Challenge Me
Credits: Matthew Dawkins, Photo57, ldeiter78, and Amaya Solozabal
This is not a post about moving servers (that’s history), it’s about RedBubble challenges.
Any group can launch a challenge and occasionally we will have major RedBubble challenges. For many artists it’s a leap to put your work into a challenge. You are sharing something important and it will be voted on – or not. This is hard.
But challenges can be an important part of our growth as artists:
- we get to see work by similar artists on similar themes
- we are encouraged to think about how our work appears to others
- we may get to enjoy the knowledge that our work is popular.
But this is also the rub – popular does not equal good. Should you change your work or your approach to your art because of how others see it? I don’t think so but it also feels important to listen.
But regardless of how you feel about putting your own work in challenges, I do think there is a joy in seeing what others are doing and the breadth of interests that comes through in the challenges. It always amazes me what is underway at any given time. Just a sample:
Photojournalism challenge (which has nice prizes donated by Kodak)
Fantastic Flora
Toys are Photogenic
Ink Medium
Global Warming
Mythological Creature
Works on Paper, Water
Elderly Beauty
Dignity
Grid Patterns
As I Drink My Coffee
Inspirational Message Tees
Vehicles of Construction and Demolition
Bokeh Love, Valentines Day
Year of the Tiger
Self Portraits
Pastel Only
Kids with Glasses
“etc … ":http://www.redbubble.com/challenges
If you have any questions about challenges you can read more here.
Martin (aka Pilgrim)
Comments
maybe we should have a challenge on challengers. I challenge you to a challenge. ok, I’ll stop :)
dc, agree we should try and do something like this as the hosts do put a lot of effort into challenges.
– Redbubble
Hi Pilgrim,
.
Has anything been done about how the images are displayed and in what order, if not then i will continue not running challenges in my groups. It seems that last in (last in the challenge) is the first seen, so there for if you have 200 images in the challenge the first in will only be seen every so often, depending on whether a person wants to look all the way through the images. I think the images should change position every time you look at the challenge, there for being fairer to everyone. What are your thoughts.
David
Thank you, this is an important issue as we have put a lot of effort into trying to make the voting fair. The images are random for each user who is voting. So you see them in a completely different order than someone else. But the order in which you see them is remembered (so you can go back and vote again). But to repeat they are random and different for each user.
– Redbubble
Challenges are fantastic… How about challenges for written works?
Luke
Agree, we have had this as a thing to do for sometime. The writers groups do run challenges but we do not have a good interface for this – and we should.
– Redbubble
I really like challenges – for many reasons.
They have fun, sometimes they are very agonizing (because you believe you are the top and waiting, waiting to see you are not even in the top ten!). Or because there is a good prize? Hmm. Some hosts make a great and really inspiring work, pushing the artists to create new art… Groups news after the challenges are always so nice and adorable, full of sweet encouraging words from the fellow members ;)
Talking the opportunity to say that I’d love to see a new idea / layout for the challenges page in voting time. I’ve found myself giving up before I see all the entries – Same as a host, I’ve seen huge participation in voting time when a challenge has 30 entries or less – very small participation when the entries are more than 50 -100? It’s very discouraging.
Agree on the voting page.
And yes many of the challenges do get good prizes – sometimes donated by us or the host find something worthwhile (as John did with Kodak).
– Redbubble
Over at the Photography Critique and Advice Group we will be running our Photographer of the Year challenge through the forums because of members dislike of the challenge software. Time to join up, first round starts 1st February 2010. << Shameless plug :)
We will be giving more options on how the voting works in future and good you have found another way to do it. There is never one right way.
– Redbubble
It would be great if we could view more than one entry at a time. Say maybe if there were 12 at once , similar to the way hosts see pages they have to moderate.
Agree, we do need to build this. It is on the list. It is particularly painful if there are hundreds of entries (good also if you could comment on works direct from the challenge).
– Redbubble
I love the challenges but has there been a solution to the problem when more than one image gets the top number of votes? In other words, if there is a tie?
Thanks for everything you do around here…makes this one of my favorite stops on the internet!
This is very high on the development queue. Now we have moved servers we will have more resources to fix things like this.
– Redbubble
Martin, thank you for your message about RedBubble challenges, and thanks for the plug on the Elderly Beauty challenge in our group at All Street Portraiture! Cheers!! ;-))
just last night i was thinking ‘i wish there was as place you could go on the bubble to see a list of all currently running challenges…’ ..after reading this post and subsequently clicking the link on the support page for more info, i now realise there was a way to do this all along! now i’m excited! thanks :)
Hey Martin,, thanks so much for showcasing Toys are Photogenic! We have so much fun in our P101 challenges,,,,,and I for one am always amazed at the entries,,,, since we are a learnign group,, we find the challenges great for beginners to improve their skills…(and yes,, Ido have to delete the ones that dont apply) but have never had any issues with that!
It just made me smile and anything that does that is very likely to get a plug!
– Redbubble