The URPG Art Forum

Omg Despicable Me! xD!

 

Something I was thinking about back when 'Pokemon captures through art' was brought up a few years ago, was using a point system.

For instance, say someone draws this huge wallpaper of some epic battle scene: an 'Art Judge' could award something like this, say, 20 points. Whereas, someone else draws a tiny sketch of a Magikarp that is almost incomprehensible, and this would get awarded like, 1 point. People could accumulate points with various pieces of art until they decide to spend them on a Pokemon. And I was thinking then, that the Pokemon could be categorized similar to the structure of the story section's. However, instead of characters being the medium, it would be points. i.e. A Caterpie could be something along the lines of 5 points, and a Porygon-Z could be 300.

This makes it require more effort to capture something, so that rare things like Snorlax don't get handed out at every pretty picture.

Art is difficult to judge, but so are stories. Who's to judge whether a story is good or not? And the same with art. Yet we make it work, because Graders offer opinions and advice, not commands; I would assume the same thing could be accomplished through an Art Section.

Just my two-cents and such.

 

I shall recreate my last gym battle in the forgotten medium of sidewalk chalk art.

 

I swear to god when I started reading the first half of that sentence I thought the second half would involve banjos.

 

This idea is amazing.

And I think I'll draw a crap picture and submit just for you, demanding overlord Kai.

 

HELLO, GUYS. MY NAME IS KAI AND I'VE JUST HAD A HORRIBLE WEEK. [/excuses]

So. Hello. Let's address some of the stuff that I neglected while I was off running into a brick wall, shall we? :3

I have now come to the conclusion that Emma is a mind reader. That is all.

'cept not really. Point being, that's basically the idea that Harry and I were discussing that I have yet to formally type up and put forward for critiquing. I love it when people do that for me. UNFORTUNATELY, I FEEL OBLIGATED TO TYPE SOMETHING UP TOO, SO I DON'T LOOK SILLY. DARN.

So. For starters, we ditched the emblem idea. I'm not sure if I posted here (inb4 no... dammit), but people didn't seem to like it that much. We created something cooler and shinier instead:
Like Emma said, there would be different ranks based on different difficulties of Pokemon, prolly based heavily on the Story/Park requirements. We'd have, like
--Easiest > 25 points
--Simple > 50 points
--Medium > 75 points
--Hard > 100 points
--Complex > 150 points
--Demanding > 200 points
--Merciless > 300 points
--Stupefying > 500 points

The key (or perhaps the sucky part) here, though, is that each piece of art submitted is only worth 100 points. I thought we could do this to help the difficulty go up -- obviously, at some point, most members aren't going to be able to make stupendously wonderful pieces of artwork... sorta thing. Like, there comes a point, for both hand and computer generated works, where it's sorta difficult to make things look any better than they are. Like, if I were making a banner 'r something, there comes a point where it looks cool and I'm like "wow, that looks cool... nothing more to do or it looks worse sorta thing..." and then there's really nothing more you can do. POINT BEING, IT BECOMES DIFFICULT TO MAKE THINGS OUT OF EFFORT. Thus, to prevent this, we have the above system-- someone who wants to capture a Pokemon can create a piece based around that Pokemon in a thread. The artist can then post subsequent images of the same mon (we're keeping it mon-oriented currently to prevent plagiarism/make it more difficult) that aren't the same picture (perhaps a progression, or a battle, or just some really cool poses... iunno), and lump them together or have them critiqued separately on scales of 1 to 100. Then, if they end up reaching the total amount of points, they get the Pokmeon.

For example, if I wanted to draw a capture a Charizard through this method, I would draw a picture of a Charizard and post it in the thread. It would look like this if I attempted to do it on paint:

Spoiler

My grader person would see that, cringe, and understand that I put it together on my computer in three minutes and forty-seven seconds. When they finished stabbing their eyes out, they might give me five to ten points in sympathy and because it sorta meets the requirements. Note that five to ten points out of a hundred is prolly okay in this case, because that's not even enough for a Magikarp capture. Theoretically. So after that one picture, I am 5/200 points for capturing my Charizard. Wooh.
After I get over my crushed hopes and dreams, let's say I submit something like this, in the same thread, to attempt again. Let's also say I went to art school and got hit by a radioactive comet that allowed me to draw.

Spoiler

Taken courtesy of bulbapedia; created by Ken Sugimori. I honestly didn't have time to draw anything, and it also wouldn't look half as awesome as any of the official work. :>

Again, that would be posted in the same thread. The grader would prolly give me an 80/100 or something for that, on the grounds that there is no perfect art (and it's on a white background and stuff, but hey...), so my running total for capturing that Charizard would be 85/100... ish. I AM MAKING THESE NUMBERS UP AS I GO. KINDLY DO NOT QUOTE ME. Naturally, I need moar-- the Demanding minimum is 200. I'm also wishing I had picked something with lower req's... lol.
So now I decide that drawing just isn't my style. Thus, this is born:

Spoiler

Again, taken from someone on deviant art/google images. I do not claim credit for this work, etc etc; it's solely for informational purposes. GET IT? GOT IT.

I'm not quite sure how this would actually be graded yet, lol... but let's give it a 70 for convenience's sake. That thing is sorta awesome. Now my running total, with three drawings/art pieces, is 155/200-- I'M ALMOST THERE.
So now, I decide that I can neither sculpt nor draw. That's okay. Instead I make banners! AHAHA. So I submit this.

Spoiler

Same drill as above. The only image that is actually mine is the first one; all others are taken from the internet. Shoot me, I'm lazy

IUNNO HOW I'D GRADE THIS. PROLLY ABOVE A 45... MAYBE... So then I have at least 200 points. Therefore, Charizard. Huzzah.
Also, if you've actually read this entire post up until this point and feel like replying, kindly do so in a color other than black. I'd like to see just how effective tl;dr's are. I get the feeling that they are not. ._.

Note that all of these images are themed on Charizard-- this helps prevent plagiarism and also serves as a focal point-- just like the story needs to have the intended mon for capture in the story as a prominent role, we need it in the art thingy.

Also, our ideas on having a rubric sort of changed: the one out of 100 thing would remain, naturally. However, since we can't always grade artists the same, especially within mediums, we would have a more flexible style. There would be a core rubric that would be on every artist's piece-- things like having the Pokemon in it, effort, creativity, originality, etc etc-- that would always be on the rubric and would make up some major fraction of it. The other stuff would then be different-- things like background, shading, technical skill, smoothness, quality, color, etc etc, each with different point values depending on how important they would be to a piece. There would be a ton of these categories-- to many, in fact, for any sole piece to actually have. I can't really critique shading on pieces like Chainy's; he can't tell me that my XYZ technique is wrong in my hand drawn stuff (dat charizard) if it's not there. However, either:
a) the artist could chose a handful of categories to be graded upon, depending on their piece
b) there'd be a set of requirements for each type of medium. For instance, banners would be critiqued on X, Y, and Z, along with the basics like creativity and originality; painted things would be critiqued on A, B, C, and Q + the basics, etc etc. Currently, I'm leaning either way.

Will it show Bibarel sitting in the corner being depressed... YOU'D BETTER.

YOU TOO. AND YES. I HAVE BEEN PROMOTED TO OVERLORD. HELL YES.

PHEWW. THAT'S IT FOR THE UPDATES, MOSTLY. ONE MORE THING BELOW. Comments/feedback on that grading scale would be greatly loved. Even if you shoot it down mercilessly. ^.^

In addition, we were planning on hosting a mini-sort of competition thingy-- Monbrey is looking for a banner for the new reffing calc, apparently, and he and Chainy have suggested for us to use this as an opportunity to host a competition and stuff. Things are still in the planning phases for said competition, but it sounds like I should bring that up. SO YES. REFFING CALCS. YAAAAY.

 

Yes, I did read all your post and me likey.

 

@Kai-Mei

Kai, I like this idea I think we should do something like we do for grades but, with like, Creativity, Effort, and then other things based on the actual artwork.

 

Looks great, Kai.

Can you really judge effort, though? I mean sure, you can probably tell when someone is trolling, but aside from that? The example I'll give is I want to earn a Scraggy, but I'm bad at drawing and don't have any artistic programs. Still, the Park is too expensive and getting a story graded can take ages, so I decide to draw a picture instead. It takes me a few hours and doesn't look fantastic, but I'm proud of it. I've even turned off my music to concentrate and make sure all the pixels are filled in. I submit it, and then a Curator gives me a 6/10 for Effort. There would either be rage or a complete dismissal of the Art board.

Don't get me wrong, I like the overall idea, I'm just not sure that "Effort" should be one of the gradable attributes. Maybe when a person submits a piece of artwork, they should list all utilities they used in creating it and people with better software get graded a bit harsher. That way people who only have basic software are put on the same level as someone with a lightboard, scanner and Adobe SuperMegaDrawingPlus Software 15.43(c).

 

Firstly, FUCK YEAH CHARIZARD!



Thought I'd submit some art of my own. What score would I get? ^.^

As for the Art Critic/Grader idea, I think it's definitely important. Whoever awards the points to the artist should give some sort of explanation why they gave the score they did. At the same time, we'd have to come up with some sort of criteria for who is eligble to crtique art. Personally I'd be happy to and would enjoy scoring computer-based art, photoshop, 3D modelling etc, however I can't see myself being able to pass a test that covers painting and drawing, and I would steer away from scoring paintings etc. I guess it's similar to a grader who might steer away from grading grimdark if they prefer rainbows and puppydogs, however they can still pass the same test as far as grammar etc goes. It's still the English language. Art is a lot more varied.

I'll get a copy "shipped over" right away.



EDIT: Another thought, we'd have to be careful of abuse. It's mostly common sense though. I completely realise that not everyone is a spectacular artist, and I like the idea that a crappy picture will still earn you some small amount of points. Using the Charizard example, something terrible earning me 5 of the 200 required seems reasonable. However if I draw 40 terrifically bad pictures, am I really entitled to a Charizard? At some point the grader would have to step back and say "Unless you produce some higher quality work I wont be awarding you any more points." I don't write many stories because I'm not a good writer. I'm a good ref, so I got rich and paid story bitches to get me my Pokemon.

I guess my point is: If you can't produce art at all, don't try and capture a Pokemon through art.

 

Just wanna say that the phrase "story bitches" caused me to burst out laughing during a lecture. Cheers Monbrey.

EDIT: Posting for TED:

@Kai-Mei

I LOVE YOU. Post the official thread on pe2k once it's ready to be launched. ^_^

 

You're welcome ^.^

I had yet another couple of thoughts:

Multiple Captures. In regards to the Charizard banner in Kai's post - it has Salamence too. So what are the points worth? 45 towards a capture of either Charizard or Salamence? 45 to both? Split points, 22.5 each? Or could we leave it as the artists decision, such as "This is for Charizard" or "Split the points for both please!"

Excess Points. I'm on 195/200 for my Charizard, but I'm too proud to spend 3 seconds scribbling in Paint, so I submit something worth 80 points. I've got 275/200 for Charizard. What's the +75 worth? Charizard comes with a couple of TM's? Transfer to another Pokemon, following some form of criteria, like must be of the same rank, or must be another Fire type?

 

Don't have a lot to say on how this is shaping up, except that it looks awesome.

 

In essence, I like this a lot. However, I think it's being made a bit more complicated than it needs to be. There are also a few quirks that might not work well when put into practice.

Firstly, I think the requirement to draw/paint/graphically design/or sculpt the same Pokemon over and over again until you capture is a bit daunting. Especially for someone who struggles with art. They would have to make a Charizard a bazillion times to catch it. I think a better way to promote activity and enjoyment (and creativity), is to allow the member to make whatever they like as long as the Pokemon theme is (somehow) involved. Yeah, the plagiarism thing is shippy, but the same risk is taken with stories. Anyone caught cheating is usually smacked with a ban, be it temporary or permanent. You could also require a screenshot, or photo scan of the piece of work when it is only half completed for verification purposes.

This means someone could draw whatever they like, and still collect points. The point method I was referring to, however, would work similar to money. The URPGer would be required to keep track of their points in their stats, and then spend them however they see fit. This however, would require a place to cash them in. A thread could be made in the Art section that would be similar to the PokeMart, however, it would list all the Pokemon and their point values instead. And thus, in having a store, you would need purchases to be approved; this would prevent cheating and abuse.

This brings us to the issue of someone just making a hundred two-minute 5 point drawings and trying to buy a Volcarona. Each rank could have conditions assigned to it, such as:

-Easiest > 25 points
-Simple > 50 points
--Requires at least one piece of art worth x amount of points
-Medium > 75 points
--Requires at least two pieces of art worth x amount of points
-Hard > 100 points
--Requires at least three pieces of art worth x amount of points, and one piece worth y amount of points
and etc. until v
v
v
v
-Stupefying > 500 points
--Requires a bunch of shat and z amount of points

It should, however be required that the Pokemon being purchased has been drawn by the customer at least once. Perhaps it, too, needs to have been worth so many points.


The second thing I have some gripes with, is that a 100 point maximum for a single piece is too high. Especially considering you have the highest mon-level attainable listed at 500 points. This means, theoretically, someone could pull a Porygon-Z capture off in 5 pieces of art. Another problem with this, is that in using increments of 1, there could be a huge variation of opinion from judge to judge. One judge could say the image is worth 50 points, and the other could think it was worth 75. The difference is that of an entire level. As mentioned many times already, art is subjective. And unless you are going to allow the artist to go back and edit their piece like you can in stories, there needs to be much less variation when it comes to critiquing.

The following things are a constant that every quality drawing will have:

-A focal point
-foreground/background (depth)
-light source
-shading/colors (whether ROYGBIV or black and white)
-Balance

A better and more consistent way to judge an image, and keep it consistent from critic to critic is to use some, or all of these as categories. You could value them at 5 points a piece, leaving the maximum point gain 25 points.

For instance: (I'll use some of my own shiz as well for clarification. v_v)

Spoiler

Focal: 3/5
- A focal point is what captures your immediate attention. i.e. Where is your eye drawn to? If the picture is complete chaos, or there is no point to the image depth, then there will likely be no focal point; thus resulting in a 0/5.

I gave myself 3/5 because while the light-source draws the eye to Salamence's face, the shatty fire is way too bright and distorts it. The eye is drawn to two places, leaving the actual focal unclear.

Depth: 2/5
-The visual perception of the first and second dimension. If someone here can make 3D shiz, then all power to them. XD Not to be confused with shading.

I did some kind of smoke/grassy crap that looks sort of like the dragon is flying through from somewhere in the distance, but it's not enough to create a clear picture of what was happening around it.

This has no background or foreground, and would receive a 0/5

This, however, has clear depth and would probably get a 4 or 5/5

Light Source: 3/5
-Where the light is coming from, and is it moving in a clear and constant direction.

The light source is clearly the fire, however, it is utilized inconsistently across the Salamence. At some points it is coming from above, and others from below. The light isn't used realistically with the fire and its placement doesn't make much sense.

Here the light source, being the moon, is used much more naturally. The light hits at proper angles.

Something one dimensional would unlikely have a light source at all, which would result in a 0/5.

Shading: 3/5
-Creating the illusion of the third dimension.

Mostly the tints were used properly to make the creatures limbs and face pop. As touched on in the light source bit, though, some of the shades are unrealistic.

Something with no shading, and the use of only one tint of the color (whether an actual color, or simply pencil), would result in a 0/5.

Balance: 4/5
-The arrangement. Is everything proportional? (Or purposely asymmetrical?)

The dragon's head is larger, as it is the foremost body part, and its shape shrinks progressively to allude distance. It is somewhat realistic but the wings seem to be a bit off.

If components like rocks/trees/grass/ etc are drawn, then the balance of the image would be affected by these as well.

So with this image I gave myself 15 points. I was a bit more harsh on my own junk than I would be on someone else's, but I wanted to use the points to help signify my explanations below. It'd also be really lame if I was just like RAWR, ALL MY STUFF IS WORTH A MILLION POINTS. I GIVE MYSELF A LUGIA, HURR.



But anyway, the same concept could be used in graphics, though the criteria would lean more towards things like flow and style as opposed to balance and shading. Drawing is often more time-consuming than graphics, so perhaps the possible point gain should be adjusted to each medium accordingly. There should also be some implementation for originality, and creativity, whether as an extra category or a bonus.


So I think those are all my thoughts on this v_v. Do with them as you may.

@[email protected]

P.S. Here is my separate color response thingy; I did read all yer post, Kai. :3

 

I thought we could address Effort (and perhaps Originality, honestly) as a pass/fail sort of thing-- either you get full credit or not. Really, it would only exist to deter people from drawing things like that Charizard above and trying to get away with it. Obviously, due to the nature of the category in general, and how the points would be distributed, it wouldn't be worth more than, say, five or ten points to prevent abuse and whining about effort and stuff... XD

THEY WERE VERY NICE, BUT THEY TOOK UP TOO MUCH SPACE TO REQUOTE. AND YEAH. THAT WAS TOTALLY ON PURPOSE THAT I DID A CHARIZARD... HEH. Although I'd like to put forth the idea here that with 3D works, people put something of theirs in the picture that we can identify as theirs to prove that they didn't just nab some cool pictures from the internet. I know that you didn't, but that's what I did with the pipe cleaners, sooo...

I'm honestly not sure how to address the whole medium split here, because frankly, it's difficult. I certainly can't judge computer stuff in a satisfactory manner, either, so that's like OH, COOL, HALF AN ARM MISSING RIGHT THERE. The problem with limiting the judges to categories, though, is that it sort of limits the participants-- you'll do computer-based art, photoshop, and that other thing you mentioned, I'll do some artsy drawing thing, and then some kid will come along with pottery and think that since we haven't made a category for it, they can't do it. Or something. We can't make everyone do something, either, although we could sort of just have the art judging people only critique works that they feel confident in critiquing -- sort of a self-imposed thingy?

I mean, that crappy Charizard literally took three minutes and forty seven seconds to draw. I timed myself 'cause I was bored. Point being, if they really want to spend two and a half hours meticulously drawing forty Charizard that can be considered different to a judge who is getting more and more impatient each time, they can do so. Or we could just say that for every score that is below X points (like, something ridiculously low-- perhaps 15), the needed requirements double or something ridiculously high. Perhaps not double, because that's hardly fair, but at least increase by a number large enough to discourage trolls and still allow less experienced artists room to have fun.

...eh. I suppose it would be a stacking thing like in stories, where someone wanting to get both Salamence and Charizard would then have to get the combined value -- so Demanding + Merciless would be 500, and the single artwork would be contributed like normal to the shared pool, just like characters are in stories/park. I honestly didn't mean to have both of them in there; I just sorta googled "charizard banner" and clicked the first thing that was decent... ;D

As for the excess points, I sort of see it as what one would do with excess characters in the park/stories or excess mons left alive in a battle. Basically, no bonus or anything. In the end, you chose how much effort you put into it; if you put in extra effort on your point scale, that's because you wanted to. Look at it this way -- if you spend a bunch of time setting up for a sweep so you only use one Pokemon in a battle, or if you write forty thousand characters over the suggested limits in the park/story section, that makes you feel all warm and fluffy and happy inside. You do not, however, get to revive your Pokemon or let that excess character count go anywhere else. I'd suggest that you make another good picture, and I'd applaud you for doing another piece, but I don't think that the rollover could go anywhere. Perhaps TM's, maybe, to discourage people from just spam finishing their points off with bad things on paint (like, every extra 5 points --> 1k in TM's, but only from one piece per capture?), but I foresee transferring as getting super messy.

GLAD YOU ARE ALL EXCITED.

AGH EMMA I LOVE YOU FOR READING THIS ALL BUT I AM TIRED AND WILL ANSWER MOAR IN THE MORNING 'R SOMETHING. SORRY. THAT'S WHAT YOU GET FOR NINJA'ING ME... BY ALMOST HALF AN HOUR...

 

I'm not quoting all of the above XD

@EmBreon

I'm torn between two things here. Yes, having to draw lots of one Pokemon seems a bit stupid, but at the same time I do feel like just drawing anything Pokemon related shouldn't earn you any Pokemon you want. Which makes me wonder if the accumulative points system is the right way to go. I know the whole idea of being able to award small amounts of points for crappy drawings is good, but would you give someone a Pokemon for writing three bad stories instead of one? Maybe we should just be grading the piece as you, and say if it's a capture or not. To return to what I said earlier - not everyone can write or roleplay, and not everyone will be able to draw.

Also, while that is an awesome drawing and I like the way you've graded it, your grade somewhat only reflects drawing. I don't know a lot about art, but I can't help but feel if we have to grade everything by a specific criteria then some art simply cant fill all of them. Take the photos of my models. There's no relevant background, and the light source probably isn't ideal, but my art is the model itself, not the photography.

@Kai-Mei

I wasn't exactly suggesting we have distinct categories. I only meant that, if I was an Art Critic or whatever you want to call the job, I probably wouldn't be scoring the paintings. But when someone posts computer graphics, I'd feel comfortable enough to grade it. Emma did a great job grading the drawing, but like I said, it probably wouldn't suit what I posted, so she'd be better off grading drawings.

I guess I support the "bad art for small points" in theory. Perhaphs we should dictate that depending on the level of the Pokemon, all pieces must have a minimum score. You cant get a Porygon with 5 point pieces. Magikarp is fine though.

Im not suggesting Stupefying requires all 100 point pieces. Maybe 50 or something though

 

@Kai-Mei: HOW DARE YOU. OMGOMGOMGOMGOMG

And Monbrey, why not? People can write about whatever they want in stories, why can't they draw whatever they want in art? Yeah the story needs to involve the intended Pokemon to capture at some point, but it doesn't have to be ALL about that Pokemon. That's why I said that, yes, you need at least one drawing of that Pokemon, but I don't see why all of the images would need to be of it.

Pretty sure I said that it wasn't good (At least not for things at higher levels). With this bit right here:

Perhaps I should have been clearer and said 'Requires at least those pieces of art worth so many points' though, *Goes back and edits*

As for the grade only affecting the drawing, yes. Different categories would need to be implemented for the different mediums, but there should still be consistency between the judging. And not just a random estimate of points. Each craft has clear technique and can be "graded" some way or another.

*Feels like she sounds rude* Insert happy emoticons-----> :ksmile::lick::lick::ksmile::lick::ksmile:

 

So uhh just to be clear... why ARE we using the points system. I'm not against it, but why did we choose to use it?

 

Because Kai said she wanted to!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Just wanna point out that some of that stuff Emma talked about (like lighting and background / foreground to an extent) isn't possible (or at least, very impractical) with low-level programs like Paint. My worry here is everyone will get carried away with inventing new ways to judge art and forget the penniless newbie.