community newbie asks

[light_of_summer]

Hi, justcreate folks, I'm new to this community—thanks for being here! I have a question I'm hoping to get your input on: What can you tell me about month-of-creativity kinds of challenge communities, especially for art or photography or short bits of writing, either on Dreamwidth or on dedicated websites that allow uploading or image-linking to DW? I'm currently aware of:

• Inktober (I've done this in the past, but am dubious about repeating it due to controversy)
• November is Art Every Day Month (I've done this in the past, and liked it a lot, but I'm not willing to follow the community onto Facebook)
• Expert Photography Photo Challenge Calender (Prompts look OK, but hashtag for community looks intended to be Instagram-specific)
• ...various others intended for Facebook or Instagram, sigh.

FYI, I do most of my writing for an amateur press association, where community is built into the purpose of the organization. I miss the sense of art community I've had in the past with NiAEDM (and somewhat with both Inktober and local in-person classes that ended with the rise of COVID-19). I have a regular monthly photo group Zoom, but no explicit challenges or central online community associated with it. I occadionally do some crafting, but am not really plugged into a community for that, and am not seeking a challenge for that, right now. I'm currently hungriest for making art in community.

Thanks in advance for any info you can share, and I send you good wishes for your projects of all types!

Here I go, to tackle my next not-very-creative to-do list item. ➡️

Comments

[soc_puppet]

moodthemeinayear is a bit longer-term than you have in mind, but with NaNoWriMo going to shit, I ended up following an impulse to make One Month Mood Theme calendars. So if you want to make a mood theme in just one month, you can use one of those! (Mood Theme in a Year also has a six-week version (18 images total), and will likely have a three-month version (34 images total) starting next year.)

[light_of_summer]

Thanks very much for the link to your mood-theme calendars!

I think I'm looking for more outward focus than mood focus, right now, but the way you structured these may help me to come up with my own list of prompts, if I decide to go that way.

Much appreciated!

[soc_puppet]

I—huh. Okay, I hope you'll forgive me if I'm telling you things you already know, but I see that you've filled out the custom mood field in this post; have you ever used any of the pre-selected moods from the drop-down list? A "mood theme" is all of the images that go with those pre-selected moods. If you've got a paid account, it's possible to make your own, with screencaps or gifs from your favorite show, panels from your favorite comics, or just ...drawings of whatever. For example, here's fifteen moods for a custom mood theme by mouseboy; or for a site-supported mood theme, angelkitten's Big Eyes is another good example. If you don't have a paid account, you can also make one with original/copyright-free images and submit it as a possible site-supported theme, and it might be uploaded to Dreamwidth as an option for everyone to use.

So it's less, "Meditate on the mood listed here," and more, "Create a sticker you can add to the bottom of every post to match whatever mood you're in when you post". I hope that makes sense?

If you already knew all of that, I guess it's just a matter of different interpretation of mood theme creation and use 😅 Either way, I'm glad that you potentially got something out of the calendars!

[light_of_summer]

Huh! I did not know (most of?) those things—thanks for taking the time to clue me in, Soc_Puppet!

So far, I'm using a free account here on DW. I bought a lifetime account on LJ, back when my income was higher and it was still US-owned. I bailed from LJ when a commitment to comply with Russian law started being required. In the time since then, I've had less disposable income, so no paid DW account, so far. Depending on how the upcoming USA elections go, this November, I might be in a position to reconsider that. TBD! 🤞

[soc_puppet]

Sure thing ✌ I know I personally didn't use any mood theme very often before I made my own, so it's pretty easy to understand how it would slip out of your mind.

I'm kinda hoping that general mood theme use will go up a bit site-wide in the not too distant future; some of my own custom mood themes have been accepted for use by Dreamwidth (shriek!), and will be available for everyone after the next code push! Even if people don't decide to use any of the themes I submitted, it might get them thinking about mood themes again, and maybe they'll also decide to try creating their own, or just start using what they have more often. I feel like it's a pretty under-rated feature here, TBH.


That reminds me: holiday_wishes might be something to consider! It's not exactly a challenge community, more of a gift-sharing community, but a lot of people ask for things like fanart or fanfics, or even original art or fiction. It can be fun to browse through wishes and maybe fill some that inspire you. (Dreamwidth points are a not-infrequent request over there as well, BTW, so if November doesn't go as well as I'm pretty sure we all hope, you might still be able to get some Dreamwidth paid time that way 👀)

[light_of_summer]

Understood!

I did see holiday_wishes on another commenter's list of cool communities—it's nice to know that's out there, thanks!

[zenigotchas]

It's so cool that you do writing for a press associsation.

There's some comms for bingo challenges, I've had my eye on one that looks particularly fun! There's also comms for drabbles and short stories for fanfic and, iirc, also original fic, that give out a prompt you use for that week.

I'll try to rack my brain and comb over the comms I remember to see how right I am but those are for writing. Sorry for the vagueness! I'm not super familiar with many comms here (I mostly lurk)

[althea_valara]

Piggybacking onto this comment: allbingo is the one I'm most familiar with. There's also comment_bingo, and oooh, I cannot forget genprompt_bingo.

(I like to collect lists of good Dreamwidth communities; if you know any more bingo / drabble comms, let me know and I'll add them to my master list.)

[light_of_summer]

Wow, thank you so much, Althea_Valara, for linking to your running list of cool DW communities—I am interested in checking out awesomeers, get_knitted, and journalsandplanners. It's great to be reminded about drawsome, too!

\😄/

[light_of_summer]

Thank you, Zenigotchas—I'll be interested in checking out whatever you feel like mentioning!

Re amateur press associations—I lucked out and was introduced to them by friends, decades ago. There are still some out there, if you ask around!

[zenigotchas]

lyricaltitles is a bingo fest for fanfiction and og fiction centering around using songs for inspiration! I've been eye'ing this one.

sunshine_challenge is prompts in July based off Summer things, you can do anything: art, writing, photos, collages, etc.

fan_flashworks is a multifandom comm that posts one prompt for the week you use to write a short fanfic.

I feel like there's more these are just the ones I can remember.

I believe you. I bet it's a lot of fun to be surrounded by other creatives and to get to collab with them and share work. :D

[light_of_summer]

Oh thank you for reminding me about flash_fanworks, Zenigotchas!

I rarely have ideas for fanworks, but maybe that might change with regular prompting?

Good to know about the others, too!

[althea_valara]

communal_creators is running RIGHT NOW. Unfortunately it's too late to sign up for this round, but: it's a creativity challenge open to ALL creative types and runs from September 15th to October 15th. Sometimes a smaller round will happen in the spring. Everyone has been so supportive there!

Most of the writing things I've heard of lately are for longer works and are off Dreamwidth, but here's a few other DW communities that might interest you:

sweetandshort is for short written works and other small creative challenges.

inspiredby posts monthly prompt lists.

common_nature is a community for nature photography.

If you're a fan of the Final Fantasy video game franchise, ffprompts posts monthly prompts. Also, my friends seventhe and lassarina usually run a Final Fantasy Kiss Battle for fic/other works, happening around Valentine's Day in one of their journals.

snowflake_challenge posts a bunch of prompts in January; they are fandom-related, as a way to both celebrate fandom and meet other people. There's also a sunshine_challenge but I'm less familiar with that one.

[light_of_summer]

Oo, thank you, Althea_Valara—sweetandshort and common_nature both especially look like they might do quite well for me!

Much appreciated!

[silvercat17]

Welcome!

I'm a mod at rainbowfic - we don't have deadlines, but we do have challenges with deadlines irregularly on our discussion community - https://rainbowlounge.dreamwidth.org/tag/mod+post:+challenges. It's mostly focused on writing, but art, crafts, etc are allowed as long as they aren't fanwork. (I need to do more promo to encourage people to do things beyond writing)

You can find a lot of communities on dw_community_promo - challenge communities tend to post there before sign-ups open

I'll second allbingo - it's open to any sort of creations, including writing, art, photography, etc

ushobwri has weekly encouragement for writing

[light_of_summer]

These all sound worth checking out, Silvercat17—thank you!

I was a bit confused about mentions of "saturation" and "novelty beads" and "paint by numbers" at rainbowlounge, but I think I figured out where to find the info I needed—is this the right post to consult?

Much appreciated!

[silvercat17]

Yeah, RainbowFic/RainbowLists has a theme of naming stuff after art terms. So Novelty Beads are a supply and paint-by-numbers and saturations are styles.

The rules and how-to should explain everything (hopefully). I also make a post in RainbowLounge for questions on a semi-regular basis. RainbowFic shares the discord with JustCreate as well if you want immediate answers.

[light_of_summer]

Thanks very much!

[mekare]

Hi! drawesome is an art community with monthly challenges, for October we just sourced our community prompt list for daily inspiration!
Caveat: it‘s for drawing/painting traditionally or digitally rather than other art forms like collage or linocut or something.
Check it out, we are a really friendly bunch! All challenges stay open indefinitely, so there is no pressure to finish in a particular month.

[light_of_summer]

Thank you for the info about drawesome, Mekare—I will head over there to check out the October prompt list, right now!

Edited to add: I see a request for October prompt suggestions, but not a finalized list—I hope I'm just too early. 😏 But if I should already be looking in a particular place that I haven't found, please point me to it, and thanks, again!

[mekare]

Hi, you were just early, our mod just posted that it‘s still possible to submit prompts.

[light_of_summer]

🙂👍