Let the Games Begin?

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Crapadilla wrote: Kraellin wrote: when i see a contest, maybe Wink What? There'll be a contest? Eek Wink

Eh, It seems to be leaning that way..

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Redcap wrote: What I need from the rest of you is a volunteer to contact FF, my grammar is to lousy, and ask them for a temporary forum section or sticky and ask if any of them would be interested in helping judge.

Well if vlad and crew read this thread...You just did..

Yep these ideals are excellent so far..

Also here are some executive choices I have made with some of the smaller details of the competition:
Note in most cases I may have not gone with the best rules or regulations but I went with the simplest. If you have a BIG problem with any of my choices suck it up and bite your tounge for the sake of actually getting this competition going. If you have a HUGE problem with one of these rules let me know and we can change it, but again at this point we are just trying to make something that works and we will perfect the competitions over time. This isn't the last competition you know


- Will entries automatically qualify? Are there submission guidelines to adhere to?
Yes and no, everyone gets only one submission and we do not want to curb anybody into thinking their work is not quality enough. With that said if they enter a filter that is not quality enough and doesn't follow the theme well enough judges will not take time to invest consideration into the filter and it will simply get the lowest score possible. Thus making it no work to police what is entered, but also doesn't put extra strain on the judges because awarding a low score will take a grand total of 5 seconds.


- What are the conditions of disqualification?

Entering more than one filter for the competition.

"Using" other's filters without giving credit. Authors are more than welcome to use parts of snippets or other filters, but must give credit. Also mimic filters will get low scores from the judges so it doesn't behove anyone to simply copy others filters.

Creating puppet accounts to enter more than once. StevieJ I am talking to you

Note, really awful filters will not be disqualified, but simply given the lowest score possible. So if someone enters a filter and the judge opens it up and sees a cobwebs of components they don't even need to try to untangle the mess, they simple give the filter a 1 and there is no way the author can win after that. So we are nicer with how we get rid of crappy filters.

- When should entries be submitted?
Any time during the official competition, judging will not take place until after the last day. And yes to re-submitions during the contest period of time are allowed, we want as high quality filters as we can get.

(With that said, anyone who has tried to create a quality filter knows it can take weeks anyway so I expect to see some of the lower quality filters entered first, then resubmission, then a wave of all the really good quality filters right before the deadline, but this is just a guess.)

- Will a WIP thread be mandatory?

Let's keep this simple; no. But it wouldn't hurt

- Should the judges discuss openly or in private?
Again simplicity says no, but they are more than welcome to discuss with one another their thoughts on the subject.

- Should the judges give reasons for their ratings?
Only if they want to, again less work for the judges the better. With that said I would encourage the judges to offer at least some feedback which I imagine they will.

Can judges enter the competition:
I have never heard of a competition where they were allowed, so let's say no.

Hi Red nice work, I think there should [ when decided ] be a single theme, it will make judging easier, if we had 5 themes there could be something outstanding for each topic

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Redcap wrote: ) We need to contact FF for a sticky, who would like to do it?

I think we all know who is well good worded and man of cushions

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Redcap wrote: We have already set it to being only one theme

o I must have missed that bit

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Redcap wrote: I to think Crapadilla should do it..

good idea +1

I thought also if FF could hold off till after the competition judging any EP's on entries [if they felt any were deserving ] and if they agreed with the judges make the winner an EP

Un-official Contest Rules:

Length:
The competition will last a total of 3 weeks from start to end, in which time Filter authors are able to submit 1 filter into the competition. Judging will not take place until after the 3 weeks, thus allowing Authors the ability to re-submit their filter if they modify or improve upon it.

Who can participate:
Any one who would like too! (except for the judges).

Prize:
Biomechanic has graciously offered Photoshop CS for the winner of the competition, a very generous donation indeed! Shipping and Handling has also been offered!

What will the judges be looking for:
The competition will start when the judges choose a theme and announce it on a new forum post. Authors of Filters will try to create filters that match this theme and are creative. The judges will then look at each filter based on the following criteria:
-Visual Appeal (Adherence to contest theme; Realism/Believability; Artistic Excellence, Freshness/Creativity)
-Usability (Range of Effects, Intuitive Controls, Stable Randomization, Useful Description, Good Presets)
-Construction (Interactive & Render Speed, HDRI-'Readyness', Technical Excellence ['proper' construction'], Filter Tree Tidiness*)

*Filter tree spaghetti jumbles should lead to disqualification, or at least drastically reduced 'Construction' scores.

At the end of the 3 week period of time each judge will give the filters entered for the competition a score of 1-10 each. The filter with the most points after the final judging will win the competition.

How can I participate:
Simply create a filter that fits the announced theme and put a link to it in the competition post of the forum. You may also write competition in the key words of the filter itself for additional clarity that this is the filter you indeed want as part of the competition.

Anything else I should know:
The only thing that leads to disqualification are the following:
Entering more than one filter into the competition via carelessness or maliciously creating more than one user profile.
Using other's filters without giving credit for the parts that you used in the construction of you filter.
Any other malicious activity such as intimidation or other such inappropriate behavior.

Looks good so far..I guess we'll have to wait about the "FF is not responsible for the prizes and blah, blah...You know the idiot rules part of the contest...To make sure the newbies know that FF is not responsible for this part of the contest....

Good point there Bio.....Where do the HUs come in...Since this was also part of the prize structure....

We'll add HU prizes for later competitions. The PS CS is enough IMO, If I win I plan to just trade it with someone for HU's.

I agree with John as I suggest earlier we should at least have a runner up prize of 3 HU's, I will offer my 3 as runner up prize

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Redcap wrote: Anything else I should know: The only thing that leads to disqualification are the following: Entering more than one filter into the competition via carelessness or maliciously creating more than one user profile. Using other's filters without giving credit for the parts that you used in the construction of you filter. Any other malicious activity such as intimidation or other such inappropriate behavior.

add - FF is not liable in anyway for competition or prizes
Judges decision is final and no corrospondence will be entered into

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Biomechanic wrote: Now it seems there's only Carl and I...

I didn't take back my offer..

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uberzev wrote: Yeah, the Lakers are getting their butts kicked.

Thats alright Detroit has been out of it for about 5 years now..

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Biomechanic wrote: Now it seems there's only Carl and I... Confused

Nope I am still here..I still have enough for a couple of months..

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Kraellin wrote: keep forgetting you're from the detroit area, CF. go wings! go pistons! go tigers! go lions! lol. well, i grew up in the ypsilanti/ann arbor area (go blue!), so i'm normally routing for the detroit teams as well, but during the jordan year bulls vs the bad boy pistons, i routed for the bulls (mostly to piss off a friend of mine and that i really admired jordan Smile ). but i was definitely happy to see the wings win the stanley cup this year Smile

Yep the bad boy years were when the pistons were at the top of their game..I compare that to when the red wings had the ultimate line..The Russian Five.....Goalies stepped out of the way when they came down the ice..

Ann Arbor the home of Photoshop..Thomas Knolls homebase I think...At least used to be..
http://www.storyphoto.com/multimedia/...oshop.html
Must not take over this thread........

ah, never knew photoshop originated in ann arbor. cool

Red, why are you "nickel & diming" this.....you have four free copies donated from CF, Carl, Sphinx, and yourself.....so why not have at least three free copy catagory awards???

I would suggest finishing this today.....because I think that you are about to loose your grand prize.....

I think the only thing we have left to do is wait for a response from the Filter Forge guys.

Redcap- you had a great message earlier, I'm assuming you sent that via the contact page right?

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I just give up...

Me too, I have tried to get this thing going for you Bio for the last several days and everytime we start to get somewhere out of the blue someone comes around and says, wow you guys haven't gotten anywhere your ideas are horrible, don't do it that way do it this way. So we change to appease the critic and then about 2 more critics surface. It is like fighting a hydra with not more than a butter knife.

In short I have found the perfect competition:

The competition is to try and have someone write rules for a competition that everyone agrees with, without going mad of course. I think it is a challenge fit for only the bravest of souls, or foolish; because it is well near impossible. Think about it, a competition to make a competition, it is diabolical!

In short here is where I am at, this thing got me really excited to see a lot of new cool filters come out but all it has left me with is a bitter taste in my mouth that I don't like. The forums use to be a pleasure to pass through, now I hate opening up this post to see people angry that this thing isn't going the way they like.

So here is a proposal of mine. We are done! We use the rules we have, I copy and paste the message I wrote to FF and send it via contact mail, and we do this thing.

Second option, someone with a lot more fortitude and charm than myself (not hard to find ) tackles this beast. If we go with the first option Yeah!!! Filter Forging time Hoo Haa. If we go with the later, good luck friend you are a better person than myself.

So with that said I just want to lighten the tone of this whole thing, because it sounds like someone has died. People pesimistic, and downtrodden; so if you read these post and feel gross and down I would direct to the following sites:

http://free.napster.com/player/?play_...type=track

http://free.napster.com/player/?play_...type=track

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Redcap wrote: Prize: 1st place photoshop 2nd place 3 HU donated by Carl? 3rd place 2 HU donated by Sphinx?

Yep this sounds good red...Hang in there man..You've made it this far without quotes like this #@#*&#@......
Well at least not a lot of them anyway.

All sounds fine with me - btw how about using the wiki for the competition? A dedicated competition section, with the rules, prizes and follow up with the winners after the competition is done? There could be links to all competing filters, main discussion thread etc.

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Redcap wrote: First question is could you create for us a sticky forum thread entitled something along the lines of "FF Competition" or something like that

Yes, that's possible. You can send us a link to the thread via the contact form, and we'll sticky it.

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Also if you are able to give someone like Crapadilla or StevieJ power to moderate the post

As far as I know, our forum can't have separate moderation rights for any given thread. However, we can moderate for you -- you send us a message via the contact form, tell us what to do, and we moderate the thread accordingly.

As for filter submissions, I propose the following:

1. The first post in the sticky thread will describe the rules.

2. Every contestant is allowed to post one message with the filter attached. If they want to include a picture, it must be hosted elsewhere (imageshack?) because our forum doesn't allow multiple attachments. The images must be inserted via the Image button, not just as links.

3. No other postings are allowed in this thread. Anything not conforming to the rules described in [1] will be deleted (as I said, we can do this for you).

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Second, if anyone on the FF team would be willing to judge we would be more than happy to have them. All judging entails is at the end of the 3 week competition looking at the few filters and having each judge give them a score from 1-10 based on the criteria of the above post.

I can participate as a judge, and I think Kochubey will be happy to join me.

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Third, if there is anything else that we could do to help make FF a better place let us know. We are doing this competition in hopes of bolstering some new members and also to get a few more high quality filters.

The very fact that you all volunteered to organize, run and judge the competition is already great!

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If you can think of anything we may do to make the competition better please let us know. Also if you would like to maybe do some brief advertising for the competition somewhere on your webpage that would also help enormously.

1. We can think about giving copies of FF as prizes. For example, 1st place gets Pro edition, 2nd place gets Standard, and 3rd place gets Basic. Can't promise anything yet, but we'll discuss this internally.

2. I'm not sure about internal advertising, because we simply don't have areas for ads on our website (on second thought, we do have an area on the homepage for partnership, we probably can use it). However, we can send out a newsletter to all FF user base -- that's easy. You can provide the text, we'll proofread and format it and send it out.

3. It's a bit early to think about this, but if all goes well with the contest, we can integrate it into the site design and logic and provide dedicated pages / areas with rules, submit forms etc. We'll see about this after we've successfully run 3 competitions or so.

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Vladimir Golovin wrote: 1. We can think about giving copies of FF as prizes. For example, 1st place gets Pro edition, 2nd place gets Standard, and 3rd place gets Basic. Can't promise anything yet, but we'll discuss this internally.

Well, looks like I'll not be judging after all

Also, looks like my Adobe Photoshop CS is going back on my shelf for the near future, since I can't be bothered to **** around on ebay

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Biomechanic wrote: Well, looks like I'll not be judging after all

I think you should still be a judge.....and there should be a majority of authors judging this.....

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Biomechanic wrote: looks like my Adobe Photoshop CS is going back on my shelf

I know Red wants it bad but yeah, I would suggest "shelving" it for the time being.....since it looks like FF is going to sponsor it and provide the prizes.....

If you want, I'll put up 8 HUs (FF lifetime updates) with your copy of CS for a another compitition in a theme of our choosing.....in other words, to get some filters that "we" want.....maybe something like an "Alien Metallix" theme, eh??? LOL....