The First Competitions

Nectar was one of the first competitions in the ansi scene. It was introduced by Nootropic (now known as Dieznyik) in early 96. The logo competitions were probably the first decent chance for ansi artists to actually compete against other artists. Nectar was ran monthly; at a preset date/time, artists would meet on irc and negotiate the upcoming competition. A title, or name, that the artists would have to draw around would be randomly selected, however, as competitions evolved the 'random' component disappeared :) The artists would have a set time, usually an hour, to jump to their OS and draw an ansi. Artists had to get all their work in before the deadline, by sending it to whoever was running the competition. The working time was usually extended and toyed with, until sufficient entries were collected, so generally the competitions were run under very soft time limits. The runner of the competition would zip up all the entries and redistribute them throughout the channel, and artists would vote. Many voting techniques have been employed, such as: 1. artists voting on their favourite entries 2. the person in charge of the competition selecting their favourite entries 3. no definite winner being selected. The third option would result in a small pak being released with all the entries available for the public to see.

The competitions were originally logo competitions, but after a while ppl starting experimenting with full screen pics. Time limits got extended to 4 hours on occasion, anything so that artists had enough time to draw works of up to 200 lines.

Abuse of the Competitions

The competition idea got out of hand from then on. People who couldn't get any decent ansis for their board decided to run competitions, and get heaps of good artists in on a channel like #darklands. They would end up with a bunch of logos/pics for their board, simply by offering a chance for artists to compete. Sometimes prizes were offered, such as modems, other ansis (drawn by respected members of the scene), etc. Half of the time the prizes never came through.

Basically the whole concept of competitions are almost down the drain now, i, for one am very hesitant about entering any competition, for the fear of being ripped off lurks in the back of my mind. The idea has sort of worn off, the same ppl show up to the same competitions, and it has gradually faded out. With a bit of spark we could generate a huge competition and get things on the road, but the smaller 'on the spot' competitions are uncommon now. Perhaps if someone organised a massive competition a few months in advance, and had it advertised in various artpacks the idea would work out.

The question to ask about the current competitions is, who wins? The person who gets voted #1, and bathes in a little glory for five minutes, before everyone jumps off irc and forgets about it or is the person who runs the competition, and ends up with 50 ansis supporting his board?

oZ96 Demo Competition

Australia's first major demo competition was held in Sydney in early 1996. Demo Competitions have been running for more than five years now, but oZ96 would have been one of the first to feature an ansi division. All the local ansi doodlers had a chance to compete in a new ansi division, part of the graphics competition. The rules were laid out by Maeve Wolf, and were pretty basic for the first competition. Ripping was allowed, ie comic book rips, but it wasn't very encouraged. BINARY files were allowed, so pictures of 160 chrs wide were possible. As with any division of a Demo Party, artists were required to censor any links to their own name, as to make voting as fair as possible. However, one thing had been ignored however: the voters.

That was the biggest problem, the voters had no idea what ansi was. It's not too hard for an ansi artist to pick what a good ansi is, but for some reason the voters at oZ96, a selection of asm coders, dp2 artists and screamtracker 3 musicians, had no idea. i guess it had to do with the fact that they didn't have much experience with ansi. A somms or an ld! pic would most likely end up with a ranking not equal to our, ansi artists, expectations.

The best method of voting for an ansi competition, considering the fact that most scene ppl aren't aware of the qualities of good ansis, is to have a panel of judges that are experienced in the field. This would raise the problems of biased voting, but if you keep all artwork unsigned, the problem shouldn't exist.