Tutorials Contest?

Upon letting my mind wander, I kinda came up with an idea. Man, it feels pretty good to be starting a forum and NOT whining on it. xD Aw, man.

Anyway, I've been thinking about CRIT a lot, and I've noticed that when somebody gives someone else a critique, you know, it's only written stuff. Sometimes it's hard to picture "the perspective is off, try doing this instead..." you know what I mean? And sure, there's the visual critique option, but that really only shows you how to fix that one picture. It doesn't really teach you how to apply that to your future art.

That's why I love tutorials. Love 'em. But there really aren't a lot here, pertaining to art, anyways. Or maybe I'm just not looking very hard (which wouldn't be too much of a shock for me). So I was thinking, maybe it'd be a really good idea for people to think of some sort of aspect of art that they're really good at (example: Proportioning, perspective, anatomy, drawing couples interacting) and make a tutorial out of it. Then they could submit them. And maybe for the sake of incentive, we could make it a contest, and the most-helpful tutorial (though popular vote?) could get something out of it, like a one-month premium account (if BogusRed is willing, of course). The contest could expand to writers, too, maybe, but I'd like to focus mostly on art. I'll think of a good writing contest sooner or later, I'm sure.

Any thoughts?

I have seen lots of tutorials, some really good, and some really bad.  If the powers that be here would like to put up a new category for them, I think it would be a good resource for artists and writers to use.  On deviantart I have a whole collection of them, they do come in handy.  The only drawback I see, is that their are so many mediums and so many programs (for digital work) that the person writing the tutorial would have to be very specific about the elements used in the tutorials.  That said, I do see them as a positive resource for the members here.

We do have a special section dedicated to Tutorials under the Writing section. Click on Libraries and select Tutorials.

But there aren't very many tutorials there.

I would be up for a tutorials contest that follows our typical PD prize structure. But maybe instead of prizes from the store just reward premium accounts for more months. I would also like to participate as I've got a lot of ideas for tutorials. But if folks think its unfair of me to enter that would be fine. I think the winner should be chosen via voting.

I'm against creating a tutorial section in the art gallery though people have suggested it . Tutorials are primarily a written form and I believe that tutorials should be in text with accompanying images where necessary, not a giant image that you have to scroll and can't search through like the tutorials on DeviantArt. Having tutorials in text means that if someone does a search on Google for that topic or just uses our internal PD search they can find the tutorial more easily. Text in an image is not searchable. Also text in an image cannot be enlarged as easily as regular text.

BogusRed, I think if it's a popular vote competition, I don't see why it would be unfair for you to participate. If all else fails, someone else could tally the votes (maybe?). Someone who wouldn't participate.

Hypocritical as it sounds, I probably wouldn't. I don't really have much to teach.

I've done tutorials for dA, and I have at least one that I'd like to elaborate on and repost. It's a traditional art tutorial, not digital, and it does have text instructions.

I'm not a premium member, though. If contests are going to be a bennie for premium members only, that's cool.

Indefatigable, I think you may have misunderstood the premium thing. Having a premium account isn't a prerequisit for participating. We're saying that if you WIN the contest your prize may be a premium account.

I've been thinking about this and I wonder if we should do something different. Instead of a contest where everyone is competing against each other instead we do something else where members can nominate tutorials and those that get enough nominations (like 5 or something)  will get free premium accounts. So there will be multiple winners or something. What do you think?

I like that idea. Would they all be winning the same prize, though? Or would they recieve something different, like 1st place, 2nd place, 3rd place sort of thing?

Perhaps we can do a 1-month premium to all those that get nominated and then a grand prize of a longer premium account for the one with the most nominations. The length of the grand prize premium account will be dependent upon the number of participants.

Sounds good to me! Oooh, whee! I've never come up with a contest idea before. I'm glad it's working so far!

Hey Dollmaker can you start a draft for the contest rules and send it to me?

Uh...sure thing!

Sorry about the double-post, but I wasn't sure if just editing my last one would set off the subscription notices, and I had to get everyone's attention.

Would we be allowing mature content? I was going to volunteer to judge so BogusRed could enter ( ) but if we're allowing mature content, I wouldn't be able to. So I thought I'd ask before I go about volunteering for stuff.

It would have to not include mature content anyway because we don't have a Tutorials section in the Red Curtain

I can't imagine that there would be that many RC tutorials to be written anyway. When you've got the draft, can you email it to me? PM me if you don't have my email address. Thanks for taking this on by the way, Dollmaker!

...Oh. xD Well, that'd certainly make it difficult to submit an RC tutorial then, wouldn't it?

Sure, I'll PM it to you. And don't mention it. It feels good to be helpin' out a little bit.

...But I've never really written up contest rules before! xD Well, I'll whip up something, and you can rip it apart as you like. I'll see if I can get it sent tonight.