"Gilles Tran" <gitran_nospam_@wanadoo.fr> wrote:

> web.417aa863b45fa19e497bbfc0@news.povray.org...
> > First of all, thank you for finally telling us what is going on.
>
> We certainly owed it to you.
>
> > Being told that the sum of the efforts that were
> > submitted was not good enough for you to award a prize is a slap in the
> > face to all of us.

Thanks for the response and the clarifications.  I apologize if I was a bit
crabby.

Well, now that I've had time to get used to the idea, I can certainly see a
lot of things I'd like to improve in my image, so I'll probably be
submitting it anew for the competition once I've got those changes done.

I would like to make a few more suggestions that I hope are helpful:

1) Add the explanation about copyright to the official rules.  You might
also explain that any other information in the image that can be used to
identify the entrant should be removed.  For instance, I noticed that in my
image, there is a directory path in part of the image that has my name in
it.  I also have a picture of myself included, but I'm pretty sure that
none of the judges know who I am based on my picture....

2) Set a lower limit on the number of images that need to be submitted
before judging can go forward.  I know that whatever you pick will be a bit
arbitrary, but it will make it a bit easier to manage expectations.

3) Continue to try to get publicity for the contest and encourage all
current entrants to encourage others to get involved.  There is still a lot
of time between now and January 31st, and I'm sure that lots of people
could create a good image in the time between now and then.

4) Perhaps someone could set up an IRC channel #povcomp2004, where artists
can waste time and talk about new ways to procrastinate.

5) Provide some kind of acknowledgement, perhaps a t-shirt or some bit of
inexpensive swag, to the people who met the first deadline.

6) Upon discussing this contest with a friend of mine, he pointed out what
might be part of the problem.  Since you have explicitely stated that
artists will be given more credit for self-made models than ones borrowed
from someone else or created using 3rd party tools, you may have narrowed
the pool of participants to POV-Ray artists who are very good at creating
models and in creating impressive images using those models.  You have
limited the ability for those artists who are primarily good at creating
impressive images using models that others have created.  Personally, I
like this, since I make most if not all of my own models for each image,
but it does narrow the field considerably.

It might make sense to arrange the Guidelines in the order in which they
will affect the judging, that might help people to better understand the
tradeoffs they might be making in thier image.

7) Reading through the posts I've gotten the impression that some people
believe that using old models that were created for other images either
isn't allowed or will count against you.  I can't find anything in the
rules that says that.  The rules just say that trivial modifications of
older images aren't acceptable.  This is good, because many of the finest
IRTC images were created by artists who dipped into their extensive
libraries of previously constructed models.

If, as I expect, you don't have any problem with an artist using/adapting
models they created in the past in this image, then it might be best to say
so explicitly.

I hope this is of some help.
  Ray