Housepets!

Welcome to the forum's new art challenge thread.
How this works is pretty simple, I'll post a 'prompt' and a time limit. The time starts as soon as the post goes up, and you have until it runs out to draw and submit something based on the prompt. No sign up or anything nececary, if the current challenge looks interesting to you just jump right in. If you want to suggest a prompt for a future challenge, just send me a PM with the thread's title in the subject.

for now the time limits will be mostly 24 hours, since the users on this forum are kinda scattered across multiple continents, and most of you are on while I'm at work. >.<

I might try to set up some 30-minute or 1-hour ones once I've figured out what the most convenient time of days is, (and gotten said day off if it would interfere with work). if i'm doing one of those i'll try to warn you guys the day before. also, since I'm in Alberta, any times I mention are in Mountain Daylight Time (UTC -6:00) during the summer or Mountain Standard Time (UTC -7:00) during the winter.

Links to past and present challenges:

Challenge #1 (Ended)
Challenge #2 (Ended)
Challenge #3 (Ended)
Challenge not found.
Challenge #4 (Ended)
challenge #ARGH! (Ended)
Challenge not found.
challenge #Something (Ended)
Strange challenge (Ended)
Mystery challenge (Ended)
Challenge #? (Ended)
Challenge #10 (Ended)
Challenge #11

Thats absolutely crazy.

CRAZY I tell you!

Used to do that actually, but interest faded. I'm still up for it.
Edit: Link to the event: https://www.housepetscomic.com/forums/v ... f=7&t=1748

Um, reading through that, it sounds a bit 'top heavy' in how it was run. i was thinking a lot simpler. drawing something for a specific other user adds a lot of prep work and coordination, which judging by the later posts i suspect is what killed it. (Also, if it's character based the roster of characters eventually gets stale.) I was thinking more "here's a prompt, here's your time limit, submit it to the thread as soon as you're done, go nuts."

those challenges are always fun cause it's never the same thing twice, and you're having to use limited info (usually only a single sentence) to work from, on a time limit. It's good practice for balancing speed and quality, and it encourages you to get inventive with the prompts. Personally i always preferred trying to find ways to subvert them; turn them into something that's still technically what was asked, but nothing like what was intended.

If i can't find one that's still running, i'd be kinda tempted to start one...

the artistic gifts thing was the closest to what you propose that we've had. I say go for it, it sounds fun.

Well. In that case, lets start this off with a bang.

Here's your prompt for the first official challenge: "It will begin at sunset, and it will be glorious."

You have Until 8PM MDT tomorrow (24 hours) to draw, upload, and link post or attach your picture here. Have fun.

Are you gonna be the only judge or can someone apply to be one? I wouldn't mind being a judge.

Um... Sure, I guess? Though I don't know what you would do besides make sure people stick to the time limit. There's no prize or ranking...

Oh you mean we aren't judging? I thought this was a contest. Oh well.

Some people just don't like to be judged.

Two hours left and... Nobody's posted any pictures? I figured this might be slow at the start but I wasn't expecting the first one to be a complete flop...

I was going to say, gotta give folks some decent time given the circumstances. Maybe see if we can post in other art related threads that this is going on, give a start date a week or so out, give people a few days if not a week or two to come up with something, and know that it'll take a few tries to get momentum.

On a random note, I haven't been checking the HP comic or forums much at all since SDS (the previous drawing thing) dried up and the celestial saga ended, but I thought it was kinda cool one of the rare moments I poke my nose in, is you starting this thread. I'm taking that as a good sign, and while it takes me a bit to produce a doodle, you've got my interest and support. :)

DingoVolf wrote:gotta give folks some decent time given the circumstances. Maybe see if we can post in other art related threads that this is going on, give a start date a week or so out, give people a few days if not a week or two to come up with something, and know that it'll take a few tries to get momentum.

while i can see the point behind most of what you're saying here, I have to question one bit. Doesn't extending the time limit for a prompt to a week take the, well, challenge out of the challenge? I mean most of the sites I've drawn for these on limit you to 15, 30, or 60 minutes. as it is it feels wrong to me just giving a whole day, and i'm only doing that much because of the timing issues of users on two or more continents.

I'd say at least give more warning before starting the challenge and make sure you have participants who can actually participate at the time/day you do it.

okay i'll keep that in mind. sorry.

Usually i'm one of the artists not the one on this side of things. guess it's not as simple as it looked.

It probably would have worked better if we got people to sign up for it.

One thing that might help would be if there were multiple prompts one could choose from.

So, I've been doing some thinking, and trying to figure out which days work best on my end, but what about doing a challenge every week?

Same time, same day. That way early warning stops being an issue.

That sounds like it could work.

Oooh, weekend maybe? Sunday?

actually the forum seems to be pretty slow on weekends. it's most active on Wednesday and Friday as far as i can tell. that's probably due to the update schedule. besides Sunday is problematic on my end; it's my only day off work, i don't want to have it bound to a schedule like the rest of my week.

I was thinking Fridays. it's an update day, so site traffic is at it's peak, and it's the end of the week so a lot of people have free time.

i was going to make a post about it in the art thread and the fan art thread, since they're related, sort of, and switch out my king and bino banners.

I've been meaning to switch out bino for the HP:ToB banner anyway.

Well people would need to find out and post the times they are free for Buster to make it work.

AD, if we try to schedule it around the exact time -everyone- is on-line we'd never be able to do it at all. We're on multiple continents. that's why it runs all day, so it doesn't matter what time it is. timed ones will have to wait until later.

That sounds like it would work much better if it ran for a few days and then they were all submitted by a deadline where they were all shown off on the deadline. Then everybody would have a chance.

what makes it a challenge is the fact that it's supposed to be done quickly.

As mentioned before, this is based on 30-minute challenges I've taken part in elsewhere. as the name implies, those have a time limit to them, usually you have roughly 30 minutes from when the prompt is announced to draw and submit the image. that's not as practical here, so I'm giving a bit more leeway, but there are limits to how far i'll stretch that. I'm not extending it beyond 24-hrs. Period.

If the window is too long the quick part of the drawing, and by extension what makes getting it done in time challenging, goes out the window.

24-hours also does seem to be a bit too long to make a picture, but I understand that not everybody will be able to make it in time for the deadline if it was shorter.

I noticed on the last one that I had approx. 8 hours in which I could draw. Unfortunately other stuff happen so I couldn't get involved. So, it's quite possible for someone to notice when they're off to sleep when the challenge starts.

So assuming 24 hours of total drawing time everyone has 24-8 hours - time all ready past. This is anything from 0 hours ( unlucky people) to 16 hours.

If it was say 12 hours, dependant on the time some people would have the full 12 hours others my only have 4 hours. The latter having the end or start of the challenge when they should be sleeping. Meaning some people may have 8 hours more time then everyone else. which in this case is 3 times as much as those with only 4 hours.

If it's 6 hours, some people miss out through no fault of they're own.

Hope you see where the trend is going.

Lets pick a few random limits to be sure.

17 hours
This digs in at least 1 hours into everyone's sleeping time. So, some people could have 7 hours more time then others.

5 hours
Same problem as 6, but more people could miss out completely.

21 hours
Digs in at least 5 hours into everyone's time. So only a 3 hour difference between people, which is a 7th or a 6th of your time, repentant on whether you have or don't have the extra 3 hours.

My opinion is that the 24 hours is the shortest, fairest time to do the challenge in.

yeah, unless i can find a work around to the timezone issue making it hard to predict who's awake when, shorter times are going to be hard to do.

You might need to get everybody who wants to join time zones and then start converting their zones to your own.

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Here's challenge No. 2 hopefully it goes better than the first one.
The prompt this week is: "a melody barely heard."

You have Until 6:30 AM MDT tomorrow (24 hours) to draw, upload, and link post or attach your picture here. Have fun.
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Well, I wanted to do this last time, but I guess now will be a good start...

Hopefully it noticed that it's nature playing the melody... The ferrets just my signature... I hope I did this right...

Nice job, Civil.

I don't think I understand the picture DingoVolf. Can you explain it to me?

Yeah, i'd be lying if i said i knew what was going on either...

Nice job, Dingo.

Thanks Saturn!

The "melody barely heard" was my shouting at Art Rage trying to use it to make anything. This was try 4, and it's exactly what it is. :)

Did you have a submission for this round Buster?

unfortunately, no...
the downside of getting these from a random generator is sometimes even i don't know what to do with em...

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Here's challenge No. 3 really sorry it's late, I thought I put it up before I left for work, whoops.
The prompt this week is: "The stars will guide them home."

You have Until 11:00 AM MDT tomorrow (24 hours) to draw, upload, and link post or attach your picture here. Have fun.
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Okay, hope I got this in on time...

Tried to do a picture from behind, but can't draw that well, hopefully you understand he's walking home...

Civ, you rock the socks, man. :)