This post documents the new updated Monthly Voting tab, my thoughts on the whole thing, and the submissions that got my vote.
The first change I've noticed: there's an easy to understand and insightful description about the nominees and its suggested criteria, updated from the original version.
Safe for Work (formerly "Not pornographic")
Independent (formerly "Not commercial")
Contains Artistry (seems new, yet somehow 2 Pebbles movies are on there).
Honestly, those criteria should be more than just be a suggestion.
Rather than each submission be arranged as a grid, it puts them all in a list. First,
-it puts all pinned submissions on top, if any.
-then all submissions I've favourited
-then stuff voted highly on,
-then those from authors I follow
-then the other eligible submissions
Arranging the familiar, already seen, already liked submissions on top, gives some familiarity with whatever picks I've selected, but at the same time, if you haven't watched that many submissions, it can make it seem biased, especially if you missed a few technically superior selections.
Ideally, the voter should aim to watch them after the fact, so my suggestion: if you vote for something you haven't watched, it will notify you to watch it, but will still let you vote anyway.
After you pick 10 or less submissions, you are then redirected to another page to sort them. I think it'd be nicer to sort them on the same page, for convenience.
Movies:
These are my picks: Since these are from August, of course the first 6 are Clock stuff.
One neat thing I like is that the voted submissions are highlighted in their Portal's colour
(movies = red, games = blue, audio = green, art = purple)
Games
Mostly identical, only there's a smaller pool of eligible submissions, and less stuff I've actually played or looked at prior to voting. The main issue is that games take longer to load and are longer to get into, compared to the other submissions, so overall... it's longer.
I know Bastard Aliens has a dick in the intro cutscene, but that's a joke penis. For comedic effect, For pissing. Different vibes.
Speaking of: that game is played through typing, like inMario Teaches Typing, so that alone makes it worth it.
Also, clocks before rocks!
Audio
If I could recommend a new criteria, it'd be "make sure it's not that overdone, overrated techno-dubstep EDM bullshit from those DJ-Geometry Dashheads."
I wanted to highlight a selection of new, unique from other genres-type bangers. Give at least one of these guys a follow.
There was also a piece of official Among Us music from Puff himself, that one I deliberately didn't vote for to highlight the other artists.
Art
Same as Audio, it's great that Newgrounds is actually allowing them into the contest, but at the same time, I don't know what is considered eligible for voting in this category, and that's a big concern for me. There seems to be about 60 submissions on this list, which is lower than what's currently frontpaged. WAY lower.
There was this whole discussion in the Suggestions to Tom thread about this whole ordeal. At one point, 84 submissions were frontpaged in a single day, which was more than what the site could handle.
Even if only 10 submissions are FP'd per day, that's still ~300 submissions, or in other words, more than two thirds of all submissions featured on this site didn't make the cut.
I've come up with a few case studies.
CASE 1: Multiple works by the same author
One of the most prolific artists here, BridgeofFaust, had 13 submissions on the month of August, every single one of them frontpaged. Only two of them made it on here (I "voted highly" to highlight them in the same screenshot)
In fact, none of the submitters had more than two entries.
CASE 2: Late-FP'd Submissions
This piece by @Veloxscene isn't featured in the voting list. It was released in April, but featured in August.
It's a little rough, but it was on the front page.
This is also a late submission, though the author does a lot of NSFW art as well.
This piece was only one day off, released July 31st.
CASE 3: Miku
Only 5 eligible submissions feature Hatsune Miku, or her regional variants, despite there being a big boom in Miku fanart.
Some neat variants that didn't make it.
CASE 4: Other Ommissions
@KokoroHatsaru did the 30 Day Summergrounds Showdown. Unlike other prolific authors like Faust, violxiv, and such, none of her stuff made the cut.
Although some of them weren't put on the front page, a lot of them (including these ones) did. I wonder why they weren't eligible.
I really like this animated loop, but alas, it didn't make the cut either. This author had 4 submissions frontpaged and none are up here.
Both of these works from a newcomer aren't on here, even though they cool has hek!.
There doesn't seem to be a @Lisnovski on the list.
My theory: the submissions are manually curated by Tom/the mods, this is why the monthly voting was delayed by 1 week. Since there's no award system, and score sorting tends to be unviable at this scale, this seems to be the only real explanation.
Most of these ommisions, I can agree. If you allow a whole dozen submissions from the big shot Fausts and Violets out there, there's a chance they'll flood multiple slots at once, so I can see why they limited them to just two.
Some of these are just people participating in a trend or doing portraits of popular characters, so presumably only the best of those kind are selected.
Some are just not as polished, but still, it's ~70% of all FP'd art, a chance is a chance.
Anyway: these are my picks. Once again, women and children second, clocks first.
Other Things to Note
While writing this post, I clicked off and on the voting page multiple times and it seemed to save my progress. It also automatically considers my picks a full vote without locking in, regardless of whether I did the full 10 or not.
Interesting to note.
Another suggestion: A tick to indicate whether a submission is "original material" or a parody/fanart/etc.. Even though I can tell already by looking at it, it makes it easier to notice in a massive list.
Anyway: Happy voting!
That's right, we're animating the legendary sprite series to the core!
