How can I improve in the studio?

Regardless of if you're an artist or not, Smeargle's Studio can gain a whole lot from other users who help out maintaining important threads, replying with advice in artist threads, or just being a positive and helpful presence. In fact, these efforts are even rewarded with a badge of its own, the Community Contributor (CC) badge. As the name implies, the badge is rewarded to users who are a positive influence in a certain section of Smogon, either by giving helpful advice or hosting various activities. Naturally, this also applies to Smeargle's Studio, but in order to help users who want to contribute, what follows is a list of stuff that would go towards earning this badge. Whether or not the badge is rewarded is judged on a case-by-case basis. You don't need to fulfill all of the criterias below, about two of them are enough in most cases. Lastly, we'd like to remind everyone that the CC badge is an activity based badge, so if you leave Smogon for a long time or don't participate in this section anymore, you may risk losing the badge, although being a contributor in another section can still allow you to keep it.

Giving Feedback to artists

Anyone can give advice to the numerous artists who have set up their threads in this forum! However, posts that merely state "Good job" or "Looks awesome," or posts that can be summarized in those words, may work well as positive reinforcement, but don't really point out what's good in their images. In those cases, you're better off liking their posts. Be specific and detailed about why you liked it and why the artist should continue doing that.

Critique can be a touchy subject, but without constructive feedback, artists may go on drawing without being made aware that something fundamental in their style could be improved, changed, or even removed! However, in these cases, it is more important than ever to explain why you feel they should improve in a certain aspect, as anyone wouldn't feel inclined to change something about themselves unless they got a good reason. A good formula for giving feedback is the "critique sandwich". Start off with positive praise, move on with giving some helpful critique or more direct advice, and then finish the post with how they've performed thus far and how they're capable of striving further. So basically, critique between two slices of kind words.

So to reiterate, you don't need to be an artist yourself to give feedback to other artists. If you don't know the specific terms, try to use more general terms while still being specific enough so that the artist understands what you're trying to bring attention to. Critique can also come in the form of suggesting what the artist should be working on next, or to encourage them to draw something they're not used to. Be creative, and the artists you help will become creative as well!

Hosting Community Projects

Most of the threads marked with a ★ welcome submissions or input from anyone in the artist community, be it fun activities or more serious work. While the moderators and studio leaders try their best to keep these threads active and updated, we all have limited time and effort, so having others volunteer to manage these threads and keep them active is very appreciated!

With that said, handling threads like this is to be seen as a commitment. Mods and above can edit the first posts in any thread, while regular users cannot, meaning that they need to create new threads for them to edit freely. However, because the old thread will become invalid, all threads that refer to that thread will need to be updated with a link to the new one. So, before you volunteer to manage one, it'd be wise to know if you'll be able to stick around the site for some time, as it'd be a hassle to update the new thread only to have its manager faze out after three weeks. If it happens, it happens, just don't try to bite off more than you can chew. If you have any questions about managing threads, just ask the mods or the art leaders, and we'll be glad to help you!

Participating in community activities

Much like the above criteria, participating in various forum events and projects by contributing your own art or support will not only help anyone else involved but also encourage others to do the same! Make sure to read the guidelines in each thread before posting in them, as some may be more lax in their rulesets while others are more serious and certain requirements must be met. We cannot ask anyone to participate in every activity at once, but every contribution in this fashion serves to make the studio better and more active than before!

Being a positive influence in our chat rooms

Smeargle's Studio has an official Discord channel, as well as a chat room on Pokémon Showdown! named the Art Room, are great places to show off stuff you're working on and generally swapping advice. Being active in those channels, where you can either get a chat going with new topics, or by helping other users by giving feedback, are great ways of supporting and improving the chat. It's also the undeniably best away to become more involved with the community, as nothing beats interacting with other users in real-time!

If you can think of other ways to either improve or promote our studio, feel free to contact any of the studio mods and art leaders. Even if you're not intentionally aiming to become a Community Contributor, we appreciate each and every user who takes their time to reply and contribute to our very special corner of Smogon. Thanks for reading!