★ Smeargle's Open Mic: The Workshop

[strawberry]

Hi! We're gonna be doing a general discussion thread for any feedback on Smeargle's Studio, with a bit of a main topic to start us off with that we'd like to see the community's impressions of. After the current topic runs its course, we'll leave the thread open indefinitely for you guys to leave suggestions if you ever have any on your mind that you feel might be worth making a full forum post for.

The Workshop

Our workshop has been an accessible spot for requesters to get some visuals for their forum projects, as well as a nice route for new artists to try out a more "proper" project to work on and get more comfortable with potentially contributing elsewhere. With that said, the option to remove the workshop has been brought up for the sake of focusing more on building up our commission thread and supporting our artists further by encouraging them to charge fair rates for their work.

We would adjust the artist experience accordingly so everyone still can have a comfortable time getting more used to contributing artwork and participating in the forum (as well as earning the art badge), along with a route for artists who continue to volunteer artwork for various forum projects. I'll drop more details on that below to avoid a brick wall of text.

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• The Workshop (go-to place for free requests) will be removed - For people who come into the studio to get art, instead of the workshop we'll have a bigger, proper commission thread take its place with a list of all currently available artists, their rates, relevant links and work examples. Those who are willing to volunteer to do art for forum projects and tours will still be free to do so, but those who want to will be encouraged to charge rates that they set for their work. The workshop also doubled as the main place for beginner artists to practice on projects and get better quality towards the art badge, so we'll increase the number of forum activities to sufficiently support this kind of growth in a positive way.

• Notable Smeargle's Event Participation Art, Smogon's Flying Press, On-site Articles, Social Media Art, Official Tournaments and any other similar officially organized projects will be the things counting towards the Artist Badge - Art for general forum projects/threads and other tournaments will not. This is to encourage artists to actually charge rates if they're able, and get the requesters used to proper commissions being normalized. Personal requests and work that the artist was paid for, like before, also won't count towards the badge.

• (beware WIP rambly wording here) With that said, we'll still look to reward those who volunteer to do artwork for these forum projects as a Community Contributor. This will be meant for those who volunteer art assistance with project threads and banners, with an exceptional dedication to helping any single or just multiple communities all over the forum with their art.
  There will be no objective quantity anyone would need for this, we're just looking out for particular contributors that are focusing on this and rewarding when appropriate. These should be long-time, consistent contributors, and we'll be recognizing their dedication to helping communities in this way on a case-by-case basis. (of course all of this assumes the artist is an approved artist)

We understand that the workshop has been a huge part of the studio, so we wanted to hear thoughts of both artists and requesters alike, on what they would think about potentially removing the workshop in favor of encouraging artists to charge fair rates for their work. Nothing is set in stone and we're looking to evaluate community reactions and see what works best for us.

Please feel free to leave a response, and if you prefer not to dedicate a forum post to your impression of this, you can also drop me/staff a message if you just want to casually let us know what you think!

 

[IMakeNoSense]

Hide

• The Workshop (go-to place for free requests) will be removed - For people who come into the studio to get art, instead of the workshop we'll have a bigger, proper commission thread take its place with a list of all currently available artists, their rates, relevant links and work examples. Those who are willing to volunteer to do art for forum projects and tours will still be free to do so, but those who want to will be encouraged to charge rates that they set for their work. The workshop also doubled as the main place for beginner artists to practice on projects and get better quality towards the art badge, so we'll increase the number of forum activities to sufficiently support this kind of growth in a positive way.
• Notable Smeargle's Event Participation Art, Smogon's Flying Press, On-site Articles, Social Media Art, Official Tournaments and any other similar officially organized projects will be the things counting towards the Artist Badge - Art for general forum projects/threads and other tournaments will not. This is to encourage artists to actually charge rates if they're able, and get the requesters used to proper commissions being normalized. Personal requests and work that the artist was paid for, like before, also won't count towards the badge

Hi! Newly approved artist (or rather, I should be getting approved here soon). I worked on many banner arts for various Other Metagames and a few other things. I never have charged rates for the work I do for Smogon, and I’m unsure whether this post is to assume that I’m to “encourage” getting compensation for the art I make. I don’t like to charge money on the work I volunteer, nor do I expect anyone to want to pay for it unless I say otherwise. That, and I’m also unsure why OM Banners, thing I do most, wouldn’t count for the Approved Artist title in the first place. As far as I can see, it’s an officially recognized, community-driven aspect of Smogon/Showdown. By these new requirements, I wouldn’t qualify for the badge in any way.

 

[Kiwi]

Hi IMakeNoSense ! I had a read through your message and luckily I have some good news. Your art isn't redundant in any way, since it would've still contributed to an approved artist. Also w/ the badge, it would still contribute to the badge if you do art of that sort. To work towards the artist badge, the standard is to make 8 pieces after getting the approved artist role -- (Sorry just realised but I think OM art would go to CC)

With regards to commissions, all good! You don't have to charge if you don't want to - we're just aiming to promote commissioning to artists overall to foster greater benefits for artists and their time. Doing free requests will always be allowed, as long as you're having fun with it!

Hope this helps, we're taking your feedback into consideration

 

[Lumari]

Hey, so first things first to be clear I'm here specifically as an aspiring artist / art contributor, not a site admin. Have been doing art stuff on and off for a while, would be happy ever clearing the approved artist bar, whether that's something I can actually do is very much questionable but I hope it properly frames me as a "learning artist hoping to contribute in full capacity at some point in the future" here.

Now first things first I very much understand that we as a community are perhaps unreasonably lucky to have great artist give us their work without charge; however, I also think we have artists that already join this community as experienced/professional artists but also people that learn art as members of this community, and I feel like the idea behind this thread is mostly with the former group in mind.

Conversely, if I were to reach approved artist level, it would be the first time ever I'm doing art with any level of "legitimacy"; very much personal feelings incoming right now, and maybe I'm not as confident in myself as I should be, but I would be very uncomfortable charging money for art at that point. I also very much try to keep the stuff I do on here to a hobby, which of course would end when it does literally turn into paid work, with all the extra pressure that comes with it. That's not even getting into the personal info sharing that to some extent is required for payment (tmk? not fully versed on all the options but at least paypal definitely has to deal with that here), which again I get is normalised among experienced/professional artists but I would not want to get into myself, and I would also not want to assume I'm an outlier here.

Idk, maybe my brain is working weird here, but the notion of the workshop being removed here has also been actually discouraging me from working my way up to approved artist. As long as I will be unwilling to charge payment for my work, this wouldn't really do anything for me other than limit the areas I can contribute to (we also don't exactly put out 20+ TFP articles per month), and when opportunity to contribute is the whole reason for becoming an approved artist in the first place it has left me wondering if it's all worth it. Reducing forum side rewards that I'd be eligible for is also a thing worth pointing out, since many others with me already have CC, and I feel like these contributions would be better suited to keeping the art-specific reward more accessible.

Overall I'm also on the side that our community's forum projects are not entitled to free art (which I'd hope anyone reasonable would agree with...), that it's oh well too bad in the end if a forum project ends up without art, and that if a project host really does want a banner that nothing is stopping them from seeking out a paid artist anyway. Encouraging people to charge rates for their work is of course not something I actually disagree with! But I'm not really following how this leads to the removal of the current option that is more accessible to people sharing my perspective and does make for increased rewards forum side.

Lmk if I need to clarify anything since I probably didn't express my thoughts well in a few places; but I really do like having the low pressure contribution avenue available for newer artists and having it lead to artist-specific forum-side rewards, and I feel like anything to keep the jump from learning to professional artist less steep is a good thing.

 

[Pissog]

Hi
I found this forum and started contributing almost 2 years ago. My first post was in the workshop, almost a month before I opened a thread of my own.
My artistic skills were a complete disaster. I understood nothing about perspective, colour or lineart. Still, I started contributing. I could try to brag by saying it was because I wanted to put myself out there and contribute something important and that drawing was my passion, etc etc. But the truth is: I started contributing because I opened the workshop and I saw some ugly ass art and I thought: 'Even I could have done better'.

What I am trying to say is that every artist started as an amateur and the workshop is the perfect place for amateurs. I would never have had the courage to ask for money for the horrendous drawings I did two years ago. But doing art for forum projects pushed me to learn and improve, and without that I would never have reached a level where I could actually ask for money now.
I understand that artists are greatly underestimated and that some people take our work for granted, but I genuinely think that smeargle studio should not only be a safe space for professional artists, but also (and more importantly) a place where artists at every level can learn and hone their skills, while helping to make this site a little more beautiful.

Please don't close the workshop.

 

[Kaiju Bunny]

Heya folks! Staff have been working behind the scenes in regards to everyone's comments, so we'd just like to give a small update with where we are currently with this! We have the following proposed at the moment:

• It's abundantly clear that people do not want The Workshop removed, so we won't be removing it.
  • The original reason why the idea of its removal was brought up was widely because that at the time, many artists felt exploited for free art. As such, the original idea was brought up so that artists felt more rewarded for their work where requesters would pay artists instead (i.e. commissioning them).
  • Be that as it may, since this original idea, I no longer think it's as much of an issue where artists feel blatantly used for free art. The community has made strides to ensure that every artist is appreciated and thanked for their art (However, if you still feel differently, please feel free to express such).
  • The new proposal idea is that The Workshop remains up for requesters to request free art, but if an artist so chooses, we can list their commission info to the op / link the Smeargle's Commission page if requesters want something specific or otherwise want to shwo further support.

Not Workshop focused, but another few ideas that were brought up were the following:

• Ironing out Community Contributor Qualifications in regards to Smeargle's Studio
  • Originally, we had ideas that if The Workshop did get the boot, Artists could still work towards getting the Artist Badge through frequently posting in Smeargle Events such as YNMT, Pokemon Fusions, Picture Telephone, etc. in addition to any other regular ways to get the Artist Badge.
  • With The Workshop staying, instead, we're thinking of rewarding Artists who frequently participate in such events with the Community Contributor Badge, in addition to any other regular ways to get the Community Contributor badge through Smeargle.
  • We obviously need to work things out with other folks as we iron out these details since, overall, Community Contributor stuff is out of our jurisdiction so to speak, but we'd like to gauge interest of this here first before discussions occur.
• Ironing Out Ladybug Qualifications in regards to Smeargle's Studio
  • While pretty rare, there have been instances where Artists have been rewarded the Ladybug Badge for aspiring Approved Artists who have reached the halfway point of being fully rewarded the Artist Badge.
  • The reason this is generally such a rare occurrence is largely because after Artists are approved (more info about Approved Artists found here), they're generally pretty quick to be given the Artist Badge where giving them Ladybug first is a bit redundant.
  • For cases where an Artist is approved but doesn't immediately create piece after piece to be rewarded the Artist Badge in a short timeframe and is generally a consistent face on the forum, we'd like to start being more frequent in handing out the Ladybug Badge.
  • Similar to Community Contributor, this will take some refining for details before anything is made official, but this is the general idea we've been discussing

Feel free to discuss how you folks feel with these ideas / feel free to suggest anything different c: