist's Easel.

So, go ahead and discuss anything you want. Bring up ideas on the idea about the Tournament style, the Prizes or anything else you feel will need to be discussed in terms of contests.

If you have any questions or have anything you wish to suggest to me without posting it here, feel free to PM me.