So, I'm sure you've all noticed that The World Ends With You contest, if not check your messages already! Now, don't get me wrong, I think the contest is very cool. The chance to maybe get some sort of notice from Square-Enix, a primary source of gaming awesome, maybe even from Nomura himself? That's a contest even I'll take the time to enter, and I usually avoid art contests for three main reasons. The first being that often, the prize isn't worth the time it takes to make the entry, and the second being that if it is worth the time, the competition will be fierce, making the odds of the payoff low. But as a wannabe game artist of the Japan fan variety, the prize is enough for me to ignore those usual complaints, though my third main issue with art contests remains strong.

I speak of the dreaded creativity criteria. The wildcard of art contests that makes it so that unless you personally know what the judges like, that part might as well be based on rolling some dice. Aspects like technical skill are fine, that's a relatively objective matter where more skill and effort is likely to have a correlative payout. But throw creativity in there, and who knows what will take the win. It is once again the huge question mark in my contest aspirations. That said, though, this contest isn't the worst offender in that regard, they provide clues like "the most creative interpretation of WEWY storyboards," which to me sorta implies they are looking for something along those stylistic lines, but once again, the c-word in there there means they might be looking for something very different. And they specified characters or backgrounds or monsters, which is good, but described it "as if you were developing for a game." "A" game? Not "THE" game? "A" game could be ANYTHING. Had they said "the" game, I could say alright, make it WEWY-style, and get to drawing. But they said "a" game, which maybe implies that they don't want it to look like WEWY? But then why give us the storyboards? And if we're supposed to act like we're on the game development team, drawing stuff with no creative or stylistic parameters is severely unrealistic. On a team, you have a setting to follow and most likely a style too. The odds of being the guy who decides the style, like Nomura, is very very low, and even then, a guy like him already has his own set style that he'll pretty much stick to. (Sure, WEWY looks somewhat different from Kingdom Hearts, etc, but it's still very clearly Nomura work, and for that I love it.) So, I guess my point is, if I'm pretending to be part of a game's art team, that implies a relatively narrow scope of creativity, so should I assume that what with the WEWY tie-in, WEWY storyboards, and the involvement of the WEWY development team, that working in the general WEWY style would be a good thing? Or not creative enough? I JUST KEEP GOING IN CIRCLES OVER THIS! Just tell us what to do, and then see who does it best, is that so much to ask of art contests? (Incidentally, the thought of working on games where you have a style to follow, and it is one I like, like Nomura's cartoonier stuff seems like a great setup to me. I also like the old art system of masters and apprentices, and think that most people these days worry too much about developing their own style versus developing basic technical skills, but that's another rant.)

So, in conclusion, the WEWY contest grand prize sounds really cool, but I fear that as with so many art contests before, that "creativity" criteria will be the bullseye I can't hit blindfolded. And furthermore, it doesn't really fit with the concept of being anyone but the art director of a theoretical art team, unless they clearly specifically mean to be creative withing the WEWY context. Which they didn't clearly say.

And, with my rant concluded, I'll go back to designing a generally WEWY-style character, as that remains my best guess for what to do. I WANT TO WIN THE CONTEST SO BAD.