Guild of Writers

Less than a month to go...

I'm making slow progress on the textures for now - I'll be fairly busy until May 3rd, so expect my third texture pack to be released some time after that.

Hey, did you ever get around to advertising this contest outside this thread? I'm just worried that no one knows about it but us happy few.

Uhm.........

I can't find news of your contest anywhere over at the GoMe. And it's definately not on the GoMa forum. Nor can I find anything on the MOUL forum.

So it looks like your thread here is it. I don't even see it in the Announcements here on this forum.

So what are the contest rules? A contest on tutorials..........for Age Created related things hmmm?

Any limit to the amount of entries? I've got like 31 or 32 of them that I've made for Blender and the GoW Plugin, and right now I'm up to something like 26 that I've done for 3DS Max and Cyan's Plugin. With Pics and Videos too!

Linky: Age Creation Tutorials at GoMa Forum

Seriously though, I just happen to finally sit down and read this thread. There is no advertisement at all for you contest that I can find.

Good point. *sigh* - I need to promote this more, and clarify the rules.

I've been very distracted by schoolwork, but that'll be over on May 3rd.

For now, let's establish a few parameters:

Tutorials must be NEW tutorials created since the beginning of this contest - ideally with intention of entry into this contest; and only qualify if posted in the month leading up to the final contest entry deadline - the end of May 15th.

If the tutorial is an old tutorial posted somewhere prior to April 16, 2010, it does not qualify; however I think a great many of your most recent 3ds max tutorials will, and you should submit them.

This contest is meant to stimulate creation of new tutorials, especially tutorials which are relevant to current age creation methods; i.e. the 3ds max plugins, the current form of PyPRP, Blender, etc.

However, it seems to be mostly ineffective at doing so (thus far) due to poor publicity - my hope is that the last days of the contest can be promoted better - and that the aftermath of this contest will be attention-getting and build interest in likely (future) contests, which I will try to organize better.

My expectation with this one was that it'd be a "small" initial contest which would establish some credibility insofar as I'm actually going to give out the prizes - I may not have been all that effective in clarifying contest rules or establishing public interest - I have kind of screwed that up - but once it's clear that I have actually handed out prizes, I think I can better build publicity, assemble a panel of judges, get more entry submissions, etc - on the next contest.

The plan for the next contest involves a QAD (Quality Age Development) contest - the goal of which will be to grant awards to the highest-quality and most detailed, realistic fan ages released in the second half of 2010. Prizes and parameters of that contest are "to be determined".

Well since the date of 16 April, I've made about 14 tutorials for Max and the Cyan Plugin.

Clarifying the rules is very important as you could end up with all kinds of entries, but have a hard time pitting one against the other. For example, is it really fair to compare one of my tutorials for 3DS Max with Age Creation to a tutorial made by someone that is for Blender and the GoW ?
Maybe the tutorials just happen to be both about Wavesets. Mine has a lot of pictures, as the Cyan Plugin is all point and click, where as the Blender tutorial would have some pictures, but would mostly be bodies of text because the Plasma Component has to be typed in (ALCScripting). One might think mine looks better because of all the pics, but then the Blender tutorial might be much more informative because the person took the time out to say what each and every variable means.

Then you have someone that submits a video tutorial. Most video tutorials will out class any written tutorial most of the time.

So yah, having some ground rules first is important. Have something like: The tutorial must be about "Blank" subject. Tutorial must be readable format and can include pictures, but no video at this time (not everyone has good video creation software). Tutorials will be graded upon picture quality, spelling and grammar (you would easily pull in Dot from the GoMa to be a judge with that one! hehe), ease of reading, organization and explinations of terms. Only one entry per person. etc, etc, etc.

But then again, the first contest of any kind is always the groudn breaker! The very first RAD (Rapid Age Development) contest was that way. The 2nd one went much more smoothly

I think your contest would of helped make more people who don't frequent this forum more aware that there ARE tutorials out there, rather than getting more people interested in making them. Making them can take a LOT of time and effort. Not too many people do it for fun (except insane people like me).

In the interest of helping populate the contestants, I'll throw in one of my tutorials on Max that I've made since April 16th. However if I win, I'll donate my award to who ever is the runner up (not that I'm that confident, hehe, or arrogant, but I don't need the stuff that is the award, and will be happy to give it to someone that can use it). But while I do see the date you said for the deadline, you have not mentioned how we are to submit our tutorials.

Yes, I think it'd be best to make the limit one entry per person.

And I'll try to publicize the event more, and the existing GoW tutorials more.

Thank you for creating so many tutorials, Andy, that's really helpful to the Uru community.

Hm, I wouldn't assume that prizes will do the trick. I won a copy of Adobe Creative Suite CS3 (combines Photoshop, Illustrator, and a host of other superexpensive Adobe products) in a Myst Age creation contest put a few years back, and there were only like two other contestants. You can't get a better prize than that, but such a low response!!

I hate to be a stick in the mud but, buying people textures or giving software prizes in contests is considered proft. This runs afowl of the rules Cyan laid down for age creation.

I used to get thousands in software and hand it out as prizes for a PC usergroup.This was possible because we were incorporated as a 501c3 nonprofit.We published a magazine with reviews and distributed to bookstores and local colleges. Venders also gave demos at our meetings and sold software to several hundred members. I don't see either plan working in the guild's case.

If on the other hand someone wants to donate their own textures or give the guild bandwidth for a server that sounds fine and legal. Since that's the way this discussion has already turned I'll shut up.

Ouch. So you're saying if I buy people gifts, this is considered profiting from Uru for (those) people I'm giving the gifts to.

In other words - not allowed...

*sigh* I think you may be right about that.

But, could I consider (instead of buying gifts for the winners) offering my TIME to the winners instead?

How about this, I make a custom texture and/or .OBJ model collection for each person who wins, according to what they request?

I could offer my art services - texturing and modelling - to the winners, with more hours going to the top entries.

12 hours' work to the 1st place winner.
9 hours' work to the second place winner.
6 hours' work to third place.
3 hours' work to fourth place.

All these collections would be released free to everyone on the board, as well as the texture pack I was working on already anyway.

How does that sound to all of you?

The winning entrants could simply describe to me, or send me a simple sketch, of what object(s) or texture packs they want me to create for their ages, and I can work on making those.

I don't think that there would be any official objection to a person producing freely-released content for someone else's fan age project.

Or we could just cancel the contest altogether if that's how everybody feels, and I could design one texture pack of moderate size for every person who submits an entry by the 15th, rather than judging and determining four winners.

That might be a better option if we have less than four people - or more than four - submitting entries by the 15th; I can make a custom texture pack for each entry (limit one entry per person) - no competition, no judging, no ranking - if you went to the trouble to submit something, you deserve a prize.

That is, if you all want to do things that way.