TWCL

[LukeSurl]

Please let's not have genre categories. It vastly inflates the number of awards, you have to have about a dozen to cover half the comics out there.

Having too many makes each award less prestigious and significantly increases the work involved getting this running. Plus, if we're doing juries, there's only so many categories we can get them to judge.
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[Casual Notice]

All opinons rescinded due to lack of interest.
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What I lack in sincerity, I make up for in sarcasm.
S*P*Q*R

[jynksie]

LukeSurl wrote:

Please let's not have genre categories. It vastly inflates the number of awards, you have to have about a dozen to cover half the comics out there. Having too many makes each award less prestigious and significantly increases the work involved getting this running. Plus, if we're doing juries, there's only so many categories we can get them to judge.

I would have to respectfully disagree, I think to some extent genre categories are a must in order to give recognition to the medium as a whole. I could see narrowing it down to the more popular genres, but I think they deserve to be highlighted.
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[Chilari]

I think having so many categories is too ambitious for the first year we're doing this. We need to limit it to reduce workload; next year, we can add genre categories if we feel we can handle it. Too ambitious, and the whole thing will collapse under its own weight.

Also,

LukeSurl wrote:

How about "Funniest" and "Best Storytelling". Both reward the primary virtues of these two broad genres without explicitly declaring the winner to overall be the best humour/story comic (i.e. art is not considered) Some comics, such as Order of the Stick, could be candidates for both, but that wouldn't be too much of a problem. There'd be a few comic which tell neither stories nor jokes, but we can't cover everything. Awards based on page format doesn't seem to be that workable as on the web these things are pretty fluid. As far as languages go, I really can't see it working. We may have to tacitly accept these are English language (and translations to english) awards.

I agree with the entirity of this post.

I propose the following categories:

Best comic
Best newcomer / Horizon award (I like that name)
Best writing
Best colour art
Best black and white art
Best story/longform
Best humourous/shortform/non-continuity (as CN put it - that is what you meant, right?)
Most improved

That's 8.

I still support splitting art into colour and black and white, for a number of reasons. Firstly, if you don't, the black and white comics will have less of a chance, even if the linework and drawing quality etc are better, because colour generally makes comics more attractive. Secondly, in many black and white comics, different techniques and skills are used to create shading and mood than in a colour comic, which often cannot be compared easily to mood and atmosphere in a colour comic. Finally, good colouring often adds a considerable amount of time to the production of a page, so on average, a page of a certain level of detail and intricacy will have taken longer to produce than the same page in black and white. They're on a different kind of scale.

I also still support the most improved award, even though I realise I have been arguing to keep category numbers down. I think significant improvement must be recognised, even if the comic does fall into another category as a direct result of the improvement. If measured over the course of 2009 (assuming the ceremony takes place in early 2010), then the comic as a whole during that time may not be considered by voters and judges to have been good enough on average to vote for, even if by the end of 2009 it's really great. Furthermore, nomination or shortlisting into this category will greatly encourage the creator and congratulate them on hard work, and show them and their potential readers that it's paid off, and may encourage readers who stopped reading said comic to go back and look. An award like this recognises the hard work creators have put into their comic to improve it and let's them know that their readers and fellow comickers have noticed.
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[Zaron]

I just wanted to chime in about the idea of "Most Overlooked" as a category. I know your heart is in the right place, but Evan Dorkin received such an award from the Eisners (they called it "Artist Deserving of Wider Recognition") and he wasn't that thrilled about it. When you're actually the one winning the award, it almost feels like an unintentional insult. While it implies that the people giving that award think highly of you, it also implies everyone else on earth doesn't see you as worthy of attention.
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[mooncity]

OUCH!
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Mooncity
Reversing the polarity of the neutron flow since 1976!


The comic strip that never was.

[KEZ]

Zaron wrote:

I just wanted to chime in about the idea of "Most Overlooked" as a category. I know your heart is in the right place, but Evan Dorkin received such an award from the Eisners (they called it "Artist Deserving of Wider Recognition") and he wasn't that thrilled about it. When you're actually the one winning the award, it almost feels like an unintentional insult. While it implies that the people giving that award think highly of you, it also implies everyone else on earth doesn't see you as worthy of attention.

Ditto.

Also against genre awards. Save that for something like a yearly TWCL vote thread award. I think it would be best to keep them out of THIS award.
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[jynksie]

KEZ wrote:

Zaron wrote: I just wanted to chime in about the idea of "Most Overlooked" as a category. I know your heart is in the right place, but Evan Dorkin received such an award from the Eisners (they called it "Artist Deserving of Wider Recognition") and he wasn't that thrilled about it. When you're actually the one winning the award, it almost feels like an unintentional insult. While it implies that the people giving that award think highly of you, it also implies everyone else on earth doesn't see you as worthy of attention. Ditto. Also against genre awards. Save that for something like a yearly TWCL vote thread award. I think it would be best to keep them out of THIS award.

Agree on the former, it could pose as a backhanded compliment. I'll concede on the latter, I just figured that we'd be looking at all sorts of comics from various genres anywhoo so why not? - was my thinking. Rereading the various comments though, I can see the concern of being bogged down in genre abyss.
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[dpat57]

A "Most despised" category might not go amiss for the 3Ders.
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[dpat57]

Thread killer!
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[Gregori]

dpat57 wrote:

A "Most despised" category might not go amiss for the 3Ders.

Nah, I would have a "Squarest Dudes" award just for you
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[dpat57]

Gregori wrote:

Nah, I would have a "Squarest Dudes" award just for you

They're not waving.

But point taken.
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[MoonFreight3]

What about a "Best Limited Series" category? Most comics are desgined to be open-ended, but what about those that were intentionally structured to have a short run, with a beginning, a middle, and an end, even if it ran for only a few months?
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[wendyw]

That's an interesting idea.
There are a lot of good short comics about but they don't tend to get much attention.
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[Gregori]

dpat57 wrote:

They're not waving. But point taken.

Haha awesome! You know I was only jesting :p
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