First of all, I want to thank you all for the high ratings and feature on my tileset because it means a lot to me. The Jazz community was the first place I tried to get artistic acknowledgement, so finally being “on the first page” of tileset recommended downloads means a lot to me.

Though I do agree with the various spread-out criticisms I have received: Drawing a tileset isn’t just about making a pretty scenery, it’s also about functionality and variety. If I were to draw more anymore tilesets, those features would definitely be the steps I would be taking in terms of improvement.

However, I have also learned another thing, about reviews and artistic progress. For one, I admire Agama’s skill – but having come to draw this many tilesets, I can only make a few conclusions about this artist:

- She has without a doubt drawn within the sprite genre before.
- She is hideously good at controlling her amount of colors while using a tablet and photoshop brushes rather than drawing pixel by pixel.
- She has spent an enourmous amount of time working at these tilesets at a professional level for free.

So why isn’t there more people like Agama around? Looking back, I’ve come to learn that you never really attracted any artists. Tilesets are art without a doubt, but most of our good tileset artists work with textures or very flat colors, because "full-time" artists realize drawing tilesets in detail is just incredibly time consuming compared to what they could be doing in normal art.

Don’t think I’m asking for higher rating here just because it’s “OMG ART U SHOULD APPRECIATE IT LOL!”, when I mean appreciation, I mean two things:

1) You never expanded the site in terms of art, the only section for artists was the art forum which was already labeled as non-Jazz related.

Unlike so many other fan sites, there never was a fan art section. When I say “fan art”, it isn’t just drawings of Jazz, but any fan characters as well. By neglecting such feature, you neglected the artistic progress and character development players could have made related to the game – with other words, for art, the people went to other sites and quickly lost interest in Jazz.

I have seen Jazz Jackrabbit fan art on other various sites, and surprisingly almost none of the artists even knew a fan site existed. That’s how wide Jazz got in the art universe: People don’t even know we exist.

2) Reviews were all the same for tilesets. This is probably the biggest mistake on the site’s account all together. Reviews for tileset only helped the downloader – not the artist.

So what’s a good “criticism” in terms of a review is actually just a deep detailed label of whether the reviewer feels the tileset is worth using or not, they hardly dare to step into drawing quality or specific needs because “drawing art is hard” and it’s a territory many don’t step into.

For example, I bet some of the people who gave me criticism “outside” my upload were actually somewhat afraid of using it as a reason to pull down my rating because 1) good tilesets are already damn hard to come by, 2) it’s hard to demand drawing unnecessary tiles due to the time it takes, and 3) most people don’t feel they know enough in the area of art to properly review – they’re afraid they’ll say something dead-wrong and not be helpful at all.

While 3 is a legitimate reason to hesitate, the fact is, criticism - as long as constructive and well thought - is not only helpful to the uploader, but also helpful to other artists as well as reviewers to show them how to give criticize.

This post is probably too late and even if any changes were made, most people with developing in art have taken off. But none the less, I thought I would share my reflective thoughts with you. It's not meant to blame anyone but just some of the thoughts that passed through me the night before my chemistry exam. :P

I get your point about the fan art section and fully agree with it (I've been toying with the idea of setting one up recently, in fact), but I don't quite understand your second point ("Reviews were all the same for tilesets."). What do you mean, exactly, and how is it a fault of J2O's review system instead of the author of the review?

Originally Posted by Stijn

I get your point about the fan art section and fully agree with it (I've been toying with the idea of setting one up recently, in fact), but I don't quite understand your second point ("Reviews were all the same for tilesets."). What do you mean, exactly, and how is it a fault of J2O's review system instead of the author of the review?

I mean that there is a very large difference between reviewing a level and a tileset, as the current way of review already implies. When you review a level you talk about game play, design, placement, everything that's relevant to creating a level. But when people review a tileset, the only thing mentioned is usability and rarely lacking functionality. There's very little the creator can actually learn from the review, and it's very often people hold back useful comments that are relevant to the artwork because they don't think they can base a rating on "suggestions" (such as constructive criticism) on how the tileset could be improved.

You can actually see that on my upload and the feature, the first comment there was actually criticism by EvilMike - but I assume he did not post it because he didn't think of it as a "fitting review" when going in detail with that opinion wouldn't just have told the downloader what the tileset felt lacking, but also me and other tileset artists what tiles to draw. I actually get the feeling that some people hesitated to give me a review because they felt they didn't have proper reasons to the review standards to downrate my set.

The problem is that writing a review criticizing the artistic aspects of tilesets, which are to be honest not of primary concern to a level maker, is a lot harder than simply going along a list of masking, palette, eyecandy, ease of use... I'm sure you have seen at least as many reviews which do this ("masking: 9/10. tile placement: 7/10. average: 8! download now!") as me. People just don't want to go through writing a really insightful, constructive review, since it takes a lot more time and effort. There are several reasons for this; it's the internet, J2O's audience is, though older than before, still relatively young, it's easier to use a template, and so on.

I'm not sure whether this was criticism towards J2O's reviewing system or a more general remark, but in any case I don't think this is something J2O can really do anything about. It's not the system that needs to change, it's the users of the system.

I do however think that the importance of "artistic criticism" is not as big as you picture it to be. At least not towards those who will in the end use the tileset - coincidentally also those that are most likely to review the it. Jazz2Online's download section is primarily intended as a repository of files people can download and then play - and it is to be expected that they are reviewed from that point of view too. Thus, while for you as a tileset creator feedback on more artistic aspects may be important, the average downloader will be more concerned about how easy it is to put platforms together, how versatile the set is, whether the masking is good, et cetera.

Your point about the barrier for reviewing being higher than for simply leaving a comment is correct, I think, but not because people feel such comments are out of place in a review. I assume people (or at least people like EvilMike, who actually know how to write decent reviews) realize that just such comments don't constitute a full review, and thus reply to the news post instead because they don't want to spend effort on a full-fledged review.

When I say that it's more of a fault of the site than the users, I mean that the review form have not encouraged constructive criticism at any point and despite that the current user base might not be entirely capable of writing such criticism, it might have been different if it had been there from let's say, the beginning.

As for an insightful review taking effort, I'd like to remark my point about appreciation again. My latest tileset did take something around fifteen to twenty work hours (drawing pixel by pixel rox !!), so I don't think asking for thorough criticism is too much. But then that is a user base problem.

So it might be the user base but also the site, I think it's a little bit of both.

The review form is essentially a blank text field which you can fill in however you want to. What alternative do you suggest, then?

Originally Posted by Stijn

The review form is essentially a blank text field which you can fill in however you want to. What alternative do you suggest, then?

How about a rep system? Like, when people like your review, they can upvote it, and then you can get points for having a good rating!

...oh wait!




Seriously though, some way to encourage people reading and rating your reviews might help... Like, a minor bonus in your rank when you vote on reviews. Since I have the feeling reviews are seldom read.

Reviews can only be so helpful. I would say beta-testing is still the best option for tileset makers, and the beta-testing team needs to include those who have made quality tilesets before or at the very least know what they are talking about. What could help a lot is some sort of formal public beta-testing procedure on this site, perhaps done by encouraging users to post their unfinished tileset in a separate thread so they can receive opinions and help. I suppose those who wish to help with beta-testing could also suggest and create tiles sort of like what LMAT did.

Also, tilesets in general could use more of the following:

• Shading and shadows. Putting more effort here can make a good tileset great.
• Tile variety. For example, three different types of ground and building tiles all with different color schemes. Tube Electric is a good example.
• Transition tiles. This is especially needed for the sprite layer so that level builders aren't required to sacrifice a background layer for eye candy.

Originally Posted by Stijn

The review form is essentially a blank text field which you can fill in however you want to. What alternative do you suggest, then?

When you say that small amount of feedback that comment was didn't equal to a full review, I sort of disagree. Looking at the length of some reviews that you moderators allow, I think that comment was on equal terms. Though it may seem a bit rash, but if we are talking about getting feedback to some extend, it would mean accepting different types of reviews as well. After all, if all reviews were the same and following the same structure as they do now, there really wouldn't be a need to post more than one.

Now don't think that would be "the one and only" solution, I'm not exactly suggesting anything here, but I'm saying that the review system never were any benefit to the artist, and you know very well that is a concern when you want artists to stick around.

At this point, I don't think there's going to come any more artists, so it's just a reflective thought. Jazz2Online has fit its purpose of a download archive, but the question that remains is whether tilesets ever fit into the same category of download as everything else in terms of reviewing.

Certainly, we had a time period where many tilesets were being made, but if you look at the review system back then, most of the reviews were more comments like on an art gallery than the reviews we see today. The new question is whether any artist would really want to return to doing hours of work only to have the feedback directed at the downloader, and the only true motivation for creating a tileset now is sheer dedication to the community.

Now it might sound odd coming from me as I have gotten quite a bit of praise on that upload, but what you have to remember is that we’re looking at the tileset artists that are yet to create good sets. And I’m going to be honest here, it was never the reviews or the feedback I received on my previous tilesets that were the motivation for improvement. In fact, I went elsewhere for years.

Originally Posted by BlurredD

Reviews can only be so helpful. I would say beta-testing is still the best option for tileset makers, and the beta-testing team needs to include those who have made quality tilesets before or at the very least know what they are talking about. What could help a lot is some sort of formal public beta-testing procedure on this site, perhaps done by encouraging users to post their unfinished tileset in a separate thread so they can receive opinions and help. I suppose those who wish to help with beta-testing could also suggest and create tiles sort of like what LMAT did.

Also, tilesets in general could use more of the following:

• Shading and shadows. Putting more effort here can make a good tileset great.
• Tile variety. For example, three different types of ground and building tiles all with different color schemes. Tube Electric is a good example.
• Transition tiles. This is especially needed for the sprite layer so that level builders aren't required to sacrifice a background layer for eye candy.

I most certainly agree. I think it might just be helpful for any sets that might come in the future if there were some offical beta-testing support on the main site, where people could upload incomplete work and request beta-testing with some sort of site-related reward for those who beta-test.

If there were an art section on J2Online, hints and guides to creating tilesets such as those tips would definitely be a way to go.