Ten Ton Hammer: Who
judges the art?
style="font-weight: bold;">Joe: Producers, Art
directors, Lead Artists, Creative Directors--Fred
does a good job finding a good mix of seasoned, highly respected
artists and developers. This year's judges haven't been announced yet,
but you can see what some of last year's judges had to say here:
http://www.gameartisans.org/dominancewar/2/judges/index.htm
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Peter Bohme
Ten Ton Hammer: What kind
of support does this contest have from the
actual industry community?
style="font-weight: bold;">Joe: Well, on a
company-wide level this year is the first year that
Dominance War
has sponsors. So far 38 Studios, Blizzard, Infinity Ward,
Ensemble Studios, Saber Interactive, EA Mobile, and Maxon have signed
up to lend a hand, and hopefully that list grows next year! On a more
individual level, with the size of this year's contest being as big as
it is, I'd say it's pretty tough to be an artist in the game industry
and NOT hear about it. As a "Publicity Manager" I'd love to take credit
for that--but I think it has more to do with how chatty artists
are--were always wanting to share cool art and show off our best stuff.
Often times artists are unable to really show off what they've done
because of NDAs, so the Dominance War lends itself perfectly as an
outside-of-work, just-for-fun outlet for sharing. And after all, what
game artist WOULDN'T want one of those cintiqs? So, to answer your
question, professional game artists are not only watching from the
sidelines, but a lot of them are joining right in on the fun. Veterans,
students, hobbyists, freelancers--Dominance War is a pretty nice blend
of all of the above.
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A list of all the
Dominance War Sponsors.
Ten Ton Hammer: As an
artist, what's the best part about competitions
like these?
style="font-weight: bold;">Joe: This is an easy
one--there's always a number of top-tier artists
that enter Dominance War that everyone on the boards is familiar with.
These guys are sort of mini-celebrities, and everyone flocks to check
out their stuff--which is usually quite awesome. However, the best part
of these contests is when a top-tier artist joins up that NO ONE has
heard of. For whatever reason these artists slipped through the
online-community cracks or never felt like showing off or contributing.
Perhaps some of these people have been working in the industry for
years--but they never felt the incentive to build up an online
presence. There's always a couple of them every Dominance War--usually
they get dragged into the contest by coworkers and they completely wow
everyone. It's one thing to be amazed by an entry by someone you know
delivers--it's another thing to open up a stranger's thread/entry and
be completely floored off-guard. :-)
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Petr Nasirov
Ten Ton Hammer: If a
company wants to be involved with next year's
Dominance War, who should they contact and what does their sponsorship
give them?
style="font-weight: bold;">Joe: Well, Fred
Hultqvist would be the best person to contact. You can
email him at "fredh [at] dominancewar [dot] com". This last year the
sponsorship was broken into tiers, with the highest one including logo
and link placement on Dominance War splash pages and various subpages,
"official sponsor" status, which is usually referenced whenever anyone
writes in magazines or online. In addition, all sponsor logos are shown
on any event signage and posters, the sponsors receive a one year
job-posting service on gamartisans.org, access to
href="http://www.gameartisans.org">gameartisans.org's
beta employer functions, (which include all sorts of filtering based
off of member locations, experience, software preferences,
availability, etc.), and the ability to view the final submitted
entries before the public. That last one is pretty key, because if a
company hasn't been following all the individual threads, they can
still get the scoop on talent! Oh, also, sponsors were encouraged to
write an 'opening paragraph' about themselves and why they decided to
sponsor Dominance War. All-in-all, it's a pretty fancy list. Hopefully
next year we can offer even more!
Ten Ton Hammer: Do you
have any favorites in this year's contest?
style="font-weight: bold;">Joe: Oh, now there's
a question that could get me in trouble! *winks*
There's far too many potential winners to go listing them all, but that
hasn't stopped people from trying. A couple of 'spy threads' have
started up--basically they are discussions on who's doing exceptional
work on competing forums. It's not really 'spying', since cross-forum
chatter is what the contest is all about, but the name seems to have
stuck. There's also the official thumbnail gallery of all the entries,
right on
DominanceWar.com.
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Taehoon Oh
Ten Ton Hammer: When will
we know who the winners are?
Joe: With so
many entries to judge it'll take a long time. The contest
ends April 12th and I imagine judging will take five or six weeks at
least after that.
Ten Ton Hammer: Finally,
is there anything that we haven't covered that
you'd like to discuss about Dominance War?
style="font-weight: bold;">Joe: It's not too
late to enter yet! Also, when Fred isn't busy running
Dominance War, he runs GameArtisans.org. At GA there are smaller, month
long competitions and even week-long mini-competitions. There are also
showcases, artist galleries, a big brother mentor-ship program,
tutorials, and a lot of nice people. It's always good to see new faces
too!
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Vitaliy Naymushin
Ten Ton Hammer: Thanks
again, Joe!
Editor's Note: If you'd
like to see how the forum posts actually look and how
participation and critique is structured, check out these 38 Studios
artists that have entered this years competition!
style="font-style: italic;">
Billy Ahlswede --
href="http://www.gameartisans.org/forums/showthread.php?t=2953&page=1">http://www.gameartisans.org/forums/
showthread.php?t=2953&page=1
style="font-style: italic;">
Minoh Kim --
href="http://www.gameartisans.org/forums/showthread.php?t=2665">http://www.gameartisans.org/forums/
showthread.php?t=2665
style="font-style: italic;">
Joe Mirabello --
http://www.gameartisans.org/forums/
showthread.php?t=2608
style="font-style: italic;">
Josh Singh --
href="http://www.gameartisans.org/forums/showthread.php?t=2366">http://www.gameartisans.org/forums/
showthread.php?t=2366
style="font-style: italic;">
Damarcus Holbrook --
http://www.gameartisans.org/forums/
showthread.php?t=3176
style="font-style: italic;">
What do you think of the
href="http://www.dominancewar.com">Dominance War
contest and it's artwork? Would
you want to enter?
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?p=222597#post222597">Let
us know on the forums!