Community Input Needed!

[malcom]

Hey there everyone. The mod team has been discussing things such as bringing weekly competitions back. We've also been thinking about monthly events where everyone works towards a goal similar to our very own Brushtober. Brushtober is always a great event for us as a community and we should have more of that.

---

Weeklies

---

It's been a while since we've done them and would love to bring them back for everyone.
Some ideas that we've discussed were on the lines of making them team oriented. The benefit of working with a team member is learning to work with others and make friends in the process. If you still want to go solo, you can do that as well. We would like to open the option to everyone. We can also turn the weeklies into Bi weeklies to give people more time per challenge. We would love to hear everyone's thoughts on this?

---

New kind of Monthly Events

---

Monthlies have always been really fun and challenging. In the past it would be an illustration project. Everyone would be given the same prompt and challenged to interrupt the theme in their own way. We love how the community always comes together for Brushtober, but, that's the only thing we had for a while. We would love to have other month long events that are more spread out so there's more to do.
Here are some ideas we've discussed on this topic:
Monthly Themed Events. Example: Turning Animay or Mermay into a cool (fake)game/worldbuilding project where everyone works together to help build the Cubebrush verse or just their own.
- The goal here is for everyone to have a similar theme to build within and gain more worldbuilding skills.
- You can work with another artist similar to a game jam or go solo. The choice is yours.
- Weekly missions to strive for. Example week 1 can be Main Character/Main Cast design. Week 2 can be NPC design. Week 3 Environments. Week 4 Illustration/In-game concept shot.

A current idea for April could be a gesture drawing event where we all work towards improving that skill. By the end of the month, we all take our own character(s) or a potential provided character and make a movement/pose sheet for that character.
The goal is to improve at posing, line of action, expression and more.

---

Weeklies VS Monthlies

---

One problem we used to run into in the past was that a monthly and weeklies can be going on at the same time meaning that one cancelled out the other. An idea we have is that Monthlies would become bi Monthly. So every other month, we as a community are working on many different challenges before working towards a singular goal.

---

Conclusion

---

Post below your thoughts and ideas below. We would love to hear them, so we can make Cubebrush even more amazing. Your opinions matter. We would like to try community driven events again if you guys want them as well.
These were just a few ideas to hopefully get you guys excited on what we can do together. We have some other ideas but would love to work with everyone to bring out events most can enjoy.

[malcom]

[brohawx]

Omg! It’s happening!!!!

I think your on to something here, with One not cancelling out the other. It is a fantastic foresight!

I always romanticized about a weekly or biweekly study topic here. Something where you can drop in casually like a weekend figure session or any other topic of study or master copy. All posts are edited/added to the top post and linked to prevent the endless scroll, then the threads are closed, to not keep them being bumped to the top of the latest subject.

This would invite those without the time or experience for original characters or world building to dip their toes into figure art or fundamentals.

I think people would benefit greatly from the ease of access. Seeing others participate and get ideas on how to improve. Even encouraging products or reference packs!

-Idea-How about mini cubebrush marketplace product giveaways approved by the product sellers themselves? Like a sponsor! Encouraging professional celebrity artist status cameos in monthly or weekly events. Offering a way to advertise their product and tweet the site by them just participating, with no capital investment on their part. A way to advertise for them their marketplace store and create participation freebies for the small events. We already have contacts for all the sellers in marketplace, email blast them! The forum profiles are already linked to the marketplace!

-idea- “You participate in every figure session this year? You earn a forum badge that gives you access to exclusive content!”

-idea- “It’s Figure Drawing February again everybody! Here is our guest artist Fancy Name! They are offering their ref pack as reference this month for the event exclusively in the cubebrush forums the forums every Friday! Everyone getting their mini ref pack (4 pictures that are posted in forums only ) regardless! —link to their marketplace— You participate in every figure drawing session this year and earn a badge for exclusive content!”

Incentive to participate year round, Another reason to close all the topics! Gets people to browse more products, support more artists, keep participation high and keep this place rocking!

-idea- What about badges to show off your participation next to your avatar?! that’s completely free and merit based!

I 👏am 👏so 👏ready
Let’s Goooooooooo!

[malcom]

Thank you for the feedback. Hopefully others see this as well and let us know their thoughts. We have time to figure everything out.

Idea-How about mini cubebrush marketplace product giveaways approved by the product sellers themselves?

I love the idea about mini cubebrush marketplace giveaways. Can't make any promises, but, we will try.

[strelok_2012]

I support what's been put forward here, but I'm worried I might not have the time to participate as much as I would like to given my schedule.

[Opal]

I Like the idea of the weeklies as it would get people out of their comfort zone to work together.
The monthly ideas are nice as well. I would love to build more of a universe around some characters and it might give me more inspiration. I'd probably do more monthly events than weekly ones as i do a good chunk of study's and I'm balancing that with school.
Overall i really love the ideas here!

[malcom]

@uraniumpuppy Appreciate the feedback. No worries at all if you can't do them all. Probably most people won't be able to. Having fun and participating when you can are the important aspects.

@Opal Thanks for the feedback. Glad you like the ideas so far. Just doing monthlies is fine as well. I like monthlies personally due to having more time to flesh out ideas myself.

So far we're happy to see positive reception so far. Don't forget to tell your friends.

[prinzmoana]

I would love to see a challenge/event where a group of people make a story/comic together.
For example the first one starts with a panel then it's send to person 2. This person draws the next panel based on the first and sends it to the next person and son on. In the end there will be a comic page or maybe 2 or 3 Idk xD

[malcom]

interesting concept. Setting this one up will be tricky. We don't mind trying it out. We'll make mistakes but this can be an interesting challenge.

[mitsuki-youko]

oh my these all sound so fun!!

Weeklies VS Monthlies

What about bi-weekly + monthlies?

you can then have time to do both

[malcom]

That's what we had in mind. So every other month is either a monthly or a few weekly challenges artist can take part in.

[malcom]

---

UPDATE

---

So we'll reach out to some cubebrush sellers to see if they'll be willing to work with us for a potential April Fundamentals event.

Now if they can't work for us for whatever reason, we will still try to provide links for free to use photo reference that everyone can use. If you know of some places, please post them here below.

The PLAN

The plan is to have a month where everyone works on different fundamentals for the month.

being Shape/perspective, Gesture, Construction and Poses from Memory.

Week 1 would have a focus on daily shape practice. Drawing boxes, spheres and more in different perspectives. Try to limit it to 1, 2 or isometric perspectives.

Week 2 will have a focus on doing 30 sec, 1 min and 5 minute gesture drawing(nude and/or clothed)

Week 3 will have a focus on construction of the human body.

Week 4 will be a focus on creating poses from reference and from imagination. The end goal of creating a pose sheet for an OC or an existing character that you like.

Let me know what you guys think about this plan. If you have any suggestions, let us know. This will be our first test to see how well engagement is for these kind of events. We'll be learning with everyone as we go.

Lastly, in May we will try a Cubebrush version of Mermay. We still have some planning ahead of us, but, I hope you join us on this ride.

[malcom]

Update 3-29-23

So April is around the corner. We are currently trying to finalize the structure of everything.
The Monthly Event will be called "The fundamental of Posing" as this is the main theme for the month. Like I said in my previous post, each week will have a focus on a different skill that we can all practice leading up to the final week; where we put it all together to create our very own poses for a character of your choice. I hope you guys are as excited we are.
This is our first test at something like this so don't hesitant to give us feedback so we can make these better as we go throughout the year. You can personally DM me on here or post in our feedback page that we'll set up when the event starts.

• Malcom Cubebrush moderator

[c.j.435.holloway]

Sounds alright to me. I am just trying to find my feet at the moment and striving to do the set curriculum, I haven’t moved to weeklies or monthlies at the moment.

[malcom]

It's ok. Take your time. Some weeklies will focus on fundamentals like they were in April. Others will be more specific.

[c.j.435.holloway]

I didn't know anyone had replied. Progress is slow but I guess I am getting places. Thanks for the reply Malcolm.