gamer_extreme_101
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The entries are in (After a small cloud of confusion), and now is the time to take one more hard look at them and pick your favourite! But first, the rules:

1) Don't judge based on picture quality. Not everyone is willing to spend $2000 to get the greatest camera every made.

2)I ask that you judge based on creativity and originality.

3)People who submitted entries should vote their own as "10". I'm sure you all know that by now.

4)In the unlikely event of a tie for any place, the winner will be the person with the most "10" votes. If there is a tiw for "10" votes, it will go to "9", and so on until there is a winner.

The poll closes Local Time:03-31-2005 at 07:00 PM, so that gives you just under a week.

Feel free to give your comments out at anytime. I'm sure everyone would love to hear them. I do ask, however, that your comments don't mention who you voted the highest or what rating you gave an entry. The polls are anonymous for a reason, you know.

Finally, I'd like to thank all the people that entered. I'm glad to see that this contest didn't fizzle out.

-Patrick

[Edited by gamer_extreme_101 at Local Time:03-25-2005 at 04:03 PM]

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AlefBet
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I have arranged them in a table for easier voting here if you like.

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gamer_extreme_101
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AlefBet wrote:
I have arranged them in a table for easier voting here if you like.

Awesome! Much easier to look at the entries now. And if a passing moderator could sticky this thread, that would be great!

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eytanz
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Those of you who get messages by email will note that I just deleted another commentary message and reposted. Basically, I figured I should arrange my commentary differently.

In my mind, the roaches fall into three catagories:

"Unchallenging" - There are two roaches in this catagory. Agaricus5's roach looks really cool, but, but, seriously, legos. The goal was to make roaches out of unusual building materials and legos are designed for building. Clayton's roach is also very cool looking but a bit silly in my opinion - basically, it's not really a challenge to remake a low-res bitmap on a square grid.

"Simple" - These are the roaches which basically involve the use of 1 type of building material, which is generally used to form the outline. These include techant and rowrow's roaches. Of these, rowrow's roach is a bit unproportional, but it's more imaginative that techant's.

"Complex" - These are the roaches which are not outlines, and are made of different materials. Rabscuttle's roach is probably the most original concept but unfortunately doesn't really resemble the picture much at all. MeckMeck's roach is probably pretty cool, but I'm not really sure because I can barely see it on that carpet. If it was on a solid background, it may well have been my #1 favorite. As it is, that goal goes to vylycyn who, in my opinion, has a roach nearly as cool looking as Agaricus's, but made from far more interesting materials.

---

Note that the categories, for me, were not in a simple hierarchy - in other words, I didn't give all complex roaches better scores than simple roaches. I gave scores based on how much I liked the way the roach looked, then deducted points from the "unchallenging" roaches and gave bonus points to the "complex" roaches. I'm not going to reveal my actual scores, of course.

---

Sharp-eyed readers may note that I'm not including my own roach in this discussion. That's for two reasons - I'm very biased, and I'm not sure if I count it as simple or complex. On the one hand, it's pretty similar in concept to techant's, but on the other hand, it's filled in, uses beans that have 3 differnet shapes (actually, 2 types of beans and split peas), and, I'm pretty sure, was much harder to make than any of the simple ones.

For what it's worth, trying to be objective, I'd rank my own roach #2 after vylycyn (or #3 after vylycyn and what I imagine MeckMeck's would have looked like if it wasn't on a striped carpet). Not sure how succesful on the objectivity I am there, though.


[Edited by eytanz at Local Time:03-25-2005 at 03:08 PM]

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Mattcrampy
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I gave techant an extra point because he used M&Ms, the official candy of DROD.net.

Matt

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agaricus5
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eytanz wrote:
Those of you who get messages by email will note that I just deleted another commentary message and reposted. Basically, I figured I should arrange my commentary differently.

I noticed it, and replied, but discovered you deleted yours, so I deleted mine too (since it wouldn't have made much sense by itself).

"Unchallenging" - There are two roaches in this catagory. Agaricus5's roach looks really cool, but, but, seriously, legos. The goal was to make roaches out of unusual building materials and legos are designed for building.

I wouldn't say "unchallenging", since making it was certainly not easy. Perhaps "unoriginal" might be a better descriptor, since Lego, I agree, is meant for building, so it isn't really a "novel" material to make a roach out of. However, if you read Gamer's posts nore closely, the voting criteria were originality and creativity. I don't really want to leave too many of my (subjective and biased) opinions floating around, since this might affect the voting, but since you've voiced such a strong set of opinions, I feel obliged to reply. Although not exactly original, making the roach out of Lego was certainly not an easy 20-30 minute job. In fact, it took 30 minutes to plan (I had to increase its resolution when scaling it up), 35 to make the base outline (it kept falling apart at first), 30 to fill the rest of bottom layer, 20 to build the next layer, and then another 30 to finish the main body. I spent 5 minutes on the eyes, trying out several gradients and positions, and then 30 minutes planning and designing the antennae, which were rather tricky to attach. Overall, it took 3-4 hours (including breaks) to build, and while not "unusual" or "unexpected", I can say it's quite unfair to call it "uncreative" or "unchallenging" to build.

My votes also included a similar originality component to yours, but I also voted on the creativity of actually putting together the model as well, as well as how closely the model resembled a roach.

MeckMeck's roach is probably pretty cool, but I'm not really sure because I can barely see it on that carpet. If it was on a solid background, it may well have been my #1 favorite.

I liked it quite a lot, since it was quite compicated, and needed a bit of unusual preparation to build, but I don't think it was exactly difficult to build, once the materials were all obtained, since it's just an outline made of writing equipment and dice, filled with paper shreddings.

As it is, that goal goes to vylycyn who, in my opinion, has a roach nearly as cool looking as Agaricus's, but made from far more interesting materials.

I also thought it was the best looking (ignoring my own), but while it was certainly creative with the materials, it's not exactly hard to see that a folded piece of thick clothing can be, with little effort, shaped into a vague roach-shape, and that putting one on top of another can make a lump that's vaguely roach-shaped. Similarly, the headphones are curved, and so roughly the shape of the antennae, so it wouldn't have been hard to see how it was incorporated into the model. I did however, like the use of the exam papers to make the eye, which was quite unusual (I believe that's what the yellow things were), and also the belt to create the wing case division along the middle.

On the one hand, it's pretty similar in concept to techant's, but on the other hand, it's filled in, uses beans that have 3 differnet shapes (actually, 2 types of beans and split peas), and, I'm pretty sure, was much harder to make than any of the simple ones.

This seems to go against your criteria for voting, since you focused on the actual materials and not the actual difficulty or creativity required to turn those objects into roaches. Using what you've said, the effort required to build it would not be relevant to how you would classify or rate it.

Also you might want to edit your post slightly, since Patrick did ask specifically above that you didn't mention which you thought were better than others (i.e. relative rankings), and it is relatively clear in your post which you thought was the best (i.e. the one you voted highest for).

[Edited by agaricus5 at Local Time:03-25-2005 at 03:17 PM]

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eytanz
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Actually, it's not at all clear from my post who I voted highest for (well, technically the one I voted highest for was the 10 I gave my own, but you know what I meant). It may look like it is, but in fact I thought the differences between some of the entries were small enough so actually I have a 3-way tie for 1st place. I maybe should have made that clearer.

Maybe this is my teaching experience, but for me, I can clearly like one entry more than another but still decide that they deserve the same score.

And I definitely didn't mean to imply that your work didn't take much effort. I'm sure it did. But (to me), it seemed like a less creative and original effort than building a roach out of M&Ms, for instance, even though that's probably a lot easier. And I took the real point to be coming up with the idea rather than the actual execution, and in that way yours was the least challenging. Or maybe I'm just letting my judgement be affected by the fact that the lego roach was the only roach which used an idea I had myself (and dismissed since I don't own lego and it's expensive).

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Doom
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I made one too but it never made it to my computer... I used Pokémon cards (Btw, I didn't actually like it very much.)

Creativity was the biggest thing I considered while voting. Appearance mattered also but not as much. Maybe MeckMeck's roach wasn't very difficult to build but it was one of the most interesting entries in my opinion.

I understand that Agaricus spent a lot time in making the lego-roach but I would've really hoped to see something more original than just legos.

eytanz
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Oh, and by the way, just to make it 100% clear - I really liked all the entries. I'm being critical because this is a competition, but judged purely on their own merits, every single one of the entries is great. I hope Matt can set up a section of the website to store all of them permanently when the contest is done...

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gamer_extreme_101
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eytanz wrote:
I hope Matt can set up a section of the website to store all of them permanently when the contest is done...

There will be an article with all of them in there. I guarantee it. It was actually a small reason behind running the contest as well.

[Edited by gamer_extreme_101 at Local Time:03-25-2005 at 06:53 PM]

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Mattcrampy
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For future reference:

The easiest way to get things up on the site is to make a forum post where the first post is the article you want up on the site. I just add a link to the main site, and the forum will render it using a thing Schik coded up. It's neat.

Matt



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eytanz
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My main point is that the images should be stored on the main server rather than attachements, since Schik keeps warning that old attachements will eventually be purged. Also, I think that there's an issue of spurious database access with attachment pictures directly linked to.

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techant
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Thanks for the extra point for the M&M's my candy of choice and for those that wonder I read in the instructions that it was to be an outline not fillin project. I had fun doing it. I would have picked the blue M&M's to fill in with by the way.

A special thanks to AlefBet you really made voting a snap, so I passed on my extra point to you.

Also, the "he" is a she, that is why I only entered the voice contest once. After I heard my female (girly) voice next to all those guys I just gave up.

Favorites:


Great Job everyone!!!

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Mattcrampy
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Yeah, good point. I'll grab the images and put them in a folder on the site, then tell gamer where to link.

techant: Sorry, there's just so many guys here that I tend to assume. I'll make a note.

Matt

[Edited by Mattcrampy at Local Time:03-25-2005 at 11:12 PM]

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techant
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I understand about the gender thing. We do not have that in our profiles so you would have to guess unless I told you.

As for keeping our pic's for prosperity I wonder what folks will think in say 100 yrs. Will they know what an M&M is?


Amazing Contest Discription: The Challenge!


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[Last edited by techant at 10-22-2007 07:52 AM]

ClaytonW
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techant wrote:

Click here to view the secret text

×...Until then ClaytonW #2 was my favorite (the dog was a great touch)

Are you accusing me of trying to use puppy-appeal to win over the voters?!

techant
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ClaytonW wrote:
Are you accusing me of trying to use puppy-appeal to win over the voters?!

Nah
I'm sure you just couldn't get the puppy out of the shot. Fearless dog that it is, facing that dreadful roach.


[Edited by techant at Local Time:03-30-2005 at 03:36 AM: spelling]

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gamer_extreme_101
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13 hours, people! Voting is extremly close, and it looks like a single voter could change the tides of war, so if you haven't voted - go do so now! And if you have, well...um....wait 13 hours for the results!

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gamer_extreme_101
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And the winners for March's contest are...

*drumroll plays whilst I try to find the envelope*

In third place, for his very vegetarian roach, eytanz gets a total of 25 rank points to take home in his pocket today. This bean beauty, while the colours weren't black and grey (I would have been worried if they were), the medium was probably not expected.

Runner-up goes to a beautiful brick arrangement of a DROD roach. Agaricus5, you leave the ceremony with 50 rank points (Something that Clayton usually ends up with ). While LEGO may not have been the most original idea, no one can deny the fine craftsmanship that he and his sister put into this work.

But no more bad luck! The curse has been broken! Coming in first place with a slim 0.027 point lead, ClaytonW sweeps first with a lovely sum of 100 rank points and an item for the infamous Prize Pile! This roach, made with the Deluxe Edition Scrabble (I own it too...I should really try to replicate it) has good shape, and in my opinion was the most visually appealing. I was tempted at one point to take away 5 points for using "puppy-dog tactics", but I'm too nice for that.

And now comes pay-up time for the rest. I did promise to give bonus points to people who submitted entries, along with the traditional "newbie" award. Since vylycyn was the only person not having entered in a DROD contest before, he's the only one.

So, without further ado, he's the list of prizes that go out:

ClaytonW        Prize Pile Item + 109 points
Agaricus5                          50 points
Eytanz                             30 points
Vylycyn                            10 points
rowrow                              5 points

Hooray! Five out of eight people get something to take home with them! Agaricus, I'm not giving you a bonus 5 seeing as I considered the second roach just a second photo of your first entry. If you feel this is unfair, shoot me a PM.

ClaytonW, I'm not sure what you could possibly want, seeing as I'm sure you own everything DROD related, but just shoot me an email letting me know and I'll get you hooked up with it.

Voting was fairly irregular. Everytime I had looked, I saw someone different take the lead. 13 hours ago, there was a tie between Agaricus5 and Rabscuttle. Had no one voted, Rabscuttle would have won it. Sadly, one voted changed it around. This just goes to show people that every vote does count. Had that one person not voted, the tides would have turned differently.

Feel free to discuss the entries now, although I do ask that you do treat all the entries with respect. They were all very well done, and I enjoyed them all. As a quick side note - expect the article to be up within the next week.

And on that note, let's all get a good night's rest to see what's will happen within the next 24 hours.

-Patrick

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agaricus5
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Agaricus, I'm not giving you a bonus 5 seeing as I considered the second roach just a second photo of your first entry. If you feel this is unfair, shoot me a PM.

Nope. It's perfectly fine - it was a photo of the exact same model, except using a better camera and from a different angle (it's still here actually - I haven't quite dismantled it yet).

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Schik
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Okay, the rank points are handed out. Good job, everyone, this was a fun contest.


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ClaytonW
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From the Grand Audition discussion:

ErikH2000 wrote:Well, looking at your entire contest career, it looks like you are only getting worse as time goes by....I'd say you're about washed up!

BAM!

Gamer, you're right, I do have a lot of DROD stuff. More than most, probably. But I just don't have a Master Map of the Eighth, and I really want one so that's what I pick.

Man this was close! I checked the score before leaving for school, and I was biting my nails hoping no one would vote in the two hours until the poll closed. Great contest! Next time there's a contest like this, I promise not to use puppy-appeal

eytanz
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With all the chaos of the last day - both in the forums and in my word - I forgot about this poll. Thanks for everyone who voted for me, and thanks to Gamer for running it! It was a lot of fun.

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