Crystal Brush is over, and umpteen thousands have been awarded to some of my favorite painters. Sure it had its hitches, but I suppose it went pretty well for the first year. I loved the idea of taking part in the online voting, which ties in well with CMON's whole "thing." After participating, I thought I'd mention a couple things that might improve the experience for next year.
1. Add the ability to change my vote. I had at least one experience where I realized after looking at the mini later that I really low-balled the score. The ability to fix that would be great, and shouldn't be infeasible since we're already logged in.
2. Display entry counts. Just some idea of how many entries we've voted on out of a total count would give a sense of scale, since we're not there to look at all the models physically. "You have voted on 11/23 in this category; 34 of 91 overall" or similar.
3. Display my vote in gallery view. Goes back to #1. The only place I could see what I voted on something was each time I case a vote and a new entry was displayed (my prior vote was displayed on the left with score.)
4. Inclusion in CMON annual. This may be a no-brainer, but I thought I'd mention it. A nice spread of the winners each year in the annual would be nice.
5. Improve the photography. This is definitely a case of "testing would have helped." The reflective black backdrop was distracting and many of the pics were slightly off focus and over-saturated. They seemed to get it right for pics of the final winners, so hopefully next year's competition will all have that quality.
So thanks to CMON for giving me some enjoyable painting competition participation, even if only vicariously. I really hope to compete next year!
(Also, Steve Buddle has some excellent points on the subject.)
No comments:
Post a Comment
I had to add anti-spam measures because, let's face it, almost nobody comments on blogs anymore unless they are spamming. Sorry.