Artcade 2022

parody of a street fighter character select, featuring characters from people who participated Artcade 2022. the character portraits surround a world map with flags signifiying where the character's from.

This page contains adult art. Please be wary while scrolling that you may see a butthole or titty.


Artcade 2022 Fast Facts

drawing of a haunted arcade cabinet

What: An original character art trading event, inclusive of any medium of creativity.

When: July 1st to August 1st 2022.

Where: The SCUMSUCK art farts private discord server.

Who: 25 different people from all over the world, mostly illustrators and writers, creating art for each other. We had a couple of playlists made as well!

Why: There's a lack of online art events that include multiple mediums, and accept violent/sexual/adult art.

Stats: All together, we made 218 pieces of art! That’s an average of 8 pieces per person! I myself made 16 pieces for the 16 other people who chose to create something for me.

Prelude

“Artcade” has been an event in my art server for the last two years. We had Artcade 2021 as the inaugural event, and now we have Artcade 2022.

I meant for Artcade to serve as a creative trading and gifting event formed around our original characters, and for Artcade to serve as an alternative to events that do not allow NSFW, or non-illustration work.

Sculpture, music playlists, writing, and any other form of creativity is allowed in my event. Most NSFW content is allowed with descriptive warnings and a spoilered image, save for content banned from Discord because the event is hosted on Discord.

I feel like Artcade was an astounding success, twice as much work but twice as much art from twice as many people! It really warms me heart hearing people say that they enjoyed the event, and had their creativity stoked in a art community that uplifts personal expression and original ideas. Now to get to work on the zine… that’ll make everyone jealous cuz no one will get one except particpants!!!! >:)

My art

Here's some stuff I drew for others who chose to depict my characters!

The owner of the character will be credited in the description (overlaid on the art), and in the filename.

The art of Iryuu (Nok's character), and Maurice (Miscellanium's character) is inspired by a story that Miscellanium wrote! Read Misc's story on Ao3!

Artcade Zine

Coming soon...

Artcade Post-Mortem


Thoughts on how we ran the event, what worked, and what we could change in the future.

Setting up the event:

We used the discord server in which I host art events and zines for Artcade. A couple different channels were dedicated to the event:

  • An information channel in which rules were posted, and a link to a google docs with more in depth descriptions.
  • A directory in which individuals would post their name, a link to character references (whether on refsheet or their own site), their likes, and their Do Not Wants (very important!).
  • An art channel in which individuals would post their art.
  • New to this year, a thread would be made on that piece so that each piece could get in depth comments and discussion without being interrupted by any new pieces.
  • A “sidequest” channel for individuals to post their pieces for the zine cover (more on that later)
  • A points-and-prizes channel to contain the usage of the discord bot which allocated points and prizes (more on that later!)
  • A event discussion channel, in which people could ask questions or just talk to each other about what’s going right or going wrong.

    • The event was open to anyone who signed up for my June newsletter, or if they were too late they could ask for an invite from a friend. I made a few social media posts about the event and newsletter, but otherwise did not have open calls. I reasoned that a small “screening” process would limit the amount of people (as I cannot moderate too many people in my server), and ensure that anyone who wanted to participate in the event had the patience to wait a couple weeks and read through the information in the newsletter first.

    In the future, I would probably make the “screening” process a bit more selective than an open newsletter. It seemed that some people joined without knowing who I was, or what my art was about. This is not ideal, as my art can be considered disturbing and should not be seen by most normal people.

    Because I purposely choose not to use the “proship” or “antiship” fandom buzzwords, it seems that some people who rally against whatever “gross” NSFW stuff got lost and found their way in the event. This perhaps could be prevented if I used the fandom buzzwords, but I find it disgusting to have to use fandom terms in order to clearly get my point across about how I literally do not care if people draw porn of BBW caillou’s ass or naruto eating shit.

    Another option for next year would be to use a form to collect contact information of people wanting to participate, and to privately DM them the invite link. Individually sending links would require 20x more effort. It would also necessitate some snooping and people willingly giving me their social media links so I can straight up tell them “dude your DNI says dni if you draw necrophilia and i draw necrophilia dude lol”. If someone does not have an online presence, that would also make the snooping a moot point as I would hate to require a website or socmed in order to join the event.

    In any case, most of the set-up was done in cleaning up the rules and guidelines from last year. I tried to accentuate that people should practice self care about what art they choose to engage with, by adding a line about “Skip over the Romanian incest cannibal named Blammibal Erecter, and choose another character to draw. “ But y’know, it’s a long document and not everyone reads everything.

    Points and Prizes:

    Last year’s theme was a chuck-e-cheeze parody. This year’s theme was an arcade! Both themes were to set up the “point” system, in which points were awarded for pieces made. Certain milestones like “coding your own website” also rewarded points for behaviors I wanted to encourage. Coding one’s own static website (i recommended neocities) was something I wanted everyone to get started on, as refsheet and toyhouse are not necessarily going to be up forever or allow all content. We’ve seen that with tumblr purging NSFW posts, or various other character sheet websites going down. I wanted everyone to be vigilant, and have fun having complete control over how their characters were presented!

    The prizes were mostly jokes, like photos of my dogs for 60 points or changing my discord name for 200. There were some physical prizes like zines (from my store, or the artcade zine we’d form with the art we create). I did not want the focus of the event to be on prizes, but have them be fun rewards to redeem.

    By far, the most valued prize was the “Movie Night” despite it being a paltry 20 points. As such, it was accessible to most people who made just a couple things, and participants talked about what movies they were thinking of choosing for their One True Choice making the value very great in Community Value. Movie nights were a thing in the server far before Artcade, but it was just fun to have that one big movie that you wanted to show everyone and force me and Shane to watch! Are our opinions and live reactions to movies valued?!

    Movies watched included: Amores Perros, Michael Collins, Rituals.

    We have a few more lined up in the back when people choose a date.

  • The point system is imperfect, but always will be because the act of making art cannot be assigned a numeric value, especially based on volume of art made. I simply want them to be some representation of the progress one has made in the event, so one can look back and see how much they’ve made for others.
  • I would like to mitigate any and all focus on the points and prizes as the main point of the event. The point of the event is to learn about each other’s characters, learn about each other, and hopefully have fun while building a supportive community.
  • No one should be fixating on getting 250 points so they can redeem a movie. I will mitigate more of the physical prizes, as they take a lot of effort to make, and a lot of money to mail out. The artcade zine has not been finished yet, but it may be the only thing I am willing to send out in the future.
  • The point system may be simplified further to only award points for each new person a piece has been made for, and return fires. It has been made evident to me that I underestimate most writers. I consider 2000 words (the max word count that counts for points) a very high amount to write in a week, but it seems that other writers can consistently write that much in just a day or two!
  • If the point system is simplified and deflated, we can deflate the points for the prizes to be less like 240 points. It’ll be easier to think of them as individual pieces made.

    • Moderation:

    By far the most difficult thing for anything with more than like 5 people. No one is guaranteed to get along with each other, and no one is guaranteed to have read any rules.

    The event was 99% smooth sailing in my opinion. The thing we had to address the most was the use of “deviantart fetish” as a term in DNWs (Do Not Wants), along with “gross stuff” and similarly vague descriptors. While it seemed a certain subsect of the population knew exactly what a deviantart fetish was, many others were confused as to what that entailed. After many discussions with the server, I concluded that the term should not be used because it does not inform the reader and is used judgmentally (no one ever says they WANT a deviantart fetish in their art, and it’s designated as the “other” weird fetishes). The event was supposed to be inclusive, and the server is described as kink-friendly. As such, participants should not be using judgemental language. You never know if I’m the one with the “deviantart fetish” :)

    The Do Not Want section is supposed to be for the artists’ own safety. It is not a place to put one’s personal judgements on display. While one can be free to dislike pee and poo fart fetishes, there is never any need to elaborate on why it’s gross or even say that it’s gross. Just say it and be done.

    I would encourage artists to elaborate more on what they do like, rather than write huge lists of things they hate.

  • Simplify the rules on Discord to just the basics, and have an outside site like dreamwidth to elaborate on the rules. The google docs is not quite accessible on mobile, and laggy.
  • Zpires had a great page on “ID”, which was basically a great “likes/prompts” list with elaboration on why that pings the brain. I would encourage people to focus on writing that rather than the DNW.
  • If someone has a great amount of fetishes they do not want, to the point that they need to use a vague term like “deviantart kink” or “gross stuff” to try and cover all bases, I would encourage them to simply say that they do not want NSFW or sexual art, unless the kink is specifically listed in their “wants” list, or the art has been discussed beforehand with both participants.
  • I need to make it absolutely clear that there should be no shaming of ships, fandom, interests, kinks, or anything else. It’s much more productive to focus on things you do like, rather than make everyone around you silent and uncomfortable because you are making fun of things they may enjoy.
  • I should make the join link for next artcade accesible only if the reader presses a specific checkbox or hidden button LOL. Like “press here if you love necrophilia and spiderman 2002″. Just to hammer in the atmosphere of the server.
  • I should not be afraid to just kick people if they seem like they are misunderstanding everything and do not fit in the climate I am trying to cultivate. No one is meant to get along with everyone, and they are free to participate in any other art event that does not involve making me uncomfortable.

    • Das all folks...

    Thanks for playin!


    drawing of my character lil' ronnie. she's smiling blankly.

    Seeya soon!