BABYLON5CONTEST

It makes me feel less like we're all submitting variants of the same icon.

Hello, icon CONTEST here. Of course the goal is to pick the best out of mayn who have the SAME picture as a source. if there are any MORE caps to chose from, then good riddance. I would prefer less , maybe just three, with one the HAS to be included...

What is there to misunderstand? Contest is always (at least in my vocabulary) that different contestants are challenging each other by using the same tools (aka caps) to see who has the best twist or idea to express his/her own sense of wit or sentiment. For me a good icon is notonly nice to look at, but I like icons with a touch of feeling.

Having more than one cap makes it difficult already, having even more caps, just makes me shudder.
If people want to have a broader spectrum, then make something like xf_challenge. Personally, I prefer things like bicon_challenge or whedonosity (which is a total free contest), but apparently that is just me.

Hmm, I'm not sure, really. On the one hand it's very nice to have a couple of caps to choose from (because sometimes an image just refuses to "talk" to me), but on the other hand I've got to agree with asherific - the more different caps people use, the more difficult it gets to choose a "winner".

I guess the main question is what exactly this community wants to focus on: producing as many well-done and diverse Babylon 5 icons as possible, or giving people a chance to compare their icon-making abilities?

As far as I'm concerned, I think I'm going to opt for the first possibility, diversity, simply because that's more fun, and nicer to look at ;)

I really like how it has worked so far. Most enjoyable icon challenge community I've done. (though, I will admit that the sample size is small. I like it mostly *because* of the variety of caps to choose from. I think the number or caps is about right, too.

I can do the one icon challenge, but it *does* get dull seeing the same crop, or the same crop rotated, or flipped.... which is what I find happens a lot in "one cap" challenges. Booooooring. (IMNSHO)

I don't like the "whatever" kind of challenge, when you get a theme (like "the station") and you have to go find your own caps. I do like it that they are provided. :-D Part of that is that I just don't have the time to track down caps. I barely have enough time to make icons... Having caps to pick from is a big plus.

I don't find it particularly that hard to pick my favorites, despite the different image sources. It's easier, in some ways.

And I don't think this icon contest community has to be a clone of every other icon challenge out there.

My 2 cents:

When something is titled "contest" I expect a comparison of things that started from the same level. You don't start a 100-m-run at different starting points, or do you?

For me in terms of icons that means comparing skill, technique and style in making an icon. If there too many different caps, you can't compare the results anymore. There has to be the same starting point and it's not enough if it's only reduced to a theme. If there's no base for comparison we should better call this an artistic exploration of Babylon 5 and not a B5 contest.

I think a challenge IS to make an icon from a cap even if it is difficult - that's the meaning of 'challenge'. If you take a look at bicon_challenge you can see that it isn't only cropping or flipping the cap (as amergina said). It's about that AND coloring AND text AND textures AND the overall composition. It's about inspiration of what you can do with a cap.

IMHO communities like this are about learning and inspiration, not about copying like aris_tgd said. It's about improving your skill and developing your own style. When I first joined LJ I had almost no idea about making icons - I knew their max size was 100x100px. The rest I learned from icon makers whose icons I liked (you know who you are), at icon_tutorial, AND from challenges.

Two suggestions for a compromise:
1 - You post as many caps as you like for a theme, but ONE cap has to be included in the icon.
2 - As aris_tgd suggested, different week, diferent 'contest'. One week we have a contest with one or two caps, the next we have 10 caps.

One of the things I like about this community so far is the variety and the consistency: the variety of caps means a variety of icons from which to choose your favorites, and the consistency of the members and moderator to do things in a timely fashion.

Honestly, though, looking at this week's contest, it seems as though there was an excess of caps available (each contest had one cap that wasn't used, and the Londo and G'Kar one had a cap that was only used once; in fact, most contests have one cap that's either used once or not at all). So, I think cutting down on the number of caps might be good, if for no other reason as there's one that's not being used anyway. Maybe typically something like three or four per contest; I think that's a good number to keep things interesting.

I understand aris_tgd's fear of variants of the same icon; one only needs to look at the John/Delenn contest from Week 2 to get a sense of that (lovely icons, but overall they're kind of repetitive). I've not been part of many icon contest communities, so I'm not sure how much variety in composition there can be, but from the little I've seen, one cap can potentially be very boring. (Though, like I've said, I've not seen much in the way of icon contests.)

Really, though, the number of caps per contest is ultimately to be decided by our lovely moderator, who gets the final say over everything babylon5contest. I'm having a good time here and am enjoying things the way they are, though, so I wouldn't change much, if anything, about the contests.

Though, it might be nice to add the winners to the memories or something, for easy reference. Just a thought. :)

Just a post about a small number of caps resulting in (almost) the same/boring icons:

This was the first challenge result I saw at bicon_challenge and I was so impressed. As you can see, it is no way boring, just because it's only three caps, with one as a must. There was one challenge with Willow from Bargaining, the results were even more impressive but I couldn't find the post anymore.

I'm in now way saying we have to copy or imitate bicon_challenge. But I have to disagree with the "boring" statement.

PS: I forgot to put LJ-tags in my last comment. The most important I forgot is to icon_tutorial.