Challenge Champions

Forum competition organisers on how they grew their communities

Darren Rawlings, former moderator at CGHub

“While I was an editor/moderator at CGHub, we had ongoing events called jams, where artists would post designs and stuff every week on a chosen topic. It was fun and everyone seemed to enjoy it. We gave out badges and whatnot for winning, but it was mostly just that: jamming. Folks in the community drawing together. A lot of folks would join and there were always cool topics, such as design a new Mass Effect character. I remember thinking some of these designs and should be in the game. There was always mind-blowing stuff coming out of the community.”

Fernando Caire, The Gnomon Workshop

“The Gnomon Workshop has run monthly Community Image Challenge contests since 2006 in 2D and 3D categories through our forum. Each month we’ve chosen four winners to receive subscription prizes: access to The Gnomon Workshop library. Contest themes change from month to month, with recent challenges including Magical Fail, David and Goliath, and Tolkien.”

Lynette Clee, former studio manager at 3DTotal

“3DTotal ran regular challenges on the Threedy forums including Stylised Challenge, Speed Modelling Challenge and Speed Sculpting Challenge. We also used to post a Stylised Challenge over on ConceptArt.org forums for the 2D guys and gals. Prizes were usually 3DTotal goodies such as DVDs, books and PDF magazines.”

Daniel Wade, former publisher, CGChallenges

“The art challenges started out as friendly artist-driven contests on the CGTalk forums. It was just a bunch of guys shooting the sh*t while creating art and giving each other feedback. They became the CGChallenges on CGSociety. These grew from a handful to thousands of artists, with a defined framework around a creative brief, several categories and substantial prizes.”