2020 Derpibooru Community Collab

@Joey  
We believe in you!
 

 
Take as much time as it takes and remember to have fun :)
 
Because if you aren’t having fun, then it just isn’t any fun.

@Ciaran  
This is very true. :)

It’s alright! Take as much time as you need! No need to rush, no matter when it’s finished we’ll all be thankful for your amazing editing work ^^

@Ciaran  
 
Not to be taken too literally  

Unreformed changeling OCs staring directly at overly adorable shippings? Sure, why not?
 

@Joey  
You would think the bug would be happy surrounded by so much love :P

So, here’s a bit of a bigger update regarding the status of the collab, as well as some of my thoughts about what it should be:
 
Anyone who’s seen the 2019 collab (>>1945331), or even the 2018 collab (>>1623600) will realize that characters were largely arranged by color, with a lot of regard to artistic style. Everything flowed together really nicely, each image looked very nice next to every image surrounding it. Originally, I was taking the same approach to the 2020 collab - I’d place a character, and then search through every remaining submission looking for the one that looks the best next to the one I just placed.
 
This is why it’s been going so slow - sometimes it’d take me 5-10 (sometimes 15) minutes to find a single image to add to the collab. I’d find one that looks like it may fit, add it, then realize it doesn’t look quite as good with the character in the row before it, so I have to remove it and go looking for another character. This was especially tricky with characters/groups in odd poses, or a character holding something that needed to be shown off (like a plushie). The process I was using trying to keep everything nice and smooth was causing things to progress extremely slowly.
 
Even worse - I zoomed out and looked at what I had so far overall, and quite frankly - it looked so fucking boring. It was just a few hundred OCs arranged in neat, even lines, sorted by colors. It looked nice, but it felt more like like a class photo than a fun event:
 

 
I wasn’t excited by what I was seeing. It didn’t feel like a Derpibooru collab. It didn’t reflect my vision on what a Derpibooru collab should be, nor my feelings on what the Derpibooru community is. Simply put - it wasn’t fun.
 
So I deleted over half of it.
 
Then I grabbed around thirty random submissions without regard to color, art style, etc and imported them all into the collab’s main PSD all at once. I scaled them all to be the same size, then just arranged them into a neat little blob around what was left. No regards to consistency, no neat organized even lines, nothing. Just thirty random ponies arranged in a way that looked nice. Then I grabbed another thirty and did it again. And again. And again.
 
After doing that a few times, the collab started taking a new shape. It looks a bit more chaotic than previous collabs, and a bit more disorganized. But in turn, it looks absolutely amazing. It looks like a snapshot of an actual community. It’s fun, it’s exciting, it’s inclusive, it looks great. And while I’m only just under a third of the way done, I think with this new approach I’m taking, it’s gonna be the best one yet. I’m definitely magnitudes more excited about what I’m looking at now than what I was looking at last night.
 
And yes - I did say “just under a third of the way done”. After deleting over half the collab, I went from ~330 characters to only 156. But this new approach I am taking is so fast that the current count is exactly 447 characters. In the past twenty four hours, I managed to make almost the same amount of progress that I made in the three weeks prior, but the results are so much better.
 
Overall, I feel like the approach I took to the 2019 collab just wasn’t all that great. At a minimum, it doesn’t scale well. I feel I was making a huge mistake trying to apply the same approach to the 2020 collab, but luckily I caught myself in time and things are looking much better now.
 
So yeah, that’s the status. It’s going great, and I’m now officially excited.

@Joey
 
THERE I AM GARY! THERE I AM!

Sounds like you’re finding your groove. ^^ Bet it’ll look awesome when all said is done, and I’m sure we’ll all be patient for the results.
 
turns towards everyone
 
Riiiight guys?

@Pilot231  
Amen!  
You work how best suits you Joey AND is most enjoyable for you as well.  
Its been 8 years, This fandom isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. :3

@Joey  
Hey, there’s me lol

@Joey
 
Sounds great!… It also sounds like the good old “find my OC” game just got a lot harder as well. :D

@Ponyvideomaker  
You’re not there anymore :P
 
@Autumn_Shy  
It honestly feels like it’s growing in some ways.
 
@runner2  
Probably, at least for most people. I know my OCs will be easy for me to find though :P
 
Also, your name reminds me of one of the most famous passwords in internet history

@Joey  
I’m guessing I’m also not there anymore lol

@Joey
 
Hmm. I haven’t heard of that before. I have been using this name for over a decade for various things though. :)

@Joey  

God, bash.org still makes me wheeze.

@Joey  
@The Smiling Pony
 
Can we plan badges for 2020 community collab? Just a plan/request.

A bold move cotton, let’s see how it plays out.

@Melisareb
 
@Pizzamovies
 
Personally I agree with whoever suggested Luster for the main collab badge. As for artists, maybe one of the student six?

Luster Dawn is better because of the end of the episode as the end of the year on MLP series

@Joey
 
Find the Pony is going to be a much harder game to play now

@AaronMk  
Especially if you submitted your OC

Knowing the last two collabs, my OC will be the part of some stupid placement inside joke that will spark memes for the next year.

@Joey  
The new approach does sound like a lot more fun too, if you can find little jokes like the changeling and the couples around it to put in some of the other clusters. And rather than have a great idea that will carry the entire group picture, there can be multiple smaller ideas that don’t have to be universally applicable throughout the thing.

@Panko Pai  
I’m expecting my own to stand out a bit, because they’re traditional art.
 
Got 11 of my drawings in this, 13 characters. (Mine and my daughter’s, 4 well known ones I wanted to see, and the rest are for others who couldn’t draw their own for various reasons).