Team Chow :: Feedback/Discussion Thread

[daestwen]

TEAM CHOW :: FEEDBACK THREAD

Hey Guys, this thread has a very simple purpose. Since Team Chow was a Beta run - Our first team-based chow ever! - I need to know how it went.

So, I want to hear about everything! How your experience was, did you get along with your teammates, if you got randomly assigned how did that go?

Was 6 characters too much? Too Little? Did the brief have enough leeway?

For those that didn't finish, you're the ones I want to hear from most! Did Real Life hit you too hard, or did you have problems with your team? Was procrastination a killer? Or were there other issues i don't know about?

Your feedback will really help me decide if I will run another one, so even if you didn't participate at all but now wish you did, let me know!

Also, please post your suggestions for future rounds here! Not topic suggestions, please. :]

Thanks guys!

edit: Also, if you want to tell me anything that you'd rather not post here, feel free to PM me. Thanks!

[Medieve]

Unfortunately our team couldn't complete. But I don't think it was any issues with how the event was setup. Two of our four members just couldn't get their work in. If we were a bit more aggressive with our in-team deadlines we might have had a better chance but I think that kind of success will come from experience.

As far as the descriptions go I thought they were really good, I enjoyed the open visual interpretation but having personality descriptions to provide vision.

If the next round were to be setup exactly or similar to this one I'd probably still participate!

[LostFayth]

I was in assigned to a random team. I did it because I don't know a lot of people on the forums so it seemed like a great way to get to know some more people. I ended up in Random Team #1. All was fun and game in the beginning. We were all happy to know each other and we came up with a brief and we started. Like after a week we had out first deadline and I was disappointed to see there was one team member that didn't make it due to school obligations. Basically that was the last time we heard anything of him. I think it was too much to do it with his schoolwork.

We had to make some radical decision and drop him out. By that time we only had about a week left. AhChu was so cool to take almost all of the extra work. He really was our backbone. We just pushed ourselves trough and made it with a day to spare. Six characters were a bit too much in my opinion. Drop it down a character or two. Five characters should be fine. Heck it worked with six characters too... xD I think I could get better results if I got a bit more time to work on a character. But that's really personal though. The briefs were really great and I think we all could appreciate it. The length was good, the information was good and the room for own interpretation was great.

I urge all the other teams in the future to keep communicating. Personally I don't mind to get 10 PM's a day about the team and such. It's essential that the others know what you're doing.

The random team idea was great, daestwen. I got to know two really kind and great artists and it was fun and a bit of a challenge to make something out of this CHOW all together. It would me really great to have another team CHOW where we could design the bad guys. I'm looking forward to it and I think my team is too.

just my two cents, all in all a great experience and I've learned a lot!

[Dan Valkar]

i think the most problematic issue was the times zones, when i was sleepin' , my teammates were awake XD.....

and maybe 2 months could be better...

[Clochette]

In my opinion 6 characters was a great choice, because it has to be a full team, universe, with its story, interactions between them. So it was really cool to have all these chars to do with their own backstory which was really well done. Not too alien, believable, and still original and inspiring. I especially liked the little anecdotic touches in the brief, that gave so much personnality, and helped us, at least me, to have an idea of a real person for each char.
So, if you bring it back to 2 chars it becomes very less interesting i think. And it would encourage us to spend endless time on rendering instead of searching the more acurate design. (that's a very personnal thought too ).
About my team, well i already knew them or at least their work, and i had no problem to feel good! Our ideas worked pretty well together, and it was fun to make the multpiple conversation on msn to brainstorm together, and collab, and use the others's ideas trying to make them even better and all that ...
Tho team work is not always easy, and we all had to make a cross on things we liked, but it was the point.
So, overall and in detail, it was a great experience and i hope there will be new topics!
Yaay!

[Mercuralis]

I have to say that I really, really enjoyed this challenge. My team was people that I knew, but who I hadn't actually worked with before. I'd work with them again in a heartbeat, though. We got together early, had weekly chat sessions to iron out details and work on character development, and kept in touch via Twitter and IM whenever we had problems.

I also liked how we all had a chance to work on every aspect of the project. I feel like that tied all of our characters together really well. We took turns on the background, (the combined background was planned in from stage one), then each worked on developing sketches and concepts. Those were meshed together during one meeting, and then fleshed out, and passed from person to person until they were finished. We kept our deadlines pretty firm, but it meant that if one person was having a bad day on one character, it could be caught quick on the next round of switches.

Overall, I'd have to say that hitting deadlines and working on so many characters, for us wasn't really a problem.

What I was disappointed with, and would like to see changed up in any future versions, was the sketchbook threads. Because of how huge the sketchbook forum is, Team sketchbooks were hard to hunt down. They often got pushed off the page as fast as they were updated. Having to go back to the main topic thread and try to find the links was problematic, too. I would have loved for our team to get some feedback earlier in the month, but we didn't get more than two, maybe three outside comments in our entire thread, and those mostly at the end when they weren't particularly useful.

I think either a dedicated subforum for Team Chow sketchbooks, or a thread that explicitly lists all the sketchbooks (like the one in the Final Burning thread), would have been preferable.

Still, I thought the entire thing was really fun, and I'm looking forward to another one. The brief was great, gave a lot of detail but with so much room for invention and world building. We liked our world so much we've been talking about writing stories in it or trying to develop a game out of it.

[Sorknes]

Okies.... a short (cough) summary of my thoughts after being in a group that didn't make it as well as watching the other teams:

- Six characters were good. Too few and it's hard to get a theme going, too many and you have too much work.

- The briefs were good. They had enough to build up an idea around each character, but were loose enough that people could go a bit wild on them.

- It lacked a bit in getting the overview in the SB part as said in the posts above.

- I think it's important for each team to get a phrase or theme as fast as possible, or else everybody starts off in different directions. Moodboards as well if that's a preferred way of doing it. Better with ten moodboards too many than one too short.

- You have to decide fast if it's gonna be a more democratic process, or if one person jumps on or is put as the AD/person in charge. Or whatever way you're going. Else you'll have all kinds of weird approaches from your teammembers, some waiting for instructions, others wandering off in their own direction. Make sure whatever way you end up with is ok for everyone in the team, or if they have something against it or possibly a better idea on how to do it.

- If you're gonna have a timeline, put it down as fast as possible, and make sure that everybody knows about it and feels ok with it. Also if someone knows there'll be times during the work that they'll not be available make sure that the timelines reflects that, or that the persons that can't work at certain times is ok with missing parts or that's it's ok for the team to wait for their work.

- Approach of how to do it also has be agreed on right away. Some like the assembly line, others like to work on each others work, others again would like to do a char on their own, etc. Some people in a team might not have any specific part of an assembly line they feel more comfortable, others might not think that inked chars is a good idea, others again need an inked char to make a proper coloured one, and then some might find adding and taking away details from each other chars works best so they end up with an overall uniform look later. Discuss it properly so informations isn't lost and that you're sure that everybody is ok with the initial plan.

- Each team member has to speak up if they don't like the way you're progressing, be it the way it's arranged within the team or timeline or how you're interpreting the theme/phrase for your team. If you're disagreeing with how something is happening say it. Loud and clear.

- Keep in touch with each other even when not doing anything. Not fun adding work and not knowing if there's anyone else actually working, and also people might end up waiting for someone taking the first steps.

- Inform your team mates if there's something suddenly coming up, if you don't know if you can't be around for a few days or if you need a break.

- Tell team mates what you're working on even if you don't post every step you're doing, or else you might end up with two or three persons putting in a load of work on exactly the same thing and you have to cut off that but at the same time get short on something else. This can end up with a team having four of the same char, and none of another, for example, or three borders and no background. At the same time, it might be important that several people approaches something so you can get a diverse look/ideas on something - just make sure to tell each other so you don't end up having to rush the other half of the assignment because nobody worked on it.

- Be flexible. If someone suddenly gets something in the way so they can't work, change timelines or loads of work if needed. If someone has quite a lot of free time on their hands at one point while another suddenly had something happen in their family or at work, there's no reason for that workload to just lay there as a looming ghost for the person not able to do it right away, nor is there any reason for the one free to sit around do nothing when might wanting to work on something. If someone turns out to work a lot slower or a lot faster than the rest, rethinking the workloads might be a good idea.

- When real life hits, it hits. Don't feel bad about having to pull out from your team a bit, there's is several people in it and they should be able to help soften the impact of time lost. Unless it happens with several in your team, heh. Then be flexible again, think anew and maybe a stylized way to cut a few corners might be an idea instead of trying to superrender everything and then miss the deadline.

- If you don't think you'll have time or don't think you can keep up, don't sign up. Wait for next round instead. If you're signing up already knowing that you can't be around, you're not "just" bailing out on a project you'd like to do yourself, you might screw it up for others which really wanted to do this and do it good - basically you're screwing up their "education".

- If you're signed up for a team, but later on realise you can't do it (be it school, job, real life in general or just that you might not be up for this after a second thinking through), tell them right away when you find out so they can put in another person or switch teams if needed. Bailing out right away isn't bad as then the others can get together with someone else, telling them halfway that you "might" be able to work and then ditch it all screws up the experience for the people you're signed up with.

- Different skill levels in a group can make very interesting work, and learn everybody something about group work. Find each others strenghts or weaknesses if you're dividing the work in certain aspects instead of working on each others stuff.

- If someone in your team is missing the mark on the theme/phrase, tell them as early as possible. If not someone is gonna make a lot of work they didn't even know weren't what the rest of the team was aiming for, and it's nothing as bad as feeling you wasted tons of work for nothing.

- If you're confused about something, tell the rest of the team. Make them go over it three times if needed or until you get it. If you're confused about something, there's a big chance the rest of the team hasn't managed to get a unified thought about it as well. Better to ask too many questions than too little.

- If some parts of the team talk together more than other parts, always remember to inform who "wasn't there" if there's a change and make sure they're ok with it.

- Feedback, feedback, feedback. Talk to each other, tell each other what's good with what you do, what might be missing the mark, what's not fitting in, if they're a bit too slow for the rest of the group, if they're too fast for the rest of the group, etc, etc, etc. It helps keeping the spirit up as well as bettering the work.

- Banter. Joke. Have fun. It's supposed to be a fun challenge, not dreaded work.



---


When it comes to my own team, we simply got hit with RL. All of us. At the same time. Heh. We had a good start, set a direction, did work, talked together, but then we all kind of went a bit AWOL, except for one that we already knew had a lot of schoolwork in the last half of the challenge. We should all have been better at telling each other that "Hey, something suddenly came up here", but since it happened to every single one of us, I guess it didn't matter too much, heh. I feel that I myself need to sharpen up a bit on telling when I'm around and when I'm not, and make sure that I log in to tell people that I suddenly can't do stuff, at least, even if I don't know if it's for a day or for a week.

This round ended up in the middle of pupils end of schoolyear run, hopefully if next one is during summer we'll see even more great work.

---

Hope I didn't overstep what you meant with feedback here?

[SMILEFACE]

i though it was rad sssooo much fun an' i think every body did such a great job!!! thanks daestwen for all the great ideas an hardwork

[MJ_Alcazar]

My team, Sugah Face, got along really well. I had a blast working with them. I knew of them beforehand, but hadn't seen too much of their work or had talked to them or anything. So, getting to know them was a great experience and that in and of itself was worth all of it.

I really enjoyed the way the Team CHOW was set up. The open visual with the personality descriptions was awesome. Our team had so much with these characters and the world that we had created for them. By the end we were coming up with stories for them and wishing we could do a comic or something just to continue playing around with them.

As for the deadline and real life interfering, I'm not sure that was a big problem. Sure, we all got behind because of different things we had to do, but we also found different things we should have done or things that would have made it a little faster and easier had we done that.

So, if we had another Team CHoW set up the same way, we might have a better time managing it. Real life will get in the way, no matter what, and most of the time we can't really plan that out. Although, it would be nice to maybe have the characters cut down to five maybe.

[Vorace]

It was a really cool project. I was very motivated to work with my teammates. We communicated mostly by PM and with the sketchbook, because we were all in different timezone and one didnt had msn. If I was to do it again maybe I would put more emphasis on communication. But I had a lot of fun. Thanks DanielC D@niel and Smokenmirror!!
6 characters was a lot. Considering we were all very busy maybe 4 or 5 characters would have been better.
I liked the description, it was precise but still open.

Kudos to you Daestwen for setting all of this!

[trevor]

i loooooved this
and i dont think the month deadline for 6 characters was even remotely harsh
marco and i did all of em in 5 days i think (we found out about this a bit late so had to rush)
i think with 1 month timeline 6 characters shouldnt be a problem with a team
with 3 people thats 2 weeks per character
if you do this again marco and i WILL sign up
and damn i really hope it is the bad guys

and finding folks SBs was a bit problematic but once i found em....i saw so much growth in this competition

the only thing i would like to see is either enviro creature or ID chows to go with this same topic
it would be soooo cool
maybe i will just do it anyways hahah

[blackcherry]

I really enjoyed this event. This was the first CHOW event I've participated in, but despite that I think the idea of having a team event competition is a good one to have alongside the regular weekly CHOW as it encourages people to work together or a project as well as giving an opportunity for meeting/getting to know other artists on the forum.

I was in team Crumpets N Pain with CCThrom and arttorney. I messaged them both and asked if I could join their group as they were still looking for other members. I think having the option of allowing members to form their own teams or be randomly assigned is also a great idea. Though maybe in future competitions if could be suggested that you sometimes work with different people?

I got on well with my team even though I'd never met either of the guys before. I think we communicated effectively and got on pretty well. We had a few problems towards the end due to events in our daily lives like work etc. which made things a bit of a tight squeeze. I think though that a month is sufficient time for the competition and I don't feel that six characters is too much. If the team is functioning effectively it should be manageable. Sadly how well your team functions can't be guranteed if you've never worked together before but it's still worth a show.

The only thing I didn't like so much about the comptition was trying to keep up with work being produced by other team members and I felt there wasn't much interaction and comments being made between teams on each others' work. Unlike on the weekly CHOW where people post their WIP's in one forum, to see people's work you have to find the link to each individual sketchbook which was a bit of pain.

I'm not sure what to suggest to improve this, maybe a list of all the groups with a link to each WIP sketchbook in one post or maybe a weekly update post should be made by each group detailing their progress with some screenshots of work or maybe both? That way people will be able to easily see and comment on the work being produced by other members. Also if the team are experiencing any problems they can be addressed then too.

Aside from that one problem I really liked the challenge. I think it was well put together giving room for creative freedom while still providing a brief to follow.

I hope you decide to run another one!

[Tomahawk Monkey]

I'm part of Team RITarded, and we weren't able to make the deadline. My partner and I both go to the same school so most of our interaction was in person. We got the characters done but not to a finished state. Our teamwork wasn't an issue, I feel we worked together well. Our biggest setback was schoolwork. Since the deadline revolved around the second half of our quarter, things were very hectic on our end when came to school work. It still is actually but we really felt we could get it done on top of our work. Maybe a little longer time would be better but I also feel a month was a good time frame for a contest like this. We just made the mistake in thinking we could finish this while doing schoolwork. The amount of characters was a good fit too. Six was a pretty awesome amount, it really made you focus on how these characters would interact.

In the end though, we both had mad fun doing this thing. I'd like to participate again, like in the summer where we don't have school

[Jazz]

This will be a bit long...oh well!

I immensely enjoyed the Team CHOW, and thank you, Daes, for making it happen!! This experience rivals the teamwork experiences I have at school and sometimes work, where I don't even get to touch art but have to deal with programming mainly. For ONCE I finished an art piece!! Yaaaay!!

This is also the first challenge I fully entered here at CA, so that makes me really proud!!

I barely knew my teammates, but I recall letting my voice be heard and actually WANTING to join in this time. I've never been that outgoing. It was awesome to get Dani Duck, Tavarilyn and MJ_Alcazar with me. I was surprised; having had many bad experiences with teams in school, and this just turned my outlook around! I'm so glad we got to know each other over the challenge. We learned much, and I think I showed my funny bone a lot more than I normally would. We each had something or somethings to offer and that means a lot that we all got a hand in doing SOMETHING substantial for the team! (I'm even happy the ladies liked my name for our team!! Squee!!)

I'm glad we were able to speak our minds in the team, because sometimes we disagreed, but we did it respectfully, and just continued on with our goals. Every idea we had could be changed without any of us feeling left out or overlooked. That really touched me.

More good points were raised already: The briefing was a great idea. Just enough to wet our whistles and get us thinking on our own. I researched a lot more than ever before. I think six characters was excellent--for a balance of responsibilities (though I admit to just doing one), and also because as MJ mentioned, our team got into the characters and their relationships to an awesome extreme.

We finished on our end, but I'll say that for me, school at first was a big problem. Because it lacks the creativity that this challenge has, I had to figure out how to prioritize what needed to be done, and I know the other teammates had enough issues that sometimes brought us to a pause, not so much a huge halt. Gladly I had the second half of this challenge free to focus, so that worked on my end, anyway.

I should mention that this team idea is especially good because I have felt like I'm not part of CA as much. I think because I haven't had time to draw for myself. Now, doing this, I was drawing for others AND myself. That really helped me feel a sense of belonging!

Now, the team was supportive of one another, but one problem I noticed was that our SB didn't get one single comment from anyone! No helpful feedback or anything for our efforts. I know I commented on some of the SB's, maybe not as many as I could've, too. It just would've been nice if we too got some of the cheers and encouragement that other teams received. Still, we relied on one another and it worked for us! I'm glad we did, and I understand sometimes people don't get noticed and sometimes they do. If there is a way that teams can better interact with one another though, I'd go for that!

Regardless, of that problem, I think the Team CHOW should happen again! Not each month or anything, but a special treat for us all. Getting to know other people on CA is a must!! I hope we do it again, and I'll probably join again!!

[Lalilulelo]

Weeellll, I think 6 weeks would be a better time frame. Depending on the scope of the project. This was just about more than we could chew. Not the project's fault, our group was moving along pretty half-assed at first...sigh.... But I think 5-6 weeks will be a good one size fits all for following challenges. The clincher is, people have lives, and are living them. So teamwork is difficult. Blarg. Lack of incentive or accountability is an issue as well.

[Burtzum]

I think the time frame, amount of characters, and descriptions were all right-on. As for how to work effectively as a group... I still don't know.

Part of me is tempted to say that having an art director would be beneficial. Our team got hung up sometimes, particularly on the Shadow, as we had some wildly different takes on the character and some strong opinions on which way was the way to go! Time was lost; while if there was a dictator the matter would have been settled swiftly. I think that a director would allow for a more cohesive world/vision for the characters also.

However, I think our team's lack of a director led to some ideas that would not have happened if we had designated someone to approve/shoot-down ideas. I'm pretty sure that, though we have similar interests and inspirations amongst our group members, there are some key differences between us and how we think. Sometimes a balancing act would take place and the final ideas would be shaped for the better.

Our pacing was erratic. As Lalilulelo said, we got off to a slow start. We also tried to have Mr. Visions pencil all the characters in final form a week from the deadline and basically ended up trying to render the final versions of the characters in the last day or two. And we all work full time (including weekends for me) so... didn't end well. A week set aside to render would have been nice. Then we could have tried passing them around to each other to have a more unified style.

I also think we should have done more ideation/iteration. We all seemed to prefer to draw out our own vision for a character, pit them against each other, and decide which one was best, sometimes taking some ideas from the others. We probably became too invested in our sketches when we really hadn't found the most interesting shapes yet.

[Jay-Zee]

I really enjoyed popping in on different teams sketchbooks throughout the month and seeing different interpretations. I didn't participate myself though so I can't really speak to the setup itself, but from reading around it seems like the main problems were just people's lives getting in the way (imagine that). I think around 6 is a good number of entries per team as well.

But I would really like to participate in the next one so please bring team CHOW back.

p.s. Daestwen, would you like suggestions for future rounds of this? If so, please let me know where to post them because I have a few ideas.

[Lalilulelo]

Hm! I was just reading the brief for CHOW157 and thought, there should be an optional to make a team or at least a 2 person joint effort for Chow's in general. We could make a user name specifically for that end shared between the two members or just establish a consistent call-sign. It'd get the community working together more frequently perhaps!

@ Burt- I was fighting the urge to just be dictator/director with a lot of things for risk of poisoning the water but next time I'll have to just be more iron-clad.

[Kailaan]

Well, I was assigned to random team #2.
I think there were a few problems we ran into. First being the time zones. I don't think any of us were online at the same time. Perhaps if people are matched a little closer together but I guess that involves a lot of extra work for you.
The other was a timing issue at least for me and I have noticed for a few others as well. I think a lot of people participating are in school and the timing of it was ending pretty close to the end of the semester.

On the plus side I learned a lot about working with other people. A schedule would have helped us a lot I think. But hey first time and all. I would definitely do it again I imagine it would be easier the second time around.
I also learned a great deal from looking at the other teams sketchbooks, Mood boards are genius.

Thats about it. Will definitely sign up again if you decide to do it.

[Keng]

My team had the advantage of being able to sit down with each other for the first half and talk face to face. This was also during exams and finals mind you so these talks were mostly between working on those projects.

I must admit I was kinda the weak link in my team and I know I caused some stress with how my final images came in a little later than the rest of my team would have liked, but overall it was a good experience and I'd like to try doing a paint chat for planning if there's a next time, which I sincerely hope there is.

Overall the number of characters and the time frame to finish them in was pretty much right on. Any longer and I think there'd be too big a risk of loosing even more people to real life, any shorter and there wouldn't be enough time to develop or talk with team members.

[metryx]

one third of team Mighty Minkies here. We didn't complete, largely due to my computer buying the farm four days before the extended deadline. I know there were some other major RL issues for cmalidore that gave him limited time to work. So lots of RL issues that prevented us (me, literally) from finishing.

But our experience....

We decided to do some personal sketching/brainstorming to see where we were comfortable, would give each other feedback, and then decided to take two characters apiece to finalize.

I jumped right into sketching characters and brainstorming. If I didn't have the computer failure, I would have finalized and been finished the Wednesday before the deadline. In fact, one character was entirely completed and ready to go.

One thing that is a staple of other CHOWs that I felt was really missing here was the lack of social interaction/feedback for all pieces. Having our own sketchbooks was great for team interaction, but aside from a handful of "good jobs" there wasn't the usual pattern I see of each artist going down the list of all the other artists, giving very helpful critiques and comments. I don't know what the solution to this would be, other than posting a weekly WIP or something in a main thread.

6 characters was good diversity. I think its easily handled if another time is there. 5-6 weeks seems to be ample time, however the extension given was a Godsend, even if we didn't finish. (of course, it should be kept to a number of weeks, as some months are longer than others obviously.) The briefs were perfect.

Our team suffered from RL problems that ate at our time, sometimes even preventing us from communicating regularly in the sketchbook. I'm not sure if some better organization would have been more helpful or not. But in all, we were satisfied with each other and are VERY willing to give it another go. Bring on another Team Chow!

[AsaB]

I didn't take part, so my only concern now was the timing. I know a lot of people, myself included, couldn't make it because April can be an intense time in schools, usually the finals hit then. At least it happened to be the busiest four weeks of my year! So I really hope it'll be repeated again, hopefully this summer, because I'd love to participate.

[Marco Mazzoni]

This was a seriously refreshing challenge!

It was an absolute breeze working with Trevor, though to be honest we do have the advantage of pretty much having to be on the same page everyday at work So yeah, communication and planning was not an issue.

4 weeks for 6 characters is PLENTY of time. Even between 2 people that's less than 1 character a week. If it seems like too much to handle but it's still something you really want to do, then figure out a way to make it work. That's really one of the best things these challenges can teach you. I completely understand that real life has a way of changing your plans for you, but learning how to work your way out of seemingly impossible situations can only help you in the long run.

Oh, and the brief was awesome. There were plenty of great details to get the ideas moving and the setting was open enough to really have some fun.

Someone suggested editing links to sketchbook threads into one single post and have weekly summaries posted in the main thread. This sounds like a great idea to get the teams to interact with each other more.

Yeah, definitely count me in for the next round of this (especially if it's the antagonists to this rounds heroes)

[trevor]

a lot of people mentioned conflicting time zones, i never thought about that
i have to admit for marco and i it is pretty easy
we live near each other
have been working together the last year
and would have been getting together to draw anyways as we do a few times a week
long distance work can be rough but i would suggest DLing skype and talking face to face at least a few times during the process
i have found with certain projects i have worked on long distance this helps LOT i know the time zones can be difficult but im sure at least once a week you could organize a team meeting
it makes it a bit more personal and easier to communicate
i was also guilty of not going into enough of the other SBs this time around
i peeked but didnt comment too often
part of it i blame on the fact that we didnt join in the beginning (just completely forgot it was going to happen)
and part i blame on what seemed to have killed a lot of teams, real life.
i really want to see more of these and if i can help that happen i would be more than happy too. maybe teams could select an AD from
pros who are willing to spend some time helping folks get the feel for a real freelance project. (was something like that done for COW before?) the squad decides the theme of the chars and the story and the AD guides them and keeps them on schedule and on topic
just some ideas

[daestwen]

maybe teams could select an AD from
pros who are willing to spend some time helping folks get the feel for a real freelance project.

THIS i would be incredibly interested in, so if any of the professional folks in Chow are interested in helping out in this way, please PM me.

Lalilulelo: Normal Chows will *never* be team-based. Strictly against the rules. That's why Team Chow was created!


Otherwise, I'm working out a way to get the social aspect fixed - thanks for the feedback so far, guys, I really appreciate it.

[darkly]

I think overall everything went pretty well. The brief was great. Finish 6 characters in one month isn't too much to ask (although I only contributed one character). I feel that the biggest problem for our team was the lack of communication and feedback within our team which I know the real world played a huge part in this. Now one thing that we did was "elect" an art director for our team which had it's advantages and disadvantages (hopefully not stepping on anyone's toes ). The advantages were that we were fairly quickly able to establish the setting and feel for our characters; had a pretty good idea of which characters each team member was to contribute and I guess, at least to me, a sense of being under someone and sense of trust knowing through it all it would get done. The disadvantages were being under somebody and not necessarily just being able to do whatever.

Again overall, great experience! I, more than likely would do it again. I would be interested to see how smaller teams of 2 to 3 do in production/quality vs larger teams of 4 to 6. I say this because I feel like a smaller team , depending on skill level and motivation, could produce more unified pieces of work. It also seems like it would be easier to communicate, just for the fact that there's fewer people to try to get on the same page at the same time. I know personally I would feel more motivated knowing that there was more riding on my shoulders and not being able to rely on so many team mates. Now I'm just rambling.

Good job to all those who participated and a big thanks to daestwen and an even bigger thanks to my team mates dwinbotp, sung-jae-kim and ghostbrush. Great job guys!


Oh yeah! I really like this idea!

Originally Posted by trevor
maybe teams could select an AD from
pros who are willing to spend some time helping folks get the feel for a real freelance project.

[trevor]

whooooaaa that last back to back post was not planned but like marco said
we DO have to be on the same page pretty much every day hahahah

[quickreaver]

I'm not sure what 'social' aspect you mean, Daest, but I enjoyed the hell outta this event. The time zone thing was the only aspect we had to juggle a tad, and Mercuralis pretty much covered everything in her post, for Team Weird.

I just want to mention that probably the most important aspect of this challenge was scheduling deadlines and organization. Working with a team, vs. alone, is a whole 'nother ball of wax. Very cool event, though! I'd love to see the antagonists next...

[Darktwin]

This was my first challenge in the community challenges. It was an awesome experience. I'm a student still learning and growing and I know now Chows will only help in my development as an artist. The month the challenge started was hell since I already have so much on my plate with other projects. When Daestwen posted the team chow thread I got really excited an couldn't resist the urge to participate and be apart of team chow history .

I believe communication and teamwork are elements most artist lack. We're so use to creating and designing in our own heads I think its hurts in our development overall if we don't break out of our own little worlds and compromise a little. This idea is the awesome Daestwen.

I was lucky with my teammate because we live together so the communication part wasn't really lacking. I will say though I wish we were a little more critical with each other in the cohesiveness of our final designs. There should have been more discussion and reference searching in nailing down our theme.

I think 4 weeks is a good amount of time for the team chow with 6 characters, especially with the options of having 4 members. Our problems came down to time management with the chow and life/school related projects. The last 10 days of the challenge was 80% of the work for the both of us. Will fix that and hit the gates running next time around.

I really loved the briefs, awesome work daestwen

I feel the team chow sketchbooks need to be consolidated in seperate area so there can be more input from other teams instead of having to swim through all the other sketchbooks trying to see what everyone else is up to. there were many sb I didn't see, I should have done a better job of posting in other sb's also.

For all who participated you've all gained my respect, its not easy working with others in trying to get a team project completed. Compromising is a very hard thing to do especially when you believe you have the best idea or vision and its not excepted.

Great work everyone,

[Ashrumm]

I really enjoyed this challenge very much I have to say that I have learned much about myself in relation to deadlines and I have to say I have a shit ton of work to do.

I really liked the teamwork aspect of this event and plan on participating in many more of these events in the future.

Great work everyone who participated I really had a blast and cannot wait for the next one.

Great work Daestwen way to organize a very fun and inspiring event!!