Are things slower around here?

[Koopaul]

I consider those to be sprites and not pixelart. Pixelart is large scale portraits and are not interesting to me because there's nothing you can do with them. The Banjo-Kazooie sprites I hoped would be put on the site once the sheets were complete.

The Pokedex thing is less about the pixels and more about designing Pokemon.

I should have specified.

[Vipershark]

I consider those to be sprites and not pixelart. Pixelart and large scale portraits are not interesting to me because there's nothing you can do with them. The Banjo-Kazooie sprites I hoped would be put on the site once the sheets were complete.

When we talk about pixel art, we literally mean "art made with pixels", which includes sprites. We're not trying to turn this into some elite pixeljoint clone where everyone only does landscapes or boring stuff.

More or less everything that's currently allowed is staying.

[Koopaul]

Okay see I was always worried that was the direction this place was trying to head by certain peoples standards. Not your's of course.

[Sketchasaurus]

I tend to use the two terms interchangeably since there are people who don't know what "sprites" are aside from the beverage.

I think an important part of having an active community is having people want to be a part of it while also feeling that they can. I'm in that awkward position where I've been here for quite some time, but I've never been a particularly active poster until fairly recently and even then I kind of feel like I'm overstepping boundaries at times (though this could just be because I don't want to impose on anyone in general) I mean, I've seen that there is a tightly-knit friendship between a bunch of the regulars around here, and that's awesome to see, but I think it's discouraging for some newcomers who don't have the same connections.

Although, it's not necessarily something unheard of in social groups anyways; this kind of thing is a normal part of any group of people and it takes effort on both sides of the situation for someone to be accepted. tVGR is a lot more accepting of a community than others.

I think the idea of making fan content is starting to decline, or at least the acceptance of it is: everybody is seemingly less inclined to indulge fan-game endeavors and be geared towards producing and encouraging more original content (at least, this is probably my bias since that's largely what grabs my attention) and I think part of it is because most of the regulars here have had time to grow and mature as artists/people/etc. I think it was more active in earlier years because everyone was still growing and trying to figure stuff out in general, and spriting was still a newly discovered artform without very many defined rules. Now we have commonly used terms and methods for making sprites that I didn't know existed back when I was making crappy Digimon edits back in the day.

[Koopaul]

Well I'm glad you said something Sketch. I never liked saying this but the close friendships here can sometimes get a little annoying. Especially the Love Thread which rarely expresses love beyond the same group of people.

It sometimes creates the feeling that there is this private club or inside joke or something. I can understand how a newcomer must feel too. But I don't think it's that huge of an issue. There's definitely other things that need our attention to get things going and active.

[Vipershark]

Regarding the love thread, I'm not sure what exactly could (or more specifically, should) be done about that.
The love thread is about people gifting things to each other, and we can't exactly force or limit gifts between people. It... kind of makes sense that people want to give love to their friends.

On that note, if you pay attention to the thread, you'll notice that generally speaking, if you make love for people, you'll get it in return.

[Kosheh]

sorry for the necrobump (really isn't if it's been on the same page for two months, lol)

but i rolled out of bed today and came to a shocking realization

I've seen that there is a tightly-knit friendship between a bunch of the regulars around here, and that's awesome to see, but I think it's discouraging for some newcomers who don't have the same connections.

VGR's community has seriously always been like this and nothing has changed - not even from when I started posting on Pixeltendo. It's always been a tightly-knit community of users - but the "community" in question is what's different.
The only difference is that if you pushed users around on PT they'd push back, and our hostility was what actually drove people off. It was always active because here we were - teenage keyboard jockeys commanding the OS in front of us. Nowadays, we're generally more friendly but instead of pushing people away, we just draw pictures for people we like.
The other thing is that we were "cliquey" - we had actual cliques that, despite their existence and their biggest flaw (isolation between member groups), also gave the illusion that we were more active; both groups had their parallels too (I could do this for hours; contrasting Vipershark and Tyvon etc. but...I won't). No one really agreed at the time on like anything, so conversation was always fresh and active, keeping the illusion going.
Then there was that fallout we don't really like talking about, which pretty much caused that entire clique from posting on TSR from then on, turning the forum into what seems like a ghost town.
The issue now is that there's just one "clique" - it's the group that makes up the current community, and we pretty much think alike at this point. While that's grand and chipper, it doesn't make for very interesting conversation. :/




Honestly, I feel like the ball's in Dazz and Petie's court now. There's really not much that WE can do as a community per se (more contests are cool, generate great original content and we get to see people's work, but that's not really gonna get new users HERE, IN THE FORUMS - it just seems to intrigue our own userbase at this post) - the only way we're gonna bolster community activity is if we improve things on the outside: for outsiders looking in.
Now, if I'm not mistaken (unless Dazz didn't say it) Petie and Dazz are toiling away to make sweeping changes to the VGR network. Once those changes are made, we may see a small surge of activity return to the community. One's already in effect - the use of the forum API working with functions of TSR's CMS (that supposedly Petie wrote from the ground up) so members HAVE to sign up for the community forums in order to contribute and submit sheets.
Likewise, if we're able to magically begin ripping 3DS sprites, that'll of course cause a HUGE surge. But that doesn't seem likely (as hackers are still struggling on the DSi file encryption to this day) so I wouldn't count too heavily on that. :/
Now I hear Vipershark also saying "I got plans, it's gonna really liven up the community" - if it doesn't involve some sort of outward changes to the site as well as the forums, I'm not so sure how well that will hold. :/

The thing is, though that I've heard rumours of Dazz making sweeping changes to TSR in the next few months, and that little things like the game-series archive icons from our last server crash or something is what's holding him back...and it's just poor Dazz and Petie working on it (and even Charlie; wut) ):
I think if we offered to pick up some of the slack and help TSR get back on its feet, we might see the community going places soon. :]




yeah, that's all. TL;DR version: TSR has never actually been "active"; its user clique just wasn't as "busy" or something. Outward changes need to happen to improve things within.

Regarding the love thread, I'm not sure what exactly could (or more specifically, should) be done about that.
The love thread is about people gifting things to each other, and we can't exactly force or limit gifts between people. It... kind of makes sense that people want to give love to their friends.

Quarterly Secret Santa event?
Spring Santa/Sweaty Santa/Spooky Santa/Secret Santa?

[Vipershark]

Now I hear Vipershark also saying "I got plans, it's gonna really liven up the community" - if it doesn't involve some sort of outward changes to the site as well as the forums, I'm not so sure how well that will hold. :/

If my plans go as.... planned, I'm hoping that the forum will more or less be able to create that user draw by itself, hopefully through a lot of word-of-mouth.
...Though once things are in motion, a Twitter/Facebook "hey guys come look at this" blast to all of the tSR/VGR followers (aka potential forum members) would really help things a lot.
On top of that I have some ideas about small changes to how the forum works in relation to the things that I want to do that will... well, not /force/ people to sign up, but rather heavily encourage it.
Though that's a bridge to cross when we get to that point.

Quarterly Secret Santa event?
Spring Santa/Sweaty Santa/Spooky Santa/Secret Santa?

As things currently are I still don't feel like making MORE events is a good idea. Every event follows more or less the same trend: a lot of people sign up, only some actually do anything.
That being said, forcing people to make art for other members definitely isn't the way to go. People are going to make art for their friends whether we tell them to make it for others or not.

[Ran Master 27]

I personally think, this is the most active spriter's community forums there is out there atm.

I've been around other places, they just seem quite dull. No other real spriters to sharpen edges with.

[FinalSmash]

To be honest, it has seemed a bit slower since the server was fixed. I don't know if that's because people haven't checked to see if it's been fixed or what.

[StarSock64]

I think the major problems are:

1) All of the skilled users are busy.
2) The users who seem to want to get better at art do not display the proper drive or discipline to do so, and they do not do the things necessary to become a good artist. There isn't much content posted, and the quality of said content is not great. Regular users post something once every few months at best.

And the consequences of these basically lead to

1) Nobody is inspiring others or showing them the benefits of studying art. C+C is not being given at a good pace or with good depth. Art resources are not being shared, leaving the userbase generally ignorant.
2) The culture on the forum is seriously lazy. People don't seem to understand what steps you must take to become a good artist. The less hostile environment the forum has cultivated is more pleasant and comfortable to be in, but it has made the userbase utterly complacent and disinterested in getting their butts in gear. People seem content with their mediocrity, and only get the urge to do art on a rare basis.

Most importantly, this leads me to the conclusion that...

...adding more new members isn't going to be enough. It would be great, yes, but getting them to come is pointless if you do not give them a reason to stay or to contribute. We need content. New people aren't going to make it for us with this environment.

[Vipershark]

That was a very good post, and I agree.

I hate to constantly parrot the same thing without showing anything to back it up, but said content IS coming! It's being worked on right now but I (and the people working with me) can't do it my(our)self.

When the time comes, I'll need the rest of you guys to step up and contribute as well.

The small and stagnant userbase is a huge issue but even if we had 50,000 regular posters, it wouldn't matter if all they did was screw around and stay in the lounge or whatever. We need things to draw people in and keep them here.

[FinalSmash]

Right. More members and posts almost never means better community. I'll take quality over quantity thank you.

[E-Man]

After reading Kosheh's huge post, that actually makes sense. While we did have our booms due to big spiriting projects (I won't deny that the most significant booms are related to the first and third Mario & Luigi games), it is basically the same users who form this little community at its core. While that isn't a bad thing, we always have room for a few more.

Now that I think of it, we did manage to bag several good users to add to our ranks recently, including Iocus, Level 1, Psychospacecow, and even Final Smash once he got with the program. Even though it's not apparent now, this place is still gathering users and some of them turn out becoming actually beneficial to our forum once the sand shifts away.

VGR's community has seriously always been like this and nothing has changed - not even from when I started posting on Pixeltendo. It's always been a tightly-knit community of users - but the "community" in question is what's different.
The only difference is that if you pushed users around on PT they'd push back, and our hostility was what actually drove people off. It was always active because here we were - teenage keyboard jockeys commanding the OS in front of us. Nowadays, we're generally more friendly but instead of pushing people away, we just draw pictures for people we like.

Hm, I can see that. While we do have good causes and reasons when we act hostile to others who provoke us, I would actually agree with anyone who would call anyone out for that kind of of behavior. I know that acting that way is sometimes effective and some of your friends would agree that you "did the right thing" and you were "in the right for acting that way," it still doesn't make it completely OK at its core. Sometimes, there are users who don't mind this kind of abuse, but there are others (myself included) that ended up getting emotionally wounded with various degrees of deepness. Even though I hardly do anything to irritate people on purpose, there are some people who actually yelled at me and even went as far to cut off friendships with me for some of the quirks I had. Obviously, I fought back to keep them in line and prevent them from giving me this treatment, but I ended up getting more hate that way (which lead me to take even more measures).

While I am still not afraid to fight fire with fire at this point, I went on a path since then to severely cut back on that kind of behavior after it not only didn't do so well for me, but also after realizing that I would be no better than the users who actually act aggressive to drive me away. Now, I just act generally positive to anyone regardless of how they treat me and even left my Deviant ART account nearly abandoned to put a stop to coming into contact with more spiteful users when I already had my share to begin with.

[Sevenstitch]

To be honest, I miss a lot of the older users, but mostly for their content

I joined in 2010, but you'll see that my first post was in 2012, although i will admit id been lurking before then

I miss the great stuff that used to pump out of this place, and when everyone was getting along, it was great,
But the overwhelming hostility scared me into not posting for over 2 years, I'd never really used a forum before this one, really dangerous waters to venture for a first timer

The user base back then, and most likely before, was just toxic
I loved looking at Tyvon's and Shawn's and Hunter's and Ridge's and Frario's (the list goes on and on) art work, it was inspiring, but it was always posted with hostility, and responded to as such

Getting rid of spam haul got rid of a lot of that, forcing users to keep their mouths in check, and begin acting like real users
Granted, there were quite a few amusing threads in spamhaul back in the day, this one being one of my favorites, but you know the story, just mean spirited hate in almost the entire section of the forum


I suppose most of us have outgrown this whole spriting thing, even if we love it, and still do it
we aren't 13 year olds anymore; it isnt as new or exciting as it once was, and we just dont have the patience for new guys by and large
mostly because they are 13, and just as unwilling to take real critique as we were

It's hard to parrot the same basic tips and terms to every new guy that posts here with a smile and polite nod
Mostly because 4 out of 5 new posters completely disregard your advice or actually tell you that you are wrong, not them

It's frustrating, but we're gonna have to suck it up, because all of our best posters over the years started as snot-nosed little brats, just like we did
We gotta mold that clay, even if we need to punch it into shape
It was never the Site that made the forum what it is, it was the users, and it's the users' responsibility to make it now, myself included



Man I rambled a lot up there, but what im trying to get at is that I loved the activity back then, but not the overall tone of the forum
And it wasn't until around 2012 that the dust finally started to settle and posting became less of a risk,; unfortunately most of the negative
element was our strongest userbase... The rest of us are gonna have to take those roles back up and get some content pumping through
here again