Soooo competition stuff! All of mind numbing details put down so I can look back and think, well... I'll tell you what I think some time way off in the future.
Deviant Art had a journal post that went out to all users saying about the blackberry backed project " a calendar of tales," Which was created by a guy named.... Neil... >.>... Someone (who I now know to be the creator of the movie stardust.) Sent out a tweet each month, for a year. Asking people for ideas on what to write. And then he wrote using those ideas, 12 short stories. One for each month.
The deviant art post was about a second part in the project were the stories had been read by him and the audio uploaded on their website. The idea was filmmakers would create a video to go along side a story of their choice, or stories if they wanted to do more than one. I found out about this.... One week before the deadline o..o ONE FRICKEN WEEK D: .... ahem >.>... Oh also the first part of the project was to create an image to fit the a story that would then be ( if you won) used on the calendar month// Be featured on the website.
So... I had a week to make the video and the first thing I did was listen to each of the tracks and found which ones I liked... And which ones were shortest. January tale in all honesty is my favourite of the 12 stories, however in the end I was left choosing between August and September as they were the shortest.
As you may or may not know from previous posts I created September Tale in the end as I could play around with it more and had more ideas for interesting transitions... Kinda the only reason it was any good in the end in my opinion was because of those transitions >.<
So theres me, the beginning of the week, playing darksiders listening to the audio on repeat, jotting down little ideas as they came to me, being killed by the weak monsters that I really shouldn't be being killed by >.>..... Still pretty much thinking, "I don't have time theres no point, I'll just see what I could have done if I was going to..." That's me tricking myself into working >.> With false illusions.
That week, I didn't get much sleep. But I made it.. Stressed over getting it in on time with around 5 mins for it to actually upload to YouTube and me to submit it to the site. But I did it, YAY. And yeah o.o That was that. Didn't really win anything, well, It'll be shown on there website so lots of people will be exposed to my work haha but yeah :P
A couple days later my art teacher said about " Surreys next big thing" And I thought... >.> I could just submit the animation I've just made >:3. Though I wasn't sure if I was allowed to or not what with the story not being mine and I didn't exactly have permission... I did ask, but in the end they didn't respond and I figured I wasn't making money of off it, and could always take it down if they asked. And that was that, with a slightly edited video so the timing wasn't so off I submitted it to Surge.
Yay it was accepted...And for a couple days that's all I thought I had to do... meanwhile those who had realised that you needed views to win were streaming on ahead and one girl was at nearly 1000 views O.O I'll admit I did like her marker style picture though.
To get a vote you needed unique views on your entry... That was it, so as long as you got tons of people to view the page via a link then you were done. Ironically a few days before the competition I went through my friends list on Facebook and remove the 500people who I kinda new but not really, and I never spoke to V.V..Why didn't I wait D: >.>... Minor details...
Several other people entered from my school in the art department and I will admit that for a while they were my main goal, just be the best in my school and that's all that mattered~ Yeah I know, I'm competitive sometimes and it's not the best of trait, but >.>... yeah. So on with my boring story~
I managed to get ahead of everyone in my school, then there was the girl with the awesome painting and she'd kinda stayed around 900 views for a couple days and I was like >.>... I could beat her <.<....
And so I did, and whilst I was busy trying to do that Anabel Alum appeared. I mean this girl was in the 1000's already and I was like O.O the fu.... D: NU I've put this much effort in o.o and then my friend Icey and zuul came in and helped me :L As well as my real life family and friends, aha I think I asked everyone so much that when it was all over they were glad I wouldn't keep bugging them. Ah but I'm almost forgetting....
About a week, well less than that before the competition ended two people suddenly shot up practically over night. One to 7000, and one to 5000... I was pretty gutted at that I had no idea how they got that many views and was like... What have they done that I haven't? Eventually the idea that they had cheated came up in conversation when I was moaning to different people which kinda made sense. Still I didn't want to take the chance and figured I'd try at least...I mean there entry's were just pictures of an animation .... The songs and videos that were just below me, were damn good and, although I wouldn't have wanted to loose I wouldn't have minded loosing to them either.. but these pictures kinda irked me at the lack of effort :/. In the end I made it to 5000, and I kinda gave up on the whole idea of winning. Like at the back of my mind I thought there could still be a chance, but I didn't want to give that to much thought just in case I was wrong.
Then the email arrived, saying congrats you have won! .... I squealed and, giggled and, laughed so hard at that... Then immediately called my mum, dad and close relatives XD And texted my boyfriend as at the time he was in the Caribbean. Turns out the dudes had cheated and used a robot to get the page views, so they weren't unique and all that stuff. So yeas o.o.... As for all the methods I shall list them below more for my sake than anyone elses aha so it may not make all that much sense.
In no particular order// whatever comes to mind first....
1) Facebook - friends asking certain people who I new to post on there blogs/twitter/facebook ect
2) Facebook - Spamming everyone who came online that I hadn't already asked
3) Twitter - Tweat spammed famous animators... Don't think this actually did anything in hind site and I had my account blocked so... yeah don't do it people D: - Though Swoozy liked the one I sent him >.>... Maybe it's because he was the first person I actually tweeted, under Iceys suggestion... Heavy suggestion that is aha.
4) Chatango - Started with just spamming the link, the actually wrote a little message to go along side it. - probably most of my votes came from here ....
5) Magic Duel
6) Tumblr
7) Deviant art - All my watchers on all my accounts, a message in the two groups I run, and on the forums. I also messaged people that I was watching that's I particularly liked. And some of the more popular groups on DA also, including #Getwatchers.
8) Get watchers - A site were essentially every time you look at someone elses work, some one looks at your work. So I used my wing drawing and wrote in the description asking for help
9) Put in my signature on Every forum I was using ( including DA)
10) Gaia forum / Gaia signature also
11) Signed up for some "get votes" pages were you look at other peoples pages and they look at yours... this... wasn't very good to be honest...
12) On all of my youtube videos I put in the description the link and also an annotation at the beginning of each video.
13) Went through my parents address book
14) Emailed my old church ( parents current one ) and asked if they could put it in there newsletter - they did <3 thank you guys so much! Though on the day the email went out surge died.... <.< Bad timing much. Also emailed all the churches and school I've been to asking for them to do the same.... none did or got back to me... not even my current school...
15) Posted in Reddit with the help of Tom aha, I put it into 3 forums and one of them was a "Don't you just hate it when" so I put people scrounge for votes >.>'' with the link of course haha.
16) Posted on a couple of really good animators YouTube videos asking for votes >.>.. Rather a lot on swoozie;s aha.... Thank you Icey :)
Hmmm I guess that's it o.o I was going to post on 4chan, but was strongly advised not to by my friends :L
I think spamming chatango, and asking people to ask other people were how I won pretty much. So thank you to everyone you have be unbeknown to you gratitude <3
Prizes O.O
!!!!!
--Interview - Imagine that some one wanted to know about me haha, seems weird really but was kinda cool aha. --12 La di da cupcakes o3o zomg so yummy <3 - They arrived just before I got back from London on an awesomes day out so that was pretty good timing haha. And they wrote a little card saying congrats and that's now on my wall!
--They are making a video series and have asked if I'll make the intro
--I have now become one of 10 young people to be a surge editor.. I say that I haven't posted yet XD
--And *drum roll please* In summer half term I'ma go up to London and this dude is gonna mentor me and teach me stuff or well yeah O.O insaneness muchly! I have been told his name (which now escapes me) and I've looked at his work from what I could online, he seems to be a kinda 3D game artist but I'm not entirely sure... But yes that will be awesomes~
Now with my new audio book I'll be cracking on with some work, so by the time you mange to drag yourself and read through all this I may or may not be done. We shall see :)
P.s - my plants are still alive! Photos... at some point aha XD
P.s.s Sorry for the long post V.V If you read it... well... I hope you recover soon.
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