Artistic Challenge Ideas Thread

[Pyroclasm]

There really is nothing holding you back from teaming up with another participant, or even recruiting someone who didn't sign up.  For example, in one of the Amalgam challenges, I was asked to team up with Blkcassanova in our concepts and execution since I had a Batman part, and he had a Robin part.  So that's where Black Bat & Collosal Boy came from.  I don't think it's beyond a reason to share the art chores either.  What I don't think would be good is forcing anyone into a pair up.  It reminds me of "group projects" in high school.  One person might do all the work, and the other one chooses to be a slacker.  It's hard enough for some of us to finish our own pieces in time.  How messed up would it be if your partner doesn't finish until a day or two before the next challenge, or worse, never gets around to doing anything?
So long story short...Team up with people if you want to, but you won't be forced to do so.

Now the hopefully fun part...
We've had a request for a random art style in the current challenge.  I've got a few I used the last time it was asked, but I think I want to add a few more to add a little more "randomness".  Hope you guys can help.  An art style is not going to be a specific artist, unless that artist is the epitomy of the particular style.  For example, Bruce Timm is what I think of when I think of "Animated Style".  Here's my current list.  (All suggestions will be considered, not all will be used.)

1. Anime/Manga
2. Classical Art
3. Classic Comics (Kirby, Ditko, etc.)
4. Bruce Timm/"The Animated Series"
5. Humorous Cartoon (South Park, Simpsons, Family Guy, etc.)
6. 90's X-treme Comics (Liefeld, Lee, Silvestri, etc.)
7. Peter Chung (Aeon Flux, Riddick: Dark Fury, etc.)
8. Frank Miller (High Contrast B&W, i.e. Sin City)
9. Classic Magazine Illustration (Pulp Art, Time, Life, etc.)

[psychopanda]

The Classic Comic style really should include more of the greats, like Steve Ditko, Curt Swan, Wally Wood, Alex Toth, etc. You could also make a 70s style with Neal Adams, John Buscema, or an 80s style with John Byrne, George Perez, Mike Zeck, etc.

Thanks for the cooperation clarification. I think I might toss a hook out there for this next Challenge.

[Pyroclasm]

Modified the list.
Also added
8. Frank Miller (High Contrast B&W, i.e. Sin City)
9. Classic Magazine Illustration (Pulp Art, Time, Life, etc.)

[psychopanda]

Couple other suggestions for this list:

Mignola (maybe thrown in with the Timm style).
Dan Brereton, really  unique, likes to use paint in his work.
Alex Ross (speaking of paint).
Boris Vallejo.
Walt Simonson, known for his linear style and awesome sound effects.
Abstract/Montage, something like Bill Sienkiewicz
Dave Johnson, not much of an Image or Manga fan, but I liked this guy's stuff a lot. Geoff Darrow is pretty similar in the American comics meets Manga style.
Funny Comics Style (Sergio Aragones, Fred Hembeck, PVP, Captain Carrot, etc.)

Edit: had to take off before I could finish, adding a few more ideas.

[UnkoMan]

I think there's a bit too much specific artists here (which pyro said he wasn't going for), and to be honest... while good a few just don't really stand out to me.

Now, Mignola I'm alright with. He's like Timm crossed with Miller, and amazing, and easy to do with ink.
Alex Ross? Well... I'm almost inclined to hook his under "Classical Art."
Brerenton? Friggin' fantastic, and I love him... but a bit hard to duplicate with ink. Still, I am tempted to leave him.
Walt and Dave? It's really just comic book art now. Extremely good, granted, but not THAT much standing out.
And Boris Vallejo is just painted.
If I did throw out an artist's style I'd like to see though, it would be Ben Templesmith.

That being said... I think Montage is an awesome idea.
Funny Comic Style could essentially be Humourous Cartoon, however... Funny Animal Style? Basically you design your character as an actual character, then redesign them as a funny animal parody of that character. Like the spectacular Spider-Ham.
Or how about Underground Comix Style? You know, Crumb, Spiegelman maybe. A very '60s vibe. Not too much, though. Got to be family friendly. Actually, maybe that nixes Ben Templesmith.

Also, I think pulp art really is its own genre, isn't it? Unless Time and Life did pulp style covers, that I don't know about.

How about throwing in different artistic movements? Pop art. Dadaism. Deco. Ones people should know, obviously, and that could translate. Or how about "child like"? Try to design the character as a child would, and draw thusly.

Okay, enough ideas for now.

[daglob]

Boris did a comic book story in, I think, Fight The Enemy #2, from
Tower Comics.
Need to dig that out sometime...

[psychopanda]

Try to design the character as a child would, and draw thusly.

Um, that's my default style. :P

It would be kind of neat to draw stick figures with crayons though.

Anyways, good points. I was trying to think of different styles at first, but Pyro had listed specific artists (like Frank Miller, Jack Kirby) so my brain got side-tracked thinking of other artists that have their own unique voice. I had thought about Crumb, but wasn't sure what the style would be called. I was thinking "alternative", but "Underground" is perfect. Looking back, I agree, Alex Ross and the other painterly styles would be really hard for most people to do.

[Pyroclasm]

Ok, just giving a preview for the idea for October's challenge.
October is the month for my most favorite holiday ever, Halloween.
October's challenge will be another Amalgam challenge but with a twist:
Each participant will name one monster (movie, mythical, literary, etc.) and one non-monster (comics, movies, etc.).  I'll probably toss in a few extras in the mix just for some more randomness.
Each person will get a monster and non-monster to combine together.  Anyone who wants more than one assignment to combine into a "battle" or whatever can just ask when they sign up.
Sign ups will start on the 23rd and assignments given on the 1st.  Just posting this here in case anyone has a suggestion for tweaking this challenge, and to maybe get you looking forward to it.

[MJB]

I am the guy that loves to over-complicate things so feel free to ignore this.

How about adding a "situation" to the mix? Example you get Superman as the hero, Zombie as the monster and sleep away camp as the situation.

-MJB

[UnkoMan]

The situation idea sounds sort of neat, but I think we should try just monster amalgams first. If it works, and were're all still around, situation for next year maybe?

As for "non-monster," that's very vauge. Are we sticking to superheroes or just anything? What if you end up getting Marty McFly and werewolf? I've already seen that movie, man. What if somebody says, like, "homeless person" or "construction worker" or something? Should it be an established fictional character?

[Pyroclasm]

As for "non-monster," that's very vauge. Are we sticking to superheroes or just anything? What if you end up getting Marty McFly and werewolf? I've already seen that movie, man. What if somebody says, like, "homeless person" or "construction worker" or something? Should it be an established fictional character?

It's always an established fictional character, and it will have to be something readily identifiable.  Because of their costumes superheroes/villians are best, but some people may want to do an identifiable non-"superhero" character such as "Indiana Jones", "Cobra Commander", "Lara Croft", "Neo", etc.

[Pyroclasm]

Next month's challenge is going to be a Reverse Randomizer as suggested in last month's challenge thread.  The basic idea is this: Participants sign up by choosing their theme from the randomizer list.  I will hand out random character assignments to each participant.
As I've done on a couple of previous challenges, I will give two random characters to each participant.  The characters will hopefully be quite different from each other.  This will give the participant the chance to make a choice: a) Pick one or the other  b) Do both or C) Create an Amalgam of the two.

I'm hoping if anyone has been contemplating additional themes for the randomizer, that they list them now.  I will be starting up signups for next month's challenge next week.  A little early, yes, but next Saturday I will be driving up to stay in a cabin in North Carolina, and won't have any access to Internet until I return on or before New Year's Eve.

[captainspud]

If I can make a broad suggestion: all the challenges are essentially the same thing-- costume design challenges. Try picking some radically different artistic challenges, like "draw in a completely different style than you usually do", or "illustrate this page of comic script", or "do a sequential that emphasizes and communicates speech without a single word of text". Something that's actually challenging, and not simply a variant on "design X costume with Y modification".

I did something along these lines with my "too many cooks" thread, and people really seemed to respond to it. We got quite a few non-regulars popping in and trying their hand at it, not necessarily because it was a particularly good idea for a challenge, but simply because it was something new and unusual.

The other thing I think that worked well for it was the lack of sign-ups. You just drop in and, if something piques your interest, you make an entry. And if not, you wait for the next one. That's one thing I've noticed about the FR community over the years, we suck at commitment. ;)

It just seems like the challenges are getting into a rut... it might be worthwhile to do a dramatic shake-up.

[Pyroclasm]

Essentially, that was why I made this thread.

However, I'm pretty sure that if I just alternated random themes and amalgam from now on it will start to get stale.  So I have created this thread to get some challenge ideas.

Turns out most of the people who chimed in so far seem to prefer to stick with the character design element.  When asked about trying new things, most suggest more character design challenges.  :blink:
The challenge signups are there so people can help contribute to each other's assignment, giving each person something different.  Without signups, everyone gets the same assignment or I give out assignments with no interactivity.  When there were no signups and everyone got the same assignment, there was a distinct lack of participation.  If someone can come up with a challenge that can be different for each participant, features participant interaction AND allows each of them the full 30 days to complete it, I'd be more than happy to consider it.  :thumbup:

[Pyroclasm]

Ok, next month's challenge is going to be pulled from one of the Freedom Reborn calendar themes.  Each participant will nominate two different movie posters.  Each participant will be given two movie posters chosen randomly from the nominations.  You can pick one or the other to do.  Your assignment is to create your own version of the poster: It could be parody, a faithful replication or even an "homage" done in your style.  You can include any characters you wish, whether normal people or superheroes(mainstream or avatar).  The posters should be fun & recognizable.
Hope the couple of people who don't want to do character design will participate.
I'll post this one up for signups Thursday.
If you have any tweak suggestions to make this more interesting, post them here.

[Pyroclasm]

Tried doing something that wasn't a new character design.  It pretty much bombed.  Unkoman posted his piece (which was great) and that was it.  I'm still trying to finish mine (problem with my trackball right now), but no one else has indicated any progress.
Hopefully this month's more freeform challenge without signups will work better.  Otherwise it might be back to Randomizer and Amalgams since those seem to get people excited.
I'd like to hear from the artists who participate.  What kind of challenge do you want to see next?  Want to go back to the character designs or do you have something else you'd like to try?

[UnkoMan]

The one before that bombed too, though. It wasn't super heroes also.

For me, personally, it's just due to being busy. That's why I haven't joined the latest one. I don't know about other people. I do like the challenge not just being super hero costume redesigns. I liked doing the poster one, even if it took me a little while to get to finish it, although that was a little broad. Personally, I like a more specific challenge. For example if it was JUST sequel or JUST parody or whatever.

Personally, I'm at a bit of a loss at to what else to do for a challenge. Redesigning an '80s cartoon might be fun. But it's still basically costume design. You could try the forced style change, I guess. And then just assign random characters to be draw as they are, but in that paticular style. Have people suggest character and style for these ones. How about draw an ad for a paticular product or something? I dunno...

[Pyroclasm]

Thanks for the input, Unko.
I don't really want to do a style change challenge since so many people had negative opinions about that when Meej suggested it.  That's why it's been something you had to volunteer for.  I know you like the forced style, and it doesn't bother me, but it seems to be a no-no among the others.
So you think I've been giving too much leeway in the challenges recently?  I need to be more specific?

Here's a couple I've been planning to implement but now I'm not so sure:
1) Photo References - I'd post up 5 different photographs of people.  Each person signs up by picking one of the photographs.  They then get a theme from the Randomizer.  Their assignment is to draw any character/non-character using their chosen image and fitting their theme.  For example, the image chosen might be a woman holding a broom.  The randomized theme might be "Medieval".  Perhaps the entrant then decides to draw a D&D-style character holding a quarterstaff...
2) Secret Identities - Similar to the Origins challenge in which participants make up a character from a simple description.  Only this time it is the character's civilian persona described.  For example, "Your chosen character is a millionaire playboy who hides his personal demons through his facade of being charming, superficial and frivolous."  So the entrant has to decide what kind of character they might be when they don their costume.

[daglob]

Tried doing something that wasn't a new character design.  It pretty much bombed.  Unkoman posted his piece (which was great) and that was it.  I'm still trying to finish mine (problem with my trackball right now), but no one else has indicated any progress.
Hopefully this month's more freeform challenge without signups will work better.  Otherwise it might be back to Randomizer and Amalgams since those seem to get people excited.
I'd like to hear from the artists who participate.  What kind of challenge do you want to see next?  Want to go back to the character designs or do you have something else you'd like to try?

I'm still working on Sheepdog and Puma. Unfortunatley, I've been snowed under in real life, and the few things I've completed were actually nearly done before that. Okay, except for Kirby Hulk, but how could I resist that? Or doing Elizabeth Montgomery in a mini-skirt? (need to finish the Barbara eden skin for Green Genie sometime) Anyway, my lack of participation hasn't been from lack of interest, I just didn't want to sign up again and find myself a couple of months down the line with nothing by some sketches. I wanted to do the movie posters-I did a spoof of "The Attack of the 50-Foot Woman" for an article in a Champions fanzine, and it was a lot of fun. However, I wasn't sure I'd get anything done so...

Speaking of Champions, I run a game. This time of year (from sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas to around Easter) attendence always falls off due to family stuff, school, work, and so on. Then too, we have Mardi Gras, which is hard competition for a simple little RPG.

Both the Secret ID and Photos idea look good. As for styles, well... I used to be able to mimic some styles, like Kirby, Steranko, Ditko, Kane, very bad Neal Adams, but not Manga. My style is, I'm afraid, stuck somewehre in The Silver Age. But your offering the Style Challenge as an option-that is good. Anyone who wants to try it is free to, and those who don't, won't.

[UnkoMan]

Yeah, that's true. Then some people get stuck with a style they can't quite pull off. I never finished my "classic magazine illustration" picture, although I had sketches somewhere around here... I just needed to find the time to make it look painted in photoshop.

I like creating character based off a civilian personality. Some people complain about too much super hero related stuff, but... well it is a super hero forum and honestly, I love to draw them. If you look through my sketch book the majority is super hero type characters. And I do like reinterpreting costumes. I don't really think it's that bad an idea.

Maybe we could just start a new, seperate type of challenge. Just an open redesign. We could first build a list of characters (left over from all the other times we listed characters), and then a random theme gets picked. A person calls dibs. They choose a character from the list (or get assigned), and draw them in the random theme. They also add a new character to the list, and choose the next theme. They have a set amount to do their drawing (a week maybe) otherwise dibs is opened up again. If they do post, it continues using their theme and another random. Forever. Then you have character redesigns for people who like those and you can start doing other things for the monthly challenges.

[YoungHeros]

I will without doubt join these artistic challenges, when I become good at drawing!

[Pyroclasm]

You don't have to be good to join.  Even if you draw scribbly stick figures, as long as you make an attempt.  Who knows, you may surprise yourself.

[editorialedgy]

Stranger Than Fiction- The idea for the hero must be utterly strange. Out there. Avant-Garde if you will.
Examples- The Hero Of Those Annoying Cheap Erasers That Just Smudge The Pencil About

[Pyroclasm]

Here's an idea for a Style Challenge. Tried to work something out that didn't pigeon-hole anyone.
Each entrant nominates a character or series that is normally rendered in a certain style.  The nominations would include reference images.
Each entrant gets randomly assigned a character from the pool of nominations.  They then draw the character in a style not normally associated with the character/series.  You aren't told what style to use, only what style NOT to use.  I think it's simple and shouldn't be very restrictive at all.

[UnkoMan]

Hmm.. that would be an interesting one. So characters tied to a specific artist or something would look quite different. Like Groo done in actual Conan style or something. I like that.

[Panther_Gunn]

Like Groo done in actual Conan style or something.

Heretic!  I'm letting Groo know that you have unlimited amounts of cheese dip......by carrier pigeon. (I don't plan to be within 500 miles of that walking disaster  :lol:)

[UnkoMan]

Okay, I just had this idea...

Everybody comes up with a simple character concept. Say "Super strong robot from the future" or "A bitter man, cursed to roam the world for eternity." Nothing too detailed. From that, the artists design EVERY character, AS A TEAM. If people want similar uniforms, do it. If people want varied, do it. They can be posing, fighting a villain, whatever. Included team backstory is encouraged but not needed.

How does something like that sound?

[Pyroclasm]

I like it, Unko.  I think just in case, there should be some sort of limit on number.  Only because what if (yes it's a BIG if) we end up with 10 people signing up?  One character seems to be tough enough for people to do in a challenge.  Imagine having to incorporate 5...10...maybe even 15 characters in one image.  Maybe as many of the nominations you want to do, but no fewer than two?  That way, people can draw as many as they can, but still have to do an interaction of some sort.  It also helps the artist when some of the descriptions may be completely uninspiring to them.  What do others think?

[UnkoMan]

Alright. Team-Ups. And this way, people could end up with vastly different characters, given the same small profile.

I guess it should also be noted that gender specific pronouns need not matter, just in case.

How about this, also... They don't have to be heroes. They can be villains too. Or you can do heroes fighting villains, but every character must conform to one of the stated sentences. Heck, they don't have to be either, if you don't want them to, I suppose.

[Pyroclasm]

Unless there are any compelling objections, I will use this for the next challenge.  Thanks, Unko.