just wanted to say i think your fest skin post is really good! it's always fun to see your and other returning artists skins in the submission thread (and as winners) because mm good soup we're eating good tonight, but ive never been able to word it properly, so i very much appreciate that post for doing it so well! i know there's always a lot of drama around this topic but idk. i think its really neat and it shows how much you care for this site to consistently submit skin contest entries, on top of the skin guide post and the bp thread.
but ye just wanted to let you know i appreciate you and the effort you put in for the site and players! (n this extends to 888 and the other regular skin contest artists)
thank you, your kind words mean a lot! skin contests are my favorite part of the site and I've always had a lot of fun going over submissions with my friends, so the decline of submissions has been something that I've wanted to comment on for a while––though, I haven't found a way to put things into words until now. I'm happy to see that people have found my analysis interesting and I hope it's of some encouragement to new artists who might want to join!
since participating in Arcane's house cup a long time ago I've been obsessed with what academy uniforms dragons would have, so here's a doodle of my progen Kraken in what I imagine to be his school outfit. (I considered doing it on my random progen, who is a fae, but I love my little blue mirror too much. look at him. he has no idea what school is but he's so excited.)
I drew this piece for my FR skin contest decline analysis post, which you can check out here!
Festival Contest Submissions Decline + Suggestion (An Essay)
Hello! The idea of a festival skin contest overhaul has been on my mind for a while now, and since we’re about to enter the 13th festival cycle, I thought I would give my two cents on why I think it's happening and some suggestions I'd like to make.
A short disclaimer: any opinions and speculations I share are based on my personal experience and conversations with other entrants, and may not be consistent with the experiences of other players or the intentions of the staff. As such, please take everything I say as my own opinions and observations, not fact!
A summary/TLDR of my points is at the bottom. (I've also submitted a version of this to FR's helpdesk.)
Without any further delay, let's get down it.
Wait, Why an Overhaul?
It’s a fact that festival submissions have been declining over the years. When I first started submitting back in 2021, we were regularly seeing the page count for festival skin contests hit 10+, but in 2025 and 2026, festival skin contests have barely been hitting 9 pages. As a recent example, the lightfest skin contests was at a remarkably low page count of 6 three days before the contest deadline, despite being one of the most popular elemental skin contests––and unfortunately, this has been the same for every festival contest sans the water/nature fest contests in the 2025-2026 cycle.
My friend August goes into the actual statistics of the decline more here, but the TLDR is that we’ve gone from an average of 25-50 pages per skin contest to an average of 7-12 over the past 13 years. The FR userbase is only growing so theoretically we should be seeing more entrants––so why isn’t that the case?
Problem #1: Lack of Consistent Entrants
This is going to be my main point going forward, and it’s the fact that the skin contests haven’t built up a roster of consistent entrants. At the moment, there are about 8 artists who enter regularly (“regularly” defined here as “have entered the last 5 contests consecutively”).
But why is it important that the contests have consistent participants? Well, while I agree that encouraging new artists to join skin contests is a way to boost participation––what is equally important is maintaining their participation. Think about it: if new artists join skin contests only for 3 contests, then drop out the moment they obtain a win, then you’re going to constantly be looking at a deficit of entrants rather than consistent participants who will contribute every time. And in the scenario where you really want to stabilize or increase the number of participants, what would you prefer? An artist that enters just once, or an artist that enters multiple times?
To explain this with numbers, here’s an example. As I mentioned before, there are currently about 8 artists that consistently submit to festival contests. That’s less than 1 page of entries. Now, imagine if that number was 30. Then that’s a consistent, guaranteed 3 pages of entries that you’ll get every contest. As such, I think it’s in the site’s best interest to continue growing that consistent group of artists––which begs the question: once you get a new artist interested in participating in festivals, how can you encourage them to keep participating?
That leads us to the next problem.
Problem #2: Outdated Prizes
If we’re going to look at what incentivizes artists to enter the most––particularly new artists––then you have to start with the prizes. And frankly, I believe the skin contest’s prizes are outdated. The last time any changes were made to them was in 2019, when the gem prize was upgraded from 1.5kg to 2kg for the Brightshine Jubilee. As we’re now at the point where a large portion of the playerbase are established players and the general economy has changed pretty significantly, I feel that the current prizes aren’t sufficient to draw interest. So I’d like to make some suggestions:
Suggestion 2A: Update Gem Prize (3kg for Winners, 1kg for Honorable Mentions)
Many other artists have spoken about this before, but the winner’s prize of 2kg is no longer enough of an incentive for more established artists to enter. (This is because artists generally earn 3kg per run filled skin run - 350g of profit x 9 copies sold, on average, minus the 5kg blueprint cost for x10 skin copies of the same design.) That means artists actually lose out on profit if their skin wins. Since the time and energy dedicated toward making a festival entry and a UMA is generally the same, when you consider whether you want a chance at 2kg or a mostly guaranteed 3kg, the choice is usually clear.
And if we’re talking about how to encourage people to keep participating, I think what would really help is if the honorable mention prize is updated as well. After all, the more likely it is to obtain a prize beyond being a winner, the more people will find it worth their time and energy to participate. Plus, there isn't a limit to how many honmens there can be the way there are winners. And finally, if you don’t have to win to get something, this also reduces the intimidation of the contest, which I’ll also address later.
So my solution is as follows: winning prizes should be updated to 3kg to match the profit earned from a run of skins, while honmen prizes should be updated to include an additional prize of 1kg.
I think this is the easiest adjustment to make. The gem prize is insofar the only skin contest prize that’s seen updates (2014 ROR & 2019 BSJ) This is proof that the staff have changed the gem prizes in accordance with the playerbase, and since it’s been 7 years since the last update, I think it’s reasonable for the gem prize to be updated again.
Suggestion 2B: Blueprints (5p bp for Honorable Mentions)
I really like blueprints as a prize, and I think the 5p skin bp is the most useful––especially since you can also print accents with the skin bp, so it covers for the possibility that you might be doing that.
The main suggestion I’d like to make for bps is actually on the honorable mentions end. Since honorable mention submissions are the ones that are often printed outside of contests, I think it would be more appealing if they could actually sell extra copies, since it could help kickstart new skin artists. Assuming they keep a copy for themselves, they could sell the remaining 4(*850) for 3.4kg, which is most of the way to a 10p Skin bp, and I find that to be more helpful and enticing to new artists than a 1p Skin bp that they can only use to print for themselves.
Suggestion 2C: Skin Artist Vista
The skin artist vista is one the main reasons I see more established skin artists submit to contests. And it’s also the main reason I see them no longer submit to contests. For a lot of artists I know, they (very validly and reasonably) enter contests just for the vista and no longer submit once they get it as the other prizes just aren’t appealing to them.
If we’re going to talk about building a consistent roster of participants, I find it absolutely necessary to update the skin artist vista. After all, there’s currently nothing stopping artists from just dropping out of the competition once they get the vista they want.
I personally don’t know if I have a good solution for this. The first thing that comes to mind is a new skin artist vista––after all, the current one has been around for 13 years, so it might just be time for a change in general. What I do feel is that we need something new for the winner’s prizes beyond the current skin artist vista to encourage people who’ve won already to begin submitting again.
I did consider other prizes––say, apparel, scenes, etc. But since we’re talking about prizes that will be account-locked, I personally feel like anything other than a vista would result in a lot of drama towards repeat winners. But we do need repeat winners, because the premise of a repeat winner is a consistent participant, and as mentioned several times at this point, I personally think consistent participants are incredibly important for maintaining submission numbers in skin contests.
I also thought about the possibility that the staff could award prizes based on consecutive contests you’ve entered, but I realize this would be incredibly hard to manage since someone would have to manually check each and every entrant, and the FR staff team is pretty small. Still, if festival submissions ever get automated to the point where that information can be collected within reasonable effort, then I’d really suggest that.
Problem #3: Lack of Notice
Now that we’ve talked a bit about prizes and retaining entrants, I think we need to address the elephant in the room: which is, how do we get more people to enter? If you want to build a consistent roster, you need to first have people that want to enter, and that’s where we get into some logistical issues with the skin contests.
First and foremost is the fact that the skin contests are no longer prominently advertised in the sidebar. This has mostly been a problem with the recent 2025-2026 festival cycle, as early as FF 2025, and I can’t count the number of times I’ve spoken to someone who didn’t even know the skin contest was ongoing or that it had just ended. The problem is pretty prominent: if even established players aren’t aware of this event, then how could new players ever find it?
I can somewhat speculate on the reason for this––and I think it’s because skin contests now begin on the same day as the start of the previous festival. And when there are two events ongoing, it’s inevitable that one gets overlapped by the other.
For instance, let’s say it’s the Wavecrest announcement thread, at the bottom of which is the BSJ skin contest. Well, as a participant of the festival, I’m usually going to scroll down, take a look at the new items, and immediately get to collecting, forgetting about the skin contest entirely.
And since skin contests have consistently only been advertised at the bottom of announcements for other new things, I think what’s happening is that it just gets overshadowed by the shiny new stuff.
Suggestion 3A: Skin Contest Submission Pinglist
Establish a pinglist to notify players when the thread goes up. This also helps remove the issues we’ve had with the wrong submission threads being linked (or the discussion and submission threads being swapped). Advertise this pinglist in the skin contests, festivals, etc, and you’ll be able to notify people who are already interested in submitting, giving them that extra kick they might need.
This would also be helpful for the staff in gauging just how many people are interested in participating in the skin contest.
Suggestion 3B: Post the Skin Contest Thread the Monday After Current Fest Ends
I feel like there’s been a significant drop in participation since skin contests were set to begin on the same day as a festival, for the reasons I mentioned above. The easiest fix is to remind people of the skin contest after all the excitement of the current festival has passed and people are beginning to look forward to the next one.
I suggest that the Skin Contest Thread go up the Monday after the end of the current festival. It’d give people time to enjoy the festival, and it’d decrease the chance that the skin contest is overshadowed by the current fest.
Problem #4: Intimidation
There’s no way around it. Entering the festival contests can be scary. This is especially true for new artists who are unfamiliar with creating themed skins. And the reason? I think it’s mostly because people aren’t sure what constitutes a festival skin. I’ve seen many artists submit amazing skins that I know won’t be picked because it looks far more themed for another flight, and I’ve seen a lot of artists submit skins that will be rejected just on linebreaks/lack of transparent image, etc.
Suggestion 4A: Example of a Valid Entry
This is a small fix, but I think it would absolutely help clarify things for new players. Having an “example valid submission” in the submission thread would really help give new players a visual of what their final entry needs to look like (shadows and lines applied, transparent png). This doesn’t only help “confirm” for new players what their submissions should be like. Providing a submission template code on top of that would help as well.
I also consider a visual reference an accessibility upgrade, since word blocks are sometimes difficult to read (and this is even truer if English is not your first language). So I see this suggestion helping on multiple ends.
Suggestion 4B: “What We’ve Enjoyed”
I think it would do a lot for the festival contests if the staff provided a “some elements we’ve enjoyed seeing in the past” blurb in each of the skin contests, with a note that a skin possessing those elements doesn't guarantee an automatic win. My reasoning is that 1) it would really help new artists understand what to focus on and ensure their skins stay thematically on-point, especially since new entrants usually possess less of a grasp of the elemental themes 2) it would provide a sort of “prompt board” for artists who are stumped/stuck with ideas, and 3) having a section like this would be helpful as a reference for artists that back out of contests because they don’t know what to draw.
A Small PSA
Since we’re talking about intimidation, I get the feeling this may be brought up, so I’m going to preemptively shut down the conversation that skin submissions are declining because new artists don’t win, or because of repeat winners. Quoting from August’s decline breakdown (backed by raw data), an average of 45-65% winners of the 2025 skin contests were “less established/new artists,” and August also stated:
“I overall believe it's unhelpful to repeat the idea that 'new artists have no chance of winning' or that festival winners are crowded by repeat winners. Blindly echoing this discourages new artists from participating more than the actual data on festival winners shows.”
I agree, and he does a better job of backing up his statements with raw data, so I suggest checking out his thread. But if you’re a new artist, please don’t feel intimidated by the fact there are established players submitting. In fact:
Due to the massive drop in submissions, NOW is actually the best time to submit because you have less competitors
Don’t compare yourself to other artists. Every artist started from ground zero––even if your art isn’t where you’d like it to be right now, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still try.
“Repeat” winners make up only 30%ish of the winning slots. Per raw data from August’s thread, 45-65% of winners are less established artists. That means statistically, new artists actually have a higher chance of getting a winning slot.
“Established” artists are more scared of you (me, I’m more scared of new artists than anything)
Problem #5: Festival Monotomy
This is probably the biggest issue for festivals in general, and it is simply the monotony. It’s a difficult issue to navigate, partly because I feel it’s an inevitable result of a long-lived site, and partly because it’s hard to balance appeal to older players who've kind of seen it all vs newer players who are excited to collect new things. But overall, festivals no longer contribute new gimmicks or aesthetics to the game.
The same formula, aesthetic, and gimmicks (new apparel, returning apparel, new vista, gene expansion) are used every time, and the predictability makes it difficult to feel excited for a new festival. And the less invested the general playerbase are in festivals, the less invested they’ll naturally be in festival skin contests as well––especially when skin contests also suffer from the reuse of aesthetics.
Which, now that we’re entering the 13th festival cycle, I feel even more keenly as someone who has been submitting to all but 1 contest since 2022.
However, this is where it gets a little tricky. Festival contests, by nature, need to adhere to the aesthetics of their elemental flight, which means skins contributed to the contests need to necessarily repeat some elements.
I’m not denying that and I do recognize there’s an argument to be made that aesthetic reuse is a part of creating festival skins. I myself often advise other artists to review previous winning skins and existing aesthetics to create their own entries. But I don’t think that necessarily has to be the case.
Suggestion 5A: Themed Contests/New Art/Lore Drop
Wait, but festival skin contests are already themed! Well, yes, but picture this: when the festival skin contest opens, we get a new lore drop or art drop for the celebrating flight. Lore/world expansions are probably some of the events that remain consistently anticipated by the playerbase, and serve as a decent “gimmick” (so long as the same things––lore or art or secret––isn’t reused too much) to get the playerbase hyped up.
It doesn’t have to be a new breed––maybe a little story about Imperials meeting Everluxes for the first time, or just something that introduces a new aesthetic into the flight. I think this would do a lot in encouraging people to draw in relation to the new lore/art drop.
Suggestion 5B: Reintroduce New Gimmicks per Fest Cycle/Crowdsource Ideas
As much as I love Ancients and the Elemental Genes, I feel like they’ve been really detrimental to festivals, especially since the reception of genes are so dependent on how much people like a particular Ancient. Coupled that with the fact that we get the same new items every festival (1 big apparel and scene), and it’s a contrast from the days when we got halos and we were looking forward to seeing what the next one would be like, or when we initially got genes, or the vistas, or scenes. These new gimmicks that catch people off guard were really helpful in making people anticipate upcoming festivals.
I’m not a game designer so I can only imagine it’s really difficult to come up with new stuff for every festival. But I don’t think that has to be the case… I think FR could absolutely crowdsource ideas for festivals.
Imagine if, during the Anniversary, FR launches a post where players can suggest gimmicks they want, and the staff can choose which one they want to implement. This not only introduces fresh ideas to the existing FR team, it also encourages general participation from the players. Everyone wants to be the one that’ll suggest the item that gets converted into an actual in-game item. Imagine how exciting that would be!
For example, I personally would want more elemental eyes––but something like the corrupted version of primal eyes, like “elements but they went very wrong.” Or what about school garb for each of the flights? I think it would be really cool!
What WON’T Help Boost Submissions?
Here, I want to take some space to preemptively address the most common suggestions I've seen, and explain why I don't think they would work.
Adding More Winning Slots
Adding more slots is NOT the answer. We’re already seeing a record low for submissions––the more winning slots there are, the more likely that we’ll run into a problem where staff cannot actually pick enough eligible submissions to win. Also, it costs 680kt for a full set of festival skins at this point. People have already stopped buying full sets for this reason.
Banning Repeat Winners to Encourage New Artists
All repeat winners exist on the premise that they are consistent participants, and I’ve established early on just how important it is to have a roster of consistent participants. If you remove repeat winners, you’re looking at barring at least 20 artists or 2 pages of submissions from the next festival contest.
At a time when submissions are at an all-time-low, I really don’t think this is the best move.
Summary:
So, what do I think is contributing to festival skin contest declines?
Lack of consistent entrants
Outdated prizes (last updated 2019)
Intimidation/knowledge gap of skin contests
Inconsistent/lack of advertisements
Festival monotony
What will NOT help:
Adding more winning slots (we’re already at a deficit of submissions. Adding more winning slots could result in a scenario where the staff runs out of skins to pick.)
Banning repeat winners (you’re removing 20 participants from the next contest at a time when we’re already low on submissions)
My suggestions:
Find ways to encourage new artists to enter AND maintain their participation, cultivating a roster of consistent entrants for the skin contests
Update contest winner prizes to 3kg + 5p skin bp
Update honorable mention prizes to 1kg + 5p skin bp
Update skin artist vista prize to help retain consistent entrants
Add examples of “valid entries” to the contest thread
Add a “elements we’ve enjoyed in the past” list to the contest thread (should be changed annually)
Adjust the start date of contests to the Monday after the end of the previous festival
Skin contest submission pinglist
Add a lore/art drop to coincide with the start date of the contests to hype people up for the contest and the festival
Crowdsource new gimmick for festivals
Conclusion
Once again, I want to emphasize that this is just my personal take. I recognize that the FR staff is incredibly busy on other aspects of the site and the festival skin contests might not be on their list of priorities.
I also am not aware of how skins are selected or what internal processes might be limiting the possibility of a skin contest overhaul. I am just someone who really loves the skin contests and would love it if more people continue to participate in them. However, as of the 13th fest cycle, I do believe that many of the existing prizes and such for the festival contests are outdated and could benefit from an overhaul.
If you're interested in seeing my analysis of my personal festival skin submissions, go here! If you're a skin artist and you'd like tips for starting out, or a free blueprint, you can go here. Drink water, take care of yourselves, and happy 13th fest cycle!
All of the elemental lair scenes for Flight Rising, together!
This was a hell of a project, and you can really see where I learned as I went. There's a lot I'd go back and change if I could still but overall I'm super happy with these and so glad to get the opportunity
FLIGHT RISING REFACTOR: No, you're not going back.
I am seeing a lot of people ask for a toggle or a way to go back to the old site design, in a way that implies such a thing should be easy to implement. It does sound easy to implement. We have three different colour modes we can switch between, right? We can go between mobile view and wide view? They have all the old code and assets, why can't they just let people pick in their settings to look at the old site again?
It's not how it works. It doesn't really matter what your feelings about the refactor are, and I'm not going to give my opinion on it here. I just want to help people understand what exactly happened yesterday and why it's pointless to ask for it to go back.
i. HOUSE
Imagine a house.
It's an old house. It's been around for a while. It was built many years ago, and it's creaky and weird but it's our house, and we like it. There's leaks and the wood is a little aged and it stands out in the block of modern flathouses, but it's still our house.
As much as we love this house, there are issues with the house. Not everybody can get into the house, or navigate in there while they're around. There are things about this house that we can't change while it's made of the same materials that it is.
This is a structural flaw inherent to the house. The house is two-storied. Not everyone can get to the second story. In terms of the site, there were features that were unfriendly for people with visual impairment, people who could only play on their phones, etc.
ii. DARK MODE & INTERFACE
What did the old site look like? Why couldn't we have dark mode? The site was built out of layers and layers of PNGs made to look exactly like the light mode interface. All the NPC images, the old message and friend request icons, they all had white backgrounds or white fragments around the image because they were made assuming the site had a white background.
You couldn't just make the background of the site dark, because every single feature and image was created assuming the background was and would remain white.
This is why the logo was 'doubling' upon itself when the refactor first launched. The Flight Rising logo was a part of the banner image. Now the banner has been removed from the image and it's a floating element on the top of the page. This means it can react when the screen is made smaller. This is the equivalent of being able to move our lightswitch.
What did the site refactor do? Among other things, it decoupled all of these in-built images and features from each other. They added repaintable 'drywall' separate from the site's structure.
This was necessary so the site could be reactive. For example, the iconic red sidebar of the page was actually a background PNG with a white part for the site content and a red sidebar, built into one single background image. Now these parts are defined with CSS, which you can think of as the 'wallpaper' of the site.
Every single surface of our house can be repainted now!
iii. Rollback or toggle to old site pls??
This is the refactored site. Among other things, it's been changed to improve accessibility for everyone. It now looks a little bit more like every other house on the block, but it is still the house that we live in. It no longer has two stories to climb. It has a ramp, so people can get in and out with ease. It even has some additional rooms, and renovation is still ongoing. (The contractors are still fixing up the washroom.)
Yes, the site is now designed to be mobile friendly. It no longer has a second floor. It's going to look 'designed for mobile' (people who can't access a second floor.) It's going to look more 'modern' (because the materials people use to build houses has changed.)
People are not used to the new site, of course. Can't they go back to the old house? Why has the door location changed? They keep walking into the walls of the new building. The light switch isn't there when they reach for it anymore.
This is understandable. It takes some time to get used to living in a new house. It's a big change. You're going to be fumbling at where the light switch used to be for a long time.
You may even hate how the new house looks. You may not want to live in it anymore. But you can't go back to the old house. It isn't there anymore. You can't have a toggle, because the new site is the infrastructure uploaded to the site's servers, where it is built, and while you can change the colour of the wallpapers or even move the location of the light switch on your own, the house is rebuilt and you cannot 'toggle' it back to the old house.
The database calls, the HTML, the js on the front and backends of the site are completely different. The walls and shape of the house are different!
iv. Conclusion
There is a reason there are bug threads and feedback forums for the refactor. You still have time to request that the washroom is a different colour, or the ramp should actually be less steep because the people it's meant for can't actually use it as it was intended. But the ramp, and the accessibility features are here to stay.
Don't ask for a toggle or for the site to go back the way it was. It will not be going back to the house built a decade ago. Instead, figure out why the old site worked for you while this one doesn't.
Maybe the ramp was intended for you, but you can't actually use it. Maybe the way the door is positioned now makes it actively harder for you to use the site, in ways other than 'I don't like where it is now and I want it to go back'. Ask for the site to be repainted and improved in ways that would help you.
please read august's refactor explanation! I feel like there's a lot of misinformation going around that's causing even more complaints, and this is explained so well
Pawborough Open Beta Review: Literally What Is Going On And What Are They Thinking
This is going to be strongly worded thoughts on PawBorough's Pelts system (the equivalent of custom skins/accents here on Flight Rising).
So I joined the Pawborough open beta test (servers opened about an hour ago), the cat-themed petsite that ran an extremely successful Kickstarter campaign back in 2022. It is one of the latest in the many, many petsites that have tried in recent years to offer an alternative to the Flight Rising-esque petsite demographic (think Dappervolk, Lorwolf, etc).
It's been interesting so far: forums use markdown which means that you if you want to show images you have to upload images directly to the Pawborough server. Which, just why? That cannot be scalable, but I don't know if they're thinking about scale or if that's just temporary? (For the sake of their own budget I hope it's jank left over from alpha.)
Anyway, you're not here for that, you're here to hear my take on the Custom Pelt system. I'm an artist, of course I want to see their take on custom content. My thoughts? It's sort of like if the worst bits of Lioden's custom decor, Flight Rising's sometimes arbitrary queue, and Furvilla's paintie systems were rolled into one giant heap of 'no, seriously, were you thinking about scalability here?'
PART I - Style & Limitations Guide
I don't know if users can view the guides without an account, but in case you can't, I'll run through just some of the chief concerns I have quickly. Let's have this series of images in their Style Guide speak for themselves:
That's right! No pure cel shading! No shading that's too 'soft!' What's that? You're using highlights on your custom Pelt? Nope, that's not allowed. Don't even think about using texture or painterly shading in your custom design. You think I'm playing around?
Get ready to get real familiar with the airbrush tool, buddy. What's next, you need to make sure that the light sources in your drawing is completely consistent with the light sources on the cat? Oh, wait:
If you're adding fur texture or markings onto cat, it has to follow the fur lines on the bases. Let's check out a few other bangers from their style guide. Can you tell the critical rule-breaking difference between these two?
That's right, line weight and softness must match the cat’s lineart, and direct from the guide: "The brushes’ “stamp” may not have any strong aliasing, nor texturing." So it's default G-pen and airbrush only from here on out? Got it.
Oh, there's an exception though.
We try to avoid completely smooth, digital gradients when possible. We either use [Grainy Airbrush], or [Blotchy Smudge] to give a gradient a bit of texture. See the brush packs for reference.
You have to use an airbrush, but be careful! Your airbrush can't be too smooth or digital, whatever that means. Uhhh, got it. So texture brushes are permitted and even necessary here?
It's not over yet: You're not allowed to repose any of the cat's limbs or put human features on them: (helllooooo, Furvilla painties!)
You can't use any existing PawBorough content in your Pelt design. So if there's a Pawborough-distinct animal/food item that isn't an existing accessory item, are you allowed to draw an animal companion? Or no?
PART II - What Kind of Culture Are We Creating Here
Pelts are PawBorough’s primary source of income, and participation in Pelt creation and trading by users helps to upkeep and support the game!
If I wanted custom content to be my primary source of income, I would attempt to make it as easy and welcoming as possible for artists to participate in the custom system. That's not what they've chosen to do here with their immediate and challenging style and limitations guide. Now, in all fairness they've put this up top:
But why are you monitoring for all of these in the first place?
If you play Flight Rising and you're following this blog, you'll know I've been making custom skins on there for about 5 years now. Flight Rising has far less stringent style limitations than this, two skin moderators dealing with custom content queue, and it still takes a week or more sometimes to get the first round of approvals/rejections on a skin approved. Most people who try making skins just stop here because it's discouraging. I've played Lioden which has a similar style limitation on its custom items too, and that's even more discouraging.
I'm not just speaking on player culture. I hope PawBorough will have one superhuman moderator for the queue that has 24 hrs a day to breathe down the neck of the custom content queue, because imagine getting your pelt denied for having shading that's too soft, you go and fix that the best you can, and then when you resubmit again now your lines aren't matching the 'site style'.
Humans have to check all that and make their own judgements on it, by the way! These guidelines all have enough 'artistic' wiggle room that it's completely unsustainable for if they want PawBorough to get huge. Why even make your own moderator's jobs harder, make it harder on the people you're supposedly relying on to be your primary income source, make it harder and feel worse for new artists to get started? And why even specify things like a furmap and using a textured airbrush if you also want to say 'but it's totally okay!! we'll be understanding and reasonable!!'
What is the point here? To farm out your own site content to users and have them pay you for it?
Also, there's this pose discount thing that feels like it's taken straight from the Flight Rising blueprint playbook, except if you think about it for more than a few seconds, you'll realize this will lead to people burning out and never completing pelt designs because you need to complete and upload all their poses at once for the best discount and most 'efficient' use of the premium currency.
And, by the way? PawBorough does not enforce and will not care if other people start closely copying your custom designs. Cool and awesome, right?
PART III - Closing Thoughts
At the end of the day, it's their site and they can do what they want with it. If they don't want to have custom content that doesn't match their vision of the site style on their site, that's ok! But I just don't expect this Pelt system to work in a healthy or sustainable way for players OR staff the way it is now.
I hope I'm wrong, and the guidelines aren't going to shoot everyone in the foot as much as I fear. But for now, I'm giving PawBorough and its custom content system a hard, hard pass.
The site intends to, and has stated that it will, majorly benefit off of player-made content (re: "pelts are PawBorough’s primary source of income")
Players will have to pay to create pelts, and will not be paid in return––i.e. they will be producing content for the site for free (at a cost to themselves)
Players must abide by the site's artstyle––simply put, PB is expecting players to act like the site's official artists, again without being paid
PB does not offer any venue of protection for its artists if their pelts are ripped off by another player.
It also doesn't seem like artists are credited on the pelts at all, though hopefully this is just an oversight and will be corrected.
on one hand, I do appreciate the transparency of where the site expects its income to be coming from. but I'm not certain I agree transparency makes this system okay. if you do want to profit off player-made content, it seems natural that you should give as much flexibility and liberty to the artists that will be creating content for you for free.
like august said, it's entirely up to PB how they intend to manage player-created content. but honestly––as someone who's been making skins on Flight Rising for 5 years now, what has always made FR so much fun for me is just the flexibility they give skinmakers. You want to slap a worm on a string on a dragon? go for it. you want to put a mini spiral on an imp? green light. from my point of view, I really do feel like FR's skin system is fully created for the users to customize their dragons, filling in any gaps the site skins and apparel/effects don't. Meanwhile, PB's pelt system seems more so a system created for the site to profit, which is an unfortunate path for them to have taken.
I'm not saying that FR doesn't make any money from the skinmakers. But the important distinction here is: FR's skin system was first created as an option for players to customize their dragons, not for the site to profit. whereas it appears PB is attempting to nab the profit aspect of the skinmaking system without really understanding how this system began as a player-centric venue.
I do hope changes are made for the sake of their players, but I'm sticking to FR.
Just wanted to ask if you were still making public skins, since you're one of my favorite skin makers on the site! I really love your fest skins, but I also really love your public designs <3
hi! I'm happy that you like my skins! I do have some public skin ideas in mind, but unfortunately I haven't really had time to work on them ^^" it's been a bit of a rough year for me, and I've just not had time to sit down and do the kind of detailed work a public skin requires.
I did promise someone that I'd do a public release of my wind + arcane veil m fest reject (below), so I might throw that in the ring before the end of the year, if I can muster the energy to deal with skin queue + orders––but I don't want to make promises I can't keep, so I can't say for certain it will happen T-T
so... tldr––maybe! hopefully! but only after things calm down for me ^^" sorry for the long wait between public releases, hopefully the full res of this fest reject makes up for it!
