Sticky Smeargle Studio - Open mic

Bummer

Jamming to the beat
is a Top Artist Alumnusis a Senior Staff Member Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Top Smogon Media Contributor Alumnus

I felt it was time for a general discussion thread regarding the state of Smeargle's Studio and what all of our lovely users can suggest to improve our corner of the forums. If something's been on your mind as of late but didn't really know how to approach it, then this is definitely the time. If not, then I have a list of topics I figured I'd bring up, since while Smeargle's Studio fulfills the same function it always has, sometimes it's good to reinvent yourself.


Another Art Leader wanted

This is more of a personal matter rather than one directly affecting Smeargle's Studio, but ever since Zracknel stepped down from his art co-leader position with me, that same position has always been open and ready to be filled by someone suitable for the role. Now, even my own activity has started to wane, and I'm realising that our studio will soon be in an urgent need for someone else to keep track of stuff and just overall implement beneficial changes to the place. Not planning to leave Smogon completely any time soon, but I'm definitely more distracted than before and this place deserves someone better than that.

There has been moments when I've been tempted to approach someone with an invitation to this co-leadership, but due to artists generally having fluctuating activity or having other duties elsewhere, I've played it safe for the most part. If you're reading this and feel that you would be suitable for this role, then shoot me a PM here on the forums or start a private chat on Discord or PS and I'd be glad to give you a rundown of the position. Being an artist yourself is not an requirement, but you do need to be able to give constructive critique and just generally know your way around art in order to help all of our local artists improve. Being level-headed and relatively known in the artist community certainly helps too.

But yeah, hit me up if you feel capable and aren't planning on leaving Smogon within the closest year. I don't bite.


Discord activity

The honeymoon phase for this new hangout is most likely over by now, and I'd like everyone to start consider what they'd like to see in that channel. Should we try to host certain weekly/monthly events? Try to have certain topics rotating? Do we even have enough activity to attempt that yet and should just let things develop as it comes? Certainly something I'd like to hear some input about.


Arterview

This used to be a thing back when, but things pretty much ran out in the sand since I had difficulties finding artists who weren't so humble to the point they'd decline an interview. Is this something you'd like to see return, with or without being hosted on any of our media outlets? Also can't guarantee I'd still be hosting it, would like to stop adding more tasks to my workpile as is.


Monthly Art Contest

This used to be kind of neat, but like always, artists generally have a lot on their tables and so it's not always easy to participate despite getting a month to do it. Have enough time passed to revive this? Or should we keep it buried until something else sprouts?


The Studio hub

We already have a separate discussion thread for this, but I figured it deserves a mention in here as well, both as a reminder but also because I like what we've done to the place thus far! Just need to illustrate a few pages and scrap the History department entirely and I'd say we're golden. That is, unless any of you have further suggestions on what to put in there. Fire away!


Anything else

The floor is yours. If there's something you'd like to see adressed or talked about, be it our forums, activities, my role/duties as art leader, then now's as good time as any to voice it. You don't need to respond to the topics above if you don't feel like it, those are just some things off the top of my head that we could begin talking about.
 
Been thinking about some of the stuff mentioned already, so let me break the ice I guess.

Regarding the Monthly Art Contests, brightobject and I took the opportunity to start hosting these again over the previous year (not monthly though since there wasn't really that much activity) and while we did good more or less at first, the last MAC definitely fell flat. After extending the entry submissions period to two months we somehow managed to round up a decent enough number of people participating, and while the contest did produce some great pieces there was still a pretty big lack of interest this time around.

I feel like we should probably leave the MAC behind for now and see if we can figure out another type of event that might raise more interest at some point.


Regarding the Arterviews, it was one of the things I'd look out for in The Smog when I first joined and I really enjoyed seeing the process behind making one over at the Smogon's Flying Press. With that said, there's obviously a specific, smaller group of people interested in checking these out and since we switched to standalone articles the series wasn't as suitable for the format as it was for The Smog. I think it'd be worth bringing this back, though not as an article but more of a forum project? Sort of like one of those "Player of the Week" threads dedicated for interviews of well known players. This would enable us to act more freely while creating these as well since there's no grammar checking, htmling, qcing, etc. we'd have to go through, it'd probably be more interactive since people could suggest specific questions, and so on. There's definitely a lot of things to think about and work out before making this happen but I'd def be willing to try my hand at co-hosting something like this with anyone who's up for it. Let me know what you think about this!

Had some ideas regarding Discord but I'll write it down in a post once I give it some more thought.
 

Bummer

Jamming to the beat
is a Top Artist Alumnusis a Senior Staff Member Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Top Smogon Media Contributor Alumnus
I think it'd be worth bringing this back, though not as an article but more of a forum project? Sort of like one of those "Player of the Week" threads dedicated for interviews of well known players. This would enable us to act more freely while creating these as well since there's no grammar checking, htmling, qcing, etc. we'd have to go through, it'd probably be more interactive since people could suggest specific questions, and so on.
I can see this working out. If others feel the same, then adopting this new format wouldn't be too bad, and if we want them in a better layout, we can always put the interviews on the hub afterwards.

Also spoke with Tikitik about how our #sun&moon channel on our Discord has now grown unnecessary since the hype has died down and most of us has gotten a chance to play the games. Apparently, we couldn't find a way to merge the channel with our #general chat, so apart from deleting it entirely, the only other option was to rename the channel to something else. If we do want to give rotating topics or certain events a try, we now have a channel that can be renamed into whatever we like, so that's one thing to cross off the list.

Another topic of interest that a user approached me about on Discord is that we should remind ourselves that posting in other people's art threads and either offer positive observations or needed feedback is still just as encouraged as before. I have personally laid pretty low in this regard, and apart from welcoming new artists to the studio, replying again to new content can sometimes be forgotten and artist threads thus become more of a catalog than an exchange of views and opinions. This is not intended to beat down on our live chat channels, since they serve a purpose of their own and sometimes it's simply more convenient to leave short messages on Discord instead of making a proper reply in a thread. But regardless of what features we have available, it's good to remember that this forum is still the heart of our operations and that whatever we can do to make it more active will not only make it easier for new users to establish themselves, but to also stick around.

I bumped the Battle: Free for All thread yesterday, and the Art Critique thread today, as one of them promotes a fun activity while the other can be beneficial for any artist who may or may not have their own art thread yet.
 

Vederation

Ascension
is an Artist Alumnus
Another topic of interest that a user approached me about on Discord is that we should remind ourselves that posting in other people's art threads and either offer positive observations or needed feedback is still just as encouraged as before. I have personally laid pretty low in this regard, and apart from welcoming new artists to the studio, replying again to new content can sometimes be forgotten and artist threads thus become more of a catalog than an exchange of views and opinions. This is not intended to beat down on our live chat channels, since they serve a purpose of their own and sometimes it's simply more convenient to leave short messages on Discord instead of making a proper reply in a thread. But regardless of what features we have available, it's good to remember that this forum is still the heart of our operations and that whatever we can do to make it more active will not only make it easier for new users to establish themselves, but to also stick around.

I bumped the Battle: Free for All thread yesterday, and the Art Critique thread today, as one of them promotes a fun activity while the other can be beneficial for any artist who may or may not have their own art thread yet.

Glad to see this being addressed. From the way I see it, the sense of community in the Smeargle studio itself has been severely lacking. Threads and posts are popping left and right with interesting things to see, but you saw no interaction, feedback, or any discussion other than people throwing "likes" at each other. That created a vacuum in the community and naturally sucks away all activity due to the absence of "us" as an entity. If I have a suggestion to many of the residence of this place, it would be this simple phrase: speak your damn mind.

I'm addressing this to whoever is reading this including myself as reminder. Take a look around. If you see some artwork you thoroughly enjoy within the threads, don't just "like" them -- tell them. Point out the strengths and your favorite aspects of it. Who knows, that kinda thing might make someone's day a bit brighter. Now if you see some mistakes or deformities that can be mitigated by the artist, tell them; help them see what they failed to notice. Nobody is gonna be angry at you for trying to help (if they are, that's their problem). Its cool to throw little praises here and there, but constructive criticism weighs far more and is often game-changing: it makes you alert rather than inert. We're an art community, and the art world revolves around feedback, feedback, and feedback; negative or positive. Sometimes they come from the experts, but mostly simple ones coming from bystanders. Considering how proficient many of us are (regardless of our own belief in regards to that), we should maintain a high standard and voice out our knowledge and use the credibility as means to assist each other rather than keeping it to our own.
 
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I absolutely agree with Vederation. There's all sorts of really cool stuff, but there isn't much conversation (which is kind of what forums need to not be dull). I'm definitely guilty of this too. It's kind of like Facebook where you just scroll through and look at what funny videos people posted. Of course we like them, but no one really ever comments. This is the only place on Smogon I actually visit nowadays so I'd hate to see it dying like this.

Just wanted to post this because I wanted to let all the moderators and more contributive members know it isn't just them who care a lot about SS. There's good few of us stalker folks I think. I'll personally try to comment more, and I hope others do the same.
 

Bummer

Jamming to the beat
is a Top Artist Alumnusis a Senior Staff Member Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Top Smogon Media Contributor Alumnus
a recent chatlog about the purpose of our third room that so far has no permanent topic:

[6:54 PM] FellFromtheSky: I think it needs a name change
[6:54 PM] Bummer: well if people actually had suggestions on particular topics they don\t want to clog the general discussion with, we can change this channel any time
[6:54 PM] FellFromtheSky: we should vote on it
[6:54 PM] FellFromtheSky: Maybe we can make it the feedback channel?
[6:55 PM] FellFromtheSky: Since we often use general just to chat
[6:55 PM] FellFromtheSky: maybe we could reserve this just for art critique?
[6:55 PM] Bummer: and fell, general IS the feedback channel
[6:55 PM] Bummer: if it's not for that, then why do we even have it
[6:55 PM] FellFromtheSky: Maybe this can be the offtopic/unrelated to art channel?
[6:56 PM] Bummer: general becomes offtopic whenever no art is discussed
[6:56 PM] Bummer: general emcompass many things
[6:56 PM] FellFromtheSky: Fair enough
[6:56 PM] Bummer: also, I'd like to keep the number of channels to a minimum unless it can't be avoided
[6:56 PM] Bummer: I rather have a few active channels than a list of dead ones
[6:57 PM] princessofmusic: y'all could've left it as sunmoon for discussion of the games in case ppl wanna add each other and trade or something idk
[6:58 PM] princessofmusic: that seems as pokemon-related and practical as anything else rn
[6:59 PM] Bummer: we still have the discussion thread I opened up earlier to make suggestions like this
[6:59 PM] Bummer: despite Creta's objections, I'm fine with changing this channel now since it has run its course and was a sudden decision anyway
[7:00 PM] Bummer: that said, game discussion falls into off-topic imo, same with trading
[7:00 PM] Bummer: my rule of thumb is: if the reasoning behind a channel can be used for any of smogon's discord channels, then maybe it's not needed
[7:00 PM] Kyrads: I mean technically pretty much everything is off topic
[7:01 PM] Kyrads: Maybe it could be a room specifically for smogon events
[7:01 PM] Bummer: we have pinned messages for that
[7:01 PM] Kyrads: Ik but i mean for discussion about said events
[7:01 PM] Bummer: this discussion is fine since we're technically talking about the room's purpose, so it's a convenient loophole
[7:02 PM] Bummer: just for an example: when a new CAP project is launched, we can rename the channel to help people start out on their designs
[7:02 PM] Bummer: or when a new MAC is announced, or contest
[7:03 PM] Bummer: or when we want to practise a particular theme, like perspective, coloring, shading
[7:03 PM] Bummer: I dunno, I just like the idea of having a chanel with a rotating topic rather than many channels with decided topics
[7:04 PM] Kyrads: I mean, in that case you only really need the 1 room to begin with
[7:04 PM] FellFromtheSky: We have 16 channels in another art server I'm in
[7:04 PM] FellFromtheSky: tbf though, I have half of them muted
[7:04 PM] Bummer: my point exactly
[7:05 PM] Bummer: and Kyrads, having one mega-room wouldn't allow for as much diversity as one would think
[7:05 PM] Bummer: because we should always be available to talk about our personal stuff we need opinions on
[7:06 PM] Bummer: without worrying that we're interupting another discussion or theme
[7:06 PM] Bummer: that and I've never liked the "if we can't have this, then we'll have nothing"
[7:06 PM] Bummer: I don't negotiate with terrorists
[7:06 PM] Kyrads: I guess have one thats just, non art genetal talk and one thats general talk with art as priority?
[7:07 PM] Kyrads: Only a sith deals in absolutes
[7:07 PM] Bummer: still don't see why people need a channel for off-topic chat since off-topic chat already happens in #general
[7:07 PM] FellFromtheSky: Uhh, isn't that what we have
[7:07 PM] FellFromtheSky: two channels
[7:07 PM] FellFromtheSky: plus the workshop
[7:07 PM] FellFromtheSky: for non-leakable stuff
[7:08 PM] Bummer: workshop is for stuff that's not for public eyes, yeah
[7:08 PM] Bummer: general is for anything else
[7:08 PM] Bummer: and this third channel could be something that would benefit from having its own separate room

[7:23 PM] Cretacerus: So that's how the fossil thread ends. With thunderous applause...
[7:25 PM] Cretacerus: http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lkx3kcldnD1qa9qygo1_500.jpg
 
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