Fellow Machinists,
So, I’ve been doing some thinking about Item Creation. I currently offer my services to create prizes for the Character Design Contests, which are weekly events. In the past I posted item polls, with selections gathered from user requests and my own whims, to determine what item to work on next. When JR asked me to generate prizes for the contests I originally planned to alternate between prizes and polls from week to week. I had forgotten that the Character Design Contests were weekly though and I abandoned the polls with that realization. Now I am reconsidering the alternating item creation scheme, doing a CDC prize one week and then posting a poll the next week. The downside of this is every other week there would be no prize offered for the contests. The upside would be more people would have a chance to influence what items are added to HeroMachine. Either way there would be one item generated a week.
I’ve made a poll to get a handle on what people think. Please feel free to post any comments if you feel strongly one way or another.
Thanks!
Daryl "dblade" Blasi
I’m ok with you alternating if that’s what you want to do. I don’t want to monopolise your talent just for the CDC prizes in any way.
If you do change to bi-weekly prizes, let me know when your going to start doing it and I’ll make sure I change the CDC blurb to compensate.
My one Con to changing is negatively affecting participation in the contests (assuming my item prizes have any effect that is).
I do like the idea of adding a blog item like the biweekly poll though. It might encourage more member participation which can’t be a bad thing. Plus I could bring back the terrible puns to punish my fellow Machinists. 🙂
I will let you know if I decide to alternate between CDC and polls.
One thing you might try is sort of in between the options. Hold a poll or two for material and encourage contest winners to accept ‘popular’ or pre-worked (your interests) choices or help requestors individually with creations if they don’t. Every three ‘easy’ ones for you, choose an item of your own at whim and offer it up just for your own enjoyment.
Maybe the alternative prize could be something like the winner chose the the theme for the next contest.
dblade, I’m sure you have a wish list that’s unrelated to the CDC winners’ requests. Maybe the off-week CDC winner could pick which items from the wish list appear in the next poll.
I was thinking making the CDC challenge deadline two weeks to give people a little more time to perfect their entry, and give Dblade a chance to work, but I really like RobM’s idea too.
I’m with JR though… You’re only one person, Dblade, and I often wonder how you don’t get completely overwhelmed with producing prizes. A new one every week seems a little buzzkillish to me… I don’t care how much you love what you do. It being what others want instead of yourself on top of it all… seems like a bit much. More power to you, man. I appreciate you efforts, Dblade, I really do!
What program do you use? Is it free? Can I teach it to myself via the intranet? I’d be willing to help you out if I can.
@RobM: Good idea. I was actually thinking something along those lines with the alternate winner. I would come up with a master list of items and then let the winner of that week help choose which items go in the poll. I’m thinking 3 items every poll. They might even be items the winner requested in the first place.
@Wild Card: That would be up to JR of course.
@Nug: I use Adobe Illustrator to create the items. Any vector application that can output to a format that can be imported into Flash is workable though.
@Wild Card- I’ll have to think about it. Of course it is dependant on the outcome here first though.
I support your polls! Those always gave another reason to check on the blog and forums is to see your progress and what the weekly count on an item was.
Another option, I know a lot of people like having some of the longer time users to Re-Illustrate theyre artwork in theyre image or style. Perhaps that could be an off week prize if someone was willing to do the work.
If only you werent the only consistent item creator dblade! Id think we would be a little too spoiled if there were more than one of you haha.
It appears the vote is strongly towards the alternating weeks scenario. If I go that route I probably won’t start it until December.