New Idea for a Photo Game/Challenge - Album Covers

The covers of music albums often feature quite interesting artwork. I think it could be very fun to try and recreate a few such covers using our dolls (seen this done on Instagram once in a while) and it might even make for an interesting photo game.

I have already played around with my camera for a bit, but before just starting a new photo game I would like community and moderator input on how we could do this best.

 

a) First of all: Would people be actually interested?

Of course I could just post my recreations in the threads I use for my other photos. But it would be interesting to see what other people can come up with and have it all in one place.

 

b) Could a simple "Recreate an album cover of your choice with your dolls!" be considered as enough of a game?

Adding more complex rules (such as associations between posts) would considerably limit options and likely result in fewer people joining in. Would it be better to just run it as a regular photo thread instead of as a photo game?

 

c) Then, of course posting the recreation is only half as fun if you don't have the original to compare it to. It's probably a bad idea to have people upload the original cover images to the forum, but either linking to the corresponding album's entry on an open music encyclopedia like musicbrainz.org or embedding the cover from their archive.org resource should not pose any issues.

Would that be appropriate? Other suggestions?

 

d) Musings about details:

To be welcoming to all skill levels, I guess any degree of accuracy should be allowed for your recreation - from "just posing the doll(s) like the people on the cover" to "go wild with props and/or photoshop skillz" everything is fair game.

Cover art that doesn't feature any humans is out. (Unless you can come up with some clever but sensible way to still recreate it with your dolls.)

And of course the standard forum rules would still apply.

 

This is all the stuff that comes to mind for now.

I'd really like to hear your opinion on this and any suggestions you might have.

 

Oooh, it’s a cool idea!

It also came to my mind to do movies posters!

On 2/17/2020 at 6:28 AM, Singer Yuna said:

It also came to my mind to do movies posters!

My reason for suggesting music album covers in particular was mostly because there are many fairly unique ones that still aren't too complex - which allows a recognizable recreation without too much editing or special effects.

I'm not too much of a movie enthusiast, so when I think of movie posters most that come to mind seem kinda generic - a bunch of people standing in the foreground with the main difference being the costumes and the special effects in the backgrounds. However I do not doubt that there are plenty unique ones out there if you take a closer look. And even the more generic ones would likely still be fun to recreate.

In general you could do any kind of media cover - be it music albums, movies, video games, books, even some board games...

e) This just poses the question: Make one "Doll Covers" thread that includes everything, so people have more options - or keep the types separate to have a more concise format?

14 minutes ago, Tierparkzone said:

In general you could do any kind of media cover - be it music albums, movies, video games, books, even some board games...

The idea of creating scenes has some potential, but to make it a forum game it really needs a multiplayer element.

One thing I like about this is that it would give people a chance to recreate human poses by posing their dolls. That could be a learning experience.

One option might be to make it into a challenge game. Someone links to an image to recreate, then someone else accepts the challenge to recreate that image. They then post their image and a link to a new image. A game like that would be nice for people who want something more difficult, but it would move slowly. 

I’ve participated on forums where people played a truth or dare game, where the dares were usually artistic challenges, and it took awhile for people to finish.  

Aaand I’m expecting Billy’s first submission will be a recreation of Pink Floyd’s ‘A Nice Pair.’  

(Fair warning, if you google that it’s NSFW)

5 hours ago, BeyondTime said:

The idea of creating scenes has some potential, but to make it a forum game it really needs a multiplayer element.

One thing I like about this is that it would give people a chance to recreate human poses by posing their dolls. That could be a learning experience.

One option might be to make it into a challenge game. Someone links to an image to recreate, then someone else accepts the challenge to recreate that image. They then post their image and a link to a new image. A game like that would be nice for people who want something more difficult, but it would move slowly.

Yeah, that's exactly the point I was contemplating in point b). However, as you say: someone giving a challenge - someone else accepting it, posting their recreation, then them giving a new challenge really seems to move way to slow and would involve too few people at a given time to hold everyone's interest in the long run. Depending how niche an album/movie is, nobody might actually be interested enough to bother and pick it up.

A slightly altered possibility could be: someone linking several (about five?) cover images - anyone is free to recreate any of these, post their recreation, giving five new examples - and all previous challenges (even those that someone has done) stay valid. This would allow for a snowballing amount of options, making it easier for new people to join in.

However in general, I think it might be better for people to decide for themselves which covers they want to recreate. This allows for the best possible results, as people can select motifs that best fit their crew of dolls, available costumes & props as well as their photoshop skills.

One could treat it as a kind of tag-game: post the recreation of a cover, then tag two dolls of other people like: "What is <user>'s <doll> listening to?" - then they have to recreate a cover featuring this doll. This would be interesting as people can select covers that work well with the doll in question. Of course, anyone who has not been tagged can still join in by posting a recreation, then tagging new dolls.

 

 

5 hours ago, BeyondTime said:

Aaand I’m expecting Billy’s first submission will be a recreation of Pink Floyd’s ‘A Nice Pair.’  

(Fair warning, if you google that it’s NSFW)

😁

f) That actually raises another question. When it comes to album covers, there are a few that are NSFW - how are we going to treat them? I guess hiding the images with a spoiler tag and giving an NSFW warning at the beginning of the post is sufficient?

If someone starts this and wants NSFW album stuff available then by all means hook it up.  All you'll need is a warning at the lead page/link and you're covered.

 

As for me doing "A Nice Pair", I've never seen that album cover so now I'm curious.  😉  It's obviously a Manami thing from y'alls reactions.  LOL

 

 

Billy

17 hours ago, Tierparkzone said:

A slightly altered possibility could be: someone linking several (about five?) cover images - anyone is free to recreate any of these, post their recreation, giving five new examples - and all previous challenges (even those that someone has done) stay valid. This would allow for a snowballing amount of options, making it easier for new people to join in.

That has potential. The main reason I suggested one person accept a challenge was so that someone didn't put a lot of effort into creating something only to have someone else post first. Your suggestion takes care of that issue.

I do think it should be more than just album covers. We probably have some members who are tone-deaf or deaf, and a music only theme could shut them out. My stepmother's dad was tone-deaf. Music wasn't allowed in their house, and while I have no idea what music would be like to someone who is tone-deaf, I suspect it's pretty awful.

I think I saw someone do a pretty impressive recreation of one of the Star Wars movie posters with dolls, might have been @K-2, but I'm not sure about that.

 

17 hours ago, Tierparkzone said:

I guess hiding the images with a spoiler tag and giving an NSFW warning at the beginning of the post is sufficient?

What Billy said, although the spoiler tag might be appropriate for some images. Honestly I don't think art nudity should really be an issue on this forum, but if an album had something more vulgar or offensive it might be a good idea to use a spoiler tag to hide the image.

 

3 hours ago, baldylox said:

As for me doing "A Nice Pair", I've never seen that album cover so now I'm curious.  😉  It's obviously a Manami thing from y'alls reactions.  LOL

It was the 70s.