GXWXI had two GFX competitions, one digital for round 1, and traditional (pencil/ink/paint/etc) for round 2. Did you enjoy this format or would you prefer to have both mediums available to place in each round, competing against both digital and traditional for the same prompt?
Please feel free to discuss below on your particular choice!
0 voters
I think the biggest issue is separating “digital” and “traditional” as far as being created digitally or not. A person that draws who also has access to a tablet can then “draw” digitally, too. It seems like there might be a better way to delineate what the differences in type of art actually are if we’re going to bother having that difference at all.
I would agree with Slags as well. Nowadays there is a clear overlap between traditionally drawn items and digital that trying to separate it can be very difficult, if not completely impossible. I mean, if you want 100% traditional, then you basically need to tell someone to take a picture of their drawing from a piece of paper or something 
Also, we are not a graphics-focused club in terms of base-activities, so I don’t think trying to make these events even more specific makes a lot of sense. Honestly, I’d prefer there be more of a focus on making events where submissions can be utilized by the DB itself, rather than submissions such as these that are well done, but can’t be utilized outside of this specific competition.
Personally, I would like to see a third option: Both but separate.
I remember all the original arguments for trying to split up the two mediums, because I was one of the ones who made a lot of them (shocker!). There seemed to be, for a long period of time a tendency for the graders to always heavily favour hand drawn sketches over digital art. Some of our graders actually have a distinct and vocal objection to even calling stuff like 3d modelling art in the first place.
Even in the winning entries in the first round, the so called digital round, the more obviously computer generated art placed below the art that was done in a more traditional sense. It falls down into judging bias: not bias for units, but since art is by far one of the most subjective pursuits on the planet, inherent bias based on one’s personal beliefs and views.
I remember back in GJWX, they split up art into serious and non-serious. This GJW they separated it into Digital and Traditional… in both cases, the “good” artists of the day still won, and you end up just allowing people to double dip the competitions.
What I would like to see is a choice. In each round we run both traditional art and digital art comps, but members have to pick one or the other. It’s not much different than declaring you’re going to participate on team 1 or team 2 of the runon. This allows people who only operate in a digital medium about always being beaten by someone who can sketch by hand beautifully, and vice versa.
I agree with Keirdagh’s idea of both but separate. Most art competitions are like that anyways where you have to pick a division to compete in, they don’t mix the mediums. Also even though there is overlap with digital and traditional artwork it’s still pretty easy to spot what is what, just have to know what you’re looking for. And yes there is bias when it comes to digital art, some still refuse to accept it but in the end talent should win no matter what the medium used.
In reply to Slags: I’d say “drawing” digitally with a tablet is not the same as traditional art. My second round submission was drawn with a mechanical pencil and a sharpie. I think the difference between the two is a good one and lets folks shine on either ends of the spectrum without, say, an amazing graphic artist/compositor beating out hand drawn media all the time.
Regarding the pick-your-poison method of selecting events - I’m not a huge fan. There isn’t that same restriction on writing. Right now you can participate in an RO, Battleplan, Fiction, Poetry, and ACC and not have to choose one or the other. There are some writers that are just really really good regardless of what style of writing is required. Sometimes humor beats action. I think art shouldn’t see extra restrictions just because it is art. If anything, add more art events. There will always be folks that are good a broad number of things in a certain type of event.
I would suck at a paper mache event or a pottery event. I tend to do OK in both digital and traditional events. Is that bad? I don’t think so. The same could be said about Cethgus in gaming. Or Halc in writing.
I see what you’re saying @BaxirVol but there’s a problem with the example you used. Yes RO,Batteplan, Fiction and Poetry all fall under writing but when doing competitions they are not lumped together. Battleplans get their own events, so does fiction and so on. Sometimes style and medium does matter and it wouldn’t be fair or possible to judge one against another. It wouldn’t be fair to judge a fiction to a poem because they’re not the same. They don’t have the same structure. I think that’s the case with art events as well and why most of the time they make you pick whether it’s digital,traditional,pottery etc. I recognize both as art but to pit them against each other is sometimes not fair and makes judging difficult because you’re judging 2 different skill sets.
Yeah, but we don’t have a second event for fiction with hand written stories rather than .docx files.
True. Hmm Art is different though. i can produce a piece that looks beautiful and I only drew maybe 5% of the picture and the rest is all Photoshop and composting would that be fair to judge that against a purely hand drawn picture?
Hand written stories would fall more under art 
Like the various fiction events, I’m on board for separating traditional from digital. I’m not on board with saying that someone can only participate in one.
It’s the same bloody difference
I think the traditional art event was fine this time around but I guess it could be argued that in the future there should be no finish work digitally (example: my entry’s lightsaber blade and paper texture).
The digital medium is harder because, for example, I hand draw digitally and composite all at the same time. I think digital is what it is - digitally created. It is a hard beast to judge and entirely subjective.
Hopefully you aren’t saying handwriting a story vs typing a story is the same difference between creating something via traditional means in art vs digitally is the same because that’s just silly talk. If I wrote a paragraph by hand or by typing, the same words/punctuation are used and can be read the same. It is the same story.
If you were judging me on legibility, however, that’d be different and more closely match the comparison between traditional vs digital.
Art is subjective but when judging art you’re not just going off of your own personal taste. You’re judging technical skill and design. With digital and traditional there’s 2 totally different technical skills sets at work. With composting you don’t have to render all textures on your own. You can use other sources to obtain that look.Because of that I feel like it’s not fair to judge that against a person who render a drawing purely by hand. 2 different skills are being used. Now if someone wants to participate in the digital bracket and the traditional then that’s cool but each entry should be judged separately.
My argument was to highlight how ridiculous what you’re saying is.
I’m saying flat art is a medium, and you should judge it as a medium, just as fiction is a medium. If you wanted to argue with me the virtues of having flat art vs. sculpture, relief or what not I could see it. But how you choose to create your flat art is no different than an author choosing to write from a different point of view, or from first/second/third person.
Poetry, or Runon, are different mediums than fiction, just as sculpture and flats are different. My initial suggestion to separate the judging wasn’t because the medium was different, but as a suggestion to help fight the inherent bias that comes with something like art, and to give hope to people who work with styles that aren’t currently in favour of the current regimes judging.
There are multiple fictions prompts, perhaps have more than just a single art category. That way, just as writers have more than just a single event to participate in, artists could as well. And the events could have a more narrowly defined prompt. This judging should be on how well the art piece communicates the given prompt.
shrug
We’ll have to agree to disagree on definition because I find what you are saying equally ridiculous. Digital art isn’t the same as thing as traditional “flat” art. It’s a different medium the same as sculpture is different than relief. Or - as you and I seem to agree - that poetry, RO, and fiction are all different.
That being said, we don’t have a varied enough selection of artists with the DJB to warrant 50+ different GFX events. We do have enough of a selection to warrant a separation between digital and traditional events to give folks who don’t have access to digital software or tools a slightly different arena to fight in and vice versa.
I can agree to disagree about the definition, because art is for crazy people
I think a lot of my objection of giving graphics double the events is down to the fact that like you said… we don’t have a massively huge selection of artists in the DB. You have to look at this stuff from a bigger picture, and in the most recent GJW, heavily art based events (GFX x2, BP, MM) outweighed both the fiction (RO, Fiction x2) and gaming (Gaming x2) based events which are much more the backbone of the DB’s activity base.
Really good discussion on the subject. For the record, we did consider both a digital and a traditional event for each round, but the DC wanted to keep the war relatively simple and not overload the members. Some other non-gfx events were dropped as well to keep with that theme.
One of my worries is that having multiple gfx per round might limit the quality and quantity of entries since time would (or might) be split between them. We definitely want people to enjoy events and not feel like they have to rush through it just for participation.
I can’t say that I like the idea of having to choose one, but I did like the idea of having both. There is definitely a difference between digital and traditional and we have plenty of members that are familiar with both.
Oh, I totally agree with you that a balance is needed and doubling up is not super friendly to anyone involved. I consider the BP and MM events much more of a combo event between hybrid-writing and “art”. This GJW seemed pretty balanced with (from my perspective as a non-writer) more of the events in the writing arena.
Fiction is a big part of this club, so an extra event for fiction seems appropriate but the difference shouldn’t be too huge.
As far as Orv’s first post in this thread, I don’t think there’s been very many examples of hand drawn graphics being beat out by compositors/graphic artists like… ever. Yacks hit the nail on the head earlier, there is a huge judging bias to anything that’s created through drawing vs. things that aren’t. I don’t think the bias is going to go away, because that’s just what the bias is that we’re stuck with. My problem is that there is a whole lot more cross over skill wise for people that draw than there is for people that don’t when you split digital vs traditional. All three placing entries in the “digital” event as showcased in Socks’s report have a more “hand drawn” feel to them than other entries. And yet people that are graphic designers as opposed to… drawers (I guess that’s a word now) are at a far larger disadvantage in the “traditional” art event. Basically, those people that draw with access to a tablet (or something similar that lets them “draw”) pretty much have two bites at the apple as far as competitive entries go while the graphic designer has one. And given the aforementioned bias in content, that is really unbalanced.
What do you mean by graphic designers? I’m not understanding exactly.
I kinda skipped to the reply section of this so someone may have already beat me to the punch but I think it should just be both. Pretty much what the amazing dead guy said “The judges should be able to differentiate one from the other and hold them up equally based on the effort and style that went into them” pretty much if one is better than the other then it shouldn’t count against the participant just cuz you guys decide to put a certain stipulation on an event. So all in all, I vote for BOTH being used in the same event.