Shipbucket

Thanks to all who have commented so far.

I'm not surprised with rather unenthusiastic (to say politely) reception of my post, and not surprised by which sections of the user base were most unenthusiastic and what kind of arguments they used. Though I remain unconvinced by their logic (nor by Gollevainen's claim that challenges have nothing to do with decline of SB-RL/NW output).

Hood's comment was IMHO most insightful and expressed certain things more clearly then I managed to, most importantly by referring to the issue of time constraints of real life.
In the OP I mentioned that 85 people took part in Challenges, of which 30 never made any RL/NW entries, and most people (especially from among those 30 and their friends) concentrated on saying that if such large group prefers so, then so be it and I just have to adapt. Of course, they have right to see it that way, but that's not the point (not whole point, at least) - there are also 55 other people who are "regular" SB users (who make RL/NW contributions or made in the past) - many of them take part in challenges quite regularly. Perhaps if there were no challenges, they wouldn't spend that time on RL/NW anyway (just would do something completely different), but when they spend their "time potentially available for SB" (of which they have finite amount) on challenges, then they have no time for RL/NW left (have less of it), so it does IMHO affect the RL/NW output and relative proportions of attention directed to RL/NW and to challenges.

P.S. I have a vague recollection of some People in Power calling in the past the RL/NW the primary intended purpose of Shipbucket and all the AU/Personal Design stuff just an extra fun of secondary importance that shouldn't overshadow the RL/NW. (That's not an exact quote, just the general idea of it)

Perhaps the solution would be to stagger the challenges, interspersing Real Design challenges with AU/Own Design challenges, alternating back and forth every month or two months depending on how often the challenges are being run. Real Design challenges could have their own themes, i.e. modern frigates that have not yet been drawn, Cold War-era destroyers, re-draw an old drawing from the 'bucket which is in need of a re-work, etc.

My personal experience is that while challenges might take some time from my never build/ real design works, they also allow me to make some work in the first place. The hard deadlines of the challenges let me create relatively fast designs that are relatively unique, or let me play with a scale I would normally not (FD mostly in my case).

The big issue is, that while my personal skills and those of the rest of the shipbucket community grew and we created better art, my personal time available for drawing declined. Challenges require focus on a certain drawing, but they also have lead to me taking up various WIP's again when there was a challenge that wasn't my cup of tea while I was in a drawing mood.

In short, I think in my case there are some disadvantages to all the challenges, but also advantages. The large number of challenges means I can skip the ones I am less interested in now, and take up the ones I really like. If there was a lower number of challenges, I would have less fun but spend the same amount of time...... and probably would draw even less on the other stuff I have steadily progressing (hopefully I can post some stuff soon) behind the scenes.

I don't think the challenges are perfect (the scoring system isn't perfect and we are getting less and less feedback, which for me was an important part of said challenges) but I don't think a lower frequency is the real answer.

EDIT: Rainmakers idea above is an interesting one, although forcing things like that on people might also have the opposite effect. We could of course always introduce the drawing of the week/month again and let the winner always be a worthwhile addition to the FD/SB archive instead of calling it an 'challenge'

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Drawings are credited with J.Scholtens
I ask of you to prove me wrong. Not say I am wrong, but prove it, because then I will have learned something new.
Shipbucket Wiki admin

I would personally love to see more real life challenges

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

While I personally wouldn't want any more real drawing challenges again, imposing restrictions on which era/type of real ship you're supposed to draw can lead participants to drawing the same thing. That would be frustrating for the people involved.

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I do like how the challenges rotate between the styles (SB, FD, GB etc.) which offers fair chances for everyone.

It's horses for courses. We've had some artists pop in, draw a bunch of real stuff and then depart never to be heard of again. People like E.Z.Goin who turned up, drew an excellent series of RN tug boats and then departed.

The archive will keep getting filled and some of the older works will be updated to newer standards, it will just be steady progress (though FD scale is highly productive). Its good how artists like Garlicdesign often draw real ships as a by product of their AU works. There are silver linings.

I do think the lack of challenge feedback and voters is an issue though in terms of engagement. I think the scoring criteria has improved but is still a little vague. Maybe the polls could be left open a little longer to make sure everyone gets a chance to vote?

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Hood's Worklist
English Electric Canberra FD
Interwar RN Capital Ships
Super-Darings
Never-Were British Aircraft

If there would not be any challenges, I would still produce same ammount of real life drawings. The issue still is, that the current level of style still drains huge ammount of time and effort, as well as commitment, that when Im engaging them, I dont care what others do mean time. I only participate challenges, if I know i can squeeze time to make them/or they suit my AU work. Never ever have I constrained from my real life work becouse of the challenges. Most of the work in Real life I do these days is just redoing my past work, and its absolutely astonishing how huge differences there is in time between what I drew now and what I did 10 years ago. It almost makes me feel shame, that we just drew them so carefree, according to few ref drawings and a photo in wikipedia. If I would spam those drawings the same way and with same level of research, in terms of the time I spend on the work, I could keep up with the old spreed. But I dont think no one would like that, and my own standards have risen to demand more from myself.

Thus I still stand that many feels the same way, without challenges, they would work on their other AU projects and ideas. It is the effort needed to make real life drawings today vs. the old days when we mass produced them that has declined their ammount, not challenges. Without challenges, I feel the entire activity of SB, specially in the forums would diminish even more

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Shipbucket mainsite, aka "The Archive"
New AU project "Aravala"

Just for clarity I'd like to remind again, that actually I wasn't requesting a "real life challenge" with some specific topic and deadline for submitting drawings, but intended "to challenge" Shipbucketers to do "more RL and less Challenges".
In fact, while it could be said that "I have a problem with challenges", at the same time I do not have "problem" with AU's at all (though "AU-only" people are practically in the same group as "challenge-only" ones). And I don't even have a "problem" with the basic concept of occasional challenges. Problem for me starts with their frequency - 5 or 8 years ago, when there were 2 or 3 per year, they were a welcome bonus, and nowadays, when one challenge ends and automatically another begins, it looks like almost everyone is just spending their time running from one challenge to another, with detriment to other, more "fundamental" and "traditional" activities of this community. Ok, that's just my opinion. Ok, maybe it's wrong. But so far I still stand with that opinion.

Your desire is understandable and normal. But this is not about the challenges, but about the fact that people want to draw something different from real designs. Even if the challenges were completely canceled, there will be no more real ships. Perhaps the problem is that the number of "most delicious" real ships is limited, and all of them have already been drawn by the previous participants?

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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.

thing is there are hundreds of thousands of ships out there. It's what people are interested in drawing and that's down to personal choice. My drawing skills are very limited but in my head I have a whole list of ships and ship types I'd live to see drawn. And sometime I get lucky and someone with the skill to draw does a subject I'm interested in. I wonder if putting a wish list up might encourage some?