After researching our target audience and those who might like our game, we discovered that a significant portion consists of artists. Artists who view games as a work of art, immerse themselves in the game world, bond with the characters, and pay attention to even the smallest details. Therefore, we decided to organize a challenge for artists to have some fun and also test their skills in competition with other artists.
We discussed the challenge and how to conduct it and named it "Palettes' WIZ." The name means "elite of the Palettes" and also derives from "wizard," which relates to magic and our game's world. For prizes, we considered Steam keys, action figures of the characters, and keychains of the game characters.
For the challenge theme, many might have been confused since our game hasn't been published yet and there wasn't much information available. So, we decided to fully define the creatures called "Weeny Wises" to make it clear for the artists interested in participating.
The challenge started on May 17th and continued until June 2nd. The participation surprised us, as we expected a maximum of 10 entries but received over 20 (some artists shared more than one work)! Artists who had been following our Instagram page were well acquainted with our characters and the world of Weeny Wises and shared stunning works with us. However, artists less familiar with the game, despite our efforts, still did not fully understand the challenge theme and submitted titles that, although beautiful, were irrelevant.
After receiving the entries, we held a voting on our Instagram page so the community itself could select the best artist among the approved entries for the final round. The engagement on this post was significant, with over 200 comments (we had asked people to choose their preferred artist in the comments). The voting concluded on Sunday, June 9th, and the selected artists were as follows:
1. Miss Far
2. Fatemeh Rahimi
3. Fatemeh Jerengi
This event and its results gave us more hope to pay closer attention to our game's world and characters because no detail escapes the sharp eyes of cinematic platformer game fans!
Here you can see some of the selected works from the Palette's Wiz challenge.
By the way, which artist is your favorite?