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RecycledHeart

Abandoned List

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I was wondering if it would be possible if all those dragons on the completed list I know some of them won't get released either because their spriter(s) went inactive or they're out of date, I was wondering if TJ could put them into a new reject list so we know which ones might get into the cave and which ones won't. And if it's possible once we know which ones are the rejects, if the spriter went inactive maybe people could create new up to date sprites for the dragon to help it get off the rejects list.

Edited by RecycledHeart

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This actually sounds like a nice idea. Something along the lines the abandoned art thread except where we see concepts that due to spriter inactivity or disappearance as well as concept flaws not perceived then could be put and depending on how long the spriter/concept creator has been inactive users can pick it up and freshen it up if they want/can.

 

I support this. :3

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Support! It would also be helpful for future dragon sprites to see what is outdated and what is considered too cartoony, un-dragony etc.

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I'd be ok with this. Theres a lot of nice dragons on the list but unfortunately some will never be released since their spriters are gone. It might be a pain in the bum to sort out but it would help sort out what dragons are still relevant and able to be released should TJ like them

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Do you mean "if the spriter went inactive people could pick the dragon and work on it" OR "if the spriter went inactive and gave permission people could pick the dragon and work on it"?

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I think its more for dragons whose spriters are inactive and HAVEN'T given any sort of permission to edit.

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Do you mean "if the spriter went inactive people could pick the dragon and work on it" OR "if the spriter went inactive and gave permission people could pick the dragon and work on it"?

Um--I interpreted it as taking old concept ideas and revamping them (i.e. starting from scratch with art if permission hasn't been given), or modifying pre-existing sprites if permission was granted. But if an artist hasn't signed the agreement and is inactive, editing sprites is kind of a moot point.

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Is it accurate to say that what you're really looking for is a sort of "lost concepts" thread akin to the "lost art" thread? That is something I would support (speaking as someone who has made suggestions, too, FWIW).

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There's already a process in place for situations where an artist has gone inactive and someone wants to edit their work.

 

That said, in some cases on the CL I think it really would be better to scrap the existing sprites, either all the way back to sketches or perhaps even altogether. For one thing, you'd need to back in the artwork to where the missing artist would no longer need to be credited.

 

Rather than separating them into two lists, rejected and not rejected, I'd like to see them divided into more categories: Needs Minor Edits, Rejected Due to Concept Issues, Unusable Due to Missing Artist(s) - and something clear posted in each about what the edits or concept issues are. For concepts rejected due to missing artist(s) have a post saying which artist or artists were gone so people knew how far back in the artwork they had to go. If someone takes it on they should also probably PM a mod to have the project moved back to Requests.

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For a couple of reasons, I do not support this suggestion.

 

1) I really don't see any necessity in it and do not want to take up sticky space with something that could been seen as a "shaming list" or embarrassing at the very least for some.

2) Not all conceptors/artists may be comfortable with their rejected concepts being publicly displayed.

3) There are multitudes of reasons a sprite/concept could be rejected, so just having a list of rejected concepts isn't going to help clear this up and may create misconceptions.

4) A rejected list means topics will stay in the completed section (or we will have even MORE subsections which is also messy), spamming the section up

5) There are tons of concepts out there and I don't think it's necessary to rework every single one that gets rejected because we can't possibly release everything anyway. I absolutely think final rejections are fine. If an artist/conceptor notices a concept gets rejected and wants to retry it, they can rework and rebsubmit to DR or in private. Same if you notice we don't really have anything for a concept you'd like to see - or even if we do have something and you have a different view on it.

 

Mainly number five. I understand the disappointment of a concept and art you adore being rejected but seriously. We have so much art it is impossible to release them all and I don't think we need to all spend time stalking and redoing rejected concepts. If an artist/conceptor wants to rework, that's fine, but I don't think it needs to be a public concept in the terms that it is 'announced' on the forum.

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Question...are the artists/people that worked on a concept even made aware their work was rejected (or at least tried to be made aware)?

 

Thus far, none of my concepts have 'poofed' from the Completed List, but I always worry that one day they will and I'll be left not knowing if they are getting ready to be released or if they were just tossed in the trash.

 

If they aren't, there should be something to let at least the ones that worked on it know.

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Question...are the artists/people that worked on a concept even made aware their work was rejected (or at least tried to be made aware)?

 

Thus far, none of my concepts have 'poofed' from the Completed List, but I always worry that one day they will and I'll be left not knowing if they are getting ready to be released or if they were just tossed in the trash.

 

If they aren't, there should be something to let at least the ones that worked on it know.

As far as I used to know, they aren't specifically contacted, no (not sure if this changed with exclusivity/artist agreement), but they can PM TJ to inquire about it. Reason being that if people are notified, they tend to react more... passionately/dramatically than if they inquire themselves when they notice it has gone missing. I've been a part of a few incidents like this (also part of why you should inquire to TJ and not to mods as TJ is the one who makes final decision) and I have to say, I completely understand and agree with the reasoning, even though I do wish there was a better way for those that would be more... understanding of the decision.

 

(But I don't think making the decision public rather than private would help either...)

 

But notification is a topic for another thread. xP

 

EDIT to say the lack of notification is not intended as a punishment but rather for protection. I know it sucks, but there's only so much that can be tolerated. D:

Edited by SockPuppet Strangler

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I really just wish DR was more heavily sifted through. Having stuff sitting on the completed list for ages always asking "is it good enough? should I improve it? should I remake it?" sucks. Getting a rejection with reasons would be great (because you'd know exactly what to fix), but even just some automated message saying your concept has been removed without intent to use would be good. @Sock I can understand that some people might react poorly but the current situation is pretty lame and punishing everyone for the sake of people who are acting immature doesn't seem fair.

 

 

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I do see Socky's points about not making more of a mess of this section or making rejections public. However, I am thinking of all the people who see sprites they really like on the CL and never know why they never get released. (edit - or if they ever will) I'm thinking of all the people who have contributed to artwork or concepts on the CL and never know why they just sit there forever.

 

Yes, they can PM TJ if they are the artist or OP, but what about people who helped but weren't the either of those things? And wouldn't people be reluctant to make a new thread about a concept that just sits there if they are neither the original conceptor or the artists involved?

Edited by Fiona BlueFire

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Well it wouldnt have to be called a rejected list. Something labeling them as abandoned but completed concepts or concepts that need reowrking would be nice.

 

I can see your point about the whole notifying artists thing. I do thend to see that some of the artists are a tad... touchy.... with their art. Which honestly is awfully entertaining and I would be more than happy to take on that heat if you need someone to go around letting them know why a concept had to be removed or rejected. I mean if your art or concepts needs to be reworked then it needs to be reworked, whining andthinking your art is Godly isnt gonna get it released.

 

Having something like the abandoned thread for those concepts whose artists have been gone for 1+ years would be nice though. No every concept doesn't have to be reworked and redone but there are some here and there that are really good but are sitting there rotting away and we might want to give them new life. SO having a list that contains missing artists for 1+ year or concepts with outdated information would be a nice. It would also give users a better view on what is actually up for consideration as opposed to having a cluster mess of stuff that won't be touched for ages.

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Well it wouldnt have to be called a rejected list. Something labeling them as abandoned but completed concepts or concepts that need reowrking would be nice.

 

I can see your point about the whole notifying artists thing. I do thend to see that some of the artists are a tad... touchy.... with their art. Which honestly is awfully entertaining and I would be more than happy to take on that heat if you need someone to go around letting them know why a concept had to be removed or rejected. I mean if your art or concepts needs to be reworked then it needs to be reworked, whining andthinking your art is Godly isnt gonna get it released.

 

Having something like the abandoned thread for those concepts whose artists have been gone for 1+ years would be nice though. No every concept doesn't have to be reworked and redone but there are some here and there that are really good but are sitting there rotting away and we might want to give them new life. SO having a list that contains missing artists for 1+ year or concepts with outdated information would be a nice. It would also give users a better view on what is actually up for consideration as opposed to having a cluster mess of stuff that won't be touched for ages.

I can agreed with this.

 

I don't support a "rejected" list because I really don't know how TJ works and I don't see any benefit. Does TJ "rejects" some dragon as soon as it considered complete or he spend a couple of years thinking about it before rejecting? We don't know and I don't think we need to know, it will add too much drama in a place that already have too much drama.

 

I think an abandoned list it would be much more useful, a list with the dragons that can't be used anymore because the artists are missing for more than one year.

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Yeah that's the main reason why I wanted this. There are a few dragons on the CL that I absolutely adore but it's been years since their spriter(s) have been active.

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I have to say if I had a concept that ended up on any such list, unless because I had completely left this place, I would be ever so upset...

 

Being PMd to say what I need to improve would be something else.

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I'm on the fence about this.

 

On the one hand I totally understand Socky's points and I don't think it's a good idea to have a public list of rejections (I'd be pretty upset if my work ended up on there).

 

But on the other hand, I want to know if my art even stands a chance of ever making it on-site, and if improvements are needed or even a complete re-work. It annoys me that concepts that were finished literally years ago are still on the list without any indication on whether they might ever see a release. I'd definitely prefer getting a message 'unfortunately, concept x wasn't deemed suitable for release, for the following (standardised) reasons: a, b, c, etc.'

 

-----

Random thought in extension of this... would having the finished concept be submitted through an on-site form instead of on the forum solve any of the problems DR faces? Really just a random, not-very-well-thought-out idea, but maybe someone can run with it and improve it xd.png

Edited by Rhynn Collins

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I'm on the fence about this.

 

On the one hand I totally understand Socky's points and I don't think it's a good idea to have a public list of rejections (I'd be pretty upset if my work ended up on there).

 

But on the other hand, I want to know if my art even stands a chance of ever making it on-site, and if improvements are needed or even a complete re-work. It annoys me that concepts that were finished literally years ago are still on the list without any indication on whether they might ever see a release. I'd definitely prefer getting a message 'unfortunately, concept x wasn't deemed suitable for release, for the following (standardised) reasons: a, b, c, etc.'

 

-----

Random thought in extension of this... would having the finished concept be submitted through an on-site form instead of on the forum solve any of the problems DR faces? Really just a random, not-very-well-thought-out idea, but maybe someone can run with it and improve it xd.png

Well if its off site then we would still need to find a way to contact artists about why it was rejected. Also updating a request kind of like how Piemaster is updating his concept or how Niyaka updated her already completed concept would be more difficult. Having to send in an extra off site form for every update, and then you wouldnt be able to get the same feedback as simply editing and repost in your already completed threads.

 

Again having two separate sections to the completed list wont add extra clutter, if anything hopefully aleviate some.

 

It would be completed requests

-Sub forum: Completed requests

-Subforum: Outaded Completed Requests

 

The second subforum would contain concepts whose artists have gone missing for 1+ years and concepts with outdated information or irrelevant information. Each thread would have to be labeled individually like (Missing Artist) or (Outdated Info) and users could PM mods about taking on a request and contacting all parties involved. If after x amountof time goes by with no response the user who decided to atop/take on the concept can revamp it with either updated art or newer concept info. This would leave only the concepts with a better chance that other in the absolutely completed list, and the ones with less chance due to outaded art or concept info would have a chance at being redone.

 

An extra sticky or two to set up some guidelines and rules about the concepts there, about contacting users, and concequences of reworking a concept without as much granted permission as possible would be the only extra things. Otherwise I don't see much of a clutter :3

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Again having two separate sections to the completed list wont add extra clutter, if anything hopefully aleviate some.

 

It would be completed requests

-Sub forum: Completed requests

-Subforum: Outaded Completed Requests

 

The second subforum would contain concepts whose artists have gone missing for 1+ years and concepts with outdated information or irrelevant information. Each thread would have to be labeled individually like (Missing Artist) or (Outdated Info) and users could PM mods about taking on a request and contacting all parties involved. If after x amountof time goes by with no response the user who decided to atop/take on the concept can revamp it with either updated art or newer concept info. This would leave only the concepts with a better chance that other in the absolutely completed list, and the ones with less chance due to outaded art or concept info would have a chance at being redone.

 

An extra sticky or two to set up some guidelines and rules about the concepts there, about contacting users, and concequences of reworking a concept without as much granted permission as possible would be the only extra things. Otherwise I don't see much of a clutter :3

I think that does create extra work for the mods, though. Keeping up with DR already takes quite some time from what I heard, and if they also need to keep an eye on whether the artists for each completed concept are still active... yikes. With my modding experience on other big forums, I can tell you it sounds like a great idea at first, until you actually start doing it. Then it's just too much work to bother with it and it stagnates, and at some point someone is bored enough to do it all in one go, it's kept up with for a few weeks but then the cycle continues.

 

Apparently TJ occiasionally goes through the completed list and removes concepts for various reasons. What if he just adds a small note ('needs new art' or 'concept needs updating' etc.) on concepts which need it? While this doesn't entirely solve the problem, it at least improves the current situation somewhat. It creates a small amount of extra work for TJ, but at least it's not a huge amount of extra work for the mods.

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Well I mean its to kind of add some organiztion. Then we'd have topics littered here and there within the whole completed section with little notes in the titles that users have to sift through and such. Having each in their respective place in my opinion would give a better sense of order.

 

Think of it like files of paperwork. You don't put files that need fixing in the same pile with files that are complete and ready, you place them in their own pile to be sifted through and fixed as time goes along. Something similar would apply here.

 

Heck I would be #1 to volunteer to sift through all the concepts and start contacting users and moving them from point A to point B seeing as organization and filing is my strong point, I actually enjoy it. So hey, mods if this sounds like something plausible, I would be more than happy to do all that dirty work for ya~

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If I missed tackling anything, please just poke me and bring it up again/link to your post. I just don't have the energy to actually look back through the thread at the moment, so doing this by memory.

 

~

 

Tbh, just changing the name of the list doesn't really alleviate any of my concerns. It's still the same idea behind it.

 

I know we've also had this discussion on the reorganization of completed/rejected/tweaking concepts before but I'll have to look harder later to see if the thread is still around.

I believe my thoughts are generally the same though and it falls down to: this is just way too much work to keep up on and I do not think it is necessary so wouldn't be worth the work it would take.

 

Every time it comes up, we have plenty of volunteers, but that's the thing about volunteers. People have lives and other responsibilities. We have very few 'old' mods here and many more 'young' (old = a mod for a longer amount of time) because modding is volunteer. People move on with jobs and school and families. People lose interest. Things happen. Keeping on the proposed system for DR would not only be a lot of work to keep up on but also a lot of work to get done in the first place. Part of the reason the progress list in DR doesn't get updated is because all our volunteers have moved on by now and mods just have too many things to do to go through and get 10 pages (on the highest topic/page setting there is) placed AND updated on the list. It's just a buttload of time.

 

As well, keep in mind that it is ONE person who makes decisions for what is acceptable for the cave and not. This means that pretty much everything would be on TJ and he'd just be delegating work out - and if he's got time to go through and list reasons why something still needs work, then why is he delegating? Volunteers don't actually help much for this situation, anyway - unfortunately.

 

Yes, TJ has guidelines out there, but even know these by heart, I still can't always accurately guess what TJ will accept and what he won't. There've been several releases that surprised me and some rejections that surprised me. There is some degree of subjectivity when decisions about what art to release are made. I know it can be frustrating to not know exactly if your concept/sprite is viable for cave, but due to the subjective nature of these decisions, more strict/rigid guidelines or info isn't really possible. Best bet for all of us is to look around at the types of art/concepts in the cave (particularly more recent dragons over older dragons).

 

And again, none of this addressed the fact that we are already swamped with art. With how much art we have and we receive fairly regularly, I just do not see the need or use at all of keeping rejected concepts around to redo them. If you really like a concept, you probably follow it by looking for it every so often. If you notice it disappear, go ahead and suggest your take on it to DR. If the first gets released later - great! No problem. No harm, no foul. If it never gets released later - hey, maybe yours will. But I just don't see how following old topics instead of letting inactive topics go will really benefit us. Yes, some great stuff has gone unused, but some great stuff has also been used. We gotta let some kind of give and take happen here to make any kind of progress.

 

I will also note that TJ does often post about suggested tweaks on concepts he finds workable but not completely up to standard for the cave. Ex. TJ has moved topics with missing art back to DR to give people time to post the art again rather than just rejecting. There was also some two-headed jeweled wyvern that had too many props that TJ posted about getting rid of rather than just rejecting for use of props. So some concepts do get those notes.

 

So I kinda said more than I meant and it was rather ramble-y, but for me to support any kind of large overhaul and re-organization like this is going to take some convincing. Users are always pointing out how we have 'too much' art to follow or release already, so I really just don't see the use in trying to save all the art that has ever been suggested when we are never going to get to use it all anyway. D:

Sorry for all the negativity. </3

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Thats the only problem of having only one person overseeing everything. Th amount of work kind of nixes the amount of time that can be dedicated to doing something.

 

Then maby changing how releases are chosen and put into the cave. I do rmember at some point someone making a suggestion that put up the idea of allowing users to make that decision where a certain number of releases would be put up for poll and the winning concept or winning top 2-3 concepts would be put up to TJ and he would choose which of all would be released the next month. Something like that would cut down on the need he has to go through each one and finally pick one he likes, his userbase, the people he works for, would be doing that for him.

 

I mean we are the ones that enjoy the dragons, collect them, breed them, hoard them, why not have the users have some say and opinion? Also by helping narrow down the choices for them, theres less work in again having to sift through a giant pile of concepts to release. I think its things like this that also cause delays and single releases.

 

TJ is boss though so what he says goes, but I think he and the site staff should also have a little confidence in the users that play this game in being able to help as best as possible. Yeah some are quick to volunteer though, and I agree that many change lives and move on, its always a pain to replace staff when really all of this is volunteer work and there is no way to bind anyone into doing more than they have/need to. I have modded in a few forums here and there and I'd like to believe that my volunteering is a bit more genuine and less of a spur of the moment thing :3

 

Considering the huge amounts of art there is maybe some sort of system where more than one person can try and help to decide on what can/should be released as well as a multiple release system would help move that along as well as increasue user interest and encourage community participation. :3

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