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View Full Version : How good are you.....really?



Steve Clarkson
04-17-2009, 3:49 PM
So you think you're pretty good using CorelDraw?

Let's find out.......

Corel is having a contest......and the grand prize winner gets a Roland® VersaCAMM™ VP-540 printer/cutter (approximate retail value of over US$21,000).

There are six different categories:

Advertising/Marketing
Promotional/Personalization
Vehicle Wraps
Textile/Fashion Design
General Illustration and Fine Art
Students

And I assume most of us would enter under the Promotional/Personalization category (it says it's for "Designs to be used in the engraving, awards, dye sublimation and other related industries").

They also said that you can download a free copy of CorelDraw so you can do your design (in case anyone here doesn't have it).

They set up different websites to enter the contest by country.....so since we have a worldwide group here on the Creek, here are all of them:

English, North America: www.corel.com/coreldrawdesigncontest (http://www.corel.com/coreldrawdesigncontest)
English, UK: www.corel.co.uk/coreldrawdesigncontest (http://www.corel.co.uk/coreldrawdesigncontest)
English, Australia: www.corel.com.au/coreldrawdesigncontest (http://www.corel.com.au/coreldrawdesigncontest)
French: www.corel.fr/concoursdesigncoreldraw (http://www.corel.fr/concoursdesigncoreldraw)
Spanish, Spain: www.corel.es/concursocoreldraw (http://www.corel.es/concursocoreldraw)
Italian: www.it.corel.com/concorsodidesigncoreldraw (http://www.it.corel.com/concorsodidesigncoreldraw)
German: www.corel.de/designwettbewerb (http://www.corel.de/designwettbewerb)
Dutch: www.corel.nl/ontwerpwedstrijdvoorcoreldraw (http://www.corel.nl/ontwerpwedstrijdvoorcoreldraw)
Polish: www.corel.com/pl/konkurscoreldraw (http://www.corel.com/pl/konkurscoreldraw)
Russian: www.corel.com/ru/coreldrawdesigncontest (http://www.corel.com/ru/coreldrawdesigncontest)
Czech: www.corel.com/cz/soutezcoreldraw (http://www.corel.com/cz/soutezcoreldraw)
Spanish, Mexico: www.corel.com.mx/concursocoreldraw (http://www.corel.com.mx/concursocoreldraw)
Brazilian-Portuguese: www.corel.com.br/coreldrawdesigncontest (http://www.corel.com.br/coreldrawdesigncontest)
Japanese: www.corel.jp/coreldrawdesigncontest (http://www.corel.jp/coreldrawdesigncontest)
Chinese (Mainland China): www.corel.com/cn/coreldrawdesigncontest (http://www.corel.com/cn/coreldrawdesigncontest)
Chinese (Taiwan): www.corel.com.tw/coreldrawdesigncontest (http://www.corel.com.tw/coreldrawdesigncontest)
Korean: www.corel.com/kr/coreldrawdesigncontest (http://www.corel.com/kr/coreldrawdesigncontest)


I don't have a prayer of winning, but maybe one of you do. If you decide to enter, please post on this thread your cdr that you submitted and then maybe we can vote for our own winner!

Joe Pelonio
04-17-2009, 4:08 PM
I'm not up to the level of many other Corel users either.

Having followed some of the other vendor design contests, most are won by a company that pays an employee full time to work only on the contest, because it's so good for business to win it.

They can advertise that the have an "award winning designer." The student category, though, should be interesting.

Scott Erwin
04-17-2009, 4:21 PM
I have an old book called "Corel Art Show 4" which is a book of the Contest winners from CD, and I have to say even back then " W O W " -- How did they do that...and of course, where did they come up with the time to do it....

The CD Art Show 4, Best Of Show winner was called The Huntress. Here is a small except of the information....

"Georgina, president and co-founder of The Electric Easel, a graphic design and illustration company located in Phoenix, Arizona, developed The Huntress on a 486-33 IBM compatible computer with 20 meg of RAM, a 210 meg SCSI hard disk and a 24 bit Genoa video card."

Some of the past winners are:
Product Illustration - Drawing of a Evelyn Camera...
Technical - Drawing of Canadian's DC-10

Some of the non-winners' drawings are still works of art....

So Go Get 'Em Steve....I look forward to seeing your drawing on the cover of the book....oh and the winner got 1 million dollars too..


PS - If anyone wants to see some of the winners let me know and I will send them to you

Doug Griffith
04-17-2009, 4:36 PM
Hey that's a good prize.

Can I create in Illustrator and import into CorelDraw? Otherwise I'm pretty useless.

Gary Hair
04-18-2009, 2:05 AM
For all that I do know about Corel, I realize that I have a very limited scope of knowledge. I know what I need for engraving, dye sub and cnc, but I am nowhere near the level of some of the artists that are out there using Corel on a daily basis.

I look forward to seeing some of the designs.

Gary

Steve Clarkson
04-18-2009, 7:15 AM
I assume the contest when it says "Designs"......means the graphics that are made in Corel.......but there really aren't any "graphic design artists" on the Creek that I'm aware of.

But if the contest was for "what you can DESIGN using Corel".....I think there are a few people on here that would have a shot. Specifically, I'm referring to people like David Fairfield and some of those unbelievable models he makes. Or how about some of the stuff Doug Griffith has made......maybe not the iPod holder, but he has made some stuff that I could never dream of making. And there are others too........

Jack Harper
04-18-2009, 10:59 AM
I assume the contest when it says "Designs"......means the graphics that are made in Corel.......but there really aren't any "graphic design artists" on the Creek that I'm aware of.

But if the contest was for "what you can DESIGN using Corel".....I think there are a few people on here that would have a shot. Specifically, I'm referring to people like David Fairfield and some of those unbelievable models he makes. Or how about some of the stuff Doug Griffith has made......maybe not the iPod holder, but he has made some stuff that I could never dream of making. And there are others too........


This brings up an interesting thought I have been mulling over for some time. I thought it would be fun to have a multi-tier contest here on the creek. The tiers would cover different categories like type of material, size and perhaps years of laser experience, think boxing weight categories. A few rules like percent of laser used to complete job, dollar amount allowed in materials (this could be several categories) and so forth.

We could get a few of the big guns like Epilog and Universal to throw in some good prizes in exchange for exposure and maybe the right to use any promotional images of the completed pieces.

As to benefits to the Creek, in addition to the shear fun of it, we could make a contest requirement that all submissions must include a detailed description of the process used along with all drawings or source location of drawings/art in case of third party copyright issues. In other words, if you want to play you have to give up your rights to your submission for the benefit of the Creek community.

Now, as to a more financial benefit to SMC. I was thinking it could be for contributors only, but I am on the fence on that. Each completed piece could be donated to the SMC for Ebay auction with all proceeds to SMC. I'm sure others would have better ideas.

However, with all this said, here is the aquilles heel to my idea, how do you judge it with a reasonable spattering of fairness and order without a huge amount of work on someones part to figure out each of the winners? If each member was given one vote for each category/tier, that might work. I am not sure how this can be done and error checked using the board software though.

If by some chance all this was possible, and while it would be of no business value to me, but rather in support of the amazing resource that is the Creek, I would be willing to be the first to throw a prize into the pot with a $1000 worth of my black Thin-Stone granite (that's one slab waterjet cut as reasonably needed). Oh well, just an idea.

Bill Cunningham
04-18-2009, 1:43 PM
Hmmmm I wonder??

My wife 'does' say I'm better than nothing!

Amanda Shughart
04-27-2009, 9:48 AM
How would you judge the quality of a product if you can only see pictures of it? Don't some pieces look better in person than on a screen? To that effect, you could have submissions mailed to one place(If mailing were possible) say, where your get-to-gether is and have a board of memebers or something like that vote and decide winners.

My 2 pennies.

David Fairfield
04-27-2009, 10:30 AM
Hey I just saw my name mentioned, thanks Steve! :D

I like the idea of a contest, because I suspect we have a bunch of lurkers here with a lot of know-how. It would be interesting to see what all they're doing behind closed doors! :)

I wouldn't limit it to Corel though, I'm an Adobe guy.

Dave

Mark Winlund
04-27-2009, 10:43 AM
While I have been using Corel since before "Draw" existed (anyone like to buy original Corel 1 disks?), I would not say that I am "good" at it. At least not by the criteria of the contest. These contests highlight designs that would never be profitable in real world situations. Contestants spend months of time creating elaborate "gee whiz" designs that have absolutely no bearing on making a living.

How about a contest creating cleaned up vectorizations using crummy logos from business cards? This type of design is where the action - and profit - lies in the real world. Creating balanced artwork for signs and engraving in the shortest possible time is where the real talent is. When I started, it took several hours to do one acceptable design. Now, it is unusual to spend more than 15 minutes. A lot of it is due to the automated tools now in Corel, but you still have to pick the shortest route to the end (and knowing all of the options available in Corel!)

Mark

PS Also, in the early days, Corel crashed so much that there was a significant recovery time factor to be added to your costs!

Bill Cunningham
05-02-2009, 9:48 PM
I started out with a ahem..borrowed' bunch of corel 2, disks.. Liked it so much that when 4 came out I bought it, then 8, then 12, and now X4.. I like your idea Mark! but not just for crappy b.card logos but also for the the 6k 256bit .gif, a customer will download from the web, and tell you they want it 10" x 10" on wood.. :D