Over the last month or so my friend and I have been running a painting competition. We’ve got to the point now where we would really like some help with the voting. If you think you have an eye for painting , would anyone mind looking at our google form and voting?
Also, does anyone have any feedback on our way of presenting it or scoring it. Some things we can’t affect, like the way the photos submitted have been taken, but other things we could. Is anything unclear?
Just finished voting. Cool Stuff! I found it really hard to judge some entries though, because the photographs didn’t show the painting well enough and often the camera was too far away to make out details.
Still, very cool!
Also: Do you know by chance which model that Dragon with the Elf Lord is? I’d kinda want to get my hands on one of those! 
Yeah the photos are too small to really judge in many cases (not sure if you can affect that?)
Modelling - as I don’t know what most of the original models are, hard for me to even tell if they are converted or not.
Basing is a very touchy subject for me too, as I really don’t like ornate basing for tabletop usage, but can see it looking great as a “show piece” of course, so tough one to judge for me, depends on what the model is intended for imo.
The other issue is there’s too many entries to consider at once I think, and also such a wide variety of different things it’s very difficult to compare. Especially due to the way human brains work (by comparisons), you’ll naturally start to compare vs the thing you saw more recently too, so such a long list means you’re very unlikely to be able to keep a consistent judging standard in your mind throughout unfortunately.
Yes, it’s the perennial problem of online painting competitions. It’s our third online one now, and this is always the hardest part. It’s hard to stop it being a photography competition, but undoubtedly some people are better at showing their work off in photos than others.
There are other photos in here.
I tried to get people to email them.,rather than Facebook them as the compression is bad, but I suspect google forms might do the same.
The collage photo was a toss up. It’s been hard to get people who are not involved to vote, and giving them a big gallery of photos to loom through and them try not remember which was which is a big ask. It’s hard to balance simplicity with detail,
We do intend to keep doing this every quarter though, so any suggestions on improvements we can make would be appreciated.
Thanks again everyone!
Thanks @Matus! Awesome looking Dragon. 
And yeah I fully understand it s not easy to photograph all models consistently and am not sure how to remedy that either.
What I would have wished for specifically on some entries was the ability to zoom in and take a closer look. So maybe a wide angle shot and a close up for each entry?
One thing you can do is “lean into” the comparison factor, and actually have a “which do you prefer” vote of 2 (or maybe 3-4 max) models and then repeat that to cut down like a knockout playoff kind of thing.
Might not work though depending on what you are after - won’t give you nice ranking scores for example.
Yeah, we used to do a ‘pick your best’ approach, but the people who never got into the top four never really got any feedback. The same few entries always got all the votes. This way we can tell, even the person that came last, where they did well and reassure everyone that they all got rated on average a bit above table top.
That’s a good reason to do the vote on everyone thing yeah.
Maybe there is a way to do both things though? Vote on a smaller number but still add the details, and then gradually cut-down to your “finalists” as it were, even behind the scenes without necessarily letting voters know that they are making a cut?
That might be an option if/when we get more interest. Last time we got 40 people to vote, this time it’s up to 70, which while reasonably small when you consider how many were entrants and us, is still good. I don’t think I could get people to come back twice.
If I get more entrants I could possibly split so there is a form for each category, then you’d have a smaller number to look at at once. Might make comparisons easier.
I could put a link to a gallery in each entry, so I’d still not overwhelm more casual voters with lots of photos in the form itself, but give better res options to people with the time to click through.
The photos themselves, I’m largely limited by what people send me, but in general, as these competitions have gone on, the photos submitted have improved.
Sounds like you’ve got some good ideas!
Good luck!
