2005 Nominees Announced!

[Zortic]

The list of nominees is up! Go check 'em out!

Mark Mekkes

[William G]

May I suggest that you post them on the index page of the site?

[Dutch!]

Gee...one click and I found them...can't be that tricky...

[William G]

No, it's not tricky.

But there's the idea that if you want people to see something, it should be the first thing that crosses the reader's gaze. Wednesday White wrote about it's importance over on Websnark. It's a good read.

[Dutch!]

It was a good read. Doesn't change the fact that I found this year's nominations within five seconds of reaching the main page. I thought that was pretty well placed, to be honest. The link was clear, and the main part of the page had the essential information about the awards themselves. I reckon that's more important to see first than incomplete nominations for this year.

Bugger I didn't make it myself though, eh?

[William G]

Doesn't change the fact that I found this year's nominations within five seconds of reaching the main page.

Well that's nice, but it's still meaningless in regards to my suggestion.

[Dutch!]

I thought both our points was to have the important information on the main page...in this case, that would be information about the Webcomic Awards as an entity, not just a yet to be finished list of nominations for this year. You go to a page about a car repair franchise, I'd rather see information telling me what they do and how they do it than just a list of new places opening up. I reckon that'd be the same case here...I'd rather know what these awards were about before I looked at any list of possibilities to win.

In that case, maybe he should have linked directly to the nominations page instead. Matter of semantics, I guess.

[Tynic]

typos ahoy

From the Outstanding Art Nominations:
Ian MacConville (Achewood)


From the Outstanding Writing:
Chris Onstad (Scary-Go-Round)



Pretty good nominations, overall.

[Zortic]

Remember, you are looking at it from the point of view of someone coming to look for the nominees. Someone coming to the site to find out what the awards are about are going to be confused by a list of nominees with no discription.

I also think it's important to keep the site consistant, if the 2005 results are always on their own page, there's no reason to move them when the 2006 results appear. However, for your convenience, I'm happy to post the link here.

Also, thanks for the corrections, I'm making them now.

Mark

[BloodKnight]

Sigh.

Yet another webcomic award that caters to the more popular comics.

I'm sorry but if I don't see Chronicles of Garas as 'outstanding artwork' and 'outstanding black and white', then its pretty obvious that you guys really don't care about the small comics over the already well-known ones.

Hell, you listed Megatokyo, Machall, Errant Story, and Alpha Shade again. It is because of poorly done events like this that make it hard for newcomers to actually breakthrough.

Seriously, does a comic with a hit count that is probably in the 5 digit category need yet *another* award? Why not actually pick people who aren't so mainstream?

And yes, I know about the rules about nominations by other comic creators. I've sent my email in, and I know several other webcomic artists/writers who nominated CoG as newcomer, black and white, fantasy, layout, writing, and artwork.

[Dutch!]

Of those three you mentioned, I've only heard of MegaTokyo but have no interest in it personally. Machall and Alpha Shade I've never heard of. How do you pronounce that first one? Is it 'ch' or 'sh' sound blend in the middle?

Does sound a bit like you're sucking a lemon at the moment though. Thousands of webcomics out there, you at least got nominated. There's probably be thousands more who'd be prouder than an ape with seven dicks to even get one nomination.

If it caters for the big boys and strokes their egos what does it really matter? Is it gonna twist you into a cynical artist who chucks it in because you got overlooked because you're the little prawn in the deli display? Then let the babies have their bottle.

Tynic, I'll have to trust your judgement on the merits of the nominees...I recognised five eighths of bugger all of them myself

[BloodKnight]

Alpha shade is well known mainly because they pay for lots of ads. I don't read the comic personally, but I see their banners on some of the sites I visit.

Just saying that it doesn't seem right for an award ceremony for comics that are already popular or listed before.

I don't see the Oscars nominating movies that are years old or stars in movies done decades ago. They go for the fresh, new meat for that one year.

Here, it isn't like that. Instead its the same old thing as before.

Whatever happened to a council of people awarding people, instead of 'whos most popular'. If the music awards were run by you guys, the only 'good' music would be spears and avril lavigne.

[Zortic]

As an example, I'd like to once again point to last years results. The top award went to Count Your Sheep, a BRAND NEW COMIC (at the time)! And it wasn't because any other comics were removed or disqualified, infact it stood toe-to-toe with Penny Arcade. In my opinion, this makes it a much bigger honor than if it was given the award because it was the only comic left after all the rest were disqualified.

Also note that the nomination round does tend to be more "popularity" oriented. That blank space can be intimidating. Once people have a clear choice, they're usually better about judging the nominees on their merits.

As for judging by a committee, an award process like this could easily be done. I could give you my list of favorite comics but I don't see any reason anyone should care what I have to think. Sure, if I add the opinions of a few more people, the opinion carries more weight... And the more opinions that are included, the less subjective the results become, right? I don't see any other award process that people seem to care more about than this one and I think the reason is because it reflects the opinions of the most people. That's what makes it different.

And I also want to note that there's nothing about these awards that say that they're the "only good" comics out there. There are a lot of others and we are going to try to do something this year to broaden the awareness of what's out there. Stay tuned for more information...

Mark Mekkes

[Joezabel]

I'm very happy with the list. I'm especially happy that A LESSON IS LEARNED BUT THE DAMAGE IS IRREVERSIBLE got so many nominations. Too bad it didn't get a Newcomer nomination, considering that it only started in August of 2004. I'm also pleased that Copper got so much attention. Two very fine comics that don't compromise on quality!! The same can be said of many other of the nominations! 8)

[Joezabel]

PS: One of the ways of increasing the awareness of the many good comics out there is to jump into the reviewing game. The Webcomics Examiner ( http://webcomicsreview.com ) and Comixpedia are always looking for reviewers, or you can start your own blog like Websnark and Webcomic Finds. Spread the joy, spread the word, you heard it here first.

[Stolle]

Bollocks to it.

[Eruditebaboon]

I'm very happy with the list. I'm especially happy that A LESSON IS LEARNED BUT THE DAMAGE IS IRREVERSIBLE got so many nominations. Too bad it didn't get a Newcomer nomination, considering that it only started in August of 2004.

It did get a newcomer nomination! Which is exactly why I have no chance of winning it: Lesson is going to totally kick my ass. Still, I'm really pleased (and suprised!) to be nominated at all.

[Ida]

I like the nominations. Great to see Earthsong and PPGDoujinshi nominated (I voted for those). This might just be my twisted opinion, but I think there is less Penny Arcade this year, which is good. Nothing against PA, but honestly, it's won enough, and it got nominated in cathegories it didn't really belong to earlier.

[Joezabel]

"Too bad it didn't get a Newcomer nomination, considering that it only started in August of 2004."

I am obviously brain-dead!

[Keffria]

Whatever happened to a council of people awarding people, instead of 'whos most popular'. If the music awards were run by you guys, the only 'good' music would be spears and avril lavigne.

The whole idea is that these comics are being nominated because they are well-known and respected by their peers - i.e. fellow webcomic creators.

If you're irked about the fact that you haven't gotten an award, maybe you should consider why you weren't nominated. Maybe you don't mingle enough with your fellow webcomickers? Maybe others feel that your concept isn't original enough, or perhaps they have issues with your style or your storytelling? And you berate Alpha Shade for buying advertising, but it works, and if you want to get popular that badly, maybe you should do the same.

At any rate, there are still many "big names" this year, but I'm glad to see some of my favourites made the list.