That's true, Kat talked me into doing the Miami challenges and I wasn't even a Miami fan but now I am. Thanks Kat!
I think the best thing would be to look around all the threads, find some who is probably a beginner and ask them via PM to enter a challenge, Kat did that with me too when I first started off.
How about if one person makes the banner and then all of us use the same one. I mean totally saturating the board with encouragement. Just an idea!
I'm fairly new at this so I'm a beginner. I've entered two challenges, still waiting on the results. The reasons why it took me so long to finally enter were time and insecurity. I've got more free time and I finally make icons without any help and a lot less swearing. Making an icon is not a fight with Photoshop anymore. I know that most of you can make icons a lot faster but I'm confident that in time I'll get the desired result quicker. In the second challenge I was the only beginner who entered. My icon is now competing with icons made by more experienced people. That is a bit intimidating so I hope in the coming challenges I'll enter there will be more beginners entries.
The only down side to that is some beginners do not have the PM ability right off the bat, like the old system allowed. So sometimes the communication aspect is hard to do, unless random emailing takes place; but there needs to be comfort in doing so.
Think of what attracts you to fan art Use that as a starting point. Okay, here's a list of things you can and cannot do: What you can do: - place something in your signature/avatar/location/custom title that advertises fan art - if you see someone who's been posting fan art here, but not entering challenge, you can encourage them "hey, that's a great icon, you should try entering a challenge!" - if you know someone that might be interested in fan art, send them a PM to encourage them. - answer questions, of course! If you can't, direct them or check with someone who can Don't: - go into threads in other forums and start posting about bringing people to fan art - if there's someone who you want to encourage, but they can't receive PM's yet, don't email them without permission. Here's the banner I made. If anyone else wants to use it, they may. The quality isn't that great, because I had to cut the file size down. It's still pretty big, though.
Just wanted to make mention of this since it may be directly correlated to the recent drop in participants. April = College/University finals. Boooo April is by far one of the busier months for anyone in college or university. It'll be interesting to see if participants increase again next month and into the season finales. Not that there is any harm in recruiting. ^_^
I only make fan art about 4 months ago, and I was a little "affraid" to enter b/c I was really new and I didn't work that well in the programme I use, after the 1st challenge I entered, it was much easy, I was more confident... After entering in the first challenge ever, it's much easier then And like roximonoxide, it's almost end of university/college, so maybe a lot of people are more busy now. I think the banner is a great idea to "recruit" beginners :bolian: Read and understood Will use the banner
That is a good point. I think we've discussed it before... probably last year at this time :lol: I've been so busy focusing on my own exams I forgot that other people will be doing the same :lol: