Hello Everyone!! Today I have a very exciting post to share! If you've been following me on my Instagram, you'll know I've been planning to release my very own art challenge for a while now, and today is finally the day! I've explained all the bits and pieces of this challenge in all sorts of different places, but in this post I plan to collect all the information in one spot! So, let's begin!
First Off: Let's Start with the Basic Premise! The Challenge is called "Erstwhile Academy", and here is the concept: Each Participant will create their own new OC. These OCs will be students at a school named Erstwhile Academy, which is a private high school for time travelers. For a little more info, the school was created in 1837, after people began to realize around 5% of the population had the ability to travel in time by thinking of their destination and essentially teleporting there. The School was created to teach students to advance their skills and to use traveling for good. It is unknown who originally started the school but it is now funded by the McKlaine family. To participate, you will design your own Student OC, then use that OC to complete a list of 31 prompts based around your student and the school. This challenge will last throughout the entirety of 2020, so feel free to complete each prompt at your own pace, as long as you finish before the 1st of 2021.
Here are a few other basic rules: • E.A. Exclusively teaches time travel related classes - therefore students must first attend a normal high school, and attend E.A. after completion. They can however finish normal high years earlier if you wish. Most students range from ages 15-25.
• E.A. Is set up in London, England, and is a boarding school. However for the fun of room design, each student had their own small room similar to a dorm.
• Your OC can exist in any year you wish- from the past to the Future - however, students are not allowed to travel into the future from their existing time period. Example: if your student was born in the future and is now in 2045, they cannot travel into THEIR future, as in beyond 2045. Unless of course, they break the rules.
• Small Pets are Allowed in student's rooms
• Some People can have advanced Time manipulation powers, such as speeding up time, stopping time, etc. Feel free to come up with your own time related powers!
Hopefully that all makes sense and the challenge is clear! Basically, just make an OC who is a student and can time travel, then use the 31 prompts to make art about said character! The prompts will help us get to know the characters personality, powers, and more!
Here's one last thing before I can discuss the actual prompts - The School Uniforms!
As you can see, there are multiple options for boys and girls, and you can mix and match the pieces of course. For example, the girls have sweater vests and full sweaters, but you can choose to wear just one or neither. Also, if you're student is feeling rebellious, they can also choose to go against the uniform in some way. Just know that it is against the rules and they could be punished! However, be sure to include at least one item in your students uniform that matches the color of the year they are attending. E.A. lasts for 3 years - and each year you attend, you are assigned a different uniform color to differentiate you.
• Year 1 - Green
• Year 2 - Red
• Year 3 - Blue
Onto the Prompts!
There is a list of 31 prompts. These prompts will tell us more about your OC. The main point of the challenge is to complete all 31 of these prompts before 2021, as a way to practice developing new OCs, both in personality and design. My hope for this challenge is to grow more confident in my ability to create characters, and also to become better at drawing the same character multiple times. I hope this challenge can help all of your with your OC goals! These prompts are meant to be taken as you wish, so don't feel too limited on what to draw.
There are a few rules though. For more complicated prompts, there are "*" indicating further explanation. We'll look at those now:
These sheets clarify any prompts that I felt needed more explanation. If you have come to a prompt with a "*" beside it, please be sure to read the specifications before drawing, as many of those prompts have additional steps. For example, a few prompts such as "Field Trip" or "Midterms" actually have randomized assignments! For example, when you are ready to begin work on the prompt "Field Trip", you will first contact me (through Insta DMs) to be randomly assigned a time period to travel to! There are many more specific rules like this for the prompts, so again be sure to read them carefully. I really wanted this challenge to be very immersive. A few different prompts will require you know the Classes and Electives provided by Erstwhile Academy, so here are a list of those:
Last but not least, here are a list of rules, and a brief summary of just how traveling works inside this universe. Be sure to read this all before beginning work on the prompt list.
Here are a few last rules to the challenge:
• Deadline - January 1st, 2021
• Please use the hashtag - #erstwhileacademy for ALL your artwork related to the challenge and the prompts.
• Please keep your art PG so that everyone can enjoy the art and the hashtag.
• Be sure to read the prompts carefully before beginning.
• Some participants have asked to make Teacher characters as their main OCs - which is fine by me! As for the prompts, I do not have a seperate version for teacher OCs. So feel free to bend them a bit to make sense for the teacher character. For example, swap the prompt "favorite teacher" for "favorite student". Instead of showing the characters taking the exam for "final exams" show the teacher grading it, etc!
• Make sure to ask before using someone else's OC in your artwork in any way
...
And that's pretty much it! If you have any more questions, check out my Erstwhile Academy story highlight on my Instagram, or feel free to DM me with any questions!
I hope you all enjoy! I'm so excited to see what you all do with this challenge, the characters you create, and your interpretation of the prompts! Be sure to use the hashtag #erstwhileacademy on your artwork so I can see it!
📷ReplyForward