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Artfight retrospective
7 years ago
Soooo... did ya miss me? I've been over on Art Fight, denouncing one hot beverage I don't drink on behalf of another hot beverage I also don't drink! They really should've put in cocoa or something... Anyhow, for those who don't know Art Fight: it's a month-long event where you get assigned to one of two teams. You score points for your team by 'attacking' opposing members by drawing their characters. Sailoranna did it last year and I figured I'd see whether it was any fun.
Well before the fight even started, I gave what I wanted to get out of this some thought. Obviously I was hoping to get some art of my characters. That was a crappy reason to join, though; I didn't expect to get all that much without putting effort into it. So instead I decided to focus on said 'effort' and just see what it would get me. My personal rules: attack people at random, draw some fun stuff that I normally might not, and maybe even meet some new people I would not have met otherwise.
All-in-all, I have rather mixed feelings about the whole experience. It was fun drawing other people and fun seeing their responses. The site doesn't lend itself to comment-chains, though. I didn't get attacked out of the blue even once; not without me attacking them first. I hadn't expected much, but there was always the hope for more. So yeah, that was a smidgen disappointing. Will I do it again next year? To be honest... I don't know.
That having been said, prepare for a bit of a flood of art-attacks. I've got 13 attacks and (so far) 6 defenses (art by others). The event will be running for two more days, but I don't intend to draw anything more for it.
Now on to some random artfight observations:
- I seem to be about twice as old as the average art-fighter. I felt a bit self-conscious at times...
- So many people seem fine with gore, but nipples?! Oh nonono! Seriously... the amount of profiles that state "Gore is great; NO NSFW, THOUGH!" is just ridiculous.
- Portraits. Sooo many portraits! They're the staple of the art-fight community! I suppose it's inevitable when drawing random people, but even so... they can be a tad impersonal at times. That's why I tried to make things a bit more interesting; tried to find some activity for them.
- Artfight needs a way to reply to comments.
- Artfight also needs a way to specify that you're only looking for random characters on the opposing team. Friendly fire defeats the whole purpose of art-fighting!
Well before the fight even started, I gave what I wanted to get out of this some thought. Obviously I was hoping to get some art of my characters. That was a crappy reason to join, though; I didn't expect to get all that much without putting effort into it. So instead I decided to focus on said 'effort' and just see what it would get me. My personal rules: attack people at random, draw some fun stuff that I normally might not, and maybe even meet some new people I would not have met otherwise.
All-in-all, I have rather mixed feelings about the whole experience. It was fun drawing other people and fun seeing their responses. The site doesn't lend itself to comment-chains, though. I didn't get attacked out of the blue even once; not without me attacking them first. I hadn't expected much, but there was always the hope for more. So yeah, that was a smidgen disappointing. Will I do it again next year? To be honest... I don't know.
That having been said, prepare for a bit of a flood of art-attacks. I've got 13 attacks and (so far) 6 defenses (art by others). The event will be running for two more days, but I don't intend to draw anything more for it.
Now on to some random artfight observations:
- I seem to be about twice as old as the average art-fighter. I felt a bit self-conscious at times...
- So many people seem fine with gore, but nipples?! Oh nonono! Seriously... the amount of profiles that state "Gore is great; NO NSFW, THOUGH!" is just ridiculous.
- Portraits. Sooo many portraits! They're the staple of the art-fight community! I suppose it's inevitable when drawing random people, but even so... they can be a tad impersonal at times. That's why I tried to make things a bit more interesting; tried to find some activity for them.
- Artfight needs a way to reply to comments.
- Artfight also needs a way to specify that you're only looking for random characters on the opposing team. Friendly fire defeats the whole purpose of art-fighting!
I mean, in theory you would win by choosing / being assigned to the half whose members as a whole happen to contribute more effort/talent/know-how in the end... but is the score-counting done by some sort of judge or panel? If it's about the sheer number of pictures, then would a 'zerg rush' of stick figures do the trick? Was any attention paid / discouragement given to the periodic own-goal you bring up?
Well, they're not quite as random as the points on "whose line is it anyway?", but the scoring is mostly a gimmick to tie the whole thing together. There are various classifications for images that determine how many points your team scores for them. I'm talking stuff like head/half body/full body, uncoloured/rough colour/clean coloured, no background/background, no animation/animated elements/full animation. Which side wins is pretty much arbitrary, though, as a single person is never going to have enough influence over the score for it to be particularly significant (for example, team coffee is behind by 9482 points; I've contributed about 123 to combat that over the whole fight).
To be honest, I had my reservations about the whole system as well as it's really easy to game. Then I realised that, if you join artfight to win for your team, you might be joining for the wrong reasons. It's more of a free-for-all art-trade thing with a gimmick :P
I think that is the point of the points and the 1 team vs another, but seems like people dont really care about a goal and just want they want for them selves.