[Kamal]

Hello everyone,
I'm pleased to announce a cool new Digital Arts Festival

We are putting a call out to all digital artists to submit their work for a digital art exhibit. All submissions are due before the end of August. Yes, the deadline is fast approaching!!

All submissions will be juried by:
Dhabih Eng (The founder of the Sijun Forums and Lead Artist for Valve's Half-Life 2)
Jeff DuLong (Lead Environment Artists for Microsoft Games Studios)
Ruth Caspary (Lead Texture Artists for SEGA Secret Level)

These distinguished artists will be looking through each submission very carefully and will be responsible for picking the very best pieces for the exhibit. Of those selected they will pick 1st, 2nd, & 3rd places which will each be rewarded cash prizes of up to $1,000 along with extensive media coverage and exposure.

Submissions are $15 per entry. Start out by registering for free here: www.redmondartsfestival.com. After you register go to the "artist" section and select your desired number of submissions.

We look forward to seeing your work

Sincerely,
Kamal Siegel
Redmond Arts Commissioner
www.redmondartsfestival.com

[netflow]

Some big names on the Jury, can't wait to see the submissions!!

[Sumaleth]

You have to pay to enter? Am I reading that right?
_________________
Art Links Archive -- Artists and Tutorials

[gLitterbug]

[Ian Jones]

So this looked kind of exciting for the first few paragraphs... then the entry fee...........................

[Sumaleth]

It seems a bit weird. Never seen a pay-for-entry art competition before, and the prizes are lower than average too. It's like, can you spend some of your free time making content for our festival, oh and you'll have to give us some money so we can afford to look at your art. I'd have thought it a scam except our own namesake and benefactor is a judge.
_________________
Art Links Archive -- Artists and Tutorials

[Kamal]

Hey everyone, I appreciate all your comments and concerns.
Entry fees are common for art competitions such as these, especially when prize money is involved.

As some of you have noticed, we did reduce the price to $15 to encourage a wider audience of artist to submit their work. Our goal is to have a diverse body of digital art present at the event to show the world what an incredible medium this is and also to create a platform for artists to shine.

We're putting on this festival as a service to the community and to artists. To learn more, here are the three goals we plan to accomplish with the event: (if you're short on time, goal #3 is for you)




Goals of the Redmond Digital Arts Festival

Goal #1: Educate & Inspire

All presentations, exhibits, workshops and demos are designed to inspire and educate all those that attend. And in order to appeal to a broad audience we designed the program to include cutting edge content that is presented in a simple and approachable format (current content presented using a common language). This way a novice and a seasoned veteran can sit side by side, understand what is being said and both become inspired and learn something new in the process. The implications may be unique to each individual, but that in our opinion adds to the richness of the event and conversation taking place.

Goal #2: Entertain & Amuse

Other than the presentations and workshops already mentioned, the event will feature a digital dance party and a movie night. Both are meant to be pure and solid digital fun. The dance party will primarily consist of dancing to digital music in a dark interior setting lit by party-style lighting with black (blue) lights. The event will also feature various glowing interactive digital installation pieces which will be placed on the perimeter of the dance floor so that people can take a break from dancing but continue immersing themselves in the world of digital arts. We�re also hoping to have some of the classic arcade games available to play along with the modern day consoles out in the market today. Digital portals will also be available.

Goal #3: Expose the Arts

This event is not to be confused with events like Siggraph, GDC (Game Developers Conference), or Penny Arcade. Our event doesn�t focus on products or technology. The focus is art, and specifically art created digitally or digitally assisted. The digital arts are truly an emerging art form and unfortunately the ever featured advances in technology seem to cast a shadow over the incredible innovations artists are making in their own fields. Therefore it was really important to us that this event put the spotlight on the artists for a change and create a platform for their voices to be heard. When looking at the relationship technology has with art, we should never lose sight of the fact that technology is there to support the creative impulse. You can spend a lot of time arguing over which kind of pen is better but at the end of the day what matters is the marks the artist makes with these and not what pen the marks came from.

[gLitterbug]

[sweetums]

While the argument for a fee sounds all well and good, Announcing something like this with LESS THAN 30 DAYS for submission, AND charging a fee...Well, let's just say it's not the most professional announcement I've come across...

There is NO mention of insurance for works in the display, and "on display at various locations throughout the festival," is not exactly reassuring as regards security...

What is a "kylobyte?"

Your requirement that all artwork must be created digitally is vague, but even more so with the specification that "If your work is selected to be shown in the digital art exhibit, we require that you supply us with artwork that is ready to hang...images may be no larger than 250 kylobytes"

Even at monitor resolution of 72dpi, a 250Kb image is going to be pretty crude, and if you are talking a print resolution of 300 dpi, well, a 250Kb limitation would leave you with a bunch of terribly tiny works...lol!

This thing reads like Amateur Hour. I'd think it a hoax except it has Dha as a judge...Bet he wasn't told many of the deets...
_________________
Life is short. Expect nothing, enjoy everything.
That which does not kill you should make you wiser...

[Kamal]

Swetums,

1) The 250 kilobyte limit is simply for the uploads during the submission process. Obviously since your final piece should be printed and ready for hanging, it's not expected you'd be sending us a 300 dpi digital file for us to print. Does that make sense?

2) We realize 30 days is not a long time to upload your files. But hey, it's less time you spend waiting to hear the results right? I personally don't like it when I submit a piece of art and have to wait many months to find out if I made it in or not. Uploading your work takes a few minutes. How would additional time help you submit work? Since we're not asking for work that has a particular theme or belongs to a particular genre, we didn't expect people to be creating custom pieces for the event.

3) The requirements are vague intentionally because we want to attract a diverse body of work created digitally.

4) We're not offering any insurance. Otherwise the submission price would have to be much higher.

I hope this answers your questions Swetums. Thanks for your comments.
Kamal