Art Capture Method

There have been many discussions about the possibility of an Art Capture Method for Pokemon in the URPG. The idea being that the three biggest creativity outlets on a pokemon forum tend to be Roleplaying, Story Writing, and Art. The Park is the RP method and our Story Board is the Writing method. So where is our art method?

It has been suggested that it would be rather difficult to create a standard method of judging if an artwork would capture a pokemon or not. Not to mention the fact that we have different styles ranging from CG to pixel. Writing follows the rules and limitations of grammar. What rules does art follow?

Of course, being the obtuse person I am, I have not given up on figuring out a potential method to use for art capturing. Think of it as the holy grail of Art and URPG cooperation. When we achieve it, it will be a sight to behold.

For now though, I present a rather simple idea that we perhaps could implement.

Most of us are aware of art competitions, in which creative members gather together and submit their work to be judged by a panel of experts or the community as a whole. Voting is involved in some form or another. Ultimately, a victor or a ranking is announced. There are winner and losers. Everyone is excited about the results and can't wait to see what may happen next.

I propose something similar. Already, for competitive events, we award pokemon as top prizes. Becoming the Champion awards a Legendary (as does winning the Summer Story Competition). Reaching the top of a tournament offers a mon of your choice at a certain rank. Competitions are difficult in that you're not fighting against just yourself, but others who are just as eager as you are to win.

So I propose an art competition that occurs every week or every two weeks depending on the length. It could work similar to auctions in that an official puts up a single pokemon as the competition's theme. Instead of money, artists submit their work to be judged. And the winner, of course, wins the pokemon in question.

To ensure fairness and promote diversity, the official can set additional rules to an individual competition such as "only scanned drawn art" or "cg only". Perhaps the official would add an additional theme like "Delibird and Valentine's Day" to add a little more challenge.

The competition would last 1 or 2 weeks depending on the number of submissions. I'm thinking a minimum of 5 members must have submitted before the Art Capture can be judged.

Anyway, the point is to offer artists a method to capture pokemon. This is, by no means perfect, but it's better than anything we've come up before.

Please feel free to discuss the idea so that we could perhaps better it even further. I'm only one person after all. And if anyone is interested in helping out, please say so! The more the merrier!

 

I think it's a lovely idea.

 

I like the idea... granted, I probably won't enter, but that's a different point (this is not the thread to discuss my mediocre art skills, so I'll shut up about that now)

I'm just worried that someone could commission a different person to draw some artwork for them, somewhat like a story deal, but then claim the artwork as their own. If the actual artist doesn't know about the URGP, they might agree and give the first person some really nice artwork, and possibly a legendary, for free.

But if there's a way to work that out, I'm all for it!

 

I really liek thsi idea im mediocre in most forms of artistic flair such as writing and drawing but i would give stuff a go, question is im alot better at pixel then drawing so i suggest that in these competitions there are stages either the option of 5 stages the winner of the easiest stage will get an easy mon and so forth, or you can have beginner only competitions with the winner getting a certain lvl of mon and having harder competitions for harder mons so for instance an easy competition for beginners would be make a retro looking image of say jolteon, then 3 judges judge the work out of 10 for which image is the best. Well thats my thoughts what do you think?

 

I know this would be weird but in addition to ordinary art, could we involve sprites? I'm terrible at drawing and terrible at writing.

I'm only good at sprites Lol.

 

I like it, HKim. However, I don't like your idea about limiting how you create your piece: having a drawing only contest, or digital only contest. If you're suggesting one is superior to the other and it's unfair to the those skilled in the other, you're wrong. Some of the best work actually starts with a drawing and is then worked on in a program.

Some size requirements should be made. 500x500 should be the minimum (maybe less). That probably frustrates spriters, however. Stock images should be disallowed. Also, are you suggesting the winner be decided by public vote? A panel of judges may be an alternative

 

I like the idea. But, I fail to see how this could accurately be judged. We won't truly be diving into very deep forms of art here, but there are so many varieties. I understand that if we leave it up to the community to decide, things would get judged on mass appeal, but that would leave the art to being more simple and based on pure similarity to the works of Ken Sugimori or other artists for the series. That shouldn't be how art is defined. That is merely one way to make art. There is abstract, process, sculpture, realist, etc. To even consider drawings and digital creations to be the only form of art is just narrow minded. Film, Literature, Drawing, Painting, and Sculpture are just a few forms of art. Sorry if I am coming off a bit angry or rant-like, but I come from a family of artists who feel rather strongly of these types of things. I just feel like things like these shouldn't be judged solely by their similarity to previously made art. If anything could be done to give each and every person a fair chance, and not just the same person winning repeatedly because of their ability to draw exact duplicates, I would be greatly put at ease.

Rant End.

 

Well, I suppose that if we get a panel of about 5 people, and judge everything in as many categories we can think of (Theme, Skill, Shading, etc.), and mark each out of 50, it will give an accurate-ish level of performance. It could also be sort of like LD, so the legendary can be changed between people quite quickly.

My only problem is how we could find potential judges. For reffing and writing we have ref and grader tests. I guess it would be possible, if we saw how accurate their judgings were, and decided if they were good. Maybe put in a four line limit, to make sure they look into it deeper.

I can put a lot of spare time into this, so if you'd like help, I'm here. Just send me a PM or VM, or maybe talk to me on AIM ;O

 

I'm not sure about handing out legendaries considering that I want this sort of competition to be frequent (we hold one after the other) and rather easy to organize. The idea should be that to make this an event in which artists can catch pokemon just like we allow writers to catch pokemon and allowed roleplayers to catch pokemon.

The difficulty should be based on the principle of "Equivalent Exchange".

Stories are sometimes difficult in nature for certain pokemon for the very reason that you can catch any pokemon you want (except a legendary). Your difficulty is dependent on the pokemon you wish to acquire, ranging from a Magikarp to Porygon-Z.

Similarly, the Park should theoretically have a similar difficulty but modified based on the fact that you cannot choose the specific pokemon to capture, but potentially could capture a lot more pokemon over the course of your journey. Additionally, there is a monetary cost to entering the Park that stories do not have.

Acquiring a Pokemon in the Pokemart is not difficult at all, but your selection is limited. Acquiring a Pokemon in an Auction is limited by the fact that you could easily be outbid by any of the other members. Equivalent Exchange.

A continually held Art Competition, in which he hold one contest after the other, would implement elements of the Park and Auction House. The pokemon put up to be won would be decided randomly (more or less) and thus not up to the choice of interested trainers. Unlike the Auction House, it would be a skill challenge rather than a bid, so no money would be required.

We have a variety of artists among our members so I would propose the following format.

A competition is held in rapid succession (like how auctions are supposed to be run). Rules are rather simple:

- The work must be your own
- Only one submission per a competition
- The entry must match the theme (usually the pokemon in question)
- Follow basic forum and URPG rules

And the "type" of competition will be rotated between three aspects of art:

Week 1: Drawn Art
Week 2: Graphic Art
Week 3: Pixel Art
Week 4: Drawn Art
Week 5: Graphic Art
Week 6: Pixel Art

And so on and so forth. This allows for different types of artists to compete.

Should we have a lot of participation, I imagine that the competition will last two weeks. The first week would be the time allotted to submission and the second week would be allotted to judging (which probably will be either selected qualified people or by popular vote). During the second week of voting, another competition will be held to keep the ball rolling. So to update the list above:

Week 1: Drawn Art Submission
Week 2: Drawn Art Judging, Graphic Art Submission
Week 3: Graphic Art Judging, Pixel Art Submission
Week 4: Pixel Art Judging, Drawn Art Submission
Week 5: Drawn Art Judging, Graphic Art Submission
Week 6: Graphic Art Judging, Pixel Art Submission

 

That works, I guess. From what I see, it shares some factors with the PE2K BOTW competition. It works quite well, so maybe it could be used as inspiration? Take a few ideas from it, and use it to make it better?

Now, back to the grading/judging. I think there are three possible ways we can do this, which I think could work reasonably well.

1 - Do it like the other URPG sections, get one (or more?) people who have completed a test, then get them to grade each piece individually, before finding an average. This would be the most precise, but maybe the winning piece might not be to everyones liking.

2 - Do it like the BOTW. This is where everybody votes for one piece to win that week, and the artwork with the most work is the overall winner. This is good, as it can be compacted into a poll, so it would be just a few clicks.

3 - Do it like the Story Competitions. It's kind of like the above method, but everybody ranks the top 3 1st 2nd and 3rd. 1st gets three points, 2nd gets two and 3rd gets one. It's a more accurate way than the second, though it might be a bit more hassle.

Remember, about a year ago we did the Comic Competition, so we've organized something similar to this before.

 

I think this would be a great thing to implement. Although I won't be taking part for crappy art reasons I think it could really benefit the URPG. The only thing is there is only going to be one winner as far as I can tell, which is pretty bad imo. Maybe 3-5 "winners?"

 

One Competition a week is not a good idea. that means every week a pokemon is up for grabs, and will be won. since the pokemon is random, competition for some pokes will be more than others (eg. competition for a staru Vs. weedle). so some weeks it could be a less than mediocre work of art that won, and no one would want that since it defeats the purpose of the competition. My ideas are in the list.

-Art competitions should be held much less frequently. thinking one every one or two months.
-Mart mons should not be allowed as prizes. Wont be worth it
-All types of art should be allowed, not just drawing/pixel per comp
-Liked PE2KCalamity's idea^^. Judging should be like story comps where you rank them from 1st, 2nd and 3rd, much fairer.

 

I still feel like the same person is going to win the competition every time their particular form of art comes along. It would be difficult to vary the winners, because some people are just going to be better than others. Art is a difficult thing, where it takes a while to grow and become good at. I think most people who keep trying, and keep losing to the same person, may give up hope and quit trying all together.

 

Maybe to stop the same person repeatedly winning and taking the Pokémon, we could have prizes for 1st, 2nd and 3rd. Or maybe judge each piece of work out of, say, 1000. It depends on how well the top 3 do, and if they get 878, as it is in the bracket for a complex Pokémon, the get a Complex Pokémon, for example.

 

Well, we'd have to get decent participation for that (above idea) to work. If they gave out mons to the first three places and there were four people in the competition, it wouldn't really work out all that well.

And mart-mons are entirely worth it. Would you rather spend 10K on a baby pseudo-legend or draw a pretty decent drawing/sprite for it and possibly get it for free? It's like writing stories for mart-mons as well; it's objective and depends on the person who is writing or creating.

And if the same person wins so many times, so be it. The less talented people (such as myself) will just have to try that much harder.

 

Why not scrap the competition aspect, and have art captures work like stories? They have to draw a picture of the Pokemon to capture, then the capture in progress, and then a shaking Pokeball. If the art is good enough, then its a successful capture.

For example, if you want to catch Magikarp, the first image might be like so:



Porygon-Z would obviously be significantly more difficult.

 

I think that one of the bigger objections I've seen so far is that it's too hard to judge art objectively. This is true; however, we don't need objective judging, as it sounds like it'd wind up as a popularity contest, more or less. Personally, I think that'd be fine; say there was someone who hand-drew all their art, and always went with a noir style. They could do serious pieces, like for Umbreon, or Mismagius; or they could go for more of a comedic take, like Psyduck or Jigglypuff. They might be great, but sometimes their drawings just won't have the most appeal; it might instead go to the Modern Art rendition of Jigglypuff, or a Cubist Porygon.

While people with a lot of talent will have an advantage, that's been true for every other capture method. Good writers will do well writing; good strategists do well battling and buy their Mons or do story deals; although this would be more competitive, I think it would also allow a lot more freedom.

Soldier on, HKim. I'm sure you'll puzzle something out that most people like. And if they don't, well, they don't have to draw anything

 

I think the competition aspect makes it more fun. If not, we'd just see people drawing over 9,000 bad pictures of Magikarp in various poses and getting a bunch of Pokemon with practically no investment. That doesn't happen in any other aspect of the URPG (stories, mart, and National Park, as Harry said).

I'm just curious, though. How good does an image have to be for a Porygon-Z or something around that difficulty? Ken Sugimori level? There isn't really much difference between that and the Magikarp picture posted ^ (well, yes there is), or at least not enough to make up for the 60K+ character difference in stories.

I'm still all for this idea, though. We can make it work!

 

As Kai said, for this to work we'll need to find a way to make a great piece of artwork be equal to the month or two to write for a Porygon-Z. Maybe just a few weekly competitions would be better than a story-like section.

Just a suggestion, a way we could do it by skill rank. A similar way to how Contests are done might suffice. 6 people join one competition, in categorys such as Pixel Art, Drawn Art and Graphic Art. The winner gets a small cash gain, and a small symbol, not unlike a gym badge, or ribbons. These would have different designs; a golden base, with a design imprinted onto the front. Getting enough of these symbols would result in you gaining a 'mon. This system is not unlike the Library (which still hasn't really gotten going), and we could do it like this:

2 Emblems -> Hard 'mon
5 Emblems -> Complex 'mon
9 Emblems -> Demanding 'mon
14 Emblems -> Merciless 'mon
20 Emblems -> Mystery Prize?!?!

Yes, that was a copy and paste, but maybe we could lower the prizes slightly, and add some in.

And then, if we have some art competitions, people could earn a special, limited-edition/unique symbol worth, say, 3 points.

I think this could work in the long run, so that's why I suggested it :3

EDIT: And if you have enough points, you can only enter set competitions. Like in contest, you can only do Super Contests if you have the normal ribbon beforehand.

 

I have a program on my computer called Comic Life that I am able to create a comic, but my art skills suck not bad.