Glad you guys liked the photo presentations! They were terrific fun to make! And as trivia, the photos for the superhero one were taken when a we went to a superhero-themed improv comedy night and were never intended for a presentation - all the others were specifically for the awards. ^.~

I agree with DAJB on those points. I also agree that there needs to be much better visibility for the Awards. It's not readily visible from the homepage, and a casual viewer might give the News update link a "ho-hum" and move on.
I had to bookmark links to the forums and sometimes hunt and peck to find my place again. Again, a minor complaint. I'm sometimes either in a hurry or too lazy to browse my way around.
My fellow panelists fortunately didn't have too many issues with wrongly categorized comics...but they did require some thorough reading to get final votes.

amanda
Ooh, agreed on that time frame, BlkKnight.

DAJB, you bring up some really good points - we definitely should have worked out some specific definitions and criteria for each category, and I like the idea of the panelists being responsible for ensuring that the comics belong in their categories (I should have totally done that this year, but...that would have been a TON of reading).

On the publicity front...that was a little tricky. The admins/mods were awesome about news posts and stickied threads which helped a lot. People plugged it on their comics and in their forum signatures. UsedBooks ran a Project Wonderful campaign. BenGo with The Floating Lightbulb did a really nice piece on the awards (and he's not associated with the Duck or PS) so we got some off-site interest. We did probably the best we could do on the relatively short notice, but I think that, while planning the awards for 2009, publicity should DEFINITELY be a topic.

Top navigation? Check. I didn't even think about the commenting and then having to scroll down - and some of those presentations were LONG (which, personally, I think is awesome). ^.^

Don't fall over from shock, Skullbie, but I completely agree with you. Being a first timer I was pretty gung ho with my reading, but for other judges to be sloppy or haphazard is not only not fair, but unethical. If you are too opinionated or simply don't have the time, do not commit to being a judge. It's not fair to the other artists.

Skullbie
The awards this year were wonderful, my only beef was the judges panel thing. The comic gets through tons of popular votes only to have 3-4 people decide if it wins?
And from the discussions that went on in certain panels i was in a lot were biased, letting a comic shine through not because it deserved too but because they liked/dislike it persoanlly. Not naming a name here but one even confessed he didn't read more than 2 of the comics up for judging dismissing the rest- and the panel was very plot oriented.

The DD awards is fairly new- but i think with this year it's grown in respect tremendously. My suggestion is provide clear as crystal guidelines to what they should judge the comics on. (i.e.: best traditional must be done by hand, good line quality, less digital, etc) and create an actually private forum that only the judges can get into to encourage discussion(with this years tiki mail shenanigans it hindered discussion)

With the forum people from all the panels can flit into the discussion and make sure someone's not saying' i only read 2 of them and i'm reading the other 3 cuz they're stupid!' and get him off the panel. And actual discussion will occur with 'did we judge it right for the category?'

Well, it's difficult for me to recall the awards as anything other than something fun well thought out, and well-planned. Really for me it was one pleasant surprise after another! I didn't really like the idea of panels before but usedbooks brought up a really valid point about that. Winning an award through popular vote just means that a lot of people liked it. Winning an award through a panel of judges consisting of your peers would suggest after much consideration decided that your comic was the best. The biggest thing that I can think of that would improve the awards would be more advertising on the front page. All we really got was a mention in the news post, maybe for next year the admins could showcase the awards in featured comics?

In light of the "someone else running the awards in 2009" things, JustNoPoint has volunteered to take the reins (barring unforseen circumstances or a change of mind, which is entirely possible).

Oy' I didn't know you would announce it! Or that it was definite O_O

*watches as all the eyes look upon me... uh, hi...

Though I will start accepting bribes as early as now in the form of $100 US bills.

EDIT: LOL I better get my camera ready, eh Amanda?

Well, it's not completely definite - but you've volunteered to do it, so I thought I'd let people know there's interest ^.~ You are still free to run screaming at any point, haha.

And yes! Being the emcee entitles you to make photo presentations of all the ones that get dumped on you, hehe

Even though we might be having the mantle of head organizer passed along, I think it would be a good idea for those of us who have taken a major role thus far to continue on helping as a core committee to help oversee and direct things. If we could find a way for those people to all discuss things privately that would probably be a big help. Not to say that we should exclude new talent and ideas, but I'd really like to make sure we've got people who are dedicated and focused on making it bigger and better each year. I think it would be a good idea to keep around the group from this year who can help make things run smoother while seeing if we can always bring in a few new people to avoid accusations of cronyism or whatnot.

As for choosing judges for next year, I highly suggest we think about getting some off-site judges to help us out if we can. Especially webcomic celebrities. Not only does it have the advantage that they're more objective due to not being tied into the community here, but it would help to select judges that are qualified for the role as well as maybe contributing to the PR of the awards. Imagine the Pr that could be gained for all of DD and the awards from a single plug on a comic like Questionable Content.
Another option might be asking previous winners to voluntarily give up their slot to run in the awards ( The better to keep them objective about things. ) and become judges. As previous winners, they have some level of experience in the area they would be judging. Or maybe we could ask them to help us out by being presenters for next year. Either way, it would add some really good talent and PR to the mix.

Keeping the ballots clean will be a hard task. It would be an exceptionally good idea to get some technical talent into the crowd here to help out. If we could get a codemonkey to set up a form that would automatically disregard spam ballots, double votes, and non-DD comics, that would make the job far easier. Let's face it, Amanda and I waded through a couple hundred ballots each by hand. If we end up getting many more than that, it could take days of work to comb through it all by hand. And while I'm more than willing to put in the work and help out as much or more than I did this year, next time around it could be totally impractical. The same might be a good idea for site layout and design. If we could get our hands on a really good coder to do a slick site for us, that would save someone a lot of learning and trouble and mean we'd have a really really nice presentation space ( Not to say the one we had this year wasn't a good one. It was in fact great. ). But I think to smooth out some of the kinks, we really need some experts in those areas to help us.

Lastly, I make one final suggestion since I see no one has mentioned it, and I propose we call the individual awards: Drunkie Awards.

Is "Pictures of You" even autobiographical?

Cuz if it isn't, that's pretty lame.

Allan
Is "Pictures of You" even autobiographical? Cuz if it isn't, that's pretty lame.

As has already been acknowledged, there are a number of comics in several categories where their inclusion is questionable. That's what happens when the fans of a popular comic nominate their favourite in every category they can think of. A lesson has been learnt, I think, and it's intended to try and tighten up the genre definitions next year.

As far as the "autobiographical" category is concerned, however, it will always be necessary to trust what the creators themselves say about their comic and, in the case of Pictures of You, Gibson Twist specifically describes it as being based on "real people and real events" drawn from, for example, his time in several bands. That's pretty much the definition of an autobiography so, in this case, I honestly don't think there's an issue.

amanda
Glad you guys liked the photo presentations! They were terrific fun to make! And as trivia, the photos for the superhero one were taken when a we went to a superhero-themed improv comedy night and were never intended for a presentation - all the others were specifically for the awards. ^.~

Don't forget to give credit where credit is due, for the inspiration for those photo comics.... ;)

Which were very inventive and fun, by the way.

I just wanted to say I think amanda did a great job. Its super stressful organizing something that ultimately you're responsible for, but have to depend on lots of other people to get done.


That said I think Djab brought up alot of good points. For example, people nominated for categories should at least been PQ'ed making them aware of the nomination. I think some ground swell from each candidate could have easily changed the outcome of some of these awards.

Easily king. The problem we had this year was the short timeline we were working on. For next year, I think we should be giving ourselves a lot more time to get the groundwork laid even before we open the ballot. Instead of a week before the nominations go live, perhaps we should start advertising, and doing some things maybe a month ahead of time.

Perhaps it would be advisable to work out a general timeline of things to do, that would get as much of the work that doesn't have to be done with the ballots ( Things other than ballot counting or presentation pages and the like. ), out of the way as humanly possible before the vote goes live. I don't know about anyone else, but I have a serious aversion to giving myself shorter deadlines than is necessary.

DAJB
As far as the "autobiographical" category is concerned, however, it will always be necessary to trust what the creators themselves say about their comic and, in the case of Pictures of You, Gibson Twist specifically describes it as being based on "real people and real events" drawn from, for example, his time in several bands. That's pretty much the definition of an autobiography so, in this case, I honestly don't think there's an issue.

Really "basing events" on "real life people" is like inserting yourself and your friends into your comics.

"One time we went to an ice cream store, so I wrote a strip about us fighting ninjas and then eating ice cream."

At least it's a real comic this year, yes? ^.~

Tera Sanders was a "real" person last year, too

Nevermind. Forget it

Amanda, should we go ahead and give the link out to those that wish to help set up the Awards for next year? Especially since it's still fresh in everyone's minds.

Of course the ones involved this year would get the link, but I also think DAJB and Skullbie should probably come along if they wanted to give feedback. They seem very helpful thus far with all kinds of good ideas.

Sure!

I'll help ^o^

Better idea. I'll just give the link out publicly here. There is a private section for some of the people that will help out more (looks at Skullbie) =D

I'm putting together a post now for the categories. Feel free to suggest anything else.

http://www.justnopoint.com/drunkduck/forum/index.php

@JnP

I registered but i can't find the reply/new thread buttons in my account. :'(

Skullbie
I registered but i can't find the reply/new thread buttons in my account. :'(

If it operates like the Off Hours Forum (and I'm sure it does!) JNP will have to "activate" you first.

It only hurts a little bit!
;-)

*Goes to make test account to make sure I didn't fubor anything up.

Ooops... hehe I missed up when I gave you committee rank.

I'll fix, sorry about that.

EDIT: Fixed

Anyone can register, I don't have to activate them. I just forgot to set the permissions for the committee group. Meaning that you and Skullbie, could see the private board... but other than that you had much less than a regular member :P

I'll help! I already registered at the forum. B)

It seems there's a lot of hand-wringing about the judging process, and I'll just say my experience was a mixed bag. I almost want to call-out the awesome people, but you all know who you are, and that's enough, right? ;)

That said, I think though the idea of a panel seems good, in its execution it's terminally flawed. My suggestion would be to have people who are familiar with the genres police the first round of voting, in a transparent way, with one another, to weed out all the misplaced comics. If at all possible, all of these people would also be ineligible for awards, whether by choice or circumstance. Then we let the second round go popular vote. If all of the comics are in the appropriate categories, I don't see why this is offensive. If you let the first round be chosen by popular vote, you may as well let the second round, because even if the panelists are Scott McCloud, Art Spiegelman and Chris Ware, their decisions are still limited to comics that "the mob" chose.

On a side note, Pictures of You isn't autobiographical, because the characters are amalgamations of real people, plus fiction. Kind of like Law & Order, only written well.
And that's no slam against Mr. Twist, he's said pretty much the same. Except for the Law & Order bit, that was me.

The biggest reason we did NOT go with a popular vote this year, actually, is because I didn't know how to code a ballot to keep people from voting twice ^.^ Yeahhhh. I'm a firm believer in the panel system, though - I think if we perfect that process a bit (it was, admittedly, pretty much thrown together at the last second) and are better prepared for it in 2009, it will go much more smoothly.

In case someone didn't say it yet, I personally think we should use Amanda's nomination forms again for next year (maybe edit a bit, but still).

I also second the idea (I think someone suggested) of going with more "pure" categories, ie, the categories people choose for their comics here on DD (humor, manga, horror, etc.) and if we want more fun "mtv" stuff like tension, or best villain, etc... put those up to purely popular vote, since they're more casual in nature anyway. That would also lessen the need for so many panelists.

I also think that best overall should be split into strip and story, since there's really, really significant differences in the formats of the two.