So I had a look at the current crops of entries on the May themed challenge page. Officially, of course, entries are supposed to be anonymous, but there's an image there that is so strikingly in one, certain, well-known style that there is no doubt in my mind who made it. A person who has been making similar images with a self-developed UCL that makes baffling images with spheres in them. Ahem. Now of course this isn't a problem -- the image is perfectly beautiful and the artist certainly deserves to enter any contest he desires -- but it does kinda dilute the idea of an "anonymous" contest when one artist has such a striking individual style as to be recognizable even from the thumbnail. I'm merely pointing this out to see if anybody else has any thoughts on this. In a sense it is a good thing for an artist to be recognizable through his works, of course. But in another sense it makes me smile and wonder "is there really anybody here who wouldn't immediately recognize this guy?" I guess there's a certain self-defeating streak in a contest where people are supposed to post something as highly personal as art - but do it "anonymously". It appears in a highly refined group where everybody is intimately familiar with everybody else's style, there couldn't really be such a thing as an "anonymous contest". Just some idle sunday afternoon thoughts...

lol what do we have to do? change the style? i know i am recognized even though i upload anonymously sometimes, and so do others ... no contest will ever be anonymous, unless people are honest and fair do not ever think that a design is valued for its appearance, it's always because of the character of the person behind it...

I certainly know wich image you are refering to, though I cannot remember the name of the artist. But I think that as long as votes themselfs are anonymous we won't run into the problem of 'returned favours' like the ones that plague Hot20. I would only go as far as undisclosed-designer if I saw a completely talentless hack win because he has "character". I don't think that will happen though. The artist in question is talented enough to deserve to win (or come second, after me ;) )

Isn't it nice if an artist is recognized by his/her style? Especially if the style and talent is great? I wish this was true for mine :-)

:rolleyes::sad:
Joy of Frax

Andreas your excellent style is very unique; I think many of us could recognize

Agree to undisclosed-designer! - what can be done here. It's fine the style is individual. Don't remember who said "each person is a style', parphrasing this to the artistic specifics 'it's a great Artist if he's developed a recognizable style'. Otherwise he is: - either developing very rapidly - or very innovative person - or not a great Artsit (yet ;-) The first way out is to forbid our most talented members to participate in the contests (Rykk, do You hear me ? :-). On the other hand the contestants may be grouped by categories (in some communities we have 'senior member', 'gold member', 'newbie' categories depending on the number of uploadsforum postings etc.But don't think that will help either. Say there are people (especially among those who has advanced membership (don't remember exactly the type of membership that makes it possible to upload 3 works a day as it was a couple of years ago) who post many WIPs or similar to WIP raw compositions... - Neither Artistic merit nor style can be measured in dBsfl. oz.etc. Perhaps we should not concentrate on the anonumity... This is the only way out imho (!), -Anthony.