Everyone please welcome Kicker to the Gimpystick practice gallery!

I took the time to make a few updates on Gimpystick tonight. Thumbnails are slightly smaller (200x250px max, largest side only) and the main page lists images three per line instead of two. Everything else is internal code chages to make things easier on me.

A friend and I did some brainstorming, though, and I really like the ideas we came up with. It would be appreciated if Gimpystick members shared their ideas on this subject (in the forum if the miniforum is too small) so I can know if the ideas are liked or not, but the general idea of what we came up with is thus:

Gimpystick Showcase
The current idea is that Gimpystick will have two parts: a practice gallery, which is the main purpose, and “Gimpystick Showcase,” which is where non-practice, finished pieces can be uploaded by the artist.

Stats Page
The stats page will contain things like how “daily” they’ve managed to update, how many practices and showcases have been uploaded by the user, what contests they’ve beaten, and etc.

Scavenger Hunts
Each user will receive a checklist of things to practice over a given time period. Participation is entirely optional. If they do a practice drawing of everything on the list, they will receive an award on the stats page.

Theme Months
Certain months will be set aside for drawing certain things. Participation in theme months is entirely optional. The plan is to allow the users to vote on the theme of the next month. Weeks of the month may be divided into sub categories (ie, if the theme is “wilderness backdrops”, one week might be “forests” and another might be “mountains”), and there may be special days where a certain specific topic is listed. Full participation in a theme month is recorded as an award on the stats page.

The idea behind Gimpystick is not to pit users against each other, but for everyone to practice and (hopefully) have fun. As such, none of the contests will be user versus user, but will instead simply be awards for competing the required practices.

These features may take some time for me to get implimented, and other features I plan to work on first include comments and private messages. I would really appreciate feedback from Gimpystick members as to how they feel about these ideas so I know I’m going to impliment something they’d like.