I'm not going to say a whole lot about this because for the most part I'm preaching to the choir here.  But, if you live in the United States, before you do anything else today, you need to contact your representatives in congress about SOPA and PIPA.

If you're not familiar with these bills, reddit has a good overview.

Okay, I finally found the time to analyze the results of my little survey.

There were 47 participants who completed the survey and 18 participants who didn't complete it. Thanks to all of you!
To make sure everyone is counted only once, I decided to create the statistics only from the completed surveys.

A large majority seems to think pretty positiv about art challenges in general, and more than half of the participants have already entered one of our contests. Many of those who haven't entered yet either wrote that they aren't artists or that they didn't have enough time to do so.

Most people liked the idea of rather general topic challenges. And a majority liked the idea of a guest FOSS project aswell.
On the other hand, art challenges which focus on a specific type of art, free-for-all challenges and challenges based on annual events were rated rather negative.

The question whether the contests should be hold on a regular period of time base or whenever someone comes up with an idea was answered pretty clearly:
51 percents voted for a regular period of time. But since 36 percents voted for both, there might sometimes be contests which are not based on the regular period aswell.

The average answer on how long such a period should be was 2.31 weeks, and the average length of a single contest was 10.66 days.

You can get a more detailed report about the results here.

So what will future art challenges on OGA be like?

I'll try to keep the contests rather general, but if there is a FOSS project which needs art, just drop me a mail.

I'll announce the contests more clearly, and not only on the website but also on IRC.

Since many people told me that they didn't have enough time to submit art for the challenges, future contests will be based on a 3 week cycle: two weeks for the challenge and one week for voting. This won't hurt the ones who like the contests quick and dirty, but will give the more sophisticated ones at least a bit more time.

In their comments, many people suggested that there should be a better way to motivate artists to join the contests. Maybe a first improvement would be to show the medals in forum posts again and to give all the contest winners who haven't received one yet the 'contest winner' medal. Someone also mentioned having a monthly newsletter and announcing the winners there might help. We'll see what we can do.

Just a quick heads-up, Charles Gabriel has made some major updates to his 48x48 face sets (which go with the 16x18 pixel art characters) here:

/content/48x48-face-template
/content/48x48-faces-1st-sheet
/content/48x48-faces-2nd-sheet
/content/48x48-faces-3rd-sheet
/content/48x48-faces-4th-sheet

You can check out the complete set of 16x16 RPG artwork here.

Peace,

Bart

WTactics is currently offering a chance to have your likeness on a WTactics card in order to raise funds for the continued development of thier project.  From their website:

Give our artists a picture of you or your beloved one and become a part of the game! The artist will create a nice portrait with your chosen class, clothing and equipment, making it an everlasting part of our game and the open source communities, turning it into an immortal memory.

The game will be freely available for millions of people for both download and online play as well as pro-printing. Let’s face it – you have never been given the chance to become a part of an ever expanding fantasy world. We don’t need to convince you that this is the perfect gift to yourself, or that you could surprise somebody you like by letting us create his/her portrait and be included in the game.

The opportunity to be included in the core and first set of WTactics is a one time limited offer. We have decided to only make this offer to the 20 first people that place an order. The number to the right shows you how many slots are currently available. Put in perspective to the whole internet you’d be pretty unique if you manage to grab one of them.

Once the slots are filled nobody else will be included in the core release. In the future we will continue to offer these services for coming expansions of the game, but not for the core, and not as cheap.

In addition, and as an option, you will also become immortalized by getting your name/nickname listed in our public thank you-section with a link to your personal page, and a unique ID-number associated with your piece of art, connecting the artwork to you and also showing what slot you got.

If you haven't already seen the art for WTactics, you can check it out here on OGA, or see the cards on their website.  I'll be taking them up on this myself, so if you're reading this, there are no more than 19 slots available. :)