Temporary Changes to Gallery Acceptance

#1

As all of you know, we’ve always operated a form of quality control over all images being submitted to the Showcase Galleries - this has been the case since we started up the galleries about eight years back. About six months ago, a decision was made to become stricter with regards to quality, resulting in more images being rejected due to technical and artistic weaknesses within them. Understandably, a few people haven’t been too happy about this decision, so as an experiment (which actually started a few days ago), I’ve been accepting pretty much everything that gets submitted to the gallery, regardless of the quality of the image.

This gives you, our members, the chance to see everything that gets submitted to the gallery.

The only criteria that will result in work being rejected is stuff like having incomplete full names for the submitting artists, non-existent descriptions, and gallery flooding of multiple simultaneous submissions - in other words, more bureaucratic criteria as opposed to any criteria regarding the images themselves.

We’re interested in hearing everyone’s feelings about this system, so please feel free to share your thoughts over the next week or so that we’ll be running this experiment.

Anyone who has had work rejected recently is free to resubmit their work at this point.

#2

although I’ve had my images rejected(for reasons i fully understand) I think the old system of strict scrutiny of the incoming images was imho a better system. I personally always found the gallery as something to shoot for. If my image was accepted I would know that my image had some merit other than what I gave it but to some experienced artists. Even though we will be exposed to more images it feels like this might be a “watering down” of the gallery.

just my 2 cents
thanks for giving us weaker artist a chance though :cool:

#3

I to, liked the stricter rules for the gallery. My only crit was if an image is rejected, it would be nice to tell the submitter why it was rejected, rather than just saying “it didnt mean our standards”. That way they would know what they needed to work on to make thier image better.

I do realize this would probably be a huge undertaking, for the judge/judges of the gallery, but I do think you would get less complaints.

-B

#4

Good idea!

Completely agree with everything said at this point. Better the gallery be something to strive for rather than expect acceptance. A real crit for every submission is impossible, but perhaps a tiny bit more feedback than hitting the reject button and getting a completely vague reply. Obviously not for images that are completely off the mark and need detailed critique. Also I would add a note to the submission form about not submitting more than one within 48 hours, down by the submission check box. I know it says it in the gallery somewhere but I completely forgot about that when doing submissions last week.

Or better yet how about a “Rejects” gallery! I’ll admin it! Actually sort of serious, it’s not as involved as a wip thread which really is another animal. I mean I am not going to start a WIP for every image I might submit and most wips are often more process and progress oriented. Rather a spot members can go to suggest where things went wrong. Maybe just no teapots. Teapot = complete and utter rejection.:scream:

#5

You can stop this kind of pathetic childish experiment right now as everybody here knows the outcome of it. It’s obvious that nobody likes the acceptance of pretty much everything in the gallery. It would be “watering down” like BenDstraw mentions.
It’s exactly similar to these advertisements where they state “we from ‘X’ performed research and…the outcome recommends ‘X’s’ product bla bla…”.
(for the Dutch readers here’s the ultimate Dutch example: “wij van WC-eend adviseren WC-eend!”)

Nice self-fulfilling experiment you’ve created here to defend/“prove” your ideas on how you manage this.
So you can switch back to your preferred methods and I suppose from then on nobody will start about it again and we’ll see how it will work out with this whole gallery thing :wink:
If you’d like to have this a bit more fair then you could also tag the submissions you would have rejected/accepted to show people how well your “system” is.

On-topic (above is probably considered off-topic): the recent change did some good, admittedly, but to say it is a significant improvement, no. Not at all.
The update-frequency is so low that it’s a lot less interesting to browse the galleries.
Just look at the number of views and replies especially, it has dropped in the last months.
And when there’s an update then there’s still a lot of weird stuff which has been accepted which still makes me often wonder if you’re the one most suitable for this job.

I agree with Billabong, but I’m pretty sure that’s not feasible in practice.
I suggest a bigger board which reviews the submissions to avoid to have it all depend on your opinion.
This way there’s probably also a better balance between technically interesting images and visually interesting images. In my opinion that’s what’s seriously wrong about how things are going now.

To add another suggestion: it might be useful to create a thumbnail-system for the WIP section of the site as well.
After rejection it is recommended to post in the WIP section and work from there.
To take myself as example, probably not the best as you may likely agree (lol), I don’t like clicking dozens of link without knowing what to expect.
The main reason for this is technical though, as this site isn’t very fast here, despite my 20MB connection.
Perhaps this is not feasible in terms of bandwith/costs, but it would certainly add something for me at least.

Cheers!
Martin

#6

can already see the impact it’s having :argh:

#7

CG Choice Gallery - the best of the best. Should have some level of scrutiny, as determined by the people who run this website. It’s their gallery, they make the decisions and getting accepted should feel like an honor, not a right.

3D Stills - Here’s where anyone can post their images.

#8

Such an aggressive reply. Please explain exactly why trying something new is “pathetic” and “childish”? Nobody likes the acceptance of everything in the gallery? How do you know that? We’ve never tried it.

I am fully aware that there is no solution that will please 100% of the site’s members. But I feel it’s worth a temporary change to see how removing the rejection aspect from the forum affects the galleries and the people who submit work.

I have no idea why you’re suggesting these been a low frequency of updates in the gallery lately, as there’s usually at least 30-40 accepted submissions on a daily basis. And I know that for a fact, because I manage the gallery.

Lastly, please keep all your baseless accusations and insinuations about ulterior motives to yourself. It’s really rather impolite, arrogant and obnoxious of you to suggest that you know better than I do what my motives were in trying something new.

#9

Bingo. That’s pretty much where this system leads us. If you only want to look at the best work from the submissions, look at the CG Choice gallery. For everything else, look at the showcase ones. During the last six months, I was choosing only the best of the submissions for the showcase galleries, and then we were choosing the award images from that crop. So the award images could have been said to be the best of the best. Now they will be the best of everything submitted instead. Ultimately it makes the showcase gallery less “elite” (I hate that word but can’t think of another one right now) but at the same time it also cuts out the rejection aspect which some people seem to have been finding discouraging.

#10

Personally i did like the previous strict selection much more with each work worth to click on it. Now i was seeing through the many new thumbnails, did click on two of them, and left the gallery. I don’t see the necessity to post every single creation into the gallery when having now the section with the latest works posted at the portfolios.

Nonetheless, i believe that it wouldn’t be a bad decision to have a small team of 2-3 people responsible for the gallery admittance. It could free you Leigh from being the target of frustrations.

#11

Although I’ve had some images rejected too,
I always thought it was for the best,
I’ve never had a vague reply about why my image was rejected.
In fact, that simple action made me work harder on my skills every day.
It’s not that one should be aiming to get an award or recognition, but to know
that you’re getting real critiques from professional artists, that’s priceless.
I’ve had learn so much from this community all this time, That if you ask me,
I think the strict selection was just fine the way it was.

Cheers!

#12

I’m supporting strict selection, i just think it happened too fast, over the night so to say, I believe that slower changes/transition would be much more beneficial for all of us.

#13

The stricter the better imho. Would rather have something to aspire to rather than a forum people treat like imageshack.

#14

it’s not like anyone comments on gallery submissions anyways

Cool work!

Awesome stuff!

So realistic!

#15

In my opinion it should be strict just like before, I think that the gallery is something that you should aim for.

#16

I’ll support the strict system. =D

#17

Everyone, while it’s good that you’re all speaking your mind and throwing ideas into the pot, please at least give this system a few days before making any judgements over which one is best.

When I have some time, either later this evening or tomorrow, I’ll write up a long reply about the pros and cons of each system, and possible changes that could be made to each to improve them.

Ultimately, we want to keep as many people happy as possible.

#18

It’s great that you listen to the community.

… But in all honesty, most CG/3D stuff is a complete crapfest. We live in our own little bubble and as a result we regurgitate the same crappy ideas and we focus on the technical side of things. We’re so blinded by the realism, by the lighting, by the texture that we lose something in the process. Making something realistic is not a merit for artistic success and I think this is where a lot of folks got mixed up.

Aaaaanyway… slash rant.

#19

Thanks for trying this. I know how hard it is to choose a line for what’s good and what’s not quite good enough. I guess my only ‘not very exacting’ suggestion would be for that line to be somewhere between where it was before today and where it is today. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I liked the newer guidelines, but having seen some work that wasn’t deemed ‘up to standard’ I thought it might have been a ‘touch’ too strict. No system will be perfect that’s for sure.

#20

What’s bad in lighting and texture? They don’t seem like technical aspects of cg.