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The extended deadline for this contest was July 31st.

The homepage hasn't been updated since the announcement of the extension. http://www.fractalartcontests.com/2007/ (http://www.fractalartcontests.com/2007/)

Does anyone know when we will hear something ???

That all depends on way too many factors.  I have seen some of these contests drag on for a whole year while they attempted to get things together.

If there is money and sponsors involved, then most likely it will progress faster.  (They will then need to look more professional.)   ;D  :P

Sigh....

(I entered this year  :P)

A sponsor has been announced (Vodafone) and the selection of a sponsor was a key requirement in the final selection.  While it's not up to me, I suspect that the final selections will be made and announced before the end of the month.

Kerry

Thanks Kerry, that's good news!

I entered this year too. Good to hear that the results will likely be announced soon.

From what I gathered from reading the rules of entry, the winners will have to produce higher-resolution versions of their images for display in the gallery (is this correct?), so I assume that they will have to announce who the winners are ASAP to give them time to produce the hi-fi versions.

From what I remember, 12000 pixels on the long side is the desired resolution.

Kerry

Well, looks like they've made their selections. Congratulations to the winners!  :)

Yes, sponsorship was the holdup (I figured that was what it would be).    ;) 
But now that real money is involved, everything should move rapidly along.

Though I was surprised that they even decided to have one this year, my sources said they were going to wait until next year.

There's quite a heated discussion of the contest going on over at the Orbit Trap blog:

http://orbittrap.blogspot.com/ (http://orbittrap.blogspot.com/)

If you're interested in such things, I encourage you to read of the charges levied at the contest, its sponsors, organizers, and jurors, and express your own opinion here or there.  I'm obviously quite biased, having been involved with Ultra Fractal and the fractal art contest from the beginning.

Kerry

i made the mistake of posting a reply there :/ it is of course true that townsend's winning submission is (sorry) ugly and has no self-similarity at all, but then again ken's comment about the pot calling the kettle black hit the nail on the head...

anyway, all of this arguing isn't worth the reading time i think.

I had a look at the page of winning entries, and there were some great ones, but nothing particularly novel in my opinion. How many times can you re-colour Julia sets and flame fractals before it starts to get a bit stale? I guess this is more a criticism of the state of fractal art rather than the contest though.

that competition is in no way indicative of the state of fractal art, however. i like to think i'm doing new things in the field, and know / know of many others who are too. actually i hope to show some completely new novel 3d fractal rendering methods soon, the program is still in its infancy though...

actually this very subject cropped up recently with the apophysis 3d hacks. some of us have been quietly making 3d fractals with our own software for ages, but when someone hacks in a divide by z into apo everyone suddenly bricks themselves. more on that here: http://lyc.deviantart.com/journal/14330563/

Wow, those images are amazing!

I submitted a couple of 3D images to the contest, but tbh they weren't very "arty", more like tech screenshots. My other one was a continuously image-mapped Julia.

yeah i'm facing exactly that problem myself :| (my best 3d fractal rendering so far, "snow", is pretty bland; i hope to have something more "arty" up in a day or two. edit: http://lyc.deviantart.com/art/rise-64751071)

Yes, definitely an interesting set of issues and concerns being brought up in those discussions (but nothing new).

One issue I find the most peculiar is where Damien tries to explain why the "rules" were set up the way they are:

   "The sponsors require this as a hedge against
    insufficient quality being submitted."

Which is rather strange, since the rules were in place long before they ever got a sponsor signed up.


And I too was involved with such things in the beginning, and for a few years there after.  But I recall that you did not start using UF in the beginning.  In fact, it was not until almost this exact day back in 1998 that you stated:

    "....it took a little gentle cojoling from Damien to dig into UltraFractal...."

And that was when UF ver. 2.0-Beta-6 was being used.  I had started using UF back when it was version 1 (around a year and half before people were being "cajoled" into using UF).

There were some interesting XenoDream.com (http://www.xenodream.com/) entries submitted to the contest, which helped relieve the consistency of similar type fractals.

For those new to fractal imagery, I guess everything looks great.  But for some of us that have been around awhile, we tend to look for anything new and different, especially if it is not the same old tired spiral images.

on a slightly tangential note, i found the first (to me) truly excellent xd fractal yesterday: http://love1008.deviantart.com/art/3dFractal-Watergrass-50256771


i do feel there is a solid basis for saying the competition is an "ultrafractal spirals" one, but on the other hand some new things do get selected. last year someone i know through the demoscene had their (self-programmed) work selected for the final, which kind of restored my faith in that approach to a competition like this.

however all this bickering, talking about it being "amateurish" (tim said it best i think: "Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. ROTFLMAO."), is certainly uncalled for and disrespectful to a large number of skilled artists.

Just to point out that both "Theme Park #2" and one of my other entries "Wild Flowers" distinctly lack spirals and are both non-standard fractals being created using escape-time IFS - each being produced from 2 Julia transforms, I know that's not completely different from a normal Julia but I've seen very few folks trying this method :) Granted Theme Park #2 does have features vaguely reminiscent of Newton fractals.

great, now they're trying to blame the readership for the recent poopiness (can't think of a better adjective) of their blog:


pffft, speaking for the fractal community, talk about delusions of grandeur... they speak more than enough for themselves, leave us out of it :P