News
 Art Fight 2021 Theme Reveal The time is finally here. It’s become a tradition to animate a short video revealing the theme. This year, we revealed the 2021 Art Fight theme on stream. If you missed the stream, find the video uploaded to our Youtube. Early Bird Registration - Pick your team! Yes, as we stated before, you will be able to pick your team early by clicking on this google form and following the instructions. Please be aware that you won’t get on your team immediately, it will take some time to process. The form will close June 28th. |
Site Update - June 2021
In this update:
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ToS Update
We have updated the Terms of Service. We recommend reading through the policies for yourself, but here’s a summary:Clarified Prohibited Content
- Sexually explicit content, including depictions of illegal sexual acts under US federal law.
- Content that depicts/mentions sexual exploitation of minors/visually appearing minors. (Disclaimer: Height is not a deciding factor.) This includes minors in any sexualized situation. This in particular is taken very seriously and can result in off site investigation and account banning.
Clarified Links to Other Sites and Materials
- We do not regulate what is posted outside of Art Fight and will not search through offsite activity unless given a legally serious reason to (e.g investigating claims of pedophilia).
Rules Update
In addition to the ToS update, we have updated the Rules Page. You can click on the page to read a summary. Please be aware that the last major rule update was done in March, and if you have not read them recently, we highly recommend to.Filter Guide Update
We've updated our filter guide, also known as the maturity guide for Art Fight 2021! Have a look at the changes and make sure your characters are filtered correctly.New Site Features & Additions...We have a number of exciting site updates that we think you'll all enjoy. This is brought to you by our developer, Pika. <3Character tagging and tag searchOne of the most highly requested features is here. You can now tag your characters through their “edit” page! Characters are allowed up to 10 tags each, which will enable them to be searched in the new Tag Search. For example, if you have an anthro cat character, you might consider tagging them with "anthro" and "cat".
Hide Theme ButtonThere is a new "Hide Theme" option on User Profiles, located on a new header dropdown button. Clicking this option on a user's profile will hide any custom CSS/theming they have on their page for the duration of your log-in session. We will be discussing the ability to hide custom CSS globally in the future.Subscription Notification ChangesSubscription notifications no longer contribute to your total notification count next to your avatar in the site header. Instead, when you have new subscription notifications, a "new" badge will be displayed next to the subscriptions link. The "new" badge will be dismissed after visiting the subscriptions page.Character ArchivingThe 100 active character limit that was mentioned in the previous news post is now being enforced. There is no penalty if you currently have over 100 active characters, but you will not be able to submit new characters until your active total is below 100. In order to reduce your active characters, you may either archive or delete them.Archiving is a new feature that will allow you to "store" characters not in use without completely removing them from the site. When you archive a character, their commonly moderated fields are deleted (images, description, and permissions), and they are hidden from your profile. Archived characters may not be attacked, but their names remain linked in any attacks they appear in, and they have a minimal profile that other users can view. You can also view their Attacks tab. You can choose to restore an archived character later, and they will return to your profile and become attackable again. You will need to re-add any images, description and permissions at this time. Other fields are retained. Archiving is recommended over deletion unless you'd like to completely remove the character from the site. You can find your archived characters under the "Archived Characters" tab on character management, or by clicking this link. As mentioned before, this decision to reinstate the character limit was made mostly due to moderation strain over the past year with profiles that had more than 100 characters. We have found the vast majority of users have under 100 characters uploaded, and we think 100 characters is a fair amount to showcase for the event. We hope the new archiving feature will be a good compromise for having this cap, and will allow you to cycle characters out without losing their page and attack data. Here’s a quick guide to the different visibility levels for characters and when you might want to use them: Active - A character that appears on your profile and counts towards your active total. These are characters you want to be attacked for the current event. Hidden - A character that does not appear on your profile and cannot be attacked, but still counts toward your active total. You might hide a character if you don’t want them to be attacked right now and have plans to unhide them later, or if you have under 100 active characters and prefer hiding to archiving. Archived - A character that does not appear on your profile and cannot be attacked, and does not count toward your active total. This character has their images and most of their profile removed. You might archive a character if you don’t want attacks on them for the foreseeable future but would like to keep their name linked on old attacks and preserve their URL, which you could potentially restore later. You might also archive characters if you have over 100 active characters and wish to cycle them out without making them a brand new character later. Deleted - A character that has been completely removed from the site. This is non-reversible, and you will need to submit a new character if you want to put this character back on the site. Archiving is recommended before deletion if you would like to preserve your character’s name on old attacks and have easy access to their old attacks. |
Art Fight Start DateAs always, Art Fight 2021 will be starting on July 1st at 12:00 pm US Mountain time. Make sure you prepare yourself by updating your characters and bookmarking some characters early! Like last year, there will be an option to choose your team before the fight, after the theme reveal. |
Discord Sponsored Event + Theme RevealWe are partnering up with Discord to provide you guys with an exciting event on our Discord Server, utilizing Discord’s new stage channel. For those unfamiliar, a stage channel is kinda like zoom without the video and screen sharing. There are speakers and users can raise their hand to speak.We are hosting an Interview + Ask Me Anything (AMA) event on June 24th at 5:00 pm Mountain time. We will be interviewing various staff of different roles about their time and experience with Art Fight. Those who are interested in the inner workings of Art Fight should join as there will be some opportunities to ask them questions yourself! There will be plenty of Art Fight premium giveaways too, wink wink. At 6:00 pm Mountain Time, we will switch over from the event to our Twitch stream to watch the 2021 Art Fight Theme Reveal on our Twitch! The theme reveal is an annual animation made by our lovely artist Axel that reveals each years theme. Mark your calendars! After the reveal, we will release a google form which will allow you to pick your team. On July 1st, you’ll automatically be placed on that team. The advantage to registering early is that you get to pick your team. If you don’t, you will have to wait until July 1st to get yourself registered, and will not be able to pick the team. |
Other Updates…
Site Rule Updates
Quick reminder that we recently updated our rules as of March. Please take the time to read through them, as a lot of changes were made!100 Character Limit
Starting with the next site update, we will be reinstating the 100 active character limit. This decision was made because profiles with more characters than this were becoming difficult to moderate, and having no limit on characters uploaded can greatly increase the number of images Art Fight needs to host.In addition to this change, there will be a new "Character Archiving" feature that will allow you to "keep" characters beyond this limit. Archived characters will not be attackable and will have minimal profiles, but their names and any attacks made on them will still be visible to users. Archived characters may later be restored to an active profile, though they will need to have images and text re-added. More information on archiving will come when the feature releases.
Not to be confused with the user character limit, we have also added a limit to the total amount of characters able to be added to attacks. There is now a hard limit of 100 characters per attack.
Ratings Update
Spoiler:
Character Filter Update
We will be releasing updates in regards to Art Fight’s character filter guide in the upcoming weeks!Tips and Tricks Page
We have a little treat for art beginners or those who seek some nifty tips for art making! We now have a "Tips and Tricks" page where you will find:- Tips for drawing on computers, tablets, phones, or on paper
- Free art software for computers, tablets and phones + free 3D software
- How to set up an ideal character page
The traditional art section will be fleshed out some more over the coming weeks, along with some tips for crafting too!
We hope you find it useful. ♥
New Moderators
We’d like to welcome some of our new moderators joining us this year! Please give a big welcome to…Site ModeratorsJaywing47 Alanide Daylight starriewing gardenGnostic robot_toes AuthorofThyme Siobhanatron @glitzyguts | Chat ModeratorsKeo Violet_Fire Donna Sunlitsecrets @cedarcipher scribedhearts ruffianrabbit @scyriia |
In this update:
Automated donations and name changes have been released!
Name Changes
There is no longer a need to contact moderators for username changes! You can change your username in your user settings. You will be able to change your name once every 30 days, as long as you have name changes available.We’ve automatically given every user their initial 1 name change, regardless of whether you used your free one up. In addition to this, all users will now receive 1 name change every year on January 1st!
If you’re looking to change your username more often than that, extra name changes can still be obtained as a bonus for making donations. 1 extra name change will now come with every $2 USD you donate within a single transaction. If you have donated since July 1st 2019, we are retroactively awarding name changes to your account based on your total donations made within that time. If you have already "used" your name change(s) from those donations, consider this an extra gift from us!
Your account is able to hold up to 12 name changes at a time - if you are currently at that cap, you will not receive additional name changes on January 1st, or when making donations.
Please note that minor name changes (capitalization, number removals, etc) are still available for free by contacting a mod on the contact us page.
Automated Donations
On-site donation rewards are now automated*! This means that once you donate, your (on-site) rewards will automatically go through without any manual work needed. You'll also be able to view your donation history, where you'll find information about donations you’ve made, your current donation tier, and lifetime donation total. Keep in mind that discord rewards are still manually given out and may take longer to receive.(*The “Custom Symbol” reward in the VIP+ tier still requires communication with an Administrator as symbol choices need to be approved before use.)
We have imported records from PayPal of all donations from July 1st, 2019 to present. At this time, we don’t know whether or not we will be able to add donation records prior to this date, but we may in the future.
Along with this update, we've made the decision to retire the current donation progress bar in the site's footer. All funds earned from donations are currently going towards server and image hosting, site assets, and other expenses directly related to Art Fight.
Should there be a specific goal in the future (for example, running the fight in 2023) that we project needing additional funds for, the donation progress bar will return for that goal.
If the donation progress bar is not present, it means that we're receiving enough donation funding for current operating costs, and will be putting any further donation funds towards future costs.
As always, we're extremely grateful for all of the support we've received- we're able to keep Art Fight running thanks to you!
Rules Update
Quick reminder that we recently updated our rules as of March. Please take the time to read through them, as a lot of changes were made!Volunteer Applications Open
Our annual volunteer form is now open! Ever wanted to help out Art Fight? We have positions for both Site and Discord moderators. If you think you have what it takes to be a moderator, you can apply below!If you have already applied in 2020 and have nothing new to add, please do not re-apply. We are still considering and processing those applications.
Click here to be sent to the form. We look forward to seeing your responses!
Donations FAQ Updates
In the newspost about transparency we put out a feedback survey where you could ask questions. Here are Takaia’s answers to those questions.Have you considered having volunteer artists?
Yes, we have considered having volunteer artists! However, we’re still discussing what exactly that entails and will likely bring in volunteers only for the smaller tasks, and not the big tasks. We will be looking into it more next year.Will Art Fight ever start happening twice a year?
Making Art Fight a semi-annual event is currently not feasible due to the risk of burnout and amount of work / time that needs to be put into each event from the entire staff well in advance of each event. It's a fairly common suggestion, so if it ever does become feasible, we'll let you know!Why don't you put ads on the site?
Based on the positive responses to people suggesting this, ads are something that we may be bringing to the site in the future! I originally chose to not put ads up because I assumed that people would find ads too annoying to deal with, but you guys have told me that that isn't the case. The end goal is to just have internal ads that any user can pay for and have displayed. If we find ourselves needing to host external ads, we will commit to using non-intrusive ad services.How long until the money runs out?
The expenses for the site itself have always been fully funded by the amazing people who donate their money! If donations continue as they have, we don’t have to worry about the money running out 💖Why didn’t I receive my discord role?
Usually, one of the following are the reason why you don't have the Donator role:Spoiler:
If you haven’t received your discord role from a donation, please contact Takaia on Discord: @ Takaia#0135
Going Forward
We love our users, and will be doing our best to make sure you’re satisfied. In the coming months we will be doing various bug fixes and general preparation for this year's fight. You can also expect a revamped maturity guide and ratings guide, as usual. Please check out our Suggestions Trello for more information about the future!Additionally, if you are waiting on deleting your Art Fight account and have emailed [email protected], we apologize that there has been no reply. We are currently working on improving our deletion system, but the limitations of our current system have caused us to fall behind. If you have emailed [email protected], then we will get back to you. Thanks for your patience!
If you have any feedback regarding these updates, please submit it here.
Hello Art Fighters!
The team has been hard at work revising our site rules. We heard your concerns loud and clear, and with your suggestions in mind, we have changed and added a lot. This includes the new category "Spirit of Art Fight", made to ensure a positive and kind environment. We'd like to ask you to read through the entire rules page again to avoid accidentally breaking any rules!
You can read the rules here.
Asides from that, you should start seeing more updates from the team as we get closer to the fight! We will be announcing changes done to the attack and maturity ratings in the coming months, amongst other exciting things!
We hope that you are excited for Art Fight 2021, and enjoy these new rules. If you have any questions regarding the rules, please comment below!
The team has been hard at work revising our site rules. We heard your concerns loud and clear, and with your suggestions in mind, we have changed and added a lot. This includes the new category "Spirit of Art Fight", made to ensure a positive and kind environment. We'd like to ask you to read through the entire rules page again to avoid accidentally breaking any rules!
You can read the rules here.
Asides from that, you should start seeing more updates from the team as we get closer to the fight! We will be announcing changes done to the attack and maturity ratings in the coming months, amongst other exciting things!
We hope that you are excited for Art Fight 2021, and enjoy these new rules. If you have any questions regarding the rules, please comment below!
Hello Artfighters! I wrote this over the past few days with a lot of time and careful consideration because, after all this time, I think that’s what I owe you. The consequence of this is that it’s way too long, and I’m sorry about that, but if you’re concerned about donations at all, I’m hoping it will answer most of your questions.
I wanted to apologize for the huge delay in making this announcement. I know a lot of you have been asking for this for a long time, and I regret not taking more initiative to overcome the obstacles in my life, rather than allowing them to inhibit progress on this for so long.
I know that the delay has caused a lot of feelings of frustration and mistrust, and may have given the impression that I was being intentionally non-transparent. I’ve never hidden this information on purpose, but I know my actions and lack of communication probably made it look that way. I’m truly sorry and embarrassed that it took me this long to do this.
I’m here now to attempt to make things right, as best I can. I’m going to address some common concerns regarding donations below. In the likely event that I failed to address everything today, please see the final section in this announcement to find out how to send me more related questions, concerns, and suggestions.
Carefully examining the finances to figure out exactly what our goals should be for the 2021 fight is on my to do list! I will let you guys know when I have the donations page updated with 2021 goals. You may have noticed that I’ve also reset the goal progress bar. Even though I didn’t have an announcement about it ready at the time, I didn’t want to continue leaving it stagnant. I guessed on the base amount for the goal just so we could have a moving progress bar, but this goal is very temporary and is almost certain to change. For future years, I intend to have budget estimations ready before the fight ends so as to avoid confusion with old information being displayed.
For now, I’ve edited the donations page in an attempt to improve transparency with the following:
- added info to reflect that the provided information is old and applies to the 2020 fight
- indicated which tier we reached for the 2020 fight
- added a statement to let people know to expect 2021 goals when I’m able to figure those out
- corrected a mistake in the code where the date was off in the sponsor box on the right
- changed the “2019 - 2020” wording that the bottom of each page to say “2020 - 2021” because I hadn’t realized until now I’d forgotten to do that
- gave numbers to the FAQ questions and updated questions 2 and 4 to be more clear on requirements for banner rewards
Given that I'm not an accountant, the numbers have admittedly always been approximations. The short answer to this question is: Taxes and PayPal fees, keeping up with all the bills for servers and other things to help keep the site up and running, and each year I pay for the official site artwork.
The exception to this is the funds that went unused from the extended period of time that I had unexpectedly developed a severe health condition (not related to the pandemic). I regret not being able to properly work on Art Fight past the symptoms, and I’m sorry for allowing that to contribute to all of this.
During the time I was not working on Art Fight, due to my illness, I didn’t do anything with the money, besides paying Art Fight bills. It remained either in PayPal or in the Art Fight bank account, and it will be carried over for future use for expenses listed on the donations page. If anyone was worried about me taking the money and running, I promise you that never did and never will happen. I care far too deeply about you, the community, and Art Fight itself to do that, but I know that that is something that may have occurred to some of you, so hopefully this will be of some reassurance.
I’ve realized that Art Fight is becoming so big that it’s growing beyond the scope of a part-time, purely volunteer passion project. I’m absolutely still very passionate about it, but Art Fight’s growth has begun to require a lot more attention and time than a passion project meant for spare time. The wording from the donations page, “dedicated Art Fight site development” from 2019 I believe, which then changed to “x hours of paid site development”, were a couple first attempts at a response to the situation. Looking back, I think that the language I used was a mistake: I still very much have to rely on volunteers to help with the site, and there’s nowhere near enough revenue to pay them, however much I’d love to do so. The way I worded things may have falsely implied that I was paying all of the other coders, and that the amount of money received by Art Fight would be directly proportional to new (visible) features on the site that directly benefited users.
I believe the biggest contributing factors to this was that I’ve never been even close to being in charge of something this big before, as well as the fear of backlash for potentially using extra donations to allow myself to give even more of my time to Art Fight than I was previously able to. My inexperience at being stuck in the weird in-between spot of a passion project becoming something bigger, and not really knowing how to handle that, made things difficult. I recognize that I made a lot of mistakes due to this. I’m sure I’m going to make a lot more as I continue to learn and grow alongside Art Fight, but I will at least be working on getting better at owning up to such mistakes and being faster at making them right as best I can.
As Art Fight grows, I really do want to look into possibly having employees so that I can pay some of the wonderful people on staff for their hard work. I’ve learned that having employees is something that is far more complicated than I had imagined, but I do plan on looking into it. I do think, however, that we will always need to rely on the lovely moderators, as most sites do, to help out in the community and make things an enjoyable experience for users. And for now, I will also be relying on the talented volunteer coders, designer, etc. for a lot of the progress.
I’m really sorry for the delays when it comes to receiving donation rewards. The plan is to make donations fully automated in the future so that this won’t be a problem! We’ll be connecting the site database with PayPal transactions (or switch to a different service if PayPal decides to not play nice) as well as have a bot for discord rewards. Without the need to manually give out rewards, this should ensure that they are given out by the system promptly!
One suggestion was to allow more than one person handle donations. I agree with this completely that it would be better for user experience to do this. However, now that I am more consistently able to work on Art Fight again, I think that time would be better spent researching and implementing automated donation rewards. Automation of this process is already the end goal, and prevents putting even more work on admins when I could be working to make the system better instead.
Currently, the system allowing you to change your username without contacting a mod is almost ready to go! This will give everyone one username change chance that can be used at any time. Extra chances will be given out when you donate. For now these extras will be given manually, like the rest of the donations rewards, but this will be integrated into the automated system when that becomes ready to go.
There has been some concern about not seeing coding progress. The answer comes in two parts, both of which are pretty boring: I fell ill for a long amount of time starting in 2019, which hindered a lot of progress during that time. The second part is that there’s a lot of work that has to be done behind the scenes. A lot of coding (and other tech stuff) has to do with version updates and optimizations for the code base and server software, among other things that you shouldn’t actually notice (if we do it right) but also unfortunately takes up coder resources.
In order to keep you updated on the latest coding progress, we’re planning on implementing a simple on-site changelog that you can check. You may remember the site had a changelog in the past, but it was not used beyond 2016. The new on-site changelog, when implemented, will be easier to read and regularly updated by staff. When the update is mostly behind the scenes, we may be less detailed about changes, but we do intend to inform you when things are being worked on to help keep the site running.
I hope this has finally cleared some things up for you all! I’m expecting to have not remembered to include everything that you wanted to know, so I’m planning on doing a follow-up announcement with some FAQ that results from this announcement. Please fill out this form if you have feedback. I’ll be giving you all a week (until December 3rd) to ask questions. Give me a few days to compile and answer them, and then I’ll post another announcement with the answers to the most frequent (and donations-relevant) questions.
Note: this doesn’t mean you can’t ask questions after that, it just means your questions wouldn’t have a chance to appear in the follow-up announcement.
I wanted to apologize for the huge delay in making this announcement. I know a lot of you have been asking for this for a long time, and I regret not taking more initiative to overcome the obstacles in my life, rather than allowing them to inhibit progress on this for so long.
I know that the delay has caused a lot of feelings of frustration and mistrust, and may have given the impression that I was being intentionally non-transparent. I’ve never hidden this information on purpose, but I know my actions and lack of communication probably made it look that way. I’m truly sorry and embarrassed that it took me this long to do this.
I’m here now to attempt to make things right, as best I can. I’m going to address some common concerns regarding donations below. In the likely event that I failed to address everything today, please see the final section in this announcement to find out how to send me more related questions, concerns, and suggestions.
(Unintended) lack of transparency
The donations page was always meant to be the solution to being transparent about donations, but at some points in time it hasn’t been enough because it was too long between updates, or because some things weren’t clear enough. As contributors to the Art Fight, I know it can be frustrating to see old and confusing information. Again, it was never my intention to hide things from you, but there were times that I did so unintentionally. I’m sorry for my lack of diligence in keeping the page up to date, and for mistakes I’ve made in the clarity of information.Carefully examining the finances to figure out exactly what our goals should be for the 2021 fight is on my to do list! I will let you guys know when I have the donations page updated with 2021 goals. You may have noticed that I’ve also reset the goal progress bar. Even though I didn’t have an announcement about it ready at the time, I didn’t want to continue leaving it stagnant. I guessed on the base amount for the goal just so we could have a moving progress bar, but this goal is very temporary and is almost certain to change. For future years, I intend to have budget estimations ready before the fight ends so as to avoid confusion with old information being displayed.
For now, I’ve edited the donations page in an attempt to improve transparency with the following:
- added info to reflect that the provided information is old and applies to the 2020 fight
- indicated which tier we reached for the 2020 fight
- added a statement to let people know to expect 2021 goals when I’m able to figure those out
- corrected a mistake in the code where the date was off in the sponsor box on the right
- changed the “2019 - 2020” wording that the bottom of each page to say “2020 - 2021” because I hadn’t realized until now I’d forgotten to do that
- gave numbers to the FAQ questions and updated questions 2 and 4 to be more clear on requirements for banner rewards
Where did the money go?
Given that I'm not an accountant, the numbers have admittedly always been approximations. The short answer to this question is: Taxes and PayPal fees, keeping up with all the bills for servers and other things to help keep the site up and running, and each year I pay for the official site artwork.
The exception to this is the funds that went unused from the extended period of time that I had unexpectedly developed a severe health condition (not related to the pandemic). I regret not being able to properly work on Art Fight past the symptoms, and I’m sorry for allowing that to contribute to all of this.
During the time I was not working on Art Fight, due to my illness, I didn’t do anything with the money, besides paying Art Fight bills. It remained either in PayPal or in the Art Fight bank account, and it will be carried over for future use for expenses listed on the donations page. If anyone was worried about me taking the money and running, I promise you that never did and never will happen. I care far too deeply about you, the community, and Art Fight itself to do that, but I know that that is something that may have occurred to some of you, so hopefully this will be of some reassurance.
I’ve realized that Art Fight is becoming so big that it’s growing beyond the scope of a part-time, purely volunteer passion project. I’m absolutely still very passionate about it, but Art Fight’s growth has begun to require a lot more attention and time than a passion project meant for spare time. The wording from the donations page, “dedicated Art Fight site development” from 2019 I believe, which then changed to “x hours of paid site development”, were a couple first attempts at a response to the situation. Looking back, I think that the language I used was a mistake: I still very much have to rely on volunteers to help with the site, and there’s nowhere near enough revenue to pay them, however much I’d love to do so. The way I worded things may have falsely implied that I was paying all of the other coders, and that the amount of money received by Art Fight would be directly proportional to new (visible) features on the site that directly benefited users.
I believe the biggest contributing factors to this was that I’ve never been even close to being in charge of something this big before, as well as the fear of backlash for potentially using extra donations to allow myself to give even more of my time to Art Fight than I was previously able to. My inexperience at being stuck in the weird in-between spot of a passion project becoming something bigger, and not really knowing how to handle that, made things difficult. I recognize that I made a lot of mistakes due to this. I’m sure I’m going to make a lot more as I continue to learn and grow alongside Art Fight, but I will at least be working on getting better at owning up to such mistakes and being faster at making them right as best I can.
As Art Fight grows, I really do want to look into possibly having employees so that I can pay some of the wonderful people on staff for their hard work. I’ve learned that having employees is something that is far more complicated than I had imagined, but I do plan on looking into it. I do think, however, that we will always need to rely on the lovely moderators, as most sites do, to help out in the community and make things an enjoyable experience for users. And for now, I will also be relying on the talented volunteer coders, designer, etc. for a lot of the progress.
Making donation rewards happen more quickly
I’m really sorry for the delays when it comes to receiving donation rewards. The plan is to make donations fully automated in the future so that this won’t be a problem! We’ll be connecting the site database with PayPal transactions (or switch to a different service if PayPal decides to not play nice) as well as have a bot for discord rewards. Without the need to manually give out rewards, this should ensure that they are given out by the system promptly!
One suggestion was to allow more than one person handle donations. I agree with this completely that it would be better for user experience to do this. However, now that I am more consistently able to work on Art Fight again, I think that time would be better spent researching and implementing automated donation rewards. Automation of this process is already the end goal, and prevents putting even more work on admins when I could be working to make the system better instead.
Currently, the system allowing you to change your username without contacting a mod is almost ready to go! This will give everyone one username change chance that can be used at any time. Extra chances will be given out when you donate. For now these extras will be given manually, like the rest of the donations rewards, but this will be integrated into the automated system when that becomes ready to go.
Lack of (visible) coding progress
There has been some concern about not seeing coding progress. The answer comes in two parts, both of which are pretty boring: I fell ill for a long amount of time starting in 2019, which hindered a lot of progress during that time. The second part is that there’s a lot of work that has to be done behind the scenes. A lot of coding (and other tech stuff) has to do with version updates and optimizations for the code base and server software, among other things that you shouldn’t actually notice (if we do it right) but also unfortunately takes up coder resources.
In order to keep you updated on the latest coding progress, we’re planning on implementing a simple on-site changelog that you can check. You may remember the site had a changelog in the past, but it was not used beyond 2016. The new on-site changelog, when implemented, will be easier to read and regularly updated by staff. When the update is mostly behind the scenes, we may be less detailed about changes, but we do intend to inform you when things are being worked on to help keep the site running.
Additional FAQ
I hope this has finally cleared some things up for you all! I’m expecting to have not remembered to include everything that you wanted to know, so I’m planning on doing a follow-up announcement with some FAQ that results from this announcement. Please fill out this form if you have feedback. I’ll be giving you all a week (until December 3rd) to ask questions. Give me a few days to compile and answer them, and then I’ll post another announcement with the answers to the most frequent (and donations-relevant) questions.
Note: this doesn’t mean you can’t ask questions after that, it just means your questions wouldn’t have a chance to appear in the follow-up announcement.
CONGRATS TEAM SPICE
Final Score...
6325438.24 vs 6332569.03
| Top Attack The attack that did the most damage, with the most amount of characters from the opposing team is "Big Bertha" by Omorice with a whooping 17,323 points, featuring 720 characters... What a madman! |
| Top Attack The attack that did the second most damage is "the great wave off catagawa" by sunminny with a whooping 6,865 points, featuring 503 characters. What a unique piece! |
| Featured Attacks: Highest Points These are the top attacks that did more than 3000+ points of damage. Click to check them out: |
| Featured Attacks: Character Interaction These are some attacks that have strong character interaction. Click to check them out: |
| Featured Attacks: Film / Animation These are some attacks that have strong animation or great video editing. Click to check them out: |
| Featured Attacks: Crafts These are some attacks that were uniquely done with physical materials! Click to check them out: |
| Featured Attacks: Comics These are some attacks are comics! |
| Featured Attacks: 3D Render These are some attacks that were done using a 3D software. Click to check them out: |
| Featured Attacks: Game These are attacks that are made in a video game format, which seems to be a new trend this year. How cool! |
Statistics |
General Statistics
A total of 635,253 attacks were made!
Sugar made 317,339 attacks, resulting in 6325438.24 points
Spice made 317,914 attacks, resulting in 6332569.03 points
User Growth
We have over 267,000 users total. Of those users, 115,773 of them took part in the fight!
63,897 new users participated in their first fight. 51,876 are returning users!
Our Discord Server also saw amazing growth and now boasts 57,000 users!
User Statistics
Sixbane pumped out 1775 attacks for team Spice, the most out of anyone once again. In total, Sixbane has done over 4,823 attacks!
This is followed by Ressy who graciously made 291!
@Okapolar did the most attacks for team Sugar with 1131 attacks, and in total has done 2343!
This is followed by Creamflame who drew 384 attacks!
The longest attack chain belonged to mooneria and EmojiGamez with an amazing level 452 revenge chain?!? Wow.
Another impressive chain between Kometan and Eter contains 80 amazingly rendered attacks, great work you two!
| Staff Picks These are some attacks that were selected by staff to showcase! |
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| Helpful Members Thank you to these users that were helpful in all different aspects this year. All of these users did something worth recognizing. Give them a follow!  |
 Sangtanic |  Aituok |  crab-milk |  @Spottedphyre |  @Shake666 |
 MagicaJaphet |  PhoeniXXTalon |  @bananamop |  howlingviolist |
A big thank you to the entire Support Team for diligently helping out.
Achievements |
You might have noticed the attack and team achievements were automated this year. If you don't have a certain badge, don't panic! There will be scheduled maintenance to make sure everyone is up to date.
Also, we're still in the process of making the winner badge, traitor badge, loyalty badge, etc for this year. We'll announce when we are finished with them.
Answers to Common Questions |
General
The site will remain up and be available for viewing just like before, just without the ability to attack.
If you’d like to continue attacking others, a good alternative is an art trade conducted via PM here, our Discord, or other platform of your choice.
Minigames 2020-2021
In a few weeks, the Discord sever will start up a thing called Minigames. Minigames are art related games that you can play when Art Fight isn't active. We've currently got 5 different minigames. It'll be announced when they start up.
Here's a preview of some of the games:
Give some art and get some art! Claim a spot by posting a character or characters you would like drawn, then draw the character the person above you posted!
Design a character and auction it off for free through a guessing game! Adopts are encouraged to be based on a theme (a food, bath bomb, song, ect), whoever guesses the category right gets the adopt!
Draw your or your friends' characters using the given prompt! Prompts change the 1st and 15th of every month and range in theme from palette prompts to drawing your characters doing specific activities.
If you're interested, join the Discord Server for more information!
| We want your feedback! |
We have a variety of different feedback forms this year. This will aid us in development for Art Fight 2021. We would really appreciate if you took the time to fill these out!
General Feedback Form
Want to give some general feedback surrounding Art Fight as a whole? This form is for you!
Art Fight Usability Form
We want to hear your thoughts about the layout/UI and how you use certain features!
Ratings Feedback Form
Ratings are an integral part of Art Fight. We're always looking to improve them, so please give your thoughts about them here.
Art Fight 2021 Theme Poll
Vote for your favourite theme in the Art Fight theme poll for next year!
Thank you all for participating in Art Fight 2020: Sugar vs Spice!
Please consider going back and thanking all of your attackers for the wonderful work they did for you!
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Reports on attack ratings will be temporarily disabled after 4PM MDT. If you wish to report attacks for reasons not involving ratings, (i.e. Harassment, tracing, etc.) please report the User’s profile and describe the problem accurately in the report. Once again thank you all for your help!
I apologize about the sudden site slowness yesterday and today. Due to this, the event will be ending August 11th at 7pm MDT (Art Fight time). Here's a countdown timer if you need it
After the event ends, the moderators will spend a few days responding to attacks and double checking things. The official newspost will be posted after that with the winning team.
We appreciate the patience this last month. We hope you've all had a great fight!
I apologize about the sudden site slowness yesterday and today. Due to this, the event will be ending August 11th at 7pm MDT (Art Fight time). Here's a countdown timer if you need it
After the event ends, the moderators will spend a few days responding to attacks and double checking things. The official newspost will be posted after that with the winning team.
We appreciate the patience this last month. We hope you've all had a great fight!
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Art Fight 2020 Extension & Updates
Hi everyone! The team hopes you've been enjoying the fight so far! We've got a few updates and reminders for you all. Please read below for more information. |
Art Fight 2020 Extension
You may have noticed that the site was slow for a few days after the event started. We apologize about the inconvenience it may have caused you all.
Due to the site being inaccessible for a few days, we've made the decision to extend the fight until August 10th, 2020 12:00PM MDT. The site wasn't down for that long, but we wanted to surprise you all with a longer extension this year. We hope you all enjoy the extra time!
Known Site Issues
Art Fight should be running pretty smooth now, with the exception of an error you may get on the front page, and the statistics page being temporarily inaccurate. There may be some slow patches, but it should be generally stable!
Rating Update - Animation Balancing, Simple Characters & Minimal Form
Our rating system isn't perfect, so we've made some important changes to it for the rest of the fight that we think you'll like!
Animation
On July 4th, we recently balanced animation points, since animation was giving a bit more points than intended. All attacks uploaded after that have the intended amount.
Simple Characters & Minimal Form
There has been some controversy surrounding the Simple Shaped Character size rating. We've heard your concerns, and are implementing a new size rating called Minimal Form.
Sometimes referred to as 'blobs', these doodle-like characters are drawn with minimum effort. They generally feature singular simple shapes or silhouettes. Characters that can be drawn in only a few strokes or lines can fall into this category.
The team will be updating existing attacks we deem fit with this rating. We'll also be doing some point recalculations too, so you may notice some point changes!
We urge you to all check out the new rating description by clicking here.
Art Fight 2020 Questions Here's some general information for newbies to help aid them in navigating the site! Please be reminded that our Moderators are always available for general Art Fight questions, and our Adminstrators are available for anything a Moderator can't answer! If you haven’t already, we also encourage you to join the Discord server here! Discord is one of the fastest ways to get contact with moderators and the latest information regarding the site. |
How do I get sorted?
Now that the event has officially started, you can click “Current Event” in the upper right hand corner to check it out. Once there, you can go ahead and get sorted into a team. Team sorting is done manually to help prevent teams from being flooded with abandoned and inactive accounts. Which team you get sorted is mostly based on how many users are on the teams already, to help make sure that the user count is balanced and each team has an equal chance based on member count.
How do I attack?
Once you’ve been sorted into one of the two teams, you are then able to click the Submit button in the navbar and there should now be “Attack!”.
What is rating?
You may notice a Rate Attacks option under Browse. Here, you can rate attacks that have been submitted, giving them a small addition to their points if you upvote them. This is not a required part of gameplay! It’s just if you want to take part in it.
You also do not need to be on a team to rate! Spectators, if you want to have a little part in the game too, now’s your chance!
Is friendly fire a thing? What is it?
Friendly fire in Art Fight means to attack someone on the same team as opposed to attacking someone on the opposite team, and it most definitely is a thing! You’d attack them just like you would anybody else. However, since the goal is to attack people on the other team, friendly fire will not count for points.
Hello Art Fighters! Welcome to Art Fight 2020. We’re all excited for you to participate!
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Other
Here’s a few helpful links to get you started:
Team Badges
To show your team pride, use the badges made by Sangtanic on your Art Fight profile and DeviantART!
As you already know, the theme of 2020 is Sugar vs Spice!
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Here is some general information for those who are new!
Updates
- Name changes are no longer accepted for the duration of the fight, with the exception of donators!
- We have heavily updated our attack categorization. Please check them out as they have a lot of changes!
- You may have noticed that we implemented a dark mode! You're able to switch to it in settings.
Other
Here’s a few helpful links to get you started:
Team Badges
To show your team pride, use the badges made by Sangtanic on your Art Fight profile and DeviantART!
Sugar, left to right:
Spice, left to right:
Sugar, left to right:
Unknown LakeLake Vanderdeer @reshirama @dogantlers ClockworkRhapsody
Spice, left to right:
Unknown LakeLake Vanderdeer @reshirama @dogantlers ClockworkRhapsody
Spice, left to right:
Thank you to Axel for the beautiful banners, team badges, and animation reveal.
View the banners in HQ on our DeviantART group here
Let the battle begin!
Art Fight 2020 Theme Reveal and Early Bird Registration
Hello everyone, are you excited for Art Fight yet? You should be, because we have some nice surprises coming up!
Theme Reveal
It’s become a tradition to animate a short video revealing the theme. This year, we revealed the 2020 Art Fight theme on stream. If you missed the stream, find the video here! We chose to spice things up this year and also incorporated a summer/autumn kind of feeling to the themes. We hope you like them!
Early Bird Registration - Pick your team!
Yes, as we stated before, you will be able to pick your team early by clicking on this google form and following the instructions. Please be aware that you won’t get on your team immediately, it will take some time to process. The form will close before July 1st.
If you want to get further updates, make sure you join our Discord Server to get fast announcements. As well, check out our Twitter!
Maturity Filters Update
Upon feedback from you, we’ll be slightly revamping the maturity filters and their rules. You’ll see an announcement for that later on!
Ratings Update
We’re proud to announce that the rating system got a big update! You’ll see a variety of new options when rating an attack. Please be sure to look over the Attack Guide before making an attack to see where your art may fall!
Here are some of the changes made for this year:
- There is a new overarching Attack Type section, which includes "Drawing", "3D Modeling" and "Crafts!" These will offer different options in the drop down menu, and will have relevant scorings.
- The new Craft category allows you to chose from: Textile, Clay, Heavy-Metal Work, Food Art, Bead Work, and Paper Craft.
- The new 3D Modeling category lets you choose from Model or Sculpt, Texture types, and Lighting types.
- Animation now has two parts for scoring. The length, and technique. Technique allows you to choose between Frame-By-Frame, Tweening/Stop-Motion, and 3D animation.
- There is a new Polish check-mark. This allows you to give your attack bonus points for any extra effort you may have put into your piece!
- Single-Tone Shading and Multi-Tone Shading have been combined into one Fully-Shaded category.
- Simple Scene and Complex Scene have been combined into one Scene category.
- Painting has been moved from the Finish category to the Coloring category.
- Point numbers have been rebalanced all around!
Dark Mode
As you may have noticed, we now have a dark theme available! We did switch everyone to this theme temporarily, but you're more than welcome to change back to light theme here.
We hope you are as excited as we are for Art Fight 2020! Let’s make this a good year.