AnimeSuki Fall 2011 Banner Contest - Collaboration/Discussion Thread

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by Moresca

The only personal suggestion concerning the contest I would like to make is the placing of the contest announcement. I did not notice the contest taking place well into the two-week period since I admittedly rarely look into the General Chat. Since it concerns gfx work I wonder if an announcement in the fanart section would be more convenient. Or even better: since there are more ongoing contests in all kinds of areas I would actually suggest to bundle all those in an extra section. I think this would benefit maintaining the overview.

Well, we did actually place a Forum-wide announcement pointing to the contest threads during the duration of the contest, but this suggestion about creating a section for contests was already made and will be considered. You're right that there are other on-going contests too, and it's a bit weird with them being spread around; it would be a bit easier to find if at least they were all referenced in one place.

[relentlessflame]

Contest Winners Announcement

Thanks to everyone for your great entries! We're happy to announce the eight contest winners as selected by the staff, whose banners will appear on the forums starting over the next day or two.

But we'd also like to say that we were so impressed with the quality of all the submissions that we have decided that, after leaving the rotation of winning banners up for a few weeks, we will then expand the rotation to include all the submitted entries. This should add a bit of variety to the forum experience going forward.

Here are the winning entries...

1. Green²


2. Ganbaru


3. Moresca


4. Vane


5. Ryonea (tie)


5. blaze0041 (tie)


7. Haladflire65


8. felix



Just want to say thanks again to everyone's participation and comments, and if you have any additional comments please feel free to post them in the thread. Here are some thought starters:

• What did you think about having only one submission per person? Is that a good idea, or is it too limiting?
• What about the theme; too generic? too specific? Any recommendations for future themes?
• And feedback about the submission process (splitting the discussion thread from the submission thread)? Any way we can improve the collaboration/discussion aspect?
• Anything else we should change next round? (We already plan to bring back a user-vote process. I know some people have recommended some style changes, and I'll investigate but not sure what we'll do on that yet. I've also seen the suggestions posted so far in this thread, so keep 'em coming!)

Until the next contest!

[felix]

What did you think about having only one submission per person? Is that a good idea, or is it too limiting?

I say either keep it as 1 per person or allow for virtually unlimited entries. Setting a number, like say 2 or 3 will just make it sound like you want 2 or 3 and lower the overall quality.

What about the theme; too generic? too specific? Any recommendations for future themes?

Specific themes are always bad. Don't forget the lessons of the past, more specifically how well non-Themes have worked so far, by contrast to the old Season-themes. If anything their only flaw is that the anime portrayed in them get old. But 2-3 years is still better then 3 months. And any banners will get old in that time. That said I'm not against holiday focused contests.

This "contest has to have a theme" seems to be just an in-house thing here and quite frankly I have yet to ever see it do any good in any number of contests it has come up in. It's like some bad habit everyone gets-into.

Oh but themes are fun! Oh but they sure as hell are NOT at all. It's not even "hard" it's just tedius and boring. Themes are typically an annoying mechanism in place to allow for some similarity between entries. So when you eventually put them in succession or side by side they look at least somewhat similar. Throw a theme on a whim or with silly reasons like "wouldn't it be fun to watch people do this" and you're failing hard at making a decent one.

And feedback about the submission process (splitting the discussion thread from the submission thread)? Any way we can improve the collaboration/discussion aspect?

Less rules usually works best. Just have a simple process that is self-explanatory from watching people use it—you know like how people use spoiler tags for fresh episodes/chapters because they see other people use them rather then it being a rule; or how the same thing worked for spoilers in the past before you forbid using spoiler tags *stab stab*

So yeah, 1-thread is better. Just staff-pick your favorite version from what people post and don't explicitly delete.

Anything else we should change next round?

+1 week

...at least

Also if you have an Announcement and don't take it down, then you make the 2nd announcement and replace the first, some people won't notice the 2nd.

[Haladflire65]

About the themes, my personal opinion is that it might be nice to have a freestyle competition (just have anime/manga as the only common factor), but have a set gradient like we did for this contest. It would encourage more people to participate, at least it would definitely do so for me, since we can do banners on whatever we're interested in.

I was fine with the other aspects of the contest like the time and the rules. It was fun

[Ryonea]

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

What did you think about having only one submission per person? Is that a good idea, or is it too limiting?

I prefer having 1 entry per person, but more than that is also okay, I think. As long as it has a good proportion to the number of contestants and the number of winners. Having too few choices is not good, and so does having too many. It could confuse us instead

What about the theme; too generic? too specific? Any recommendations for future themes?

I thought the theme is alright. At least we could select one of three themes, which gave us some freedom. Having a non-themed contest is also good, I think. If possible, I'd like to have both non-themed contest and also the themed ones. Non-themed for a random timeline, and themed for celebrating specific events like this one

or did we already have something like that? sorry If I missed that since this is my first time entering a contest.

And feedback about the submission process (splitting the discussion thread from the submission thread)? Any way we can improve the collaboration/discussion aspect?

I like the 2-threads format. It makes us easier to check the submitted entries without having to scroll through so many pages.

Anything else we should change next round? (We already plan to bring back a user-vote process. I know some people have recommended some style changes, and I'll investigate but not sure what we'll do on that yet. I've also seen the suggestions posted so far in this thread, so keep 'em coming!)
Until the next contest!

Hmm.. none at the moment, but I'll post again when I have and idea

[Endless Soul]

Nice job on the banners, guys and gals! I have a couple of favorites, but overall very nice work!

[Kirarakim]

I didn't pay attention to this contest but these banners are all really nice. They really get me into the spirit of autumn. Great job guys!

[Mr. Wang]

Oi, I feel a bit disappointed for not making the initial win, but given the skill and work I can evidently see being put into the winning banners, is that necessarily a bad thing to have lost?

I find myself smiling quite dumbly right now as I keep refreshing the page to see something different at the top.

To be honest, I felt really satisfied with pretty much all the aspects of how this contest was handled, and I have no complaints.

I think that on the subject of narrowing topics or broadening them, I feel like the current themes that we had for this banner contest were specific enough to get a general collection of similar banners, but vague enough so that we can get diverse results. Personally, I don't agree with the completely freeform banner contest ideas, I'd prefer a general starting direction, as well as some uniformity with the banners altogether.

However, if it's just a somewhat general and not seasonal banner contest, I'll be all up for a good freeform contest in the future.

[Ak3mi]

These banners are the bomb Awesome looking makes the site look fresh and lovely!

[HasuMasu]

Congratulations on the awesome banners guys, some of my favorites didn't make it but it's all good.

[Alchemist007]

All the ones that did make it in are real eyefulls

Now we just need a black based full forum theme to keep my eyes from bleeding

[Hooves]

These banners are really nice when I first saw them Nice work everyone.

[HasuMasu]

^ Now that I see it in front of me, I think the lightblue gradient works best with the forum,
the only reason I didn't vote for it is because it doesn't fit the theme all too well.

EDIT: Ninja'd

[Reverzer0]

they'll almost uniformed",

[Dist]

MEH.. Is what I think about the staff decision. Even though I didn't even participate, I still find it stupid. If you're going to add all banners to the rotation, then competing in the first place was pretty much pointless ... So much for '' winning ''. At least when only winner submissions are used you'll know you have won when you'll see your banner on the forums along with few other winners. The variety excuse isn't very valid when we've had same few banners for what, an year or two now?

And yes, I know there's a delay before all banners are added, but I still don't like it.

On another note, in the gradient that light white line that separates the banner from the forum.. What exactly is the point of it? It stands out too much.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by Dist

MEH.. Is what I think about the staff decision. Even though I didn't even participate, I still find it stupid. If you're going to add all banners to the rotation, then competing in the first place was pretty much pointless ... So much for '' winning ''. At least when only winner submissions are used you'll know you have won when you'll see your banner on the forums along with few other winners.

And yes, I know there's a delay before all banners are added, but I still don't like it.

Well, I respect your opinion, but a lot of people put a lot of work into their banners, and it seems a shame to just throw all that work away based only on the vote of the staff. We think the quality of the submissions was high enough that people deserve to see some of the other choices up in the header as well. But I can say that if participants feel that the first phase window isn't enough of a reward for the winners, we may also be able to weigh the second phase so that the winners get shown more often. We don't want to diminish the winners, but at the same time see no reason to discard the other submissions, because none of them were by any means "bad".


Edit:

Originally Posted by Dist

On another note, in the gradient that light white line that separates the banner from the forum.. What exactly is the point of it? It stands out too much.

I was sort of wondering about that as well. As I look on the test page, it looks like when that background was designed there may not have been a dark grey bar underneath the header image, so it served as a sort of border line. But with the grey bar there now, it does stick out a bit much. I cropped a few pixels from the bottom now -- is that better?

Edit 2: Also removed a 1px grey border underneath the logo that helps make things look a bit more smooth. How's that?

Edit 3: So I confirmed the reason for the discrepancy is that we have some templates (such as AnimeSuki Blue) that have the main menu underneath the info box, and others (like AnimeSuki Default) that place the main menu right under the top banner. On the ones where the menu is under the info box, the "white line" in the banners looks fine, but in the cases where the menu is right under the banner, it looks funny. The compromise I have now isn't really perfect in either case, but it's probably "okay".

[Reverzer0]

Originally Posted by Dist

On another note, in the gradient that light white line that separates the banner from the forum.. What exactly is the point of it? It stands out too much.

this should serve the MAIN light source of the banner but how come it faded with opposite colors? odd isn't it? and it should be NIGHT mode fitting the background.

What exactly is the point of it?

unfortunately, no point.

[Rajura]

Those are nice!

I really like number 3!

It's nice to see Holo getting some love.

[felix]

@relentlessflame

You seem to have re-enabled the TEST theme, that's suppose to be OFF.

Please add the black/gray border at the bottom back! It looks better with it on.

Also did you just chop the bottom on all the banners?

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by felix

You seem to have re-enabled the TEST theme, that's suppose to be OFF.

Please add the black/gray border at the bottom back! It looks better with it on.

Also did you just chop the bottom on all the banners?

I didn't make any changes to the test theme. I can turn it off, but I didn't turn it on (unless it turned itself on when I edited the parent style, which makes no sense, but I suppose isn't impossible).

As for the border at the bottom... I'm not sure that it looks better with it on in this case, but I turned it back on for now. There may be other adjustments that could be made.

And yes, there's no other way to make this kind of fix other than cropping off the bottom few pixels, given that I don't have access to any of the original Photoshop files. I'm not going to recompress JPEG files.