***DAILY-DRAW FEBRUARY: CHIT-CHAT THREAD!!***

Sankam · **Posted:** Fri Mar 02, 2012 12:10 pm

Thanks for the month, folks, it was a great experience and the momentum will help me keep moving forward!

CogNoman · **Posted:** Fri Mar 02, 2012 12:45 pm

Just wanted to pop in to let people know that the final tally update, along with a more final post, will go up within about a day (life reared its head at the last minute, heh).

It's awesome to hear that so many people enjoyed this insanity this year, though. I was thinking back to previous years just now and I remember one year, there was a fella named Andrew Dickman on the boards who posted the following list for people to look back on things. I thought it was kinda neat, so figured I might resurrect it this time around, in case anybody'd be interested in posting their answers. I'd definitely be interested in seeing them (as I'm sure a lot of people would).

Here's what Andrew had:

The most important thing I learned:
A cool thing I learned this year:
I piggybacked the most off of (another person):
Something I thought I would never draw this month:
I think my best day was:
I think my worst day was:
SatelliteSoda Love?:
Wrap this Feb contest in to one word:

Feel free to post your own answers, or not. It's alllll gravy, heh. Final tally update coming soon!

EDIT: And for the record, I don't actually know what some of the questions mean myself, heh - it's just the way they were written. So like, the one about 'piggybacking', dunno if that means emotionally or artistically who you were drawing from... and the one about "SatelliteSoda Love", don't even know what that one means at all, really, heh. I can only really guess - it's just the way they were written.

Dualmask · **Posted:** Fri Mar 02, 2012 7:01 pm

The event was a lot of fun. I don't think I ever drew and posted something every single day for a whole month before.

I'm going to have to give myself personal challenges to this effect in the future. And perhaps try a theme. Thanks for the inspiration! :smile:

Line · **Posted:** Sat Mar 03, 2012 12:09 am

The most important thing I learned: Is that as I constantly draw, it constantly feeds my urge to draw more.
A cool thing I learned this year: I learned how to set my line sensitivity to be more like a pencil.
I piggybacked the most off of (another person): -unsure of what you mean by piggybacking.. I did follow quite a few people's works and looked forward to seeing them daily. I even added artists who had deviantArt accounts to my watch list for future work. Some people who's names i can remember, Monk, Koi, Mr Jack, Shane Hillman
Something I thought I would never draw this month: I had no doubts.
I think my best day was: Day 29. And I'm still working on adding more to that piece.
I think my worst day was: day 9. I spent so much time trying to think of what to draw while sketching, erasing and resketching and what i finally ended up drawing ended up being so lame.. but still i tried, so even as what i think is my worst day still was a learning experience.
SatelliteSoda Love?: Possibly biased because of the subject matter, Shane Hillman's work on Lo Pan. When I saw that I was like WHAT?! YES! But his whole thread was well done. nice daily illustrations that had a nice finished look and seemed ready for print with good effort in design and composition. That dude deserves a gig. I really was a big fan of Koi's colors too.
Wrap this Feb contest in to one word: Flub! (Love February art and look forward to it next year!)

frostfyre · **Posted:** Sat Mar 03, 2012 2:45 am

What a great idea, here's mine.

The most important thing I learned:
Don't stress about the drawing! Get it moving however you need to, even if it's just scribbling shapes.

A cool thing I learned this year:
A good part of visual interest is storytelling. If the viewer is looking at your picture and actively thinking about what's going on, you win!

I piggybacked the most off of Sankam, without question.

Something I thought I would never draw this month:
A groundhog, no really!

I think my best day was:
Feb22-I feel like it's the strongest image overall for the month.

I think my worst day was:
Toss up between day 4 and day 9.

SatelliteSoda Love?:
Awesome group, numerous inspiring artists, plenty of solid ideas and feedback.

Wrap this Feb contest in to one word:
Madness!

CogNoman · **Posted:** Sun Mar 04, 2012 9:28 pm

Thanks Line and Frost! I'll join you in a bit, post my own answers too (in hindsight, maybe shoulda done that initially, heh heh).

Whew.

WELL.

Looks like the last few posts have all come in, and the final update on the tally has been posted, so it's time to take a deep, relaxing breath and yes, announce it, folks: February 2012 is officially - Finished!

Congratulations to everybody who took part!

Whether you posted on all the days, or you missed almost all of 'em heh, congratulations! People take part in February for a lot of different reasons. February is a personal challenge, so we each sign up for this thing with our own goals in mind and we each push ourselves in the direction that we feel we want to grow. Sometimes newbies think they might have 'failed' in a given year because they didn't post on all the days, so let me be the first to tell you, newbies: You did not fail. Well, I mean, unless your *only* goal was to 'post on all the days', then I guess... maybe you kinda did? Haha - you know I'm just kidding - but the fact is, the 'posting' is secondary to the purpose of this whole shebang, the main goal of which is to push ourselves, get better, develop better work habits, create more art, hopefully learn a bit, and have some fun.

So whether it was with your art, or your comments encouraging other people, or even just your username appearing on the board and adding that extra little bit of character to the boards, you are owed some congratulations. The most important part of Daily-Draw February is us - the people who take part in it.
So congratulations to everybody! And thank you!

So yes, take that breather now, feel the relief. We made it. It's over.

That said, there are sooooome people on the boards who deserve a special shout-out, aheh heh. The event is called 'Daily-Draw' February after all, and even though being on the tally is optional, a lot of us do come here with the same goal in mind - BUT - in any given year only some, a very proud, very driven, very sparkly, select few will accomplish that goal.

So. MASSIVE congratulations (and MASSIVE jealous stares from all the rest of us who dropped the ball, heh) go to:

===> The Streakers:
(posted every day without posting late by even 1 minute on each day)
AgentBiLL-------ArtistTika-------Asharam-------badWulf-------bayless-------bloody samoan-------blueraptor
.
cannonfodder--------charon's_oar--------chewster---------cytosisx--------d2ndlettah--------denomdemon
.
D-Gee--------dgovil--------Dirk E.Schulz--------D_Murdoch--------Drunkenoodle--------Dualmask--------Ellis
.
firePanda-------frostfyre-------Garvals-------Greg-------gubester-------Gunstar-------Hardsloth-------idesofmerch
.
Igo----------iheartorchata----------jeremy----------Junz----------JWink88----------kaptain-karmel----------Kegg
.
lightbombmike-------Line-------Luname-------Mara-------Metal Hand-------NHOJ-------Obtuse Engel-------Osorio
.
OZ1313---------planetfour---------poipoi---------RedmondJFox---------Reil---------Sankam---------sbelmarsh
.
Senior-X-------shaotemp-------Sketch-------snoozlebee-------spaghetti016-------Sparky-------Strange-Ape
.
TheBronzeBush-------Toko-------Vanilla Shake-------yanoodle-------Ykarat-------zombiezach-------ZZZ

Yes, if your name is on that list, feel free to saunter around with your nose in the air, like the god's gifts to mankind that you are. You have earned that right. This February was -the- most insane February ever and yet you each somehow rose above the insanity in to the heavens like some eternal, floating, meditating monk attaining nirvana above the chaos. The dedication, discipline, sacrifice and effort it takes for anybody to post on all the days in February - on the days when they're tired, on the days when they're busy, on the days when they're grumpy - is no small feat. Sometimes it takes people years of attempts before they finally accomplish it. So congratulations to you, Streakers. For real.

And I also gotta give a shout-out to two other folk on the boards. A LOT of us came very close to hitting all the days ourselves, with only one day off, or a few days by only a few minutes each, but there are two people on the boards who came closer than any of us, with just one day off, by only a single minute. So - this year's Heartbreaker Award goes to: Hatter and Lucky.Nightmare. Congratulations you two, haha.

And at this point, there are definitely some people here who deserve some special thanks.

An event like this doesn't happen without a LOT of work from a lot of people. The most important people are the people who participate, who fuel this entire thing with their creative and postive energy, art and comments - but you guys got your props already, heh heh (just scroll up to read 'em again if you'd like to bask in some more adulation). So it's time to thank some of the people who helped keep this beast afloat with their own blood, sweat, tears and feces behind the scenes.

The first person on that list of Thankees is, without question, a fellow who initially signed up for Daily-Draw February as simply a fun way to just do some drawings with some buddies, but ended up becoming an incredibly crucial, helpful force behind the entire event. If you don't know who I'm talking about already, shame on you - I am, of course, talking about ArrantSquid, aka John. John is the genius who coded the automated gallery that made a lot of people's lives here a lot easier - and if any of you knew the sheer amount of work that John put in to this February, just to try to help people out and help this Feb run smoothly, you would likely shake your head in awe; it was not easy. John is a special kind of person, one with the insight to see how an automated gallery would be helpful, the gumption to find out who to contact so he could help, and then the skills to write and test the code himself - on top of the enormous amount of work he was doing in his real life already. He deserves some thanks, no doubt. Thank you John.

The next person to thank is certainly Osorio. Osorio is the guy who runs the tech side of SatelliteSoda. I could list off all the things that he did behind the scenes this February, but the list would be ridiculous. Any time the site might have started to slow down or crash - he was the guy who was on top of that, solving it. We actually had to re-structure the boards in order to accommodate the amount of people who signed up - he was the guy who figured out how to do that. He helped me personally in a number of ways by making things more efficient and easier - and on top of that, he was one of the main guiding forces in the automated gallery. And this is only a partial list! And then - on top of all that, and on top of his day job, and his life, he somehow managed to pump out some of (perhaps even) the best daily art on the entire forum too. Osorio is a unique fellow, for sure. Thanks Osorio.

Gotta give some props too to D_Murdoch for creating the Fabio Centaur image - that holiest of icons around which we all rallied this Feb. I would not be surprised if it turned out that some people didn't even know what Daily-Draw February was initially when they got here; they just threw their name in the hat because that centaur was so incredibly sexy (seriously, I wouldn't be surprised... it would explain a lot of the first few days' insanity actually, heh heh).

And lastly, thanks to the SatelliteSoda crew for hosting and even throwing down for this year's nutshow - and especially thank you to Igo. I don't actually have enough metaphors to describe Igo. He's the glue, he's the engine, he's the fuel, he's the firecracker, he's every inanimate object you can think of, including butts and dicks. He is the guy who got this entire year rolling from the start. He was the one who got everybody together, got everything set up - and then he was the one who managed to keep things together when they started going nuts. You know in the first half of Feb when people were creating new threads every single time they posted? ALL of those threads were merged by one very crazy, very pumped, very hairy man. The same man who managed to post a drawing every single day of February despite his day job, his life, his incredibly busy schedule, his constant efforts to support as many people on the board as he humanly could with his enthusiasm and endless boner-jokes, and the gigantic amount of other things he had to stay on top of this year. Igo - thanks for everything.

Now for some thoughts.

This year was...

Hm.

Trying to figure out how to phrase this.

Guess I'll just come out and say it.

This year... was insane. Nuts. Coocoo. Upside-Down Underpants. That shiz was the frickin' OLYMPICS of drawing.

A bit of history: Daily-Draw February was started in 2006 on the SketchTavern forum (under its old name, "The February Draw-Every-Day Challenge"). It ran there for 4 years before SketchTavern folded and then, the following year, in 2010, a number of Taverners who were still connected set it up again on a small forum called "Cketch". The following year, it was brought to SatelliteSoda, where it found an amazingly wonderful and supportive home and has lived ever since.

There is a sad/hilarious little-known bit of trivia about those Februaries - and that is that there isn't actually *anybody* who actually participated in all of them (including me, haha). But there are a bunch of people here who have participated in a bunch of them. So, even though it may not be apparent, there is a very strong core of a lot of really great people behind this entire thing.

And looking at this year, Daily-Draw February 2012, I don't think there was anybody among those people, including me, who expected this year's event to be what it was. The amount of talent on the boards this year was incredible. It was unbelievable. It has literally never been seen before. Looking through the threads this year, I discovered countless artists and people who I had never heard of before but who I became instant fans of - whether it was for their incredible art, their great personalities or just because I just liked 'em for no reason at all, heh. And I know I'm not the only one who discovered fantastic new artists and people for the first time like this. It was amazing. If you haven't gone looking through the threads yet, do so - you'll discover a lot of *really* great stuff out there. And when you do, feel free to drop a note and congratulate them! It'll make 'em feel awesome.

This year also had a lot of people.
And a lot of crazy.

Daily-Draw February 2012 will not be the last Daily-Draw February (unless of course the world actually does end on Dec. 21, 2012 - but let's assume that's just a joke for now, heh). There is no doubt in my mind, however, that Daily-Draw February 2012 will go down in the record books as THE craziest, batshittiest, shitstormiest, clusterfuckiest Daily-Draw February of them all. DDF 2012 is gonna be the one where we look back on it over a few beers one day and just laugh. It's gonna be the one that people look back on and say "dude, I was fucking THERE. I was there for that insanity.""I was there when there was literally so many threads I couldn't keep track and so much art popping out that the boards were like a cascading roulette wheel.""!t maked me brain boNkers!" The people who managed to succeed in this Daily-Draw February 2012 are going to be heralded as heroes of all-time. This year, the crazy took us all by surprise, it pushed us, and it forced us to grow. And in doing so, it has made us stronger.

Next year, we're gonna be prepared.

So from myself, from all the members at SatelliteSoda and from everybody else who wants to see you grow and develop as artists - I, we, hope you had fun and/or learned and grew this year. And you'd best make sure that you keep pushing yourself and getting stronger over the coming year - because make no mistake! Daily-Draw February will be coming back in just 11 months to kick you in the ass once again - and it's gonna be the best Daily-Draw February yet.

Congratulations to everybody this month.

And congratulations to you if you actually read this entire gigantic message. Because I don't think anybody's actually going to do that, haha.
But for those who do see this, I'll give you one last secret bonus...don't tell anybody, but ArrantSquid and Osorio are working their magic to pull off one final magic trick. You'll see it in a bit, heh heh.....

CONGRATULATIONS!

Line · **Posted:** Mon Mar 05, 2012 12:25 am

Your words didn't go unread :) Thanks CogNoman and SatelliteSoda mods. Your efforts haven't gone unnoticed and I'm glad to have been a part of it all. The daily gallery was a cool add on and i'm looking towards the magic trick :)

-Line

lightbombmike · **Posted:** Mon Mar 05, 2012 8:25 am

It isn't February without a giant, heartfelt Conor monologue!

Conor, Igo, John, Osorio, and D_Murdoch. If we ever meet, the first few rounds are on me!

Igo · **Posted:** Tue Mar 06, 2012 10:38 pm

Murdoch didnt do shit, dont buy him a drink, he still owes ME drinks... unless you have a secret crush on him Im unaware of.

But Conor, this wouldnt have happened without your efforts man. Cant applaud you hard enough. Stoked and honored to have this be a part of SatellioteSoda history...

Garvals · **Joined:** Fri Jan 28, 2011 10:29 am **Posts:** 423

Wow, i didn't knew there are still some updates going on!
I must say - many thanks for those who started this thing. Mostly - for those who started it from Sketch Tavern. How i missed that place. I remmeber - somewhere in 2008-9 year i saw Dapper Dan's pictures that he uploaded on DA and something like "i am on Draw Everyday challenge - check out this link!".
And when i clicked that link, i could not belived my eyes. C...could it be? The wonderful forum where all artists live together in peace, creating awesome pictures and drawing everyday?! i INSTANTLY got registrated (with some problems because forum could not eat my wrussian e-mail so i got english e-mail to make it go through registration and even contaced with admin for help) and sunk into the depths of Sketch Tavern!

Sadly..that was the last year when that forum existed. But thankfully i had a chance to feel that awesome atmosphere and even meet some cool people (i am talking about awesome Triangpal Trio - Neil\John\Ty).
Hm..may be i can even say that my art-side of life got a new way since i met that forum, new people, learned some english (it was 9000 times worst than it is now) and had some more inspiration.

I lost previous (my first) DDF, but this year i was a bit more prepared and hopefully will be for the next year!

kittypillar · **Posted:** Tue Nov 20, 2012 2:55 am

Garvals · **Joined:** Fri Jan 28, 2011 10:29 am **Posts:** 423

blueraptor · **Posted:** Sat Jan 12, 2013 12:17 pm

HNNNNNGGGGGGG I'm being tortured by the fact that the 2013 threads are LOCKED and I cannot yet express my UTMOST JOY at the return of the jam in them. WITH ALL MY SWEET, SWEET JOY.

Igo · **Posted:** Sat Jan 12, 2013 6:05 pm

We're gonna open them on the 20th, we didnt want the flood of awesome to pre-maturely ejaculate too soon...

dENNIS · **Posted:** Fri Jan 18, 2013 9:40 pm

hit me up with this shit, bro

Sparky · **Posted:** Mon Jan 21, 2013 1:18 am

The anticipation is killing me!

TakunisDope · **Posted:** Mon Jan 21, 2013 9:20 pm

Im so ready. SO SO ready

ed_squared · **Posted:** Wed Jan 23, 2013 12:22 am

I'd like to participate.

isorose · **Posted:** Wed Jan 23, 2013 10:53 pm

Count me in :arghh:

Midnight: Mountain Time

Thank you!

-Just realized what a newb I am...this is the one for 2012.....Okay, going to sign up for 2013 >_< Cheers to a ridiculous first post! /bonk

sussman · **Posted:** Fri Feb 01, 2013 1:04 pm

I'm in - if it's not too late!

My deadline's midnight PST

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DAILY-DRAW FEBRUARY: CHIT-CHAT THREAD!!