The Fate of the 1HDC

Hello everyone…

I’ve fired up the 1HDC over the past couple of months because it was a bit of a labor of love that I hated to see die. There were some “behind the scenes” reasons that I stopped trying to make it work in the past. In no particular order:

  • lack of submissions
    lack of support
    lack of time (my own)
    dissatisfaction with where the previous momentum of the event was heading
    lack of ROI (my own personal measurements that I won’t go into here)
    belief it was not an event that will thrive being buried in the forums

I didn’t count, but without going back into the submissions forum for the character design, we had roughly 5 or 6 entries.

So, with all of the above pretty much rearing its head again I am officially closing down my involvement in the 1HDC.

There are two suggestions I am going to put forward that might be able to keep it alive. One of them, would retain my involvement as well.

  • One of the new, younger moderators takes the helm. If the event is to stay alive, it needs someone who has the time and inclination to promote it. I no longer have either. The 1HDC has provided me with great networking opportunities and has even garnered me travel to a design conference. It has been anything but a waste of my time. I think it could do a lotof good for many people.
    If there are any developers out there that would be interested in working with me to develop a 1HDC website as a social design site, I’d be very interested in discussing it with you. Feel free to PM me.

So, with that…I will be asking Core77 to post all of this month’s entries onto the front page as they are all worth mentioning. I will be happy to help get the next one off the ground, but after that, I will step away.

That’s a shame to hear. Although I haven’t entered the 1HDC, I’ve enjoyed looking through the entries. Thanks for your input Jon.

Something that’s been on my mind for a while …I’ve always thought the 1HDC was too short to get stuck into. What would interest me would be perhaps a 1 month challenge. Each contestant could start their own entry thread, which would allow for some proper feedback and development. It could also be useful for those looking to add some more portfolio pieces.

Would this interest anyone else?

You’re kind of getting into what I am thinking with respects to the development of a design competition platform. I think the idea is sound…but it is very constrained being buried in the forums.

Thanks for the supporting comments.

Do you mean in respect to only reaching Core77 members, or are you worried about poor accessibility?

I often look over the game modelling contests on Polycount:

http://www.polycount.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=47&order=desc

They simply sticky the current contest regulations, then each entrant will name their thread with the contest name and their title. A similar thing could be done here in a competition sub forum. Worth thinking about.

A bit of both.

The process of signing up for the forums, posting, on top of the time to enter is onerous. I felt a long while back that there was a critical mass to the amount of entries the competition could get for it. When, in reality, it is something that could, and should, be accessible to a far wider audience.

Jon: did you ever exchange messages with Core on getting a dedicated website for 1HDC? Participants would still need to sign in though.

I have always enjoyed the 1HDC and never would have guessed there was stuff going on behind the scenes. Great job over the years by the way

One thing I’ve noticed is that lately the topics haven’t been as product focused… which is probably good for a mental break… but since illustrating and character design isn’t really my interest I haven’t felt as interested

another thought is that having the 1HDC within the boards, there’s a little more freedom/less pressure than something on the front page

I like the idea of prolonged contests. Now, if only there were some kind of website that everyone had access to where ideas, pictures, comments, etc. could be shared real-time…like a media site, but for everyone, you know what I mean man, like a social media site. Something like combined with the contest could reach a huge audience, but alas…

Don’t read too much into that…the problems stem mostly from the fact that everyone felt that the 1HDC could be more/bigger, but was confined by the boards which lead to frustration…primarily on my part.

Jon, Thanks to you for starting the 1 HDC, and hopefully some young blood will pick it up.

FWIW, I’ve always felt the subject matter of the competition was the biggest reason for success/failure and popularity. In my opinion, I think the subject has to be light, fun and be something that is of interest to sketch and different than normal day to day work. Santa’s Sled was a good example. I’ve suggested a few others in the 1HDC topic suggestion forum.

Length of contest is also I think an issue. Too long and it loose imperative.

Personally, I don’t have a problem with it being within the Core forums, and if anything am quite surprised how many non-regular posters the 1HDC brings. I think the key of the 1HDC is that it isn’t taken too seriously. There are enough design competitions out there and if it was to to bigger/more competitive all we’d get is a bunch of trans students who can out sketch/render anyone…


R

This is a great point, and a huge part of my frustration with it in the past. It started to be taken way too seriously and lost its element of fun and is the source of my problem now. It is no longer fun. And if it isn’t fun for me, I need to drop it…too many other things to focus on right now.

Just out of curiosity, what’s the pain point?

I almost thought that the biggest task would be coming up with a good challenge, then an informal vote between mods for the results…

and I’m scared of the trans-students too - Those guys are sketch mutants!

For me, there are two primary pain points…

Lack of time in conjunction with lack of ROI

ROI comes in the form of several things…enjoyment, participation, exposure, growth of the event…etc. It isn’t one specific thing

[quote=“rkuchinsky”

Length of contest is also I think an issue. Too long and it loose imperative.

R[/quote]

This. If I happened to like a topic, I always felt like I could do it tomorrow, and then I’d forget about it. It should feel like a Chopped Challenge I think. But, I have no idea how to implement something like that.

Maybe it’s a core only postable FB group. There’s almost no lag there in terms of feedback and “watching stuff go down”.
It would let non design people observe but not contribute.

Brett: That’s an interesting idea…

What would be the ideal length of time? Maybe have a new challenge every week announced on Thursday running to Sunday?

I was meaning to enter this one too, and missed the deadline due to random riff raff and other things quizzing my head. But I’d have to agree with above in that I had a chance to enter 2 - 3 weeks ago, but felt ‘It’s okay, I’ll sketch something up closer to the time’… Then it tick tocked away! Perhaps if the time scale was reduced, and it was placed in or around the same date every month say, it would urge people to act quicker.

Although I never entered, I’d be sad to see it go.

burnsie :open_mouth:

I like the fast challenges (even though I hardly ever participate and procrastinate about it too).

When I’m working on a project, seeing how much others do in an hour is inspiring, therefore I think the 1hr format is best and rather unique really

It’d be interesting to have feedback on a 1hdc entry, then throw another hour of sketching at the design afterwards… like a rev 2 of a design or 2hdc

as far as seeing it go: moderator or not, anyone could post a challenge on the forum… If your throwing in the towel, I guess it’s up to us to kick something off

Ray, I think it could be 1 true hour.

The topic could announced or posted at PST 11:59am and you have to have everything posted by 1pm. you’d have to clear your schedule or find a way to make it work, but you commit to a slot finite timeslot, or even just the first 15min, then post, and done. 1 true hour gives some urgency to it, and you don’t get spoiled seeing everyone’s submissions spread out over 2 weeks.

I hope someone picks it up. I’ve entered a couple at least, as far as I can remember. I even won one. For me participating mainly came down to two things; was I interested in the challenge, and consistency of the challenges. Honestly, 1HDC was the thing that kept me coming back to these boards (to see if there was one going down and what was it) but with the inconsistency of their occurrences came the inconsistency of me coming here. Though, there is probably some way to get notified about them and I’m just not that savvy with the tech.

But with that being said, thanks a lot Jon for putting your time into organizing them!

I remember the skateboard grip tape challenge. Was that the most participation/whining & complaining/awesome fun that 1HDC has ever seen?!

The water saving competition comes to mind…

I propose whomever wants to throw up a competition, do it. We could even create a section just for challenges. A moderator could lock the thread at a given time and that would be that. We could see how it goes for a couple tries and if it doesn’t work, no harm done, we try something else.

Who wants to give it a shot for the first round?