Round (D)one - Thanks and Feedback

[modzilla]

Finish Line! Thank You!

Creators are now revealed at the fffx 2020-21 collection. You are welcome to share what you wrote or drew far and wide.

I want to thank everyone for taking a chance on an exchange with unusually high requirements for works, on an unknown mod, and on various of my more experimental ideas. I am especially grateful to pinch hitters, to treaters, to people who consumed canons thinking about treating or pinch hitting, to betas, to commenters, and to the other Triple Crown moderators for conceiving of similar events that could complement and support each other. Three people took on pinch hits before assignments went out. My friend made me such a gorgeous icon. Just LOOK at that Godzilla with a clipboard. You're all stars.

Although I was wibblesome at the time of reveals, I think fffx generally worked and would like to run this again. So I'd be grateful to hear your feedback.

Feedback

Art
I am glad we included comics and would be happy to do that in future, so this can be the Five Figure Fanwork Exchange indefinitely. I would be happy to hear from artists about whether the minimums/requirements worked or could be tweaked.

Schedule
The 2020 schedule was:
Nominations start: 14 July 2020
Sign-ups start: 24 July
Sign-ups close: 7 August
Assignments out by: 14 August
Assignment Swap Week: 14-20 September
Check-in Week: 16-22 November
Assignments due: 30 January 2021
Works revealed: 27 February - delayed to 12 March
Creators revealed: 13 March - delayed to 26 March

How did it work for you? Should 2021-22 be similar? Should the check-in be at a different point relative to the overall schedule?

Assignment swaps
I liked having this option. Checking my notes, eight people asked to swap their assignments. Does anyone have any feedback on this aspect?

Letter deadlines / Mandatory optional details
I know it causes a lot of stress in exchanges when people are waiting on indefinitely incomplete/locked letters. I'm not sure if my threat of deleting letters that were incomplete past a certain point was helpful for this situation. I deleted three people's letter links.

Other
?? DNWs? Pinch hitter prompt promotion? Handling of nominations? I might give slightly fewer nominations next year but only SLIGHTLY. There were a lot. But I want people to be able to request and offer what they want, and matching wasn't a problem, only sorting.

Triple Crown

In the next day or so, I will provide the Triple Crown Committee with a final list of people who have participated in this exchange in such a way as to qualify for Triple Crown prizes. (See triplecrownofexchanges for cool stuff!) That will not include anyone whose work is orphaned or anon or anyone who has not commented on their gifts. So if your work is anonymous (the TCC have other ways around that too, you can talk to them rather than me) or you have reservations about commenting on your gift(s), you're welcome to get in touch with me at mod.modzilla@gmail.com.

More Triple Crown

Editing to add the reminder that prize claiming for Triple Crown starts on April 2! Enjoy the fruits of your labors, magnificent completionists. triplecrownofexchanges

Much love.

Comments

[modzilla]

Thank you! Obviously especial thanks for pinch hitting but personally I'm in awe that you made art AND fic for this exchange.

I borrowed the concept of promo posts from other exchanges (Yuletide and Fandom 5k) but I think it was new to link to the promo posts when posting pinch hits. Next year I need to make myself an index of promo posts.

Good to know about assignment swaps - I had more thoughts on that in this comment. Essentially the swaps period was actually 4 weeks. But could be more.

I think I will stretch the time between deadline & reveals a little, but am wary of, say, doubling it because at that point I think it stops being a real deadline.

Re comics & minimums - I'm glad you're chiming in. I actually have a really silly question - please brace yourself. How do you actually measure a page? I assume if you're creating on traditional media it's an A4 page. Is that right? But how do people compare if creating digitally? I have struggled a bit with length/size requirements that make sense and can be universally applied.

It is a bit of a conundrum that 10,000 words can take far less time to create than a ~10-page comic, but also take longer to consume. I'm hesitant to increase the minimum because of the effort involved, and I think nowrunalong also has a good point about keeping the art minimums consistent between fffx & HA.

Tangentially, I loved seeing how many different art styles there were!

[lavendre]

Phew! My apologies for the late reply!

I borrowed the concept of promo posts from other exchanges (Yuletide and Fandom 5k)

I have not participated in either of these before, so I had no idea! It's great and I'm glad to see it used here.

How do you actually measure a page?

Not a silly question! Someone else answered this below as well, but I usually look only to measuring pages if it's something I intend to print later, in which case I look at the "standardized" comic measurements of A4, B4, etc. I believe these are American industry standards for measuring comics and/or used by print shops for determining how comic books should be printed (but it does vary by publisher/printing house/country so there's not really a true standardization, these are just common ones). For me in this exchange, because I worked traditionally and I wanted to create quickly I worked at a small 5 inch x 7 inch page size and scanned it at a high setting, and then just resized the pages down until they were comfortably readable. Part of the awesome part of not worrying about printing is that pages can be measured to fit the art instead of vise versa. It looks like everyone picked a similar format for this exchange.

But how do people compare if creating digitally? I have struggled a bit with length/size requirements that make sense and can be universally applied.

A lot of digital art programs these days either give creators the option of using pre-made A4/B4 etc measurements and/or the ability to create a canvas size via pixels or inches (whatever the country's measurement system is). So digital artists and traditional artists can more or less work the same way with page size! It's just a matter of traditional artists needing to have a good scanner for their work to avoid blurriness and low resolution. Tbh, I think for this exchange, the panel minimum was a good way to measure length/size requirements? Because as others mentioned, you can always add more pages/panels if need be. And it gives artists the flexibility, especially artists who may want to participate in making a comic but are completely unfamiliar with comics' weird and inconsistent system of measurements, the ability to simply focus on the work / keeps it low key. Alternatively, if I'm rambling and you're just wanting a simple measurement, I generally like my pages to be at least 1200 pixels wide when I'm uploading the final version for viewing purposes.

I was trying to find a link I could share that may answer your question better, but everyone has different opinions on the A4/B4 etc measurements and I don't use these unless I need to for printing purposes (these sizes account for a pages bleed, how the pages will be trimmed/cut at a print shop). I think what you're wanting is a measurement for how work should be presented when completed, and probably a readable work at 1000 pixels on one side of the page or more might be helpful.

nowrunalong also has a good point about keeping the art minimums consistent between fffx & HA.

I had not thought about that, but makes sense! I am just being greedy hahaha.

I loved seeing how many different art styles there were too. So much great work was made!! It's all a delight!

[modzilla]

Sorry to reply so late, but thank you for the additional information on how artists plan around digital constraints (or lack thereof)!