I love this idea, I’m going to participate or watch/vote

I like this idea, not sure about participating

It’s neutral for me, I’m probably not going to participate or watch/vote

I dislike this idea 0 voters

I am a long time reader of Polish literature posts like Forum Mirriel. There is one fun contest type that I believe could work well on our primarily art forum, too.

The basic rules are:

There are two users who “duels” with each other.

You can challenge someone (but they can refuse) or you can introduce a challenge to everyone, and then someone can take that challenge.

Both your and the other person’s images will be posted by someone without saying which image belongs to which person.

Other users can vote on images. (There should be some categories, for image rules, for execution, for idea etc.)

The person who gets more votes wins.

In case of walkover, there are two options (for the person who made an image): another duel

The most fun comes from what is the challenge. The idea is that one of the duelists defines the rules that both images needs to follow. In case person A challenged person B, person B defines the rules; in case person A challenges anyone and person B takes the challenge, person A defines the rules (and it needs to happen in the post introducing the challenge, meaning that person B knows what they get into).

The rules can be quite specific. On the forum I took it from they were often funny or challenging. Basic categories of rules (so you get the idea):

general subject of the image (example: a castle on a hill)

theme/mood (castle from a horror, or cartoony castle with a comedic vibe to it; whether the image should be serious or funny etc.)

style (realistic, anime, cartoony, a specific style)

what you want on the picture (for example a teapot, or something more general that doesn’t fit into subject, theme or style) (for the object, you can add a picture showing exactly what object you mean; but you don’t have to, then the other person has more freedom to choose how it will look like).

what you not want on a picture (for example, draw a Halloween scene but without pumpkins and ghosts; or that you want a picture in any style but anime; or maybe you want anime, but the eyes must be of normal size etc. - just some exception)

technical details, if needed (like, it must be in a portrait/landscape format, or it must be an animation with this and this many frames or that is this and this long)

how detailed should it be (so there is no situation where one person submits a sketch and another one a very detailed masterpiece of course it doesn’t need to be defined)

of course it doesn’t need to be defined) is nsfw stuff allowed? if yes, which parts? (gore/politics/controversial topics/nakedness/explicit sexual content)

What do you think of that? I know I really liked this format on that literature forum and it was in general quite popular. Especially the stories were always of the highest quality. It didn’t create any type of enmity between duelists since they usually either knew each other already (if person A challenged person B) or both of them knew what they were going into. And in general it was viewed as fun challenge, which means, both fun and an opportunity to show off their skills

Because this is an art forum, there might be a bit of a problem with different levels of art skill. I guess it would be advised to not challenge users that have much higher or much lower skill level (this is both for person A challenging a specific person B, or person B taking a general challenge made by person A), unless they both explicitly agree on that - then the secrecy of the duelists’ project would be compromised, but I guess it would be some fun even without it. Of course judging the skill level would be in discretion of the moderators and duelists themselves - no point in tearing people apart on who has a higher skill level and who doesn’t. It’s just, it would be good to have rules for mods to be able to step in when a professional artist with 20 years painting experience challenge a beginner. (Just be reasonable and kind to each other! Then everything will be fine). Other than that, I don’t think there should be any other issues

Example:

Person A makes a challenge that everyone (although only one person, the first one that wants to do it) can enter. They define rules as follows:

dinner with vampires

theme: horror, doesn’t need to be serious

style: realistic

what I want: teapot, Dracula himself, chicken leg

what I don’t want: Dracula’s famous red and black coat, chairs

landscape format

all nsfw allowed

Then person B comes and say they want to participate. They paint a picture of Dracula in black-and-red bikini sitting on the table in his dining room in the castle, eating chicken leg with his vampire teeth.

@raghukamath @hellozee