Cover artist bingo 2020 August challenge: Cards, bingo in review and feedback

[annapods]

Since July's challenge was late, here’s something a little different for the last week of this bingo:
Tell us how it went! Did you achieve your goals? What did you learn? What was fun, what wasn’t? How’s your card looking? And most importantly, what would you suggest for next year’s round?

For the feedback part, you can also pm/email/discuss on twitter or discord/whatever else, whatever is more comfortable for you.
If you have no idea what to say, here are a few points that might need changing before next year:
- schedule (timing, length)
- challenges (why they flopped, whether to keep or to do away with, if the first what to change)
- prompts (any specific fun or unfun ones, balance between the categories, new ideas)

Once you’ve done that, you’ll have earned a special cheat that you can use to fill one (any) of your squares.

Comments

[eafay70]

I came nowhere close to achieving my goals. :(
I did enjoy the excuse to learn more art terms and see how other people do things! And I really love the cover Ravin made for me! :D
I can't think of any suggestions right now, but I'll let you know if that changes! <3 Thanks for running this!

[annapods]

That sucks, but I'm glad you still enjoyed it! It was a joy to see your covers in my inbox!
And please do let me know if anything comes to mind :D
Thanks for participating in this <3

[eafay70]

Ooh, I just thought of something!

There were two (maybe three?) prompts that were just a URL. I think one was a movie poster and the other was an AO3 work? I didn't really understand what we were supposed to do with them. If you include prompts like that next time, maybe a brief explanation in the prompt list would help. (I say "in the prompt list" so as not to make the version in the card too long.)

[annapods]

That's a good point! To me it seemed obvious that the answer was "anything", as in, inspiration from the composition, the color palette, reusing elements, fonts, whatever, but that's not a common type of prompt so I totally get why you were confused.
Would a FAQ post, or pointing people to the comments section as a place to ask questions, help?

[babelghoti]

Some thoughts to start with, I might add more later if I think of anything.

I'm almost done with my card, hoping to get a blackout with one last push!

I enjoyed learning some art theory terms, even though I'm not sure I interpreted the ones on my card correctly.

For next year, maybe more styles/periods? Like Art Nouveau, Ancient art and so on.
I'd love to see medieval or Renaissance art, for example. Or Futurism!

[annapods]

*\o/* for the blackout! You can do it!
Good idea for the squares, we can definitely do that.

[ginandchthonic]

I'm within three squares of a blackout! sigh. I was doing really well with this, until Voiceteam, which devoured my May and added several chunky longterm projects to my list (which didn't need cover art!) and Pod Together. It's really more about me than about the bingo, and the point where I personally fell to pieces under pressure.

Overall, I really enjoyed it. The challenge of fitting cover concept and feeling to the bingo squares made me less lazy, and I lovedlovedLOVED seeing other people's covers! The ones I personally tended to like best were the more concrete ones (detail, Art Nouveau, negative space, asymmetry, the link to the colour palette) rather than the emotional prompts (lonely) or the TOO specific ones ("shoe" remains unfilled, and though I did, finally, have an idea on how - going with Series which will likewise remain conceptual! - it bothered me for the entire bingo!)

Like BabelGhoti, I'd love to see even more art and design theory challenges.

It was great fun!

[annapods]

That sucks, but I'm glad you enjoyed it anyway!
Your suggestion has been noted :D

[ofjustimagine]

I've completely fallen off in regards to my own goals, but this was so much fun to play around with! It was nice that I could either a) make a cover with a square in mind or b) make a cover and then figure out which square it best aligned to. Because a lot of my output these days is based around making podfics for Podfic Bingo squares, I would have appreciated if the dates/length of the challenge were a little bit more in line with their calendar, but I obviously don't expect you to change the whole schedule for just little old me. :P

A thing that I kept finding difficult was continuing to make covers when I didn't have any podfics to make covers for. I went through the Cover Art Wanted tag a few times but it was hard to find things that jumped out at me. Maybe a future square or month challenge could be to do a non-podfic cover? Or to make a cover based on a random prompt instead of a real fic? Something that doesn't necessarily require a full podfic to complete.

Thank you for running this! ♥

[annapods]

I like the idea of non-podfic covers!
None of the prompts need a podfic to be filled, and there's already a few prompts that go for that specifically in one way or another (Cover cold (no knowledge of the pod), No podfic, Someone else’s podfic, New take on an old cover, Cover first, Different versions, Template, Meta, ...), but there aren't that many and we probably didn't communicate enough on the no podfic necessary part.
We need to revamp the challenges anyway, I'll keep it in mind.
For the schedule thing, I'm kind of in the same boat. 6 months is short!

[ofjustimagine]

You're right! As I was typing up that comment I realized that I could have used like, a little bit more creativity to fill squares without a specific podfic instead of just sticking with the norm. A lesson learned for next time! :)

[annapods]

To be fair, there was no mention of that option outside of the veeery long rules post /o/
I look forward to seeing your covers next year!