casual ultimate » Meanwhile, back in Cybertron…

Hey, while all you cats were in Tulsa playing frisbah in awful weather, I stayed in Chicago to take part in this live design competition called cut and paste. A live iron-shef style illustration showdown, with an audience of around 800, sponsored by the big names in design software/hardware and taking place in 11 cities around the globe. The deal is that you get 15 minutes to create a design based on a specific theme, judges vote on the winners, and you advance bracket style to a championship round. Awards include about 8 grand worth of software and hardware.

The good stuff: I was happy as a clam in mud. I would do this every weekend if they let me. I had a most enjoyable night and was very entertained by all the goings on. I made one pretty sweet image right off the bat and got the crowd on my side. First category was themed “currency”; and for no particular reason other than it had to be a crowdpleaser, I decided to render my currency concept in the guise of a TRON lightcycle metaphor. Even better, the crowd got it the joke, freeing me from my nightmare of having a Chief Wiggum moment (Treehouse of Horror VII). I was one of the guys chosen to continue on to round 2, got some nice compliments from the judges and one aggressive skinhead in the audience, and all was well.

Hmm. Then came round 2. I had planned to create an underwater image for the “Through the Looking Glass” theme (required integration of a digital photo taken on site). For some reason it took me forever to get through with taking, importing and arranging that photo, at which time i felt very behind in my work and made a series of bad decisions that led to a completely ugly result. I swear that it looked good when i did it at home. Audience comments included “what the fuck is that”. Honestly, I had no good answer. Sometime in the last minute I just gave up and laughed at the monstrosity, hoping my casual attitude would endear me to the judges and they’d advance me for reasons of pity. Didn’t work.

Spent the rest of the evening watching the finalists go at it. Some things I was impressed by, others not so much. One thing I’m pretty sure of is that 15 minutes ain’t much time to create anything worth looking at, even with prep. Oh well. All in all though I got a big kick out of the idea of a photoshop duel, and it pretty much made me want to hole up in my basement and get faster at everything. One other good thing; at the close of the evening they announced the “audience award” based on american-idol style text message voting from people in the room (or in Tulsa…) and I did win that thing, so either people really like TRON or there were alot of bored frisbee players waiting by their phones. In either case, thanks to those who contributed, I got to leave with some self respect and a pile of new software at least.