Artist Alley Selection Process

Started by SquishyK, November 03, 2014, 03:07:58 PM

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What Artist Alley selection process would you like to see?

First Come First Served
1 (9.1%)
Jury System
4 (36.4%)
XX% First Come First Served, XX% Reserved for Jury System (hybrid)
3 (27.3%)
First Come First Served with "Quality Filter"
2 (18.2%)
Lottery System
1 (9.1%)

Total Members Voted: 11

Voting closed: December 03, 2014, 03:07:58 PM

SquishyK

I realize that the organizers for Artist Alley are put under a great deal of strain and scrutiny each year. It is impossible to have a system that makes everyone happy. They have a limited number of tables available but don't want to artificially inflate the prices just to weed out Artists who aren't serious/committed. Then it is a struggle to get registration to open at a time that won't conflict with other cons, school finals, random power outages, and so on and so forth AND early enough that people aren't paying top dollar for their weekend badges.

Last year they implemented a jury system in which they allowed a week or so to register and then looked at every entry and selected the "cream of the crop". Of course this solved some issues but, as I said, no system is perfect so it created a slew of others. Artists were under a great deal of anxiety wondering if they will make the cut, were incredibly discouraged if they didn't, and variety in AA was notably muted (by this I meant that artistic excellence was preferred over creativity with the vast majority of offerings being prints/drawn commissions and most of the limited crafts consisting of Pixel Bead Art).

I'm not saying this as a scorned artist who didn't make the cut. I didn't even apply for a table last year and I will be missing Fanime all together next year TT_TT. I say this as someone who has been attending Fanime for 9 years and I absolutely love it to pieces! I'll admit I am entirely biased in my opinion of last year's system but instead of simply stating my case and disregarding other input I though I would open this up to the community. I'm sure there are many different opinions and views on how things went and I'm interested in how others within the community feel about it (both artists and other attendees). So I opened a poll with some different options for how AA could work and I invite anyone to post feedback here. Note, this is NOT an official AA thread I am but a lowly con attendee. Last year someone from the community posted an entire survey (and I've seen many "what did you think of..." threads) with multiple fields on how things went in South Hall and then posted the info in graphs and such... I'm not going quite that far. The poll will be open for 30 days at which time the results will be revealed automatically (this is to discourage "ballet stuffing"). Please be respectful of others and their opinions. As I said, there really is no perfect solution unless there happened to be exactly the same number of people interested in AA spaces as there were spaces available and then pigs would fly and unicorns would prance through the streets.

For further clarification on "XX% First Come First Served, XX% Reserved for Jury System" the idea is that some percentage of applicants (probably between 50 - 80 percent) would automatically get in on a first come first served basis (pending review of content for adhesion to the rules of AA). And the rest of the applicants would go into a pool from which the remaining percentage of tables would be assigned on a jury basis. The advantage of this system is some quality control but at the same time everyone at least has a shot. Also, those who couldn't get a jump on applying for one reason or another aren't S.O.L. And ideally nobody would know for sure if someone did or didn't get in based on being fast enough or based on the jury. I don't know of any Con that actually implements a system like this but who knows, maybe Fanime will be the first.

The "First Come First Served with 'Quality Filter'" works on a similar principle of people ideally being unaware if they were cut because the jury or because all spots filled up before the jury got to them in the queue.

(disclaimer: I posted all the options for selection that I could think of regardless of whether I personally support the use of each system. This was intended to give the greatest range of options. If there are any options that I did not consider feel free to post them on this thread. And again, this is NOT an official AA feedback thread.)
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Tested/MythBusters:
"Failure is always an option"
"Try again, fail again, fail better"
"Art is never finished, only abandoned"

SquishyK

If anyone reads this hold on... I just realized there was already a post about AA registrations this year.

Edit: Ok, All they had to say on it was:

"Interested in applying to Artist Alley 2015? We have changed our registration process slightly for Artist Alley this year. If your decision to attend FanimeCon hinges on your acceptance to Artist Alley, we recommend waiting to register for your membership after Artist Alley decisions have been released. Don't worry, you will not miss the lowest membership price tier by doing so. You can also book hotels without a general membership. We will not be offering refunds this year for rejected Artist Alley applicants due to not being selected. We will be opening for applications very soon! Keep an eye on our website for the opening date!"

This might mean that whatever process AA is putting in place this year is already set in stone but I'll leave this up here just in case or for considerations for next year.
I sell cute and geeky polymer clay jewelry!

https://www.etsy.com/shop/SquishyKreations
http://squishykreations.tumblr.com

Tested/MythBusters:
"Failure is always an option"
"Try again, fail again, fail better"
"Art is never finished, only abandoned"

megamanjoe415

The artist alley selection process for this year remains the same. There will be a jury selection process. A quote from one of the Fanime staff:

"We want to let you know we did not pick a jury selection willy nilly, but have put much thought into it. It was based on the reduced number of tables in the room and on general trends in the room."


SquishyK

Quote from: megamanjoe415 on November 03, 2014, 09:31:34 PM
The artist alley selection process for this year remains the same. There will be a jury selection process. A quote from one of the Fanime staff:

"We want to let you know we did not pick a jury selection willy nilly, but have put much thought into it. It was based on the reduced number of tables in the room and on general trends in the room."

Can you clarify as to where you are getting this information on AA and when it was posted? I seem to remember your quote being from information posted regarding last year's con. I think you might be looking at old information.

And I know AA puts a lot of thought and consideration into what the process is going to be and how things will be set up and run every year. But I also like to think that Fanime is a convention that takes into consideration input from the community when it is reasonable to do so.
I sell cute and geeky polymer clay jewelry!

https://www.etsy.com/shop/SquishyKreations
http://squishykreations.tumblr.com

Tested/MythBusters:
"Failure is always an option"
"Try again, fail again, fail better"
"Art is never finished, only abandoned"

megamanjoe415

This is exactly the same quote as last year. They plan to use this selection for future cons as stated last year. There were too many participants and not enough tables. But then again, if they used the original artist alley location, that would be great and have even more room.

megamanjoe415

So, looking at the polls, I think it should just be first come first served with a jury selection as a hybrid. There should be some other way to get this done. How has other cons done it? What do you artist want? What do the people want? We need more votes.

Hachimitsu

Quote from: megamanjoe415 on November 09, 2014, 08:43:52 PM
So, looking at the polls, I think it should just be first come first served with a jury selection as a hybrid. There should be some other way to get this done. How has other cons done it? What do you artist want? What do the people want? We need more votes.

AOD is using the Lottery system....and something called "PREMIUM tables" / "regular tables"
I think i had more luck with the first come/first serve system then the lottery. now this year we have more new artists coming to fanime this year, i fear traffic will shut down like how Housing has done.

Fanime 2015 WILL STILL BE using the jury system as before...so my chances are still high but the same time LOW. Since my response from AA was: "We don't have enough tables / we don't have enough space"








Admiral Donuts

Quote from: megamanjoe415 on November 09, 2014, 08:33:17 PM
This is exactly the same quote as last year. They plan to use this selection for future cons as stated last year. There were too many participants and not enough tables. But then again, if they used the original artist alley location, that would be great and have even more room.

They won't use the original location because that space is for dealers hall now.

CatToy

Quote from: Admiral Donuts on November 13, 2014, 01:39:07 AM
Quote from: megamanjoe415 on November 09, 2014, 08:33:17 PM
This is exactly the same quote as last year. They plan to use this selection for future cons as stated last year. There were too many participants and not enough tables. But then again, if they used the original artist alley location, that would be great and have even more room.

They won't use the original location because that space is for dealers hall now.

Because putting the Artists Alley in the same room as the Dealer's room is clearly madness and no anime convention could ever pull that off.

Vidales

Speaking of the selection process....anyone heard any update on it? there's only about 70 days left to get everything together for those that get a booth but no one knows if they're in or out yet?

Zully

No announcements have been made, and per the Facebook page they're refusing to release an ETA because they've already passed internal deadlines and basically have no idea when we'll find out at this point.

Quote from: Melody ZhangYou're right Bryce Nakagawa, I did not want to provide an ETA without any basis. Due to the standstill cause by the technical issues, we already passed the internal deadlines we set for ourselves, and we did not have any way to project an even remotely accurate ETA for you guys.

And here's the last time we were communicated with by staff, on March 8:

Quote from: Melody ZhangHello everyone. I know you guys are freaking out about the lack of updates. At this point, our technical difficulties have been addressed and we are over halfway through with reviews. We pushed the application site out early in hopes that we would be able to get decisions out earlier, however inevitable hiccups do happen and we will deal with them as they happen. Every year we continue to tweak our systems with the goal of one day having a smooth, timely process in place. I appreciate you guys for understanding that our staffers are all doing this as volunteer work on top of family, jobs, etc.

Anix

Quote from: CatToy on March 11, 2015, 12:13:05 AM
Quote from: Admiral Donuts on November 13, 2014, 01:39:07 AM
Quote from: megamanjoe415 on November 09, 2014, 08:33:17 PM
This is exactly the same quote as last year. They plan to use this selection for future cons as stated last year. There were too many participants and not enough tables. But then again, if they used the original artist alley location, that would be great and have even more room.

They won't use the original location because that space is for dealers hall now.

Because putting the Artists Alley in the same room as the Dealer's room is clearly madness and no anime convention could ever pull that off.

Actually I remember SakuraCon putting artists with vendors and no one  was happy. Vendors didn't want to have to compete for the finite amount of dollars entering the convention. Artists hated being in the back of the hall. (What did you think that the artists were going to get the premium real estate when they pay a 1/4 of what a dealer does?)

And lol to the one that said their "original location". I've been attending since Fanime moved to the SJCC. Artist Alleys original location was around the pillars on the concourse. If you think booth spaces are limited now....
We are a little mad here.
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