Thanks Kat for starting the thread. Good idea to discuss the issues ongoing here. I am entering into more challenges than ever before. Never done icons, never done banners, but after the restart I was really motivated to give all of those one a try. But seeing now that it is really downtwirling in entries and votes, it gets somewhat boring. Besides I do have time issues at the moment that makes me focus on the for me important challenges which would be wallpapers.
Some notes on what I've discovered/been thinking:
When we did the first round with three categories in the wallpaper challenge #17, it worked out great cause there have been quite some entries. Though deadline had to extended twice. We wanted to observe if we can hold that level of entries but apparently, we can't. Now, we see that more and more challenges don't even reach two categories, which is somewhat alarming. So, is it because we have too many categories? That ppl doesn't like that? I really don't think it has sth to do with the three categories system, cause we had this huge discussion and about the main seemed to be okay with it. Also we did the "In what categroy do I belong" thread to help ppl judge their skills, which slowed down rather quickly as well. Nobody really seemed to be interested anymore after the first round.
I also think that this round of themes were rather quite specific and challenging especially for beginners. We had "Changes" which required rather using two caps in one icon than just one, we had "Sexy back" where we had to search for caps on our own first. Vera posted some later to help ppl (*me*), but still, ppl probably thought this challenge is too time consuming cap searching wise. Kat's Miami Icon challenge with the provided caps ran rather well, we had three levels and I think everything went within the usual deadlines. No extensions. Then there was the Wallpaper challenge for the Labrats... also lots of searching for good caps. Too time consuming maybe. I had quite a hard time to find proper caps but with the lovely help of so many fellow artists, I was finally able to enter.
As well, there were quite much challenges for icons... I had the feeling the "Changes" challenge was on such a down level, cause ppl didn't notice that there was beside the usual LV, NY, Miami icon challenge threads a new one popping up. Maybe it was just me being surprised that there was a 4th icon challenge basically at the same time, cause I am new to icon art, but maybe it was not just surprising to me but to others as well, so they didn't notice...
My point is... though we discover evident declining interest in the challenge this/last round, we have to see what circumstances they are lined up with. Have caps been given for the challenge? How hard is the subject to manage for beginners? Are there other challenges running at the same time? Is it a good idead to put up more than one icon challenge per franchise etc.?
Over the time, much of the obvious themes and subjects were covered by now, so it is hard to find a new theme. An idea to get out of this would be doing polls that decides over the new themes to come. So everybody has a chance to vote for their favorite and then also go and enter for it.
Polls shouldn't always contain the same subjects, the challenge runner should maybe give 4 or 5 suggestions and then do a poll. First round is next challenge's theme, 2nd and 3rd place are going over to the next poll, cause interest in those subjects seemed to be high as well...
For icons, I also would suggest to go back to 2 categories. To be honest... a wallpaper challenge does require 3 cat.s with all the space a wall has, but to judge on a 100x100 px space if this is beginner, intermediate or advanced is rather tricky. At least for me... I changed my mind that way seeing the last couple of challenges. I couldn't really figure a big difference between advanced and intermediate. But probably that's just me.
So much for my two cents... looking forward to this discussion.
