Board Thread:Contests/@comment-1942179-20151028012214

Winter is right around the corner, so you all know what that means. The SFW Winter Awards are steadily approaching. I want to make sure to get this done right, so I'm going to try and get an early start on the preparations. First, let's go over the potential categories.

Here is the list of Categories from Summer 2015
 * 1) Best Hero
 * 2) Best Neutral
 * 3) Best Villain
 * 4) Best Lawful
 * 5) Best Chaotic
 * 6) Best Character
 * 7) Best New Character
 * 8) Best Leader
 * 9) Best Sidekick
 * 10) Best Mechanic
 * 11) Best Genius
 * 12) Strongest Character
 * 13) Best Super Form
 * 14) Best Artificial Life Form
 * 15) Best Speaker
 * 16) Best Child
 * 17) Most Handsome Male
 * 18) Most Beautiful Female
 * 19) Cutest Character
 * 20) Best Item
 * 21) Best Weapon
 * 22) Best Location
 * 23) Best Group
 * 24) Best Fanfiction
 * 25) Best Fan Project
 * 26) Best Picture

Here are the categories I'd like to bring up for discussion.


 * Best Mechanic
 * Best Genius
 * Best Lawful
 * Best Chaotic
 * Best Artificial Lifeform
 * Most Handsome Male
 * Most Beautiful Female
 * Cutest Character
 * Best Picture

Best Mechanic and Best Genius
I simply want to remind everyone that these two are not redundant. Best Mechanic should not be judged based on their intellect and most certainly should not be judged by whether or not they have (good) inventions. They should be judged in how good they are in the field of mechanics, as well as other general handiman skills. They should be judged based on how efficient their work is. Having inventions is a plus, but it is not required.

Best Genius should also not be based on the number of inventions or what have you. An intelligent character =/= an inventor, or a scientist, or a mechanic of sorts. Their intellect should be the main driving factor; anything else is just a bonus.

Best Lawful and Best Chaotic
It seems not everyone thinks the same way about these categories, so voting what was Lawful and especially what was considered chaotic was a mishmash of opinions, to say the least. I'm opting to axe these two categories, but I'm willing to discuss them and see if we can find some sort of agreement. After all, part of this confusion was my fault for not being clear on how these worked.

Best Artificial Lifeform
This was supposed to be split between mechanical and organic, but I was a dumb and forgot to do the tiebreaker at the end. But I digress. I'm putting this up here to hear some feedback on the new category. What did you all think? Is this something you want to return, or should we just leave it alone?

Most Attractive Character
A few people were saying they felt these categories (Most Beautiful and Most Handsome) were biased, but one person in particular stated that, since the categories are most often judged by the pictures inside, commissions from other users should not be accepted. Not here nor in Best Picture, which we will get into later.

Now I feel that this is somewhat unfair, yet I can totally see where he's coming from. But I don't want to have a gimped category, so I'd much rather remove them entirely instead of slapping in some crippling rules to it. So that brings me to the new category idea.

Best Character Design
Yep. This is my suggestion to replace Attractive Character. Best Character Design would, as the name suggests, judge characters by their designs. While a picture should be required, judging by the quality of the picture is not allowed. After all, this isn't Best Picture; It shouldn't make a difference if a better artist drew the same thing or not. We judge these by what the pictures portray--The character designs themselves.

I understand that there are a few flaws in this. What if, you may ask, someone nominates a character whose only art is just so bad that it's indecipherable? The only thing I can say is to try and go by the text description.

Cutest Character
Unlike most attractive, this is different as you aren't meant to judge solely on pictures and design, but the character's personality and traits, too. I understand that it is, yet again, another opinion based category, but it isn't meant to be a fully one-track voting on appearances. Just wanted to clear that up.

Best Picture
I used to see art of all kind up here, but nowadays it's mostly of characters. I just want to say that I don't want to simply get rid of this category because other people are commissioning others. I think that this category should probably stay because it showcases art. There shouldn't be anything wrong with having commissions from other people up here, and I believe taking away that aspect will deal a significant blow to this category. If it's a commission of someone's character, then the owner of said character isn't really taking the credit for the win; It's still the artist's work. The award goes on the actual picture's file-page, rather than whatever article it was posted on.

on that note, if we're going to be addressing commissions and requests, rather than barring them we should make the nominator specify the artist and give credit.

Right then. With that said and done, discuss. New Category Suggestions and discussions with the other categories are welcomed and encouraged. What do YOU want to see in the Winter Awards? 