2009 Anime-Beta Awards - AWARDS UP!

[ReiTheJelly]

I realize that we were allowed to submit sequence mate artwork if it was significantly different, but, at least in my opinion, I think that female submission #13 is too close to that of a previous female winner in the 2009 sketch awards. Both pieces have what is essentially the same pose and I believe that they are only a few cels away from each other in the same sequence. The only difference is that the catgirl is winking and the hand is facing upwards more in the winning piece, while this entry has a lower positioned hand and a non-winking catgirl.

As the owner of the other Cheshire Cat, I must say that I don't consider these pieces to be that similar. Sure, the general pose is the same, but the over-all nature/emotion of the cel is changed the moment she closes one eye and winks.


The same can be said of the current entry into the Female category of Sara from Tenshi ni Narumon. Your cel from this sequence won Best Female in 2007, yet the only difference between the two is the wink and her tongue.
http://awards2009.angelic-lair.com/female/female02.htm
http://www.zetsuai.eu/5thAnnualBetaAwar ... inners.php

In my personal opinion, both sets of sequence mates are diverse enough to warrant their entries into this contest.

[Angelic-Lair]

Hi everyone,

We'd like to add our thoughts on some of the points that have been raised.

1) "Female 13" was accepted because there was no award given to a sequence mate of this cel. There was an award given to a sketch of a sequence mate of this cel. This raises an interesting question. In our minds, there is a difference between a cel and a sketch, especially now that sketches have their own separate awards. A very similar cel was entered in 2006 and did not win an award.

2) We debated a lot over the colored storyboard, and finally decided to accept it in settei for a few reasons:
- Settei is the only pre-production category, so we felt it was where it should go if it stayed.
- Since the piece is colored, it would likely not be accepted in the sketch award counterpart, especially if the B&W versus color rule is implemented.
- The Settei category would have been cut if it wasn't for that fifth entry.
It is possible we may have made a bad judgement call on that one, but we did accept the entry knowing what it was.

3) As for the loading time for the site, we apologize if it is making it difficult for dial-up. We knew the design was on the heavy side, but we did it to make it as consistent and browser-friendly as possible. We originally had used more html, but had some difficulty displaying it consistently in different browsers and OS, especially Macs. We opted for quality of the images and consistency over overall size. We could increase the compression rate, but modding the site at this point would result in delaying the voting period. We would agree to do that only if it would make a big difference, i.e. so more people can vote.

We appreciate greatly the help everyone has given us so far. We do not have an infinite knowledge of anime, and it is useful to have a viewing period to correct any error that might have slipped in.

Thanks!

Edit: We have updated the male category. Please make sure to refresh your browser and/or clear the cache for the change to take effect.

[cutiebunny]

The same can be said of the current entry into the Female category of Sara from Tenshi ni Narumon. Your cel from this sequence won Best Female in 2007, yet the only difference between the two is the wink and her tongue.
http://awards2009.angelic-lair.com/female/female02.htm
http://www.zetsuai.eu/5thAnnualBetaAwar ... inners.php

I disagree. The one that is currently up for awards shows a full on frontal view whereas the one that won is more of a side shot. Since the angle of the body is different, I would consider them not to be sequence mates.

In my personal opinion, both sets of sequence mates are diverse enough to warrant their entries into this contest.

I realize that the notion of "significantly different" is up for debate and depends on how you personally view the artwork. However, I think some guidelines need to be set up(ie. is the character in question shown in the same angle/pose/coloration as a previous winner).

Other than the obvious "winner submitting the non-winning matching counterpart", what is the point of prohibiting the submission of sequence mates?

If you, "the committee", were aware that the submission of artwork was very close to that of a previous douga winner, don't you think that this question should have been raised to the community before the awards began? You did have a week between the cap-off of the entry period and that of the display period. That gave you plenty of time to say "Hey, we received a submission that is very close to a previous douga winner. What do you think - should we allow it or not?"


Although I realize that it is too late for you to do anything about it, I feel that this issue should have been brought up to the community instead of you, the committee, deciding for everyone on this matter. Yes, you are the ones in charge of the project this year, but clarification of stuff like this should be decided by the community and not by the committee.

[Angelic-Lair]

First, we'd like to clarify up front that the decision was made by us only, Angelic-Lair, as we were the ones verifying the submissions.

As far as alerting the community, it was a tedious process to go through all the submissions, and if we had to ask the community every time we had to ponder over a submission, we would have needed much more time than just one week. Many awards organizers in the past asked for at least 2 weeks to process the submissions and upload them. We knew we didn't have that time since the holidays were closing in.

We based our decision on what we believed was right, and what we thought the community would deem acceptable. May we point out that errors have been done in past awards, including last year (2008), where a cel won third place in a category even though an almost identical sequence mate won second place in 2007. We all try our best.

[Charon]

This is actually the first year where sequence mates to past winners haven't been allowed. Previously it'd been no past winners and then no close sequence mates in the same category within the same year.

I don't think every last detail needs to be polled though, since some rule details tend to change year to year.

[wELCOME cONSUMER]

The "voting" link on the index page is not active. I had to do the same as Rei to see the entries. The link seems to be active on other pages, just not the index.

Why are there 2 black & white entries in the Industry Art category? I thought entries to that category had to have color, either in the inking or with paint or some other medium. I'm sure I'm probably wrong about that...

If people don't know Alita is a robot, then they probably won't vote for that entry.

Allowing a non-settei item into the settei category is like allowing a hanken into any non-hanken category. Maybe future awards can have a pre-production or storyboard category for such things. But it's not a settei.

I echo Goldknight's comment, it's definitely weird to see a smaller awards. I actually miss seeing cels and sketches side by side.

[JWR]

Well by defination Settei are the reference drawing sheets used by the animators. These are then used to produce the sketches , genga and such for the cels.

Now what has been entered in this section could be considered test cels that are further down the line of the preproduction.

Maybe next year the catagory could be labeled "Preproduction Art" simular to the "Industry Art" section used this year.

Personally I would have no problem having the hand colored storyboard removed if anyone has an objection to it being there. I only enter this "show" for fun and could not care less if I actually win something.

[benten]

Maybe next year the catagory could be labeled "Preproduction Art" simular to the "Industry Art" section used this year.

Sounds like a good suggestion to me.

I'm very much in favor of leaving the current entrants as they are. There seemed to be intelligent rationale applied to the decision to include/exclude the various items. I have just assumed that the organizers would do the checking with some help by comments made during this viewing period. Ultimately, in such a short time, it seems to me that polling the community at large is impractical.


By the way, the number of entries was smaller than I expected. I would throw out the suggestion again that the next time, we go to the 3 awards for 5 entries, 2 awards for 4 entries, 1 award for 3 entries. I enjoy getting as many categories as possible to increase the likelihood that everyone will have something that they would consider a potential winner. The elimination of just two categories didn't seem too bad, except for those of us that just happened to submit in one of them. Had to scramble to come up with another entry.

[LLslickD]

How many awards will there be for each category?

[zerospace]

Hi everyone,
3) As for the loading time for the site, we apologize if it is making it difficult for dial-up. We knew the design was on the heavy side, but we did it to make it as consistent and browser-friendly as possible. We originally had used more html, but had some difficulty displaying it consistently in different browsers and OS, especially Macs. We opted for quality of the images and consistency over overall size. We could increase the compression rate, but modding the site at this point would result in delaying the voting period. We would agree to do that only if it would make a big difference, i.e. so more people can vote.

I realize that at this point, the point is somewhat mute, because no one else seems to care that the pages time out consistently over a reasonable speed dial-up connection, but probably the easiest way you can speed things up would be to convert some of your images to 3-color GIFs. You can also take your repeating background at the top of the page and just cut a slice of it and have just the smaller slice repeat rather than a large 20k banner-size image. That would cut several larger sized JPGs down to maybe a few hundred byte GIFs.

Your design is very very simple, and should display without issue across all browsers on all platforms if done right. I would suggest that you look into more CSS in the future, as it is capable of doing everything you have done using image maps and images and would take advantage of the capability of modern browsers to render colors and text. Your site quality would also improve because you would get rid of jpg artifacting. Believe it or not, tables and images are more problematic across browsers than positioning with CSS.

But that's just my opinion. Like I said, apparently no one else cares about dial-up users anymore. I find that sad, but whatever.

[beatrush]

The Vegeta and Trucks entry in the Romance section is kinda odd in relation to the other entries o_0

[Nene]

The Vegeta and Trucks entry in the Romance section is kinda odd in relation to the other entries o_0

Lol that made me laugh, I had to check out the entries after I read that. XD

Didn't the awards used to have a "couples" category where any kind of couple be it romantic or platonic were allowed? Perhaps that's where the confusion was.

[kizu]

The couples were removed from last cel awards I think in favor of group? The DBZ cel in the romance section does seem out of place, maybe it should go in group since it replaced "couple" (although most misinterpret couple as "romantic" couple)...

[iceman57]

The DBZ cel in the romance section does seem out of place, maybe it should go in group since it replaced "couple" (although most misinterpret couple as "romantic" couple)...

Well, if every cel is debate, that may durate days, i.e. there are male that are looking childish or gay... So there would be no end
Fortunally Hentai category is clear enough

[beatrush]

Well, if every cel is debate, that may durate days, i.e. there are male that are looking childish or gay... So there would be no end
Fortunally Hentai category is clear enough

I think that cel deserves some debate for that section, unless incest is part of the Saiyan Culture