Shipbucket

I adjoin the sentiments here, drawing of the month would be great idea to re-introduce, but also at the same time, the voting should be made easy and simple as possible. I would start with the simple forum poll system first.

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Shipbucket mainsite, aka "The Archive"
New AU project "Aravala"

RL/NW drawings do take much more time to complete than AU or PD drawings. For that reason those people who have only limited time to produce pixel art are happy to do something which produces visible results in a short period of time.

The quality of a RL/NW drawing needs to be of a very high standard before it gets entered into the Archive.

At the top level stands one man in Shipbucket - Garlicdesign. His production of pixel art is second to none and the execution excellent. (Have a look at the Mexican Empire)

There are others that also produce top quality work but can't hold a candle to GD overall.

When looking to produce a RL/NW drawing and you see what GD has posted, it can be quite intimidating to other artists to put their own work up for inspection.

Discord. The name says it all. I realise that the original plan for Shipbucket was to have a chat channel attached to it. Money as usual brings peoples expectations back down to reality. The splitting of Shipbucket into those who are in Discord and those who are not has split Shipbucket into sections, to the detriment of both.

The challenges are being called too often. One finishes and the next one is up and posted ready to go. Too many. Spread them out a bit so that they keep interest in them going.

Unfortunately the "winds of time" are starting to make message boards obsolete. I lament this as much as anyone as a good deal of my life has been spent posting and participating on forums. Now many groups are moving "social media" (I would not necessarily classify Discord as this), but so far SB has stayed off Facebook and Instagram, only using the Twitter account many years ago for updates whenever the site wasn't available

It's not clear to me what you are implying when you say "Money as usual brings peoples expectations back down to reality", can you clarify that comment?

Anyway, the Discord server has now greatly overtaken the forum in activity and I would encourage anyone not using it to join us as the speed of discussion is much faster than the board and it's nice to see WIPs and help other users with their research in real time. Of course people are welcome to stay away (I agree Discord can have its childish moments and we try to cut down on this) and remain on the board entirely. It's your choice... you can't really lose either way.

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USN components, camouflage colors, & reference links (World War II only)

"Money as usual brings peoples expectations back down to reality", can you clarify that comment?

"New Site Data Load Project"
Do you remember the optimism that the project started with. Everybody contributed ideas and the final project structure had a tier of objectives that was hoped would be paid for by 'crowdfunding' from the members.

So what happened?

Reality struck

Only the most basic of the objectives was reached and only because "Colosseum & Gollevainen" put their hands deeply into their pockets to pay for it. Both of you need continued applause for your unselfish acts to complete the work. Without you both the work would not have been completed.

Others gave of their time and made sure that things happened in a timely manner. The uploading phase was huge and carried out successfully with almost no errors. 99.9% on that task was a major achievement.

Hi all

I'm not sure what to make of this praise. For one, several artists come to mind - including but by no means limited to Colo, DP, BB1987, Maomatic and DG Alpha, and that's only those who specialize on warships - who deliver top quality. None of the above group draws full-time. It's a hobby whose results need not intimidate anyone. I think the main problem is that many people think someone will consider it rude if they redraw ships already in the archive, no matter how old and outdated the drawings are. But Golly did not ban me for redrawing Rurik, and whoever wants to draw a particular ship should simply do it, even if it is in the archive already. Happened to me, didn't kill me either.

Concerning Discord: What I particularly like about this forum is the determined enforcement of netiquette, which I sorely missed when I peeked in on Discord sometime in 2019. That's why I decided to keep my fingers off it. I'd be disappointed if discussion shifted there entirely.

Greetings
GD

Hi. Good points raised here. Of redrawing of the ships, its kind to ask beforehand for do so, perhaps its one of those netiquette things, though the answer in all cases should be, yes you can redraw what ever thing you want, even without such permission. Only thing that needs consideration from our behalf is the uploading it to the archive, where we just basicly need to consider if the new drawing is objectively better. But even if it would not be, still nothing can prevent one drawing it. And if its not up to the style and standards, then people can even post them on the non-SB section, as some indeed had done.
I've always envisioned SB archive to be place were myriad of drawings of same ship by different artists from different time could exist, rather than some uniform machine where single "official" picture presents that one thing. In such archive I envisioned, the doormat to redraw stuff would be lower, as well would be any hurt pride or resentment from the original artists.

As for discord, Im both bit sad and embarrassed in behalf of all of us there that you have decided to keep your fingers of it. But I can truly understand it, If i wouldn't be on the admin side of things, I would keep out there probably myself. But not all hope is lost for the discord. The same etiquette of polite and no-nonsense atmosphere could be imported there. It would probably mean bit of tears and lot of rage quits, but essentially the platform allows same (if bit more fast paced) discussion as in here. Its all about the moderation.

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Shipbucket mainsite, aka "The Archive"
New AU project "Aravala"

I have to say I was glad when members like DG_Alpha and BB1987 and GD redrew some of my old German and Japanese drawings from back in the day. They did a far more competent job than my early works, which were flawed in several respects looking back.

I would probably redraw more of my old works if I had the time.

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Hood's Worklist
English Electric Canberra FD
Interwar RN Capital Ships
Super-Darings
Never-Were British Aircraft

Guys, it seems to me that the discussion partly went in the wrong direction, and it seems to me that this is my fault.
I say things briefly, thinking that it is natural for everyone to understand. But sometimes my brevity turns to be indistinct.
When I talked "redrawing", I, of course, did not mean improvement any of the image already available on the site earlier. I meant that drawing AU is the creation of new designs by you personally, while drawing real ships is only a reflection of what shipdesigner (White, Brin, De Lome, etc) has already created long ago without your participation. Therefore, real ships drawing is "just" a redrawing, while AU is more difficult and more interesting... for some people.
Without belittling the dignity of researchers of real ships.

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"I have thousand advisers who know how build a pyramid, but have not one who can tell me whether to build it or not." - John Kennedy.

Just thought about one thing. Would the participating entries be counted by each drawing separately, or by entries (like whole posts showing whole class)? Look at recent Olekit24's posts in Merchant Ships thread - if the 1st option were to be used, I can theoretically imagine a situation, where there are more votes total on such "series", but because the votes spread between each individual drawing, the winner would be someone elses' work, which contained just one drawing that happened to get more votes than any of the individual ones from the "series", but far less that "series'" grand total.

Good point about people wanting to "get results, quick", though at the same time I'm not sure if drawing a fanciful aircraft carrier is really faster than drawing a real gunboat or a fishing cutter.

I share that feeling.

Besides the "atmosphere" factor, fact that Discord is, as I understand, essentialy a chat, means that it's pointless for me to attempt to use it. Nowadays I have both time and mood to log in and comment etc. like once-twice per week on average (I do peek into a forum without logging-in at least once every day, and even several times, but these are just like one-minute views on what's going on, without looking closely at details of drawings, reading backstories or details of discussions), and I wouldn't be on Discord any more often, so pretty much all activity there would pass past me anyway.
Good, convenient, side of message-board-like communication for me is precisely the fact, that it is NOT "much faster" - I can answer now, or in one hour, or later that day etc.

With the passing time, asking for that permission is often getting bigger and bigger problem, because more and more Veteran artist simply aren't here any more to answer.

In regards to SB-scale, Archive allows to mark the drawing as "outdated" (which is visible when one enters it), so the old drawings are kept (with that marking) even when new ones appear. And since in reality a huge chunk of these new works are depictions of "ship X in various times", while old ("to be replaced") so often show "ship X at some random, unspecified time"), then for me (as uploader) it's sufficient (in combination with visible stylistical improvements) to consider it a "valid and valuable progress", without getting into deeper considerations of what "objectively better" means.

That said, FD-scale Archive has no "mark as outdated" option, and, when eligible, old pictures are replaced entirely by new ones (with some caveats - I can elaborate on it, if necessary, but that's not the main issue right now).

Whilst I'd never want to take away from drawing RL stuff on ship bucket (it practically is a resource at this point for many ships that otherwise aren't well depicted in technical art), I'm just not skilled enough yet to actually submit drawings to the archives. Challenges give me a chance to show what I can do, and try new things, otherwise I'm just not good enough to hack it with the real artists on this site. If it weren't for challenges, I'd probably not submit any art at all.