Shipbucket

Well, I have a challenge suggestion, but one that won't be very popular, rather much to the contrary.

This challenge idea is:
GO AND DRAW SOME REAL-WORLD STUFF (RL/NW, SB-scale)

There are still literally thousands of ships to draw, and I dare to say that quite a few of those already drawn could greatly benefit from the update (new parts, modified colors and/or shading) or expansion (from single drawing at some random point in time into a career preview).

Don't get me wrong, challenges are fun for sure, and I'm not calling for axing them completely, but right now I have an impression that some 60+% of the steam here goes only into them, and only 40-% into everything else (including AU's, personal designs and Non-SB stuff ). Looks like the tail has started to wag the dog.

Or to put it into numbers: in the last 13 months (2020/2021) a total of 85 people participated in the challenges that were announced in that period. Of these, 30 provided no real-world (SB or FD) content EVER, and further 18 did provided it in the past, but not during those last 13 months.
At the same time, in SB scale, 48 people provided some content (RL and NW) - namely 612 files - of which 138 were provided by Olekit24 alone, Garlicdesign and Reytuerto provided 86 each, Karle94 provided 67 (which makes a total of 61,4% just between those 4 Gentlemen), leaving 38,6 to everybody else (including HomeSniper with 41 works, DarthPanda with 31 - and 19 Authors who provided just single picture each). Sure, there are no quotas to fill, but I sense a kind of imbalance here.
(Yeah, I didn't counted RL/NW FD-scale stuff to compare, but I think we're still SHIPbucket, right?)

Sorry for spoiling anyone's fun.

P.S. Some statistics about growth of "Challenge Sector"
2010 - 1
2011 - 0
2012 - 4
2013 - 2
2014 - 2
2015 - 2
2016 - 0
2017 - 1
2018 - 6 (5 SB, 1 FD)
2019 - 8 (4 SB, 3 FD, 1 Gunbucket)
2020 - 10 (5 SB, 3 FD, 1 Gunbucket, 1 Soldierbucket)
2021 - 2 already (1 SB, 1 FD)

If you're asking for a Real Vehicle challenge you'd be asking for something we've already done.

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No, I was sarcastic with that "challenge" part.
I'm asking for redirecting at least part (preferably: larger part) of that (IMHO excessive) attention that is currently channeled into continuous challenges, into the "real world" (both real-life and never-were) drawings, particularly in SB scale.

In other words: I'm not "requesting a challenge", I'm challenging You Folks - I dare You - to draw "real" stuff instead of "challenge" stuff.

I suppose I am on eswube's "good side" as I have submitted exactly zero challenge entries while drawing and posting only real life Shipbucket scale ships (though admittedly at a snail's pace compared to the olden days...!)



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On a more serious note, while I agree that it would be nice to see the new guys submitting real work alongside the challenges, I have to say that it's been really cool to see the excitement and activity generated by these challenges. Not everyone wants to slowly plug away at drawing real stuff... doing all the appropriate research and spending hours/days/weeks/months to perfect a drawing doesn't appeal to the short attention spans of today and anyway this is a hobby website

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USN components, camouflage colors, & reference links (World War II only)

I haven't done any SB-scale drawings in years, but I'll admit that if I ever take up the pixel again it'll be for a challenge. Why?

- Competition is fun.
- I've drawn every real ship I can that interests me, and it's in the archives. Everything else is already done, poorly sourced, or simply unsuitable for SB-scale.
- Most importantly, perhaps due to the anonymous voting system, the challenges are relatively free of the forum drama, condescending remarks, and excruciating debates about minutiae that plague the other sections of the site.

Note that my spreadsheet indicates that the last original drawing posted by eswube was in October for the *checks notes* "Endgame" heavy tank challenge.

Don't you think that redrawing something already created by someone is simply aimless as the final product? It doesn't create a value. You can spend a lot of energy studying an already existing ship, but you won't even come close to what its creator already knew about it even a century ago. This thing already exists without your participation. Your waste of energy will be just running in place. Of course, a study of real ships is necessary. For knowledge, as preparation for the creation of something new. It is impossible do not support those who study existing designs - they are beautiful. But to argue that this preparation is more important than creating a new thing - it is nonsense.

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"I have thousand advisers who know how build a pyramid, but have not one who can tell me whether to build it or not." - John Kennedy.

Yes, it is pointless to create real drawings as you will never make them 100% accurate based on what was actually built 70 years ago...

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USN components, camouflage colors, & reference links (World War II only)

time to draw another 69 iron atoms on my tank today

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The Chinese people are not to be cowed by U.S. atomic blackmail. Our country has a population of 600 million and an area of 9.6 [million sq. km]. The United States cannot annihilate the Chinese nation with its small stack of atom bombs. Even if the U.S. atom bombs were so powerful that, when dropped on China, they would make a hole right through the earth, or even blow it up, that would hardly mean anything to the universe as a whole, though it might be a major event for the solar system.

That must be either very interesting spreadsheet or you must have very interesting definition of originality (or truth ).
Since October, in SB scale I posted this:
viewtopic.php?p=198006#p198006
viewtopic.php?p=198647#p198647
and in FD scale I posted this
viewtopic.php?p=198038#p198038
viewtopic.php?f=27&t=10053

And between January and October 2020, in SB scale I posted this:
viewtopic.php?p=194787#p194787
viewtopic.php?p=194814#p194814
viewtopic.php?p=194879#p194879
viewtopic.php?p=195042#p195042
viewtopic.php?p=195080#p195080
viewtopic.php?p=195147#p195147
viewtopic.php?p=195165#p195165
while in FD scale I posted this:
viewtopic.php?f=27&t=9771
viewtopic.php?p=192952#p192952
viewtopic.php?p=193221#p193221
viewtopic.php?p=194715#p194715
viewtopic.php?p=195253#p195253
viewtopic.php?p=195322#p195322
viewtopic.php?p=195361#p195361
viewtopic.php?p=195384#p195384
viewtopic.php?p=195484#p195484
viewtopic.php?p=195630#p195630
viewtopic.php?p=195816#p195816
viewtopic.php?p=195840#p195840
viewtopic.php?p=195856#p195856
viewtopic.php?p=196039#p196039
viewtopic.php?p=196203#p196203
viewtopic.php?p=196311#p196311
viewtopic.php?p=196644#p196644

(And I tell you a secret - I'm the guy who's uploading the SB and FD stuff (most of SB, all of FD) to the main archive ( http://shipbucket.com/ ) which is taking quite a little bit of the time I'm willing to spend in relation to Shipbucket, therefore reducing amount of time I have for making new drawings. And what's your excuse for not providing more content - of any kind - here?)

I wrote: "Don't get me wrong, challenges are fun for sure, and I'm not calling for axing them completely..." because YES, I took part in some of them. Namely THREE in the last NINE years - in 2012 (Tartar DEG Challenge), 2015 (Cruiser for South America Challenge) and mentioned Heavy Tank Challenge in 2020. And voted in three or four (last challenge in which I voted was, I think, Cold War Strategic Bomber Challenge in Winter 2019).
I never said that challenges must go. I said that I think they are (in my opinion) overwhelming this Forum and members' output.
And unless You've never posted them here, or posted them via sockpuppet account or they never progressed beyond the WiP stage, their number amounts to round ZERO (same in FD scale, apparently just one work posted in Franscale and several non-standard pics - at least so it seems when one looks into your 37 posts).

http://shipbucket.com/drawings/search?c ... =&drawing=
Redrawing or upgrading of older drawings was always a significant part of Shipbucket effort, and I believe that until now nobody has expressed having any problems with the basic concept of redraw or update.

But of course you're completely right, redrawing is completely pointless and creates no value whatsoever. As exemplified by these two pictures, between which there is completely no difference worth mentioning.

I think DtN's definition of "original drawing" is something along the lines of "A drawing of something that is neither a real design nor never was". I don't keep updated spreadsheets of your work so I can't speak to the accuracy of DTN's statement however I will say that from a brief glance of the designs you listed they all seem to be real world designs which don't meet this definition of "original". (That said one's definition of "original" and whether or not what a person draws is original shouldn't matter in the slightest."

Personally I don't think the challenges have much of an impact on output as far as fleshing out the archives. As you point out many of the people competing in the challenges seldom draw anything for the archives however I'm skeptical that many of them would be dedicating the effort they put towards the challenges towards fleshing out the archives without the challenges. Challenges get people to try new things and do research into stuff they may not have researched otherwise but the idea they're "overwhelming" people's ability to contribute to the archive is a based on a flawed assumption. Without challenges people would either be drawing for their AUs rather than the Archive or simply drawing nothing (This is what I've done when I've sat out challenges).
Drawing Shipbucket is a hobby people they do for fun and I think it's a fair assumption to make that many artists would rather spend a few hours putting out something of their own design than spend hours tweaking a few dozen pixels to match vague line art and grainy photograph details of a real world ship. Both can be fun in their own right but neither is inherently a better use of a person's free time than the other. People should draw what they want to draw. Whether that's an AU ship, an obscure never was, a real world ship people have drawn a dozen times. People shouldn't be shaming people over what they do or do not draw or how often they draw. As you said, there are no quotas to fill, there's no requirements for what people have to draw. Let people draw what they want to draw.


On the topic of redrawing, I think a big issue with redrawing, is that just because a drawing was done in the past it does not mean that the end result of a redraw will be an "upgrade" over the last artist's work. I don't consider that a reason not to draw a ship but for a new person it's probably a bit discouraging to see a real ship done better than what they can do at their current skill level. But redrawing not really something I think is relevant to challenges* nor is there any real easy fix besides just encouraging new people to draw what they want to draw.


*Unless we end up doing the previously proposed "redraw challenge"