Grand Space Opera Challenge FAQ / Questions / Answers

#662

I am worried about the fake users, it is not about how many votes they can achieve, it is a moral subject we are talking about, CGnetwork should find a way to evade this kind of tricks. I like the idea that only the veterans could vote. Its very sad for those people that are beginining but I think that voting requires some judment, and it is a right that the user wins after 30 posts.

#663

I think the process is the process…

Have their been vote fixes in the past? Have you seen previous winners that you didn’t think deserved it?

From what I’ve seen of the previous two challenges the winners, runners up and honourable mentioned pieces all seemed deserving to me and I have no problems with any of the grand prize winners. I think they are all exceptional works of art.

So… if you believe in, and accept the results of the previous challenges, why worry about this one?

The cream will rise, it always does. This system has three stages and I think they’ve created a great check and balance system. This system has evolved over the course of many challenges and, I would assume, will continue to do so.

Is it perfect, probably not… will some people be dissapointed, obviously.

At the end of the day though, I bet we all agree that the winners etc. all got what they deserved.

I would, however, LOVE to know where I placed regardless of where I end up (in terms of vote count etc.). It’s always interesting to see how your work is recieved.

Thanks again CGTalk for all your efforts!

:thumbsup:

#664

I agree about that, and am sure that the winners will be the real winners.

But only my point is that I would be able to choose the best let’s say 5 works. But I wouldn’t be able to choose 15! Because in my opinion there are a few top class pictures and a bigger group of a bit lower class. And just I would like that jury get most of the works from the second group(from the first one, they surely will:)).

But I will second the cgtalk’s crew decissipon as they have experience in that matter:buttrock:

#665

Arturro, I am agree with you. And CG crusty that explanation you gave its cool for me, and make me relax. This is my first challange, and I could not see the past challanges, but if you tell me that it was fair, i belive you. I think this time it would be the same.

#666

SnakeFarlow: I really don’t think this will be as big a problem as some people are making it out to be. (at least, I hope most of the CG’ers around here wouldn’t be that immature to resort to that type of cheating)

15 shortlisted enties do seem a bit small, I admit; however, 30-40 seems too much (personally, I think 20-25 would be plenty).
I think the point of such small number of “semifinalists” (so to speak) is that it forces you to look at each entry with an open mind and narrow the list down to the entries that you feel best expresses the theme of the Challenge.

#667

Well , I thought it was actually open to the public so I’ve send this (broken) link to my friends familly and actual clients …

Erk… that page wasn’t supposed to be found, it was only found through a previously-broken link on another page that suddenly sprang to life when the voting page was up. The voting page was available (if you knew to go there) because we were in the final stages of testing and cleaning up the design. It should go live again today.

When the voting page was on-line I have downloaded the pictures that I like, There were apx. 50 of them,

Do you mean 50 that you liked? There is well over 250 final images…

#668

yes, I wrote that to somehow support my opinion that 15 works from each category is a bit small:) but as I wrote, you have experience in the challenges, so I will second your decission about the number of images which gets to the jury.

#669

Not that it matters much - because as cgkrusty pointed out, the rules are the rules and we’ll get good winners no matter what - but i too would like to see the “shortlisted” pool be somewhat larger. With so many members of CGTalk - new and old - able to vote, there is going to be a huge swarm of people who sweep in, vote for all of the coolest images, and leave again. It won’t matter to many whether those images were done over the course of 3 months of constant communucation with one’s peers - which really feels to me like the point of these challenges - or whether someone came in 2 days before the deadline, posted everything without talking to anyone, and then disappeared again, leaving no crits, just a really beautiful thumbnail.

I applaud CGTalk for organizing their contest around participants critting each other’s work, and i learned a lot from the process and tried to be as active as possible. And i think it’s good that participation will be 25% of the final scoring. So generally one could expect someone who didn’t talk or listen not to win big anyhow… yet due to the order of the process, still gets rewarded over those who may have been very involved in the community spirit and did great art but had the 16th highest number of votes. I know there were certainly more than 15 people who were active and helpful with the contructive criticism and feedback and also produced fantastic images. So i think opening the pool up larger would be fairer to these people and to the theme of the contest (the participation theme, not ‘Space Opera!’)

But, like i said, no big deal, the rules are what they are and i’m sure it works. Just wanted to get that off my chest…! :smiley:

-mike

#670

Mike;

I think those are good points but, at the end of the day 75% of the vote is still determined by the quality of the image. I have a feeling that community interaction will be used to determine placement (especially between the top three) if the image quality vote is really close. There are two separate prizes for those who went above and beyone in regards to participation but the main thrust of this competition is on the image.

One other point about the 15 qualifiers… each of these people get prizes. To increase that pool would be to increase the prize burden on CG talk and its sponsors something they may not be able to do.

I think having the general populace pick the qualifiers is a great method. There is no way these celebrity judges have time to go through almost 300 images to narrow down the images. I think 30 images is almost as many as they could handle. They’re all extreamly busy working industry professionals who are volunteering for this task… and it’s a tough one.

I do think that your point about the size of the community and the amount of entrants has some validity, but limits and quotas have to be created so that they can prepare their judges and prize packages.

Some deserving entrants may be left on the sidelines but that’s the nature of this, and any, competition.

All I can do is wish everyone good luck and congratulate y’all for getting it done! There are hundreds who didn’t. For that, we’ve all won a little something already!

:thumbsup:

#671

I think that the top 30 from each category 3D and 2D should be given to the judges.Otherwise some of the true best works wont get in possibly.I think with 30 or so this way the judges will get all the best and some of the best will not get overlooked.Also many of the true best wont get votes because of competition reasons,some people will not vote for the best because of it sad but true.But with 30 getting in this can be avoided.

I mean it’s 25% peoples vote a weighted system and 25% community reaction or involvement and 50-% judges right?

Plus it’s supposed to be a weighted vote.The peoples vote will have an effect along with the judges 50%.Plus community involvement will also carry 25 % as it should be.This way I think that the power is spread out well.And that if the judges think someone to them is in lets say 5th perhaps now because this 5th place person had better community reaction and involvement they could move up to 3rd or 4th or better.I like the weighted idea.

Oh and a thumbnail rotation idea is a must.It’s only fair to everyone.Will you address this Mibus?
Good luck everyone.:slight_smile:

#672

Oh and a thumbnail rotation idea is a must.It’s only fair to everyone.Will you address this Mibus?

The default sort ordering is now pseudo-random; while not rotating it is at least not based on the username or real name :slight_smile:

#673

ArtisticVisions : Yes you are right, this challange has show us what is to be legal and work hard by ourselfs, of course we recived help sometimes by our challenge friends. Anyway I have the same wish as you, hope that nobody be that inmature.

#674

Voting is open! :thumbsup:

http://cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=203872

#675

Hi Mibus,

you did a wonderful job. :thumbsup::bowdown:
The images are perfectly presented - Wow again!

best regards
Fahrija

#676

Hey I had a question, are you planning on locking our GSO threads after voting? Because I plan to continue working on the art from my entry and updating it. I had to cut it short due to time, but that does not mean it is done to me. Anyway, thanks for running such an awesome contest. see ya around!

#677

Hi,

It’s something on my side, or the “random” spreading of the projects in the voting page doesn’t work?

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#678

I would not like to drive bad feelings towards me, but I have to say something:

 I don't understand the thing that only 15 (30 for the 2 categories) images will pass to the jury of experts. 
 
 Why they cannot handle all the [b]272[/b] images (150 for 3D and 122 for 2D)??

I watched all of them, reading all the threads in about a couple of days. And I looked also to many threads that I subscribed to, and that didn’t finished the work.

If people’s vote determine which image will pass to the experts, and only 30 images will reach them, I can roughly calculate, even if I’m not an expert, that only about 9% (nine per cent) of the total works (hard works) posted will be considered by the jury of experts.

  I could understand this method if there were 158,873 entries....but 272...
 
So the jury of experts' vote will count only 4.5% (4 dot five percent) on the final judgment. That is 50% (50 percent) of that 9% (9 percent) of projects submitted.

I’ll suggest a rethinking on this subject to CgTalk administrators. And also to fix that “random problem” on the spreading of entries. Thank you.

 With no resentment,
 
 bye
 
 ago-stino

EDIT, a couple of days after: I thought a little bit more about this; at the end, who cares? After 2 days I don’t understand why I did all these calculations. Sorry.
Have a nice work, everybody.

.

#679

I agree. I am sorry to say, but my judging has had to become very harsh after realizing the same thing. I have been begging for a remove vote button. I voted for some very beautiful entries, that had nothing to do with the theme and regretted it afterward, even some who are very ardent supporters of mine. I feel bad but I think this is going to become a popularity contest. There are few entries which I think are going to get into the finals based on quality of art, not quality of art on target. This upsets me. I wish the judges would see all the images without any knowlege of the publics views. But since this is not to be. I think that several well deserving entries are going to be missed out on because of this… Oh well, what can we do…?

#680

That empty hole since the end of the challenge must be filled, might this work?

I am not just a 3D artist, I am a composer, a writer, a photographer, a videographer, a video editor. 3D is the lowest of my abilities in my mind so I hope this interests some of you.

I am willing to create a full music video of this competition. I am willing to composite all entries submitted which wish to participate in either static or animated form. If you are interested let me know and I will start a thread for it if possible somewhere in this site, or if the Admins deem it worthy, an official topic.

My vision is this…

The song is 8 minutes long, There are 3 song movements each broken into 2 sub variations.

The first is very soft and ominous where the more gradise, “pretty” entries would go, the most happy pieces. The second part of the first movement adds some drums and gets a bit heavier where some of the more intense maybe slightly more foreboding images and animations should go. I would envision alot of things shooting but not as many blowing up yet. Things rising into the air getting in formation, loading weapons,

The first part of the second movement is very heavy, dark, and angry. There would be either alot of stills which small parts of might be used to flash by very quickly on the build up to this part, or a very intense animation. Here you would see full conflict everything would be blowing up people getting hit, fried, destroyed, cut in half, heads ripped off or full power up faze super saiyen style! The second movement would be people trying to escape crawling on the ground, blocking defending counter-manuevering, dodging behind ships or planets, buildings or refuse.

The first part of the second movement is heavy with drums in a jazz based break beat style which would go great for the regrouped last offensive with alot of explosions and firing. The second part is very somber, returning to the original theme with a new variation, here would would have the survivors the, visionaries, the dreams, the nightmares the aftershocks of what a GSO would leave in its wake for real.

Well I am very open to suggestion and cooporation and this is open for all entries in the GSO. Anyone who participated even if you did not get a chance to finish the contest. I will use sketches if they are detailed enough as well as final art pieces. Please consider this my thanks to the best community on earth and as a gift.

I will send the original files (meaning the working document along with collected resources and a FINAL DVD MASTER freely to cgnetworks admins as my thanks to them for all their hard work with which they can do as they please.

Each person who submits their artwork to be included in the video will recieve a DVD copy free!!

(the DVD label artwork will be of the winner of the contest picked by cgnetworks).

Anyway, thanks everyone for making this the best artist experience of my life!

#681

Now that sounds GRAND! Great Idea, I hope it will be realized. I don’t have experience in such maters, but I’m totally in:)