Okay. Obviously we need to talk about concept breadth because a large portion of the concepts submitted so far have very glaring, obvious problems when it comes to such things. Here are some questions you should probably ask yourself before submitting a concept, because this is the category most of the concepts are either stopped before QC or are rejected in QC fall in to.
To start with,
Does my concept have more than one approach?
This is pretty straightforward. If your concept doesn't have more than a single solid, reasonable approach, you've already broken what is basically the most important rule of concept submission. Creating a concept that isn't broad enough floats dangerously close to a concept submission that says it's type in the title, or that initially indicates a special or physical bias. This means our concept leads itself along for the entire process. And really, who wants to create a pokemon over the course of 4+ months when it could be achieved in about a week after the concept was chosen, with the exact same result? Sound boring? Yeah. It does to me too.
This question basically boils down to Does my concept finish itself?
If you're looking for a concept that really started to lack breadth after concept assessment, just look to the Cawmodore. After we made it past choosing belly drum as our move to focus on, the concept slowly rolled to a halt. This is partially because it was perfectly timed to conflict with the release if gen 6, but the concept probably would of declined in interest anyhow as soon as every decision became practically unanimous. For a project to be successful, It's a lot more interesting to see each stage have meaningful, interesting choices. Any concept that lacks breadth won't fare well and won't be fun for anyone involved.
Secondly,
Does my concept's wording make the concept's goals achievable?
This is, in some ways, the opposite problem of the above. Occasionally, we see a concept that bites off more than it can chew, either trying to explore too many things at once or by trying to attack a question from an angle that doesn't exist. While a concept with this problem may have several ways to go about it, as the project continues, it becomes obvious that the only reason the concept has so many ways to attack it is because the wording is too vague to be reasonably executed. This makes us re-word or re-interpret the concept during the concept assessment phase, which can potentially lead the project to fall far off topic or off the original goals.
This problem is extremely, extremely apparent in the Plasmanta project, and is actually the whole reason this concept workshop exists in the first place. It became clear extremely early on that a pokemon "dying" is never a good thing for your team, and eventually devolved in to what can basically be called "Perfect Mate Part 3: Make Gyarados a Friend". Running in to these sort of problems and fixing them is what the workshop is all about, so if your concept doesn't make it past submissions because of it, don't be surprised.
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If you've answered "Yes" to both of the above questions, congratulations! You made a concept with a reasonable breadth. If not, re-evaluate your concept and try once more.
Furthermore, if you aren't getting replies, it's completely possible people are ignoring it because they can only think of one or two ways to complete it, and because of this, find it boring. If you can, try to give some examples of the many ways you can execute your concept and push your concept forward with those. You may even find that there aren't that many ways to execute it, which means you can fix it! Yay!
I'm going to respond to some concepts in terms of this criteria later. Until then, may you be blessed with good concept ideas.
To start with,
Does my concept have more than one approach?
This is pretty straightforward. If your concept doesn't have more than a single solid, reasonable approach, you've already broken what is basically the most important rule of concept submission. Creating a concept that isn't broad enough floats dangerously close to a concept submission that says it's type in the title, or that initially indicates a special or physical bias. This means our concept leads itself along for the entire process. And really, who wants to create a pokemon over the course of 4+ months when it could be achieved in about a week after the concept was chosen, with the exact same result? Sound boring? Yeah. It does to me too.
This question basically boils down to Does my concept finish itself?
If you're looking for a concept that really started to lack breadth after concept assessment, just look to the Cawmodore. After we made it past choosing belly drum as our move to focus on, the concept slowly rolled to a halt. This is partially because it was perfectly timed to conflict with the release if gen 6, but the concept probably would of declined in interest anyhow as soon as every decision became practically unanimous. For a project to be successful, It's a lot more interesting to see each stage have meaningful, interesting choices. Any concept that lacks breadth won't fare well and won't be fun for anyone involved.
Secondly,
Does my concept's wording make the concept's goals achievable?
This is, in some ways, the opposite problem of the above. Occasionally, we see a concept that bites off more than it can chew, either trying to explore too many things at once or by trying to attack a question from an angle that doesn't exist. While a concept with this problem may have several ways to go about it, as the project continues, it becomes obvious that the only reason the concept has so many ways to attack it is because the wording is too vague to be reasonably executed. This makes us re-word or re-interpret the concept during the concept assessment phase, which can potentially lead the project to fall far off topic or off the original goals.
This problem is extremely, extremely apparent in the Plasmanta project, and is actually the whole reason this concept workshop exists in the first place. It became clear extremely early on that a pokemon "dying" is never a good thing for your team, and eventually devolved in to what can basically be called "Perfect Mate Part 3: Make Gyarados a Friend". Running in to these sort of problems and fixing them is what the workshop is all about, so if your concept doesn't make it past submissions because of it, don't be surprised.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you've answered "Yes" to both of the above questions, congratulations! You made a concept with a reasonable breadth. If not, re-evaluate your concept and try once more.
Furthermore, if you aren't getting replies, it's completely possible people are ignoring it because they can only think of one or two ways to complete it, and because of this, find it boring. If you can, try to give some examples of the many ways you can execute your concept and push your concept forward with those. You may even find that there aren't that many ways to execute it, which means you can fix it! Yay!
I'm going to respond to some concepts in terms of this criteria later. Until then, may you be blessed with good concept ideas.
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