Mod Post!
Hey, guys! Watch as Sev totally abuses her modly privledges to bring you fun, entertainment, and questions!
So there was a fairly interesting conversation between kimouski, rosencrantz, katmillia, and first_seventhe about the focus of this community and various directions that it could go in. I direct curious people to follow this link and read the suggestions and comments made there. (Although I'll warn you, there are lots of words. I do, however, suggest reading the first couple comments. And anything with COCK in it. Aw, fuck it, you're bored, right?)
I've tried to keep this as short as possible while still hitting everything important. You guys know that length is a major problem for me - oh wait, that's a cock joke I have a tl;dr problem. Bear with me.
This community was founded, basically, to get Sev, Katy, and Enkida to draw once a week. For reals. We had no loftier goals than that, honestly - just to create a way between the three of us to make us draw, a way that would stick. We all knew the best way to get better at something (namely, tablets) was to practice -- so we decided to make each other practice. With absolutely NO pressure on the art - the only pressure was to get something done once a week. This will be important later!
The LJ-comm cockeyed_art was mostly created as a dumping ground for this particular project. And once we had an LJ community, we figured we could invite more people to come play and make cock jokes with us, because that's what LJ is for. (Cock jokes anyway. Like my icon says, I totally almost called this comm ff_cockathon.) And we love having people here - I myself am totally tickled by the fact that other awesome artists want to come together and draw with us! The more cocks the merrier, really.
The question posed in the comment-fest was, basically: Does this community want to take things one step further? Since the idea of the community is to promote improvement in the areas of art, would anyone be interested in actual weekly assignments targeting more specific areas/skills? What about tutorials?
So! Hence, the discussion.
- - -
I think the first conclusion to come out of the comment-fest is that all three of us "founders" (and yes, I am only calling us that because it makes us AWESOME) want to keep the free-spirited, no-pressure atmosphere that lets us create a bit of art every week. From what I am reading out of the comments, putting any type of assignment, critique, or pressure at all on the "weekly drawings" might ruin the free-for-all attitude we've come up with in the comm, and might make people (i.e. us?) less likely to participate. There's something to be learned from coming up with a worry-free picture, every week, even if it's just mechanical tablet skills -- and I don't think anyone wants to change that.
(Remember, you can totally ASK for crit on a picture, and we encourage it. We're just all precious and unique snowflakes, y'know. and everyone thinks it's a safer policy to say "Crit must be requested". That's all.)
AT THE SAME TIME... yes, the end goal is to improve art skills. And it did seem that there would be some interest in more specific, skill- or technique-oriented posts -- as long as those sorts of assignments didn't interfere with the basic mentality of "draw once a week no matter how bad just do it oh and p.s. cock". It would be a good resource to have, and an excellent thing to be doing as you are learning to draw (i.e. on a tablet, but really, wherever).
So the real question here was how to balance these two things, and whether we could add an instructional portion to the community without losing the casual atmosphere of the initial idea.
- - -
So! I come with suggestions! As always! Here is my proposal:
The Monday-Sunday Weekly Fanart Challenge remain as is. The schedule between Sev, Katy, and Enkida stays the same, and the special weeks continue being what they are (i.e. chances for us to be on crack for a little bit). We keep anything instructional out of it, to keep it low-pressure and happy and not scary. Nothing here changes.
What we add would be a separate Weekly Thing, posted on - oh, let's say Wednesday. And I'm going to call this a Discussion Post. Ha, ha, guess where else I am a mod. Anyway. The thought here is that Wednesday's post would be all about Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials.
The mod in charge of posting that week would choose a topic - either (a) something they feel they are particularly strong at and want to demonstrate, or (b) something they feel they may not be strong at, and want to know more about. Or (c), which might just be something they are interested in. For an example, let's say it's my week, and I want to do a Discussion Post on "drawing faces". I'd make a post on Wednesday addressing this issue, maybe giving an example of the way I do it, and then asking for pointers from the audience - this is where the Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials come into play.
Other people in the community can then chime in as much or as little as they want. I mean, using this example, even I probably have a couple things to say about the way that I draw faces - the tricks I use to do it, things I've learned from the internet, and the things I have trouble with using my particular method. Other, more experienced people could step in and make suggestions to add to my method. I could alternately comment with examples and ask for crit. If someone felt like making a short tutorial on the Topic of the Week, they could link it there. In short, discussion and fun!
What I like about this idea is:
However, this idea could totally fail if:
Anyway, loving and Cock-Ful members of the community, I would like to hear your thoughts.
Do you think that a separate "Discussion Post" type of thing would be something fun to add to this community? Or would you rather stick with the simple task of drawing A THING once a week? Do you have any other ideas as to how this might work?
Keep in mind this community started out as a casual art-dump place, so we only want to start something like this if people are interested. However, if you're interested, this could get really awesome really quickly.
This post is for you guys to chime in. So I'd better hear from a lot of you, even if it's only a comment with a dirty joke in it. ;)
So there was a fairly interesting conversation between kimouski, rosencrantz, katmillia, and first_seventhe about the focus of this community and various directions that it could go in. I direct curious people to follow this link and read the suggestions and comments made there. (Although I'll warn you, there are lots of words. I do, however, suggest reading the first couple comments. And anything with COCK in it. Aw, fuck it, you're bored, right?)
I've tried to keep this as short as possible while still hitting everything important. You guys know that length is a major problem for me - oh wait, that's a cock joke I have a tl;dr problem. Bear with me.
This community was founded, basically, to get Sev, Katy, and Enkida to draw once a week. For reals. We had no loftier goals than that, honestly - just to create a way between the three of us to make us draw, a way that would stick. We all knew the best way to get better at something (namely, tablets) was to practice -- so we decided to make each other practice. With absolutely NO pressure on the art - the only pressure was to get something done once a week. This will be important later!
The LJ-comm cockeyed_art was mostly created as a dumping ground for this particular project. And once we had an LJ community, we figured we could invite more people to come play and make cock jokes with us, because that's what LJ is for. (Cock jokes anyway. Like my icon says, I totally almost called this comm ff_cockathon.) And we love having people here - I myself am totally tickled by the fact that other awesome artists want to come together and draw with us! The more cocks the merrier, really.
The question posed in the comment-fest was, basically: Does this community want to take things one step further? Since the idea of the community is to promote improvement in the areas of art, would anyone be interested in actual weekly assignments targeting more specific areas/skills? What about tutorials?
So! Hence, the discussion.
- - -
I think the first conclusion to come out of the comment-fest is that all three of us "founders" (and yes, I am only calling us that because it makes us AWESOME) want to keep the free-spirited, no-pressure atmosphere that lets us create a bit of art every week. From what I am reading out of the comments, putting any type of assignment, critique, or pressure at all on the "weekly drawings" might ruin the free-for-all attitude we've come up with in the comm, and might make people (i.e. us?) less likely to participate. There's something to be learned from coming up with a worry-free picture, every week, even if it's just mechanical tablet skills -- and I don't think anyone wants to change that.
(Remember, you can totally ASK for crit on a picture, and we encourage it. We're just all precious and unique snowflakes, y'know. and everyone thinks it's a safer policy to say "Crit must be requested". That's all.)
AT THE SAME TIME... yes, the end goal is to improve art skills. And it did seem that there would be some interest in more specific, skill- or technique-oriented posts -- as long as those sorts of assignments didn't interfere with the basic mentality of "draw once a week no matter how bad just do it oh and p.s. cock". It would be a good resource to have, and an excellent thing to be doing as you are learning to draw (i.e. on a tablet, but really, wherever).
So the real question here was how to balance these two things, and whether we could add an instructional portion to the community without losing the casual atmosphere of the initial idea.
- - -
So! I come with suggestions! As always! Here is my proposal:
The Monday-Sunday Weekly Fanart Challenge remain as is. The schedule between Sev, Katy, and Enkida stays the same, and the special weeks continue being what they are (i.e. chances for us to be on crack for a little bit). We keep anything instructional out of it, to keep it low-pressure and happy and not scary. Nothing here changes.
What we add would be a separate Weekly Thing, posted on - oh, let's say Wednesday. And I'm going to call this a Discussion Post. Ha, ha, guess where else I am a mod. Anyway. The thought here is that Wednesday's post would be all about Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials.
The mod in charge of posting that week would choose a topic - either (a) something they feel they are particularly strong at and want to demonstrate, or (b) something they feel they may not be strong at, and want to know more about. Or (c), which might just be something they are interested in. For an example, let's say it's my week, and I want to do a Discussion Post on "drawing faces". I'd make a post on Wednesday addressing this issue, maybe giving an example of the way I do it, and then asking for pointers from the audience - this is where the Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials come into play.
Other people in the community can then chime in as much or as little as they want. I mean, using this example, even I probably have a couple things to say about the way that I draw faces - the tricks I use to do it, things I've learned from the internet, and the things I have trouble with using my particular method. Other, more experienced people could step in and make suggestions to add to my method. I could alternately comment with examples and ask for crit. If someone felt like making a short tutorial on the Topic of the Week, they could link it there. In short, discussion and fun!
What I like about this idea is:
- It isn't necessarily very time-consuming for anyone involved. It only requires as much time as you want to put into it. If you're having a busy week, you can ignore the discussion.
- If you've got time, however, you can chime in and help a fellow artist. You could even create an "assignment" for other people - a figure that needs shading, for example. Fosters community! Promotes learning! Encourages participation!
- It doesn't put any pressure on the Weekly Drawing Challenge, because it is a separate activity.
- It would create a really awesome collection of Memories for FF artists (really, for all artists, I guess), with different techniques and tutorials and links available for each topic.
- You don't have to be a "pro" to participate. Like I said, even someone as bad as me can talk about method. It takes the pressure off of participants by making it a "discussion" rather than a "tutorial". It isn't me being like "OK LET ME SHOW YOU HOW TO DRAW A FACE, BECAUSE I AM OBVIOUSLY AWESOME", it's me saying, "Hey, guys, let's talk about drawing faces." Adding your own method as an example or tutorial is completely optional!
- We could have a "Master List" of things that community members might want to see in a Discussion Post - problem areas in art, for example, or maybe something you see that someone else does well that you'd like them to talk about. Anyone could suggest things!
- We could hit both mechanics-sort of things (posing, action, proportions, etc) and technique-sort of things ("how to shade in Photoshop", etc).
- It would help people learn how to crit art. I've found it's difficult to find an art beta. We only had one for ff_exchange.
- Cock.
However, this idea could totally fail if:
- No one participated. Although in the end this would just mean that no-one was interested, and we would still have the weekly challenges, so it wouldn't be that bad.
- Crit descended into bad!crit, and people's feelings got hurt. I am pretty sure we're all mature enough to handle things, but I know bad!crit came up a lot in the discussion, so it's a very obvious concern.
- We all got modest. The point here would be to share the way you do things with other people and try to come up with the best way to draw X or Y. If we're all too embarassed to share and talk about our methods, there won't be any discussion.
- We don't stay relatively modest. There's more than one "right" way to draw. I know this is obvious; I'm just putting it in here in case any asshats are reading.
- It gets to be too big of a deal (the opposite of #1) and no one can keep up with the community anymore.
- There was no cock.
Anyway, loving and Cock-Ful members of the community, I would like to hear your thoughts.
Do you think that a separate "Discussion Post" type of thing would be something fun to add to this community? Or would you rather stick with the simple task of drawing A THING once a week? Do you have any other ideas as to how this might work?
Keep in mind this community started out as a casual art-dump place, so we only want to start something like this if people are interested. However, if you're interested, this could get really awesome really quickly.
This post is for you guys to chime in. So I'd better hear from a lot of you, even if it's only a comment with a dirty joke in it. ;)