New rule for art contests

This recent art contest has shown that human art and AI art is getting harder and harder to tell apart. Tied for 5th place was an (albeit obvious) piece of AI generated art, but I have seen other pieces of AI art that people submitted, and they are extremely convincing. Apparently everyone who submitted art to the contest recieved 20 crates anyway, so the fact that some people were able to submit AI art that they generated with a free AI in a couple of minutes is ridiculous and needs to be stopped.

To stop this, I propose a new rule for these contests. To submit an entry, you now HAVE to show at least 3 stages of your work on the art, unless it's something like a physical work that could not possibly be generated by an AI. I'm not an artist myself but it really pisses me off that people can do stuff like this and get away with it, so introducing some new rule like this would hopefully put a stop to that. It should also be made very clear that you have to show some stages of your process.

Based on the yeti image that got 5th in the contest, you may think that a rule like this is unnecessary. But here's another AI art piece that someone submitted

Would you have figured out that this is AI art? If you really examine some details of the piece, it becomes a little clearer, but it still looks very convincing and legitimate. I'm surprised this one didn't place higher, to be honest.

AI art definitely has its applications but I see it as more of a funny thing to play around with than a tool to cheat in competitions and such. The fact that hard-working artists put so much effort into their craft only to get beaten by someone who typed a sentence into an AI image generator and waited 5 seconds is unacceptable. Change is needed.

 

New rules:
1. Any form of submission cannot be automated and can only have minimum automated assistance in the creation process.
2. Hero and Champion winners will not be allowed to enter the next contest once. The next contest after however is permitted but they must state that they have won a rank beforehand.
3. Make sure to keep any form of progress before submitting to prevent any accusation/misunderstanding and to keep the art form true and original yourself. Any failures in cooperation will lead to disqualification.
4. Any attempts to cheat the contest will lead to a permanent ban from the contest and no appeal will be given

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5. And most important of all, NO AI ART. FUCK YOU NORMIES

 

If you submit AI art to intentionally deceive the judges you should be punished outside of disqualification to discourage people even trying

 

I voted no and here's my reason as to why: while I despise when AI art is used for stuff like this and 100% agree that it shouldn't be allowed, I do think that making participants showcase stages of their work is a bit overkill, and would penalize them if they forgot to take progress pictures or something. Given the amount of flak AI art is getting I'm not sure if anyone will try it again next competition, but if that bad trend continues I'd probably change my stance on this suggestion.

 

If societal backslash was enough to stop everyone from doing despicable things, there would be too many things in history that wouldn't make sense.

 

why?

 

To give others a chance to win...

 

I don't see why ranked players should have a disadvantage.

 

ranked players should still be allowed to enter but if they win and they already have the rank they won, the rank is passed down to the next winner

 

or they could give it to someone else
or get crates/bombs of equal value, like in giveaways

 

That.....that's a good idea

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Ouuhhh, I like the idea

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well it's mostly me being petty ⁠(⁠*⁠꒪⁠ヮ⁠꒪⁠*⁠)

 

I was thinking, the multiple stages of artwork seems a bit overkill or at least a bit strange, but I can propose an alternative suggestion: a requirement to post a portfolio with your entry. The format doesn't matter too much - whether it be a proper website or an imgur gallery, as long as multiple artworks can be verified/analyzed.

Here's my line of thinking: for those that might be tempted to hit-and-run these contests with AI, a lack of portfolio can indicate that they're just pulling an AI art out of their ass. For more dedicated people, multiple artworks can be more revealing as to inconsistencies or patterns with work that can suggest that it is AI work. I think it could be a potential layer of verification for people submitting to contests; It's not foolproof, but it could actively slow down any attempts to get stuff past the judges.

 

As a victim of this whole issue regarding the contest, I do agree that there needs to be some sort of way to determine if an AI artwork is present. The pictures of the process of making the art is a decent idea, but again like someone mentioned above, a person shouldn't be penalized from entering just because they forgot to take images/screenshots of their art in progress. Even so, though, if they stated it in the rules then the people who forget will be at fault because they didn't read the instructions and failed to follow them appropriately, so it could go either way.

Another idea (specifically for digital pieces) is to have an artist send their raw art file (such as the .psd file for example) as proof of validity. This has complications though as a lot of complex digital arts tend to rack up large file sizes and may be hard to upload/download. Plus, anyone who doesn't have a digital art could be "punished" by this rule since there's no real way for them to send a physical artwork through the entry form outside of photos. Yes, that seems illogical, but we are also talking about the same judges who put AI art over all non-digital forms of media, so who knows.

The portfolio idea seems a bit too much for a public art contest. Usually, portfolios are used to collect projects for future jobs and careers, and if someone is just making an artwork for fun or as a hobby, they won't have a vast amount of artworks to show as proof for this contest. It might also take a while to comb through a ton of artworks for the sake of validity, and it doesn't really prove anything- heck, it could be used as a loophole somehow if the person steals or even uses previous artworks to "prove" they are an artist and then submits AI which ends up getting through because "hey, the portfolio said they were an artist, so this surely must be a true artwork".

I feel like the AI situation blew up in their faces enough to be avoided in the future, but it's still best to put a failsafe just in case it does happen again for whatever reason. My main concern isn't the AI but more of the possible bias towards digital art, and whether my biggest, most ambitious project yet will even place in this heroes contest with the amount of effort, creativity, and work put into it. If it doesn't, I'm seriously going to start questioning the judges on their overbearing weighting on all forms of digital media over anything else.

I think what they may have meant was that the people who win the hero/champion prizes (2nd and 1st place respectively) should have to sit a contest out to allow other artists to have a chance to win (or even place...hmm). I'm not too sure about past winners but if the same people won the contest multiple contests in a row, not only does it discourage other artists but it also makes it look like the artist has some favoritism towards them, which could tarnish the artist's reputation if they were not at fault.

If they did mean anyone who already owned a rank (and a lot of people on here do), then I don't see why the prize can't be given to another player, put on an alt of the artist instead of their main account, or converted into real money value and spent on something else, such as seasonal crates or bombs. There are many solutions to work around that problem, and accounting player rank into the mix will only make the contests more biased than they might already be.

 

Why specify rank winners and not just "winners" then? Also I don't see why they should not be allowed, if their art it better than anyone else's (which is unlikely to happen more times in a row), they should be able to get proper reward in it.

And if there are doubts on the judges well, there are ways to deal with that.

 

as cool as AI art is I def agree its a cheat. makes the hard work legitimate artist do seem worthless. maybe having a watermark on the art that is hand drawn(digital or physical)? overall great post +1

 

YES

 

I wouldn't be against this concept if it wasn't for the bias towards digital art. I think Hams literally replied to something someone said regarding that bias and they said that "digital arts are almost always the best ones" even though there were artworks like my gingerbread house which literally received community praise and even questioning as to how I didn't place.

It also doesn't help that a majority of the "almost always the best" digital arts nearly have identical settings/content, usually containing a self-portrait holding one or two cosmetics with a blurred or even non-existent background of interest. Again, I am not saying the artworks are bad, but it seems like the judges have a massive bias for "self-portrait with subtle setting" subject matter which bugs me as an artist. So much so, in fact, that the yeti AI artwork managed to place over all other artworks outside of the digital realm.

I'm fine with not winning contests if I feel like the art that beat me deserved to win due to a higher level of craftsmanship and creativity. I mainly just want these contests to feel fair and open to all types of artists and not just those who do digital art commissions and likely whip up the artwork near effortlessly. After the bonfire and blizzard contests having near identical results, I really want some sort of change to happen, even if it means picking new judges at random like a jury to avoid any possible favoritism bias when choosing the winners.

I just want my next art endeavor to actually have a fighting chance, and I want the same for any other traditional artist who participates.

 

Is that problem with (ranked) previous winners winning again or the judges being biased? You should focus on the cause, not the symptoms.

 

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On the subject of next contests, i don't think Heroes will have one, we need to allow ourselves some time to rethink the format and formalize details to make it bigger, more interesting, entertaining and also more importantly, open.

One definitive thing i can say is that all submissions up for consideration and accepted/validated into the contest will be public and specifically visible from the main thread and on the forums (to be debated, discussed, viewed or otherwise) (and also ideally in a specific discord channel)

I also would not want to penalize past winners or people with ranks (just clarifying that).

We may look into making the contest more separated in time (instead of each festivals, it becomes yearly for example) so we can allow for more submissions and maybe be able to include categories again and possibly more prizes.

Including a special prize for popular vote is another idea that has been floated around, it's worth considering but there has been no decision on that one yet (maybe doing rounds for that one could be a good idea, i don't know yet)

In any case, once i have news, i will post a thread about it. Heroes will have a giveaway, that i can confirm.

 

Yikes...good thing I hadn't devoted to any commitments yet. At least it allows me to focus on my upcoming graphic design classes without fear of trying to manage that alongside an ambitious project, but the hero crates were the one crate type I wanted so it's kind of a double edge sword.

However, I do appreciate that you are trying to revamp the art contest in general to be more open and community based, which is a step in the right direction for sure. I personally think a yearly event might be too long of a gap and a bi-yearly contest might suit better, but given plans need to be figured out first I'll let you take your time on figuring that out.

Either way I appreciate that you are taking time to do this so all forms of medium are treated equally, community can get more involved with the contest, and the event just feels more fun and wholesome overall.