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Fractalforums.com
8th Annual Fractal Art Competition 2015


Fractalforums.com is holding our "Annual Fractal Art Contest" for the 8th time in row in the year of 2015.
 
Prizes are, as every year, winning images printed on coffee cups.

Statement regarding voting system:
 everything stays as it was in the year before, the total sum of gained
stars in the voting process are the one and only thing relevant for the final outcome. We are aware that the process
is not perfect. A voting system needs a whole rewriting of the whole process of the participating/voting for that
where simply no resources available to create a voting/gallery system with a special voting system. Presumably the
voting system will be changed at the 10th birthday of the competition, perhaps we will have found a sponsor by then as well...
Read below for a detailed description of current system.


The most important link for the compo comes first, the gallery is where everything takes place, uploading
and voting. This is the link to the gallery section:
http://www.fractalforums.com/index.php?action=gallery;cat=108

Official Sponsor for this years contest is (again) : NO ONE, everything related prize giving and prize sending is
handled by the administrator alone, a very long delay has to be accepted for prize receiving, due to this
only the first placed entries in each section will get a prize. But remember, being part of it is all that counts!

Time Schedule
- Submission Period begins on 1st of May at 00:00 Central European Time
- Submission Period ends on 31st of May at 23:59:59 Central European Time
- Voting Period begins on 1st of June at 00:00:00 Central European Time
- Voting Period ends on 30st of June at 23:59:59 Central European Time

Rules:

*new, not obligatory*
Please sign your work, by placing the text "fractalforums.com Annual Fractal Art Contest 2015" inside your production
you state crystal clear that you have produced it especially for the contest, and future viewers of the product will have
a straight time location from when the product was produced. This was originally meant to be obligatory from the administrator
but has been rejected by the admin people who thought that it would restrict artistic liberty too much, so make the admin happy and include it!

As every year, a contributor may enter up to 3 entries in each section of the competition,
so every contributor may enter up to 9 total competition entries.

The Competition is (as always) split up into 3 sections, which are this year "Film","Still Frame Wildstyle" and
as varying section we have this year the "Still Frame Black&White" section.

It is desirable to publish "new" stuff in the contest, do not bore us with already known stuff. Anything
already competing in another contest, or somehow already known to a wider public is unwanted. The
administration team for the contest is not strictly excluding anything from the contest
so it is up to you to either bore us to death or come up with inspiring new work. It would be to hard
to verify every entry by hand, so nothing will be disqualified, but keep in mind that something already
known wont get any votes ...

The whole voting and submission is done in the gallery. This year - for the first time - video submission are submitted
by using the "Enter Video" feature of the current gallery, most of popular video hosting sites are included.

Remarks
Remark about the voting System
The winner is determined by the total sum of stars. Which means that a single 5 star vote can not outnumber
for example an entry with two 3 star ratings. Although there was an effort to introduce a new voting counting
system, it will stay this way for this year - and presumably until 10th anniversary of the contest.

Remark about Time Schedule
Time scheduling caused confusion, due to contestants spread over the whole world, each of the schedules is
a "soft" schedule, especially the entry time. If you come up with your entry half a day late ( but no more than a day),
it is perfectly fine. Consider that entries which are longer in the view of reviewers have a better impact, and that
later entered entries might get overlooked.

Remark about Voting System
During the time of the submission period and the voting period the display of view counts and current voting is
globally disabled in the gallery.

Remark about Gallery File Sizes and Dimension
The hosting package for the website is now at maximum, the allowed image sizes have been incread immensely,
now 5000x5000 pixels and a file size of 25 megabytes is now enabled for uploads


The Competition is split up into 3 sections:

Competition Sections
Still Frame Wildstyle
The still frame section allows submission of any image without any restrictions, photography,
layering, post works, painting. Express your feelings through an image. Attenuate Details, make
use of modern image editing software to get the most out of your image. Single Click and render images
might not be enough to become even recognized this year! Let your mind flow to create something new!

Still Frame Wildstyle Gallery section
http://www.fractalforums.com/index.php?action=gallery;cat=109

Still Frame Black&White
The third section is always trying out new things, but this year we make it fairly easy. Create a fractal image
utilizing only black and white colors. The full gradient from black to white may be used, but no colors other than Black, White, and Grey. Again let your creativity flow, make use of the restriction the create something stunning and never seen before.

Still Frame Black&White Gallery section
http://www.fractalforums.com/index.php?action=gallery;cat=111

Film
in the film section (long) fractal videos are accepted. Let your creativity flow,
Use Voxel Stack exports to bring the Fractals into your favorite 3D Program. Use a camera tracker
to place Fractal Objects in real film recordings. Create a stunning soundtrack that is perfectly
synchronized to the film. Use Sound Syncing fractal rendering software that is nowadays available (jwildfire)
Your creative mind might need an extension for this. This is the champions league of fractal art!
 
The film section now requires that you include the following text in the intro/outro of your production:
"Fractalforums.com Annual Fractal Art Competition 2015"
this is for specially recognizing it as competition entry.

include greetings as you like greeting other fractalists is a nice way showing we are alive

Film Gallery Section:
http://www.fractalforums.com/index.php?action=gallery;cat=110

 :thumbsup1:

I just noticed that the gallery is misbehaving with making threads in the forum for images in the gallery.

It made one for an image I submitted, but not for the one submitted before mine.  Not sure why, but posting to let people know we are aware and looking into it...

I don't work on the gallery, so I am informing those who do work on it. 

Regarding the voting system; lest there be any doubt about this point, I want to make this clear to everybody that competes so the odds are even:
If you compete in a section, you can improve your chances to win massively by not voting at all. I have explained last year why this is so.

what do you mean ?! seems to work now or? posting a thread for the submitted image

Improve chances, yes.  But not enormously.

The bigger thing it does is prove you are not participating in the spirit of the contest and are acting out of pure selfishness!

I tries to make it a requirement that every entrant rate every entry or be disqualified - but that was deemed too much work to check up on.

I still feel it is the best answer, but it is what it is and if people choose to be selfish and try things to thwart others - there is not much we can do about that.  Every system can be expolited, so I suggest not worrying about it and just enjoy the contest focusing more on having fun that winning by trying to influence the ratings system!

Maybe this should then be clarified- nowhere does it state that you're supposed to vote when participating. There are good reasons to assume previous year's winners have gamed the system as described, they feel like they're doing nothing wrong since they're playing by the rules.

*EDIT*

You don't have to check up on everybody. Only the winners need to be checked. Very simple to implement and the message is clear.

yes, the idea is to vote, (later: and the future system will be based on a 1..10 ranking, that each user has to create, and fill every position, but its as it is for now).

Can't seem to post in the contest categories either. I can't find the 'Still Frame Wildstyle'/etc... categories in the dropdown box, only 'Annual fractal art competition 2015 promo'.

Am I doing it wrong ?

I'm also confused and was not able uploaded my first image. A category is required, but no categories are available for this competition.

ok, sorry for starting problem, will check the categories with "normal" account now

ok, as always there was a visibility issue from parent category, it is now fixed and the category is preselected when you use "add picture" sorry for inconvenience  :police:

No problem, thanks for fixing, I will now retry :-)

nice  :embarrass: omw to upload my pics then  O0

Why not force participants to vote at least 3 times in each category they published ? And I mean 3 times not including one's own piece of art  :dink:

Would it be technically difficult to implement ?

EDIT: Well I found the answer in the OP introduction ::)

making the database query is totally doable, but providing a user interface and information to the voter how much he has voted, and inform about this is not done easily, and since i dont want to provide an imperfect solution now it is staying like it is

so, although the overall system is imperfect i just follow the rule - never change a running system - at least until i can come up with something reasonable new, which includes a fair amount of design and user interfacing regarding the fact of the huge amount of entries to vote for

to vote for every entry would be a solution but also here would which would be needed is a fast way to rate lots of images, and not click - vote - click - vote for more than 200 entries....

until we do not have reasonable prizes to win, its a pure fun thing to participate here and give the world a standing about current fractal art possibilities

The thumbnail generator doesn't seem to like my B&W image. Is it possible to force it to regenerate it (or for me to manually upload a 250x250 thumbnail)?

That is an odd way for it to crop your image to make a thumbnail!

To answer your question, no.  There is no way to regenerate or replace a thumbnail for anybody except possibly our administrator.

But I can delete it for you and you can try again.

I wont be online for long, but if you see this in the next 15 minutes or so, and reply, we can give it a shot.

Let me know what you want to do...

Working on some submissions for both still categories that I hope to submit soon, but I've always been a bit curious about the logic behind the voting process. Why go with a system that only counts the total number of stars received instead of using one that determines a winner by highest average score? It seems weird that an entry could theoretically have ten people all voting five stars on it and still lose out to an entry that had 51 people all give it one star. The system inherently seems to favor artists that are already relatively popular and likely to have more people bothering to vote on their submissions rather than necessarily rewarding the highest quality entries.

So, its because of the circumstances, this is the only system we have
and the discussion appears every year, anone is invited to provide a better system, i plan to impllement one for the 10th anniversary

and the example you posted works vice versa inthe opposite direction as well, a single 5 star vote would outnumber a thousand five star and a single 4 star vote

although we have an academical mathematical approach at hand, which includes some weighting, more votes of any kind for an entry are good

but i doubt it would be understood by anyone

so i go for the one that everyone catches easily, i feel a bit sorry for that, i feel sorry for not providing adequste prizes and i feel sorry for anyone which gets not enough attention

but i am happy about every entry, i am happy about everyone contributing, i am happy to hold this tiny promotional event for the 8th time in row, its a remarkable point to show off current possibilities

as long as we have nothing more than a cup of coffee to compete about its pure fun.

the future system will be a system where every voter had to provide its personal top ten, but until its finished we settle for the one everyone understands

I figured it was probably something like the reason you listed. Unless it's mandatory for users to vote on every entry in a given category, each method is going to have its inherent downsides whether it's an entry with a single five star vote throwing things off or an entry with 1000 one star votes. Requiring a top ten sounds like a good compromise since it's not quite as burdensome as having to rate every single entry and is likely to establish a relatively clean consensus when the same favorites show up high on everyone's lists.

Although I do take that coffee mug very, very seriously so I'll have to come up with something better than Mandelwerk's entry this year(highly unlikely).

yup, me too I took it seriously- so you will understand my frustration of having lost last year to somebody with a significant lower average score, only because he had more people voting for him.
I took the opportunity to propose using averages in stead of totals as well, but to no avail. The 'single 5 star vote' arguments seems to be completely missing the point, since there hasn't been any entry with just one vote in the last couple of years.

so, what shall we do? change voting system ? NOW ? use the average for entries with more than e.g. five votes ?

I ran my image through ImageMagick before reuploading, and it worked fine. Advice for other people who are thinking of submitting: check that your image doesn't have an alpha channel. That's my best guess as to why the thumbnail came out weird first time.

ok, we do it the following way, since i have some money to spare, i am thinking about making 2 top list, one based on average, and one based on total ratings, and each 1st placed is considered receiver for the prices ;)

Technically, you have until the voting begins to decide on a final process   :educated:


That sort of works, but I still prefer forcing everybody who enters to vote for every submitted image or be disqualified!  I make it a rule for myself to rate very image as I believe that if somebody joins in, they  deserve some sort of feedback, even just a single star if the image is  ...  unappealing.

The other option which I like, and the one I see in almost every 3D Art Contest I have ever been exposed to, is no voting at all!!  Winners are decided privately by a Judge, or panel of Judges, usually consisting of the sponsors or those contributing prizes along with those in charge of whatever site is hosting the contest.

Not sure how either of those would go over with the group, but they are how nearly all professional contests are run  (and yes, I know we are hardly "Professionals" - but why let facts get in the way of things?).

Glad you got it sorted out!

I think I have uploaded images with alpha before, so it may have just been a glitch.  They happen...

Speaking of glitches, is it allowed to fix glitches after the submission time has expired? I hope it does not happen to anyone but what if there is a glitch in an uploaded video. Is it allowed to rerender and upload a fixed version (after 31th of may) as long as it is just to fix the glitch and not to change the colouring or other features in the video itself? And if it is posted on the same page of the bugged video to prove only glitches were fixed?

You can always post anything you like in the comments of your own gallery posts, contest or not!

We will gladly do as we did above for anyone  (delete an entry so they can re-post) before the submission period ends if there is just cause  (fixing errors or the like) - but after the submission period ends such updates would be limited to the comments area.

I think...

Ok thanks.

I think for after the submission period comment-updates are a good alternative. But it was just to ask if it would follow the rules.

use the time to polish the entry until voting starts, the issue with that is rather that it might stay unnoticed if something has been changed afterwards,
using comments is viable for that then ...

ok.

Is it allowed to replace one of my entries with a better fractal? Just curious since I've just rendered a fractal that I think is superior to any of my entries.

you can change your entry as long as the submission period ends! after that any changes are prohibited!

There works something wrong in the gallery. I tried to submit image (http://www.fractalforums.com/index.php?action=gallery;sa=view;id=17672) for Competition but it has no thumbnail. I have uploaded image once again, but there is still the same problem.

I'll have a look.

We recently had an issue with a single image giving a strange, oddly cropped, thumbnail.  Perhaps this is related?

The last one was resolved when the user opened and resaved the image in an image editor.  No idea why that worked or what happened, but it's worth mentioning.

I do know we have no way to regenerate thumbnails, so this is definitely a job for Christian to look into!

Feel free to try opening and re-saving, then upload again.  If it works, I'll just delete the old one but think it should stay until Christian can see it as it is, just in case it helps narrow the problem down.  Uploading again wont be an issue and I may be able to hide the old one without removing it if he doesn't show up and see this.

Resaving helped. Now it is displayed properly. Thanks for help

the gallery is behaving oddly, memory should be enough, last time we had a problem with a smaller png (8mb) but a larger jpg (11 mb) worked, so, jpg seem to be working better for large images here

Hi,  I have tried several times to post an image in Wild Style. It hasn't made it yet. Am I doing something wrong? The image is called 'Jabberwock' and it comes from Lambarie (Patricia Scott)

Thanks.