Hello everyone, I hope your day went well and those past few months have been kind to you.
It’s time for a new round of the CCC (Character Compounding Contest).
I’ve also something to ask you regarding the CCC and its voting system, I’ll explain everything in the second post.
If you're new to the concept, click here to learn more about it
What is the CCC
The CCC is an art contest where the participants create portraits for Fire Emblem characters to expand the FE Fangame Essentials, a resource that compiles Fire Emblem-related assets, including portraits, battle animations, music amongst others to create Fire Emblem content or rom-hacking in general.
The artists may represent the featured characters we’re used to in many ways, whether they’ll be their classic attire or re-designs including but not limited to de-ageing or ageing the characters, giving them new outfits or attributes, genderbending them, cosplaying them, etc… as long as they are recognizable and keep defining features of said characters.
This contest isn’t targeted towards a specific audience. Despite being a contest, it is very casual and everyone is encouraged to partake in this contest, no matter their skill level and experience, the main goal is to have fun and create portraits for the Community to use and enjoy!
Rules
1. All submissions to this contest will be F2E! This contest involves expanding the resources available for the Portrait Repository, so this is mandatory.
2.
Artists may create custom battle animations, music, map sprites, or any form of art related to the featured characters, however, only posts with a portrait will be eligible for the vote.
3.
Artists may create an alternate outfit/design/etc for one or multiple characters, if they wish.
4. Artists may submit multiple designs, if they wish. They will all count toward their one submission vote. (Voters will vote on all of the works they created at once)
5. No pre-existing artwork! The point of this contest is to expand the repository. It would be unfair to compete against artwork that may have had weeks or months of editing work put into it.
6. Eye/mouth frames are preferable, but optional. They aren’t necessary, but it would be awesome if they would be included!
7.
Characters must either be from the main Fire Emblem titles or one of the Fire Emblem spinoffs, such as Heroes.
8. All characters must be sprited in GBA format!
(Hackbox size is not necessary)
(Halfbodies/fullbodies are authorised)
(Please try to keep the colour count at or below 16, that would be great)
9. Submissions must at least somewhat resemble the original character!
10.
First and Second Place each pick at least one character for the next round, following a theme set by the first place winner
then the community gets to vote on the last character(s) they also want to see!
Schedule
The artists may submit their work until one month after each round is announced.
Then, the following week, everyone can vote for their favorite submissions.
The voting period is then followed by a break of a week before a new round starts, meaning a round lasts one month and two weeks in total, but the deadline will be reiterated further down on the post.
For those of you who aren’t quite sure about what sorts of designs you could make, you can click on each characters names’ to access their wiki-pages, complete with alternate designs and artwork.
Reach into your imagination, and the first place could be yours!
The deadline is December 1st.
To not miss any future rounds, you can now join the CCC Discord Server, on there, I announce every new round, voting period and results.
You can also vote for the last character(s) to be featured in the next round here
I noticed and imagined some people weren’t participating in the CCC as they were intimidated by the work of other contestants and/or thought they had no chance of winning. Even though, the CCC is a contest, as mentioned in the explanations of the concept, it’s casual and everyone is incentivised to participate.
That’s why I thought of splitting the votes into two categories, by experience, allowing for less experienced artists to win and encouraging more people to participate.
Everyone can choose to be part of one group or the other, even though winners of previous rounds will instantly partake in the more experienced group, assuring a new winner in the first group each round no matter what.
Please let me know what you think of that idea by answering the following polls.
Would you like to split the votes between two polls, one for more experienced artists and the other one for growing artists?
Yes
No
0voters
If so, the winner of which poll should get the first place benefits of choosing both a character and a theme?
The winner of the growing artists should have the privilege of choosing a character and a theme while the winner of the more experienced artists choose a character fitting the theme
The winner of the more experienced artists should have the privilege of choosing a character and a theme while the winner of the growing artists choose a character fitting the theme
0voters
It would be effective from the round starting in January 2025 and onward.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask me anything!
how would the differentiation between experienced and growing artists be done?
Segmenting based on “quality” of work might lead to another issue.
A growing artist can definitely produce a portrait similar in quality to an experienced artist, so basing it on the quality of work might not be effective.
I saw a message on discord by trybel talking about separating based on splices vs full custom, which is probably the best way to go imo
though that is also a bit difficult to do because some splices have so much clean-up that they essentially become custom…
Yes, I understand, I can’t do it based on “quality” as it might be subjective.
That’s why I thought each artist could choose themselves in which category they would best fit.
By default, I would consider anyone as a growing artist, but if the artist wishes to consider themselves a more experienced artist, they are encouraged to do so and make it more fair to the growing artists.
However, if someone has already won a CCC, they will be part of the more experienced artists, although, after a few rounds, they can go back to being part of the growing artist category if they desire.
Furthermore, I will also look at the artist’s background, if they already have made a lot of portraits in the past and are a well-established artist within the community, I’d advise them to be part of the more experienced artist group.
I hope I was able to properly answer your question.
If a growing artist reaches the top 3 in a row, maybe 2 or 3 CCCs, they should be in the experienced group. An experienced artist who has not reached the top 3 for a while, could go back to the growing artist group if desired. An artist in the growing group, if they have won the CCCs at least 2 times in a short amount of time, should be in the experienced group as well.
The first place without competitors doesn’t have much value, and sometimes I don’t feel happy enough.I would rather be at the bottom if I can see other excellent works.
Personally, my initial goal is to win the event and then see how everyone draws my favorite characters in the next round.
I agree with Redbean here, sometimes the competitors are what makes a round fun
initially I planned to join the rounds again but exempt myself in the voting rounds again (like what I did with Pent’s round iirc) so that I could participate as well per se but to also let other’s win
I present an actual submission: General Camus. A splice by me. I hope this looks enough like Camus. Yeah. I am rather inexperienced but hey, getting better at art takes time so hey I might as well try to do something small.
Resources used
And while this does not have mouth, eye or mini sprites yet the pallette and sprite size is adjusted to be importable.
Btw I now think that maybe doing a single vote is better. You know, we don’t overcomplicate it and if we do make two polls maybe making the experienced winner the one who gets to decide the theme gives people an actual motivation to consider themselves experienced.
I couldn’t decide which one looked better so I made both. And then I looked at them ingame and the difference is almost impossible to see.
Anyway, Perceval vaguely Cipher-ified (I have no idea what I’m doing)
Arden (FE4)
Douglas (FE6)
Meg (FE10)