It's good to see the "olympic spirit" win over suspicion
I will tell you a little bit what brought us to launching this contest. Many of you may not remember, but around 10 years ago, there was a contest called Terracon, in which everyone interested in Terragen back then wanted to participate. The winner would get a free commercial license of Terragen. Surely a grand prize! It was a good motivation to give your best and participate. The contest went on for a long time, eventually the contest was discontinued though. After a couple of years, there was not much more left that people could do with Terragen 0.9: Pretty much everything had already been seen and done. So long story short, after Terracon - to the best of my knowledge - there never was as much participation in a Terragen Contest again.
In the past two years, with Terragen 2, there were and and still are a few contests around. However other than for "peer" recognition, there is no tangible prize anymore. HOWEVER, participating in an art challenge is still an interesting, personal journey.
So we thought that we attempt to provide that little extra motivation by devoting our NWDA products as prizes. I am very happy to see people participate. We had no real expectations on participation, but I'm glad some of you find it worthwhile.
We chose an open, non anonymous contest with a jury for two reasons. First, we don't have the infrastructure in place for a voting contest. Second, the number 1 thing I always hated with the usual contests was the lonesome, hidden and secret image creation process. Booooring. We wanted people to show what they work on early, ask questions and get advice from others, to really have a chance to excel, go beyond what they would usually consider final, and eventually submit a piece of CG art they can be really proud of, no matter if they win a prize or not. Apparently, you're all enjoying that new freedom (in a contest)
So because we were "owning" the contest, why not try different rules and break some old habits
Lastly, we use the contest to give NWDA and our products some exposure, by providing our stuff as prizes and by hosting the contest at the NWDA website. But that's just a side effect, the main thing is that we were hoping to initiate a little challenge that is fun to participate in. I am convinced we'll have a fantastic collection of renders in the end.
Cheers,
Frank
