Drawabox.com | Announcement | A Special Promptathon is Coming!
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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 new 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.

What makes this one special?

Many of you who hang out on our Discord chat server have had the pleasure of seeing pictures, videos, and even some live streams of our precious cat, Sweater Sleeves. This Promptathon is special, well, because it's in her honour.

Why? Well, why not! Words cannot express how important she is to us, and how much support she provides, which in turn allows us to do the work of maintaining this community and developing the resources it offers. She is a critical part of the team, and she deserves to be celebrated!

For this promptathon, we're still going to provide you all with 7 unique prompts, but this time they will all follow a theme: pets. Each prompt will encourage you to explore different facets of your own pets' personalities and character - and of course, if you don't have a pet of your own, we encourage you to use Sleeves herself as your subject matter.

In preparation for this very thing, I've been posting a photo of her every day for the last six months. We hope it'll provide ample references to use for the various prompts. You'll find them here.

$1000 donation to the NS SPCA

In honour of our beloved little bear, and on behalf of our community as a whole, we have donated $1000 CAD to the shelter that picked her up and gave us the opportunity of having such a delightful creature be part of our lives.

While I'm sure none of you would worry over Drawabox resources being used for such a worthy purpose, this donation was taken directly out of my salary for this month, so our regular operations would not be impacted.

There are a lot of such causes that we'd like to be able to support in the future, on a recurring basis - including both local institutions like the NS SPCA and our local Halifax Library, as well as the funds of open source projects like the Blender Foundation, the Krita Foundation, and the Godot Development Fund. While we are a long ways away from having the additional resources to commit to those causes, we look forward to being able to support them in the future.

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

Additionally, these 7 new avatars will be up for grabs. As Sluggy's still inking and colouring them, I figured I'd share the sketches here.

To earn them, you'll have to complete their associated prompt within the first 24 hours. We do run some promptathons (usually in the fall) where we go over old favourites, but outside of that this is the only time these avatars can be earned.

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 I've used myself. If you're interested, here is a full list.
Drawabox-Tested Fineliners (Pack of 10, $17.50 USD)

Drawabox-Tested Fineliners (Pack of 10, $17.50 USD)

Let's be real here for a second: fineliners can get pricey. It varies from brand to brand, store to store, and country to country, but good fineliners like the Staedtler Pigment Liner (my personal brand favourite) can cost an arm and a leg. I remember finding them being sold individually at a Michael's for $4-$5 each. That's highway robbery right there.

Now, we're not a big company ourselves or anything, but we have been in a position to periodically import large batches of pens that we've sourced ourselves - using the wholesale route to keep costs down, and then to split the savings between getting pens to you for cheaper, and setting some aside to one day produce our own.

These pens are each hand-tested (on a little card we include in the package) to avoid sending out any duds (another problem with pens sold in stores). We also checked out a handful of different options before settling on this supplier - mainly looking for pens that were as close to the Staedtler Pigment Liner. If I'm being honest, I think these might even perform a little better, at least for our use case in this course.

We've also tested their longevity. We've found that if we're reasonably gentle with them, we can get through all of Lesson 1, and halfway through the box challenge. We actually had ScyllaStew test them while recording realtime videos of her working through the lesson work, which you can check out here, along with a variety of reviews of other brands.

Now, I will say this - we're only really in a position to make this an attractive offer for those in the continental United States (where we can offer shipping for free). We do ship internationally, but between the shipping prices and shipping times, it's probably not the best offer you can find - though this may depend. We also straight up can't ship to the UK, thanks to some fairly new restrictions they've put into place relating to their Brexit transition. I know that's a bummer - I'm Canadian myself - but hopefully one day we can expand things more meaningfully to the rest of the world.

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