Contest Triathlon Challenge #3: Transformation!

Didn't make it for the last round :/

Congrats and kudos to all of you who pushed through to the end! I look forward to seeing everyone's creative transformations!!

 

Congrats to everyone who finished. I had to bow out of this one as this week just ended up being to hectic for me.

 

Congrats to everyone who finished - and to those who almost did, too !

I guess we can all agree that this last challenge was really tough. I'm glad we finished, though.

Will we get a badge for all the successful members that completed all 3 challenges? We certainly deserve it

 

If we finished but were not able to submit, can we share our gifs here? I'd love to be able to at least show off what I learned to do!

 

I managed to get mine in on time, thank goodness! Thank you all for the support and encouragement here and to the mods for all the work that goes into these challenges!! That was one whirlwind of a month, congratulations everyone!

 

I'm so excited to see what everyone did for this prompt! I think there's so many different ways of interpreting it. I got mine in yesterday afternoon and promptly bailed in an attempt to destress.
I'm really glad I managed to figure out how to make reasonable quality gifs by the end of it. Now to just cross my fingers and hope that there wasn't any issues and my entry did, in fact, submit properly.
Good luck everyone!!

 

Congrats to everyone who tried this challenge! Have another slice celebratory cake with me.

I have to admit that I'm excited to try and make more gifs now. Hehe. I was so scared when I saw the prompt, but it turned out to be a lot of fun (and frustration as well, but also fun).
And I can really relate to those of you who are feeling under the weather. I hope you all feel better soon! I've been trying to ignore feeling sick since week two's challenge...ugh.

 

Me too! I feel my gif for this challenge was still a bit clunky but I'd love to try more, maybe even proper stop-motion so long as I had time and no deadlines

 

Hehe, yeah. No deadline would certainly ease the pressure!

 

Entries are up! Amazing job everyone! Forty-two people managed to finish the entire Triathlon! Voting closes at the end of the month which is Wednesday.

We would love to see the entries that didn't make it by deadline, so please do share them here after the contest voting closes.

 

OMG you guys, I am literally awestruck by everyone's creativity. I want to vote for all of you. Awesome entries!

 

I'm so impressed with how talented and creative everyone is! Congratulations to everyone who managed to complete the whole Triathlon!

 

Everyone's entries were so awesome! I've voted but man was it hard to choose.

 

Can't wait to see the results! Everyone did such an amazing job!

 

So many great entries, was so hard to pick my votes! Congrats everyone for completing the challenge!

 

(I've only just come back home today) Congrats to everyone who finished the last round! I also want to see the animations that didn't make it in time. The entries for round 3 are fantastic! I watched them on the bus, big smile on my face.

 

I would like to personally thank each and every one of you talented creators who completed this year's triathalon! I can't begin to tell you how much joy it gave me to linger over all the entries for the various stages, working hard to choose my votes (almost impossible because every entry was so wonderful!) I truly admire you all!!!

 

TBH it makes me a little sad that "artistic merit of final photograph" was entirely removed without notice, and materials and narrative skill weren't really referenced. Seems rough on everyone involved to work for a week on criteria that turn out to be pretty different afterwards? Still, incredible entries and I had to look through the thread so many times to figure out voting!

 

Yep, I noticed the voting criteria seemed a little...umm...tweaked...from what I was expecting. Gorgeous work though, Amazing entries, I am totally blown away. I wish there were 20 prizes at least, maybe more, because you can tell everybody worked hard and came up with such creative entries every step of the way. I am just pleased to be an "also ran" among these unbelievable "triathletes!"

 

That was an oversight on my part and for that I apologize. Several different mods were working on constructing this and I missed that the form didn't match the original criteria.
If we were to change the voting form, we'd have to toss all the voted that have been tallied so far and start over, with a delay in announcing the winner to allow for additional voting time. This isn't impossible and we can be flexible about it, but it depends on how strongly you think it may impact the results.

 

Well...like, honestly, it was um. More strongly disheartening to me than I expressed with that post? Like...everyone, mods and competitors, puts an intense amount of work into this for three weeks, and, y'know. Nobody knew that their final still photos wouldn't really count, when they were listed as something that would. Nobody knew that their goal with the transformation was to be "beautiful" rather than well crafted, using creative materials, and fitting to the doll's theme. Nobody knew while they were that, after it was emphasized that the gif should have a narrative to it, it turned out story was irrelevant to the final criteria, and only appeal would be taken into consideration? It...does seem like a big enough difference that it will impact the results a lot? It would be fair to have a competition where people know at the start that the criteria will be randomized and mysterious, but it does feel a lot less fair to have everyone working towards specific criteria and then be judged on a different set entirely.
On the other hand I don't, well, want votes taken away from people?? Like I said, EVERYONE worked their rear ends off and there are so many amazing entries and it's not like whoever has have been voted for so far somehow didn't deserve it. Voting itself kinda takes work, haha, we all have to take notes while looking at everyone's entries. And that's extra work for you guys having already been run ragged running anniversary stuff, and it might make the general forum population more likely to not notice or skip out on voting, and then everyone kinda misses out.
I really don't know what's best or fair to do, honestly? I very much appreciate everyone's effort on this. Do a lot of other people participating and/or voting feel strongly about what happened?

Thank you for acknowledging and explaining what happened, also. That makes me feel a lot better in and of itself.

 

While I agree that it is a little disheartening that some of the criteria was changed/left out I really do not want to have to go through the voting process again since it was so hard for me to decide on who to vote for. If anything maybe it would be a good idea to just learn from this experience and try to keep all of this in mind for future triathlons?

 

As a non-contestant, when I was voting I took note of beautiful images and interesting storylines, as well as the regular voting critieria. I bet other voters did too. So I don't think your efforts were wasted. Hope that makes you feel a little better?

 

I agree, it's probably not worth it to do anything drastic at this point. I prefer the original criteria.. it was more thought provoking and seemed to focus more on the skill and concept of the project. The new criteria being different is sort of weird.. just because while working on entries I don't know if we were necessarily brainstorming what transformation could be "most surprising" or "most beautiful." I took this challenge as an opportunity to explore and express my character's story further, and had a lot of fun with it! I think at this point it's not worth restarting voting or anything like that. If it's possible, maybe add in a few more of the old criteria and give people a couple more points to use to cast those votes if they want ? Might be too complicated to do.. either way, I thoroughly enjoyed the competition and thank the mods greatly for all the hard work!!

 

I agree that the new criteria is incredibly frustrating, because a lot of people worked hard towards the criteria we were told to expect (like my transformation definitely isn't beautiful or surprising, but I think I did an excellent job with the narritive and still images), but this far into voting I think maybe it's more trouble than it's worth to scrap all the old votes, open new voting criteria, and communicate to everyone who already voted that they have to vote again.
May I suggest an honerable mention or two for this round instead? People who the mods feel did excellently on the old criteria but missed out on votes due to the voting category change? They wouldn't get the prizes or anything (unless y'all think like accessories or a similar prize to the mini contests would be feasible?), but I feel many people would appreciate acknowledgement for the hard work they did towards crafting a narrative, I know I would.

 

I agree with all of this, but I would like to say really if you entered, you deserve an honorable mention. During this triathlon I've been blown away by everyone's entries and wondering how my entries could even come close to holding up next to all the others, but I did love how my entries turned out and I've gotten to know a lot more about my doll's personality than I had before and made some cute clothes/accessories/props, so all in all I feel like its been win/win for me.
Everyone who entered this year give yourself a pat on the back! We all did amazing!

 

Oh, that's an excellent idea, fairithilien. I like the concept of honorable mentions. ^__^

 

I can definitely see how this change is a blow to people who crafted closely to the criteria. I would say it would be more fair to start over if not for one thing that's already been mentioned- getting the word out that those who have already voted need to vote again, and hoping that they actually put forth the effort to do so.

I don't know. I'm going to withhold from voting until I know whether it's changing or not. I actually do go through and take notes on which entries I like for which criteria before narrowing it down to one each, so the outcome of this snafu will definitely impact how I vote.

 

I dont think the criteria would change the votes that much. I dont know if redoing the votes would change the out come that much either. I sont know. In the end i chose who i wanted to vote for because i liked theres, i thought they did an amazing job and there gif made me smile then i fit them in the criteria on the voting form. I would hope others would do the same. As a voter you can vote how ever you want and for who ever you want.
However i do think honorable mentions would be nice i know i would have apericated that in the years before. I think we all did a great job and every one can see that! This was alot of hard work having the things you made is a win in of its self i know ill treasure them for the rest of my life lol

 

The Moderators have discussed and we will add a fifth vote point. The phrasing of the questions will be adjusted to reflect the original intent (they were fairly similar, just better phrased) and the current vote tally will be retained. There is still half of the voting period left, so this is the best compromise we can execute. Thank you for your understanding!

 

I was in such a hurry to finish my entry -I thought i got the original criteria wrong when I saw the criteria for the voting were different. I don't know … even if it might be fair to start a new voting, I don't think the results would change much. There are so many entries, and each one is great in its own way. I find it hard to pick out only four anyway. I gues a lot of voters will simply choose their faves anyway.

 

Does this mean those of us who already voted get to go back with a 5th vote?

 

I'm sorry to be that person but I really don't feel like that's a fair compromise at all...

 

What about allowing people to vote again, and their previous vote will be voided if they do so? That way people without the energy to go through again don't have to, but those of us who really want to can get our 5 votes and vote on the new criteria.

 

No, sorry. We'd have to delete the existing votes or allow voters to vote more than once and neither of those options is preferable. We will do our best to promote the voting and bring in more new voters. Contestants are always allowed to promote the voting threads on their own blogs as long as they don't solicit votes for their own entries.

 

Not sure I am understanding this correctly, do we have to go through and revote for everything for challenge three or can those of us who already voted just vote for one more entry?

 

There is no way to allow those who have already voted to vote for the fifth entry using the current software. I can construct an entirely separate voting form with that one question on it for those who want to put in that fifth vote for the best still photograph and send a mass invite to those who have already voted.

 

I would really appreciate that. Because otherwise it's unfair to all the voters who voted already to get one less vote than all the late voters.

 

I think that might be confusing for those who already voted.
What if they don't remember who they gave their first 4 votes and accidentally vote one more time for the same person?

To be fair, it would be necessary to start the voting again with the same questions for everyone.

However, I personally don't think that this would be necessary. From my experience people don't pay that much attention to the questions, they usually pick their favorites and just fit them somehow into the categories. Also I guess a lot of voters will be lost, because they won't take the time to vote once again.

 

That sounds like a lot of work for just a single vote, I'm okay with only having the four but if the extra does come about I will still vote for a fifth entry. I'd vote for all of them if I could.
Thanks to all of you for all the hard work you've put into this event to make it fun/exciting for the rest of us. Even with the occasional snafu (both online and off) I am so glad that participated in the triathlon and am proud of myself for making it through all three challenges in spite of a few points where I debated on dropping out.

 

The edited voting topic says voters have five points to divide among four different criteria. Shouldn't that be five criteria?

 

Members who placed their votes before the fifth question was added may vote for their favorite still photo here.
I will manually combine those votes with the votes on the other tally. It seems unlikely that people would have already forgotten the four they had already voted for only a day ago, so in the event that one of the 70 potential people who comes back to vote again picks the same entry I'll contact them.

 

Can I just say, thank you so much for all of the hard work you've put into this! You've really gone to great lengths to make this right.

 

Yes, thank you mods!

 

I tried to place my extra vote & got a message "You have exceeded the number of responses allowed per user for this form." Did that happen for anyone else?

 

i got the same thing

 

Thank you mods for going above and beyond with this

 

Your vote went through, I just need to program the form to take you to a different page after so it doesn't think you are trying to vote again.

ETA: fixed

 

thank you for the super fast reply

 

Can I place a vote for X and include a note asking to replace it with Y if it turns out I already voted for X?
I can't remember if I ended up voting for this specific one or not. I had a giant list of my favourites overall but not all got votes.

 

Hehe, yeah...I got confused on if I voted for someone twice too...hopefully I did it right.

 

Thank you!

 

@Arekushia @Lady Ravenswood Neither of you duplicated your votes.

 

Great, thank you!!

 

Thank you!

 

Thank you, this really seems like the best compromise under the circumstances.

 

Thanks again for all the hard work that has been put into this! It has been a very fun experience and I'm looking forward to next year's festivities already!

 

Got my votes in, finally... you guys sure didn't make it easy on me! Whoever wins this thing will definitely have earned it.

 

Voted! That was difficult! Good job to everyone and best of luck!

 

Everyone did amazing! I wanted to vote for a lot more than I did! Everyonre are so talented!
Thank you for an amazing triathlon, it was really an honor to even be a small part of it!