Though technically Art fight will still be running for another week (they extended the deadline due to server-issues in the first week), I don't think it will make much difference when it comes to this retrospective. As such, I'll be posting this now. I'll also start posting the stuff I've drawn and received over the next few weeks.


Since this was my second year participating, I had a better idea of what I was getting into this time. Still, there were some things that hadn't happened before, things that had changed since last time, and just things that might be of interest. In no particular order:

I did more attacks than last year. By the end of last year's fight I was at 13 attacks. This year I am at 15 and counting! The 16th should be going up soon and I have a few more in the works. So far I have been attacked 6 times this year, putting me on par with last year.

I got attacked first for the first time. And by none other than Xizana, too. To be fair, it wasn't entirely out-of-the-blue as we had had an exchange about it beforehand. She just beat me to it :P

I got ignored for the first time. At the time of this writing, I have five attacks that have had no response whatsoever; no defense, no comment... nothing. Two of those are fairly new, so those might still get a response, but the other three have been up for weeks now. Particularly the early ones proved rather demoralizing, but I'm glad I kept up because some comments on later attacks more than made up for that.

I've fallen behind on the latest in character-design. The number of mouths in non-mouth places seems higher than last year (as will be evident in a few of my attacks). The same for characters with a screen for a head. Either I hadn't noticed them last year, or those have become really popular over the past 12 months. If I rejoin the fight next year, I might have to design a few characters aimed specifically at the artfight audience.

I drew an animation! The extra couple of points you get for a "simple" animation make it totally not worth the effort, but it was fun to draw and a good learning experience to boot. Now I know all the things I shouldn't do next time.

I apparently need descriptions to draw characters. Fairly often I'd encounter a character that looked interesting to draw, only to find out that the owner hadn't bothered writing down a single word about them. More often than not, this leads to me moving on to the next character as I always try to make the art a bit more personal; draw some activity they might enjoy, a character-trait they exhibit or an ability they can manifest. No info on the characters means no ideas, which means no art.


All-in-all: will I do it again next year? Probably. We'll see. Can I recommend it to others? Not sure, to be honest. It can be pretty taxing at times; waiting for a response; hoping to see that notification that you got attacked. I can definitely recommend going into it with a "I'm just gonna draw people stuff and not worry about the rest" mindset.