TF2 Art Competition @tf2artcomp - Tumblr Blog

In closing

Looking back on our first competition, we wrote the rules in just under two weeks, hyped it up for two weeks, had submissions open for two weeks, and took two weeks to close. It was a wild ride and although we had a lot of individual support, we ended up with a total of six submissions.

On the one hand, it’s somewhat disappointing; on the other, we completely understand many of you were particularly busy with life stuff this month. Some of you even wrote in to say so!

So we’d like to say a word to everyone who thought about submitting and then didn’t for reasons besides that: never be afraid to take a chance!

We know what it’s like: Red is a writer and Ugg is her editor, and sometimes we look at submission calls we’re uncertain about and send it in anyway, thinking her work would get lost in the multitude of quality submissions, and it gets picked! As her editor, I can tell you that Red is a talented writer in her own right– but also sometimes she gets picked because not many other people took the chance. That’s a thing that happens a lot in publishing.

We learned some things from our experience in this competition, and we hope that it gives you hope for bigger things in your life, whether it’s a regional competition or that job you’ve been thinking of applying for but felt under-qualified– do it! These things are often a combination of your actual skill and comparative skill to the other candidates… in the case of our tiny competition, a pool of under ten people.

Nevertheless, this whole thing was super interesting. We had fun, we learned a lot, and most importantly, we’re very glad to be a part of this lovely fandom, y’all have been incredibly sweet throughout. Especially true coming from shy people like the two of us!

We’d like to say a big thank you to everyone we interacted with over the past couple of months.

Special shoutouts go to @tf2community, @from-2fort-with-love, @sogekihei-sama, @strahldelune, @headcanonfortress, @iloveteamfortresstoo, and @justdishonoredthings for letting your followers know about our little exercise.

Thank you to everyone who put in the time to work on a submission @annesqf, @jelli-sfm, @cerchionero, @donnez-moi-vos-vivres, @katuen, @archbowmistress (in order of submission!)

Thank you @thehumansentry for volunteering your time and effort to translate the rules.

Thank you everyone who sent in questions, advice, and suggestions, via asks and messages.

We had a great time, and we hope you did too. Good night and good luck! =)

We’d still love to hear from all y’all lovely people. Did you have fun? Do you have advice for us? How did we do? Would you like us to run another competition? Was there something you particularly liked or disliked? Just want to say “I told you so!”? Please let us know here on Tumblr or via email: uggredzomb at gmail dot com

horsyunicorn

(mod of justdishonoredthings here) I have a couple of suggestions, which you can take or absolutely 100% ignore =). I’m not part of the TF2 fandom so I’m by no means an authority on this, but I think that although people may have been interested in cross-overs between TF2 and the other media, there might not have been that many people who are themselves interested in both TF2 and those other media.

Also, obviously it’s your first time doing this so this is something to consider for the next time: maybe when you announce the art comp, include examples of artwork that are in the ballpark of what you’re looking for? It’s sometimes easier for followers/newcomers to follow a template or formula, although I’m talking from experience of my sideblog and obviously there were a lot more different formats for submissions in your art comp.

Lastly, people sometimes hear about something and think “oh yes I’ll contribute to that!” then lose interest or just plain forget, so it can also be helpful to post regular reminders of ongoing things.

(And don’t be disheartened by the response this time round! A normal post of my sideblog gets a response from about 1.3% of my total followers. The amount of effort you put into organising and publishing content can feel disproportionately large compared to the likes, reblogs and comments made by followers, and that’s true for blogs with anywhere from 10 to 10,000 followers!)

tf2artcomp

Thank you so much for taking the time to write us! We're slow to respond because there's two of us, please accept many apologies.

First, you're right that people wanted crossovers that we didn't mention. Our criteria for the crossovers were: 1. Crossovers we were certain that one or both of us could judge (we even had a hiccup we didn't notice until later); 2. Crossovers we'd already seen in the TF2 fandom; 3. Crossovers for fandoms that are large enough that even though we hadn't seen them, we're certain people would know them (Pirates turns out to be a good choice here).

(4. is getting young’uns into Arcanum, which we continue to feel is super underrated, alas!)

#1 could probably get better with a larger judge panel; #2 is the frustrating one, because we'd seen people post new art in the specific categories we had running, but apparently they hadn't heard about the competition.

Next, regarding examples/templates/formula: we were careful to not reference any existing TF2 art (excluding official art or SFMs) because we wanted people to focus on the idea, and we tried to get that across (not sure how successful that was). The quality of art is obviously important, but what we’re primarily looking for is the reaction it gets out of us.

About reminders: you hit the nail on the head! Neither one of us is consistent on our personal blogs, plus our learned inclination is not to nag. We received this particular advice from multiple people while the competition was running and this is definitely a weakness between the two of us.

Finally: we're a little disheartened, but not because of the effort we put into it; that we're well aware of from our experience with Red’s writing. The surprise for us was the percentage of people who participated out of those who showed interest. We did, however, get private messages from people who couldn't make it in time, with lots of words of encouragement and explanations. So in the end, it sort of balances out?

Again, thank you so much for sharing your experience, and our apologies for taking a little while to respond!

#tf2artcomp #admin stuff #mod stuff #justdishonoredthings #horsyunicorn #uggzomb #redzomb

In closing

Looking back on our first competition, we wrote the rules in just under two weeks, hyped it up for two weeks, had submissions open for two weeks, and took two weeks to close. It was a wild ride and although we had a lot of individual support, we ended up with a total of six submissions.

On the one hand, it’s somewhat disappointing; on the other, we completely understand many of you were particularly busy with life stuff this month. Some of you even wrote in to say so!

So we’d like to say a word to everyone who thought about submitting and then didn’t for reasons besides that: never be afraid to take a chance!

We know what it’s like: Red is a writer and Ugg is her editor, and sometimes we look at submission calls we’re uncertain about and send it in anyway, thinking her work would get lost in the multitude of quality submissions, and it gets picked! As her editor, I can tell you that Red is a talented writer in her own right-- but also sometimes she gets picked because not many other people took the chance. That's a thing that happens a lot in publishing.

We learned some things from our experience in this competition, and we hope that it gives you hope for bigger things in your life, whether it’s a regional competition or that job you’ve been thinking of applying for but felt under-qualified-- do it! These things are often a combination of your actual skill and comparative skill to the other candidates... in the case of our tiny competition, a pool of under ten people.