Drawabox.com | Announcement | Promptathon is Coming! | What is Promptathon?
This is where the message goes!

What is Promptathon?

Promptathon is a time for rest, a time to give our TAs a chance at a break, and a chance for all of you who've been ignoring or avoiding the 50% rule to face your shame, join the community, and work off some of that play-debt. Promptathon is a week-long event we hold for the community at the turn of each season. Each day, for 7 days, a drawing prompt drops. The goal is to submit something for each prompt within the first 24 hours of its release - doing so will earn you a special, unique avatar tied to that prompt.

For those of you on the official critique track, you will still be permitted to submit your homework, but you may not receive feedback until after the event is complete, as it is up to the TAs whether or not they wish to take this time off. You are however encouraged not to work on your homework during this time, whether you participate or not, so that those TAs who do choose to take a break can do so without coming back to a mountain of work. All credits that expire during the Promptathon, as well as for a few days after it, will receive a full 10 day extension on their expiration.

Autumn - a chance to revisit old favourites

In the Spring, Summer, and Winter, all of the prompts we release are brand new, hand-crafted with fresh example illustrations and avatar designs. It ends up costing us about $2000 USD, give or take, to put it together each time, so in September in celebration of Comfy's birthday and to be a bit gentler with the Drawabox coffers, we opt instead to revisit old favourites and give students another chance to earn the avatars they may have missed out on previously.

Rewards

Those who are able to participate in the Promptathon for at least 4/7 days will earn an achievement, which will also come with a special role on our Discord chat server, allowing them access to the "Champion's Lounge" until the next Promptathon is held, as well as the ability to use our #show-and-tell voice chat/streaming lounge, which is otherwise restricted to our patrons.

Gold achievements will be awarded to those who submit for all 7 prompts, Silver for 6 out of 7, and Bronze for 4 or 5 out of 7.

Unique avatars

These 7 new avatars will be up for grabs. To earn them, you'll have to complete their associated prompt within the first 24 hours. They are not in order - you'll only know which prompt drops on which day when it happens!

How do I submit during the Promptathon?

When the Promptathon is running, you'll see a banner across the home page showing the current active prompt. Additionally, when going to the usual "Submit" page, you will see an additional category highlighted as shown here.

Submit your work to this new category.

Note - you may only submit once for the active Promptathon prompt. If you're past the deadline, submit it to your sketchbook instead to avoid blocking yourself from submitting for the next one.

Additionally, you are not required to submit for the specific prompt that released that day to participate. There are many prompts in our collection - you can choose to submit for any of them. Submitting for one of the other prompts will earn you a random avatar however, instead of the one associated with the active prompt.

Discord

Lastly, remember - the best way to participate is to do so on our Discord chat server. While submissions are all here on the website, we open a dedicated channel each time the Promptathon is running so students can discuss the prompts with one another, share WIPs, and so on.

And if you're worried about not being "skilled enough" or "ready" to participate - our Promptathons are open to EVERYONE, regardless of skill level. This is an opportunity to get past the blocks in your head, and dive right in. The only one stopping you is you.

The recommendation below is an advertisement. Most of the links here are part of Amazon's affiliate program (unless otherwise stated), which helps support this website. It's also more than that - it's a hand-picked recommendation of something we've used ourselves, or know to be of impeccable quality. If you're interested, here is a full list.
Framed Ink

Framed Ink

I'd been drawing as a hobby for a solid 10 years at least before I finally had the concept of composition explained to me by a friend.

Unlike the spatial reasoning we delve into here, where it's all about understanding the relationships between things in three dimensions, composition is all about understanding what you're drawing as it exists in two dimensions. It's about the silhouettes that are used to represent objects, without concern for what those objects are. It's all just shapes, how those shapes balance against one another, and how their arrangement encourages the viewer's eye to follow a specific path. When it comes to illustration, composition is extremely important, and coming to understand it fundamentally changed how I approached my own work.

Marcos Mateu-Mestre's Framed Ink is among the best books out there on explaining composition, and how to think through the way in which you lay out your work.

Illustration is, at its core, storytelling, and understanding composition will arm you with the tools you'll need to tell stories that occur across a span of time, within the confines of a single frame.

This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.