What is Sketch Fest?Sketch Fest involves artists from all over the world, working on a pool of prompts and ideas for up to - but no more than! - one hour an any given sketch. For 24 hours, we creatively jam, share our results with each other, and sell our work. Artists can work in any media, for any part of the 24 hours, on any of the prompts, and are welcome to sell or crowdfund their work themselves, or donate them to the Sketch Fest project to fund our website improvements.
( A Little History... )In short? It's been a wild first year, and we've come a long, long way.
Where are we going?Where are we going for our second year? Already, the site got a bit of a brush up for
Sketch Fest #12 - some of it was backend work improving the buying process (so pieces couldn't accidentally be bought more than once, as was starting to happen...), also, artists got a link directly to their claims, and there were some browsing improvements. A new
landing page is under review, and a 'quick snag' method of claiming available artwork has been requested.
Other things I'd like to see include comment threading, and links on comments, more options for artists when uploading their work (including being able to flag ACEOs, and add keywords, and add a link to buy off-site), and a way to allow partial donations, where the artist can take a 'cut' of the donation - we're discussing that last feature in my journal
here. I'd also like to discuss opening the project to other forms of art, such as writing (still bound by the one-hour limit!).
Spawning out of the partial funding discussion is some talk about a cross-platform credits feature I would very much like to develop across my network of sites. One of the bummers of micro-funding things is that so much gets lost in the transfer - the ones really making out are services like Paypal, who take a big cut from small payments. I would very much like to set it up so that people can sell their artwork done through Sketch Fest, get some percentage of the sale back in credits (up to 90%, they set their rate), and use those credits to tip writers and artists at
EMG-Zine or
Torn World, or the critics at
Fantastic Portfolios, as well as have the option to
buy things or cash out their credits.
I've worked on ambitious projects a lot over the years (a LOT *shakes cane*), and often find that I come out at the end with things that are close to what I had in mind, but won't pay off for years and years (if they ever do!). Sketch Fest is vastly different in that it was entirely front-funded - and has
exceeded my vision. I was paid professional programming rates at every step of the way to create exactly what was needed and requested. The project itself makes me wildly happy because it's getting people to
do art, and love doing it again. I've gotten a lot of feedback from people who rediscovered their muses through Sketch Fest, and
that's the very best part of the project.
I welcome input, ideas, and suggestions! Come and play at Sketch Fest #13 (lucky 13!) on April 22-23, noon to noon Alaska time.
ETA: Also, I've got a poll up now looking at new features, timing and other bits and bobs:
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ysabetwordsmith
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ysabetwordsmith's Torn World stories was sold for publication and will appear in the January issue of Lorelei Signal! I crowdfunded several pieces of artwork - collecting dollars for progress, with the high sponsor receiving the finished original. In particular, Skykittens earned enough to be painted... you can see the inkwork here: http://hotlink.ellenmilliongraphics.com/ellen/skykittens-ink.jpg 
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