Composers, it is time to dive into the Art Portal and put our inspirations into music as the 11th Art-Inspired Music Contest is starting next month!

The Art-Inspired Music Contest (AIM) is a yearly competition that runs on Newgrounds. Composers pick a piece of art from the Newgrounds Art Portal and create a track inspired by that work of art. A panel of judges evaluate the submissions and the winning 20 entries (top 3 + 17 runner-ups) are included in a compilation album on the Art-Inspired Music Bandcamp!

The submissions period for AIM 2024 will be open from April 19th and close on June 17th. Times will be in PST, but the official start of the contest will be determined by the posting of the submissions thread (to be done in the Audio Forums. A link will also be shared at the top of this news post!).

Right now, this is a time to start thinking about what art you may want to use as inspiration for your entry, but DO NOT start working on your entry until the submissions thread is posted.

This is also a time to start considering if you'd like to be a part of the judging panel for this year's compo or contribute some prizes.

Judges and Prizes

We are currently looking for users to help judge the submissions and contribute prizes for the compo.

Judges

We normally have 3 judges per compo (plus me), but I would love to have a couple more judges on hand this year if possible.

Judges will be responsible for listening to and evaluating all approved entries during the submissions period to help determine the winners. The official judging period starts once the submissions period ends (June 17), but you can also start listening to the entries as they come in.

Prizes

We are looking for some prize donations or suggestions. Something along the lines of a cash pool, product keys, etc.

Rules

The rules of the contest will be shared with the submissions thread. You can see a list of last year's rules here if you want to have an idea of what they will be like. Most of these rules, if not all, should still be the same, but there will most likely be some adjustments in regards to the Art Portal now allowing multiple images to be uploaded under one link.

I haven't completely decided how to handle this yet. Previously, multiple art inspirations for one entry were not allowed and I think I would like to keep it so that only one art link can be used as inspiration per entry. The same art can be used for multiple different submissions, but a submission cannot have more than one inspiration. This is mainly for judging purposes in which "Art Relevance" is a scoring factor and part of having a higher score, imo, is how much inspiration one can draw from a specific piece of art. If more than one inspiration (for the purposes of this contest) were allowed for one entry, it would create issues in regards to composers picking and choosing elements from multiple pieces of art to use as inspiration for their one track. Of course outside of the compo, this is not a bad thing at all, but for the purposes of AIM, it just muddies things a little too much.

The main challenge with the multiple images on one art link is that there doesn't seem to be a way to share a specific image within that art link - it always defaults to the first image. The other challenge is when comics are used as inspiration. In the past, a single page would often be presented as an inspiration (which in of itself has multiple pictures within their panels) - but I'm not sure if I would want to encourage or allow an entire comic to become the inspiration, as I see comics being a bit more like videos, with a sequential sort of narrative and I would preferably like to stick to stills or a fixed scene with some light/simple animation.

I'm currently considering the following options:

1. Disallow any multi-image inspirations to be used for AIM.
2. Allow multi-image inspirations to be used for AIM, but not allow multi-page comics. For art with multiple images, the first image that loads when viewing the art link would be considered the inspiration that is judged.

I'll have to think more about this and will likely update this post as I have or hear more thoughts on this matter.

Questions?

If you have any general questions or feedback regarding AIM, feel free to share in the comments below. Thanks and hope to see you participate!

AIM 2023 is basically done at this point and I am about as happy with how the compo went as I am relieved that it's over. As much as I enjoy hosting and judging, it is very time-consuming - in fact, I have numbers to show for the amount of time that was spent on the review part alone. But I felt like for this compo, I was more familiar with all the entries than I have ever been in any previous AIM. Most AIMs, I would maybe listen to entries a few times on a whim. This AIM, I probably listened to every entry at least 10 times in their entirety, if not more.

The biggest feat I managed to accomplish this AIM was reviewing every approved entry - yes, all 82 of them. Past AIMs, I'd be fortunate enough to get maybe 30 reviews if I pushed really hard. This time around, I managed to do 82 in the span of a month-and-a-half and it wasn't as difficult as I thought. I also made some behind-the-scene changes, mainly to how I managed compo data and approached review writing. At my current job, I learned how to use some productivity software and basic databases and saw a way to try and incorporate these as a part of the AIM process, and I wanted to share a bit of how that happened in this post. But first, let's look at some entries that I think need more love.

AIM 2023 Favourites

I want to mention a few AIM entries that I thought were great or felt like a showcase of the composer's improvements compared to previous AIMs.

Honourable Mentions

In no particular order, here are some entries I love from this year:

Environments 2D by @Cresince

Honestly probably the entry I'm most disappointed didn't get into the top 20. I love the groove and the sound design is fantastic.

ACID RAIN by @Dry

Those guitar chords perfectly encapsulate a rainy scene. I love the panning effects in the melody, too.

sweat by @SamaadBae5

This just manages to be chill and also is surprisingly good music to work out to? At least that's how I felt when I worked and sweated to this tune.

Tower of Tech by @Irish-Soul

This came SO CLOSE to getting into the top 20. The composition in this track is so well-crafted, especially with how the melody develops.

Horizon by @underscore8298

The chord progression and the rising synths at the beginning are so beautiful. Sunvox for the win!

I'm Naut Dreaming by @TheRiskster

I'm here for this romantic, pretty theme about two lovers floating in outer space. This is a perfect piece to listen to if I want to chill at night.

Travel To The Far Side by @DigitalProdigy

When I heard the composer wanted this track to be removed from AIM, I was actually quite disappointed. I love DigitalProdigy's other two entries in AIM, but this one blew me away when I first heard it. I think it does a great job at capturing the rave against the blinding lights.

Winter by @Siberg

This is another former entry that I really loved that got removed and re-added during the judging period. It is probably one of my most replayed tracks when it was still in the compo, really just for that one higher melody line that sores above the driving bassline.

Most Improved

I think these two composers are the ones whose entries I was most impressed by this year.

@Anonymous-Frog - I like "Archdukes of the Machine" a lot. It struck the right balance of horror and musicality and it all worked together well. I don't remember much of your entry from last year, but I feel like this year, you definitely stepped up.

@DiosselMusic submitted two very nice entries this year that I think showed a lot of improvement. Both have great and different vibes.

Earworms

I wanted to shout out these two entries specifically for randomly getting stuck in my head at various points frequently while I was not judging.

Kubarium by @Dynamic0

Final Frontier by @TebyTheCat

Mass Review Writing

In previous AIMs, the biggest obstacle when it came to writing reviews was burnout. It was easier to find motivation right at the start of the judging period for those compos, but after a day or two, it would become tedious to do. From what I've read about people's previous experience with the compo, participants really wanted feedback on their work, a sentiment which I understand and would love to do. I was fortunate in past AIMs to have users who did take the time to review every entry and leave detailed notes on why they evaluated the things they did.

This year, I wanted to make sure I did my part and surprisingly, I didn't burn out during the entire course of writing 82 reviews. Here's what I did differently this time around:

Listening, Always

Pretty much since the approved playlist was created, I immediately started listening to it whenever I could. The best time was when I was on nights when I had to wash the dishes. I wrote out a few notes and even a few reviews just to stay ahead of the curve. This was probably the most optimal thing, although the kicker is that during this time, people could change or remove their entries. Still, the benefits definitely outweighed the drawbacks here and even if people did make changes, I could go into the judging period more familiar with entries that were submitted very early on rather than being completely unfamiliar with 80+ entries by the time the compo ended.

Productivity Platforms

When entries were submitted and approved, I would add them to a ClickUp board and set some statuses to determine stages at which I would listen and evaluate the entries. I believed it was important to have 2 separate listening sessions for every entry in addition to a time to listen and actually write the review. Here's a snippet of what the board looks like (most of the columns are empty now since everything got reviewed):

For me, my mood can sometimes affect the way I listen to certain tracks and I wanted to make sure I wasn't just writing a review influenced by that alone. Doing quick point-form notes, especially at the start when I could just immediately write anything I felt about the track, allowed me to take time later to parse through anything that confused me later on and hone in on the stuff that I was consistently thinking of or bringing up whenever I listened. It was also great because I could put my notes/review in the description while using the comments in the sidebar to copypaste the Author Comments and review them while I listen and write. Not sure how many know it, but I do like getting insight into how composers approach their work and I like to at least factor some of it into the review.

There was actually another big hindrance when it came to writing reviews, just overthinking what to write in regards to the tracks and separating a lot of initial feelings vs. analyzing the way a track makes me feel or how I think the elements of the track really interact to create an experience. Allowing time to let loose then filter really helped me to prepare a lot for the review writing itself.

Was it a bit much? Probably. But this is the only time I've written reviews for every entry in an AIM and this was the one thing that helped me do it, so I would take this is a personal accomplishment that I'm likely going to use for next year's compo.

Time-Tracking Stats

Oh yeah, another thing I did was I tracked time to see how long it took for me to do all the reviews.

• Total time spent on reviewing was 48 hours and 59 minutes. (This includes the note-taking as well as the review-writing itself.)
• Average time spent reviewing/note-taking for each entry: 36 minutes, with the shortest amount being 19 minutes and the longest being 59 minutes.

While I do like being able to write feedback, reviews are very time-consuming to create. I might be able to cut that time down a bit, though some entries give me more trouble than others. The best I can do is show that this is how I perceive the entry and to be more specific in terms of explaining what I feel works and what doesn't work. And I think that's the thing about reviews, especially here. I think they work best when they're seen as insight into that reviewer's perspective on your track.

Databases

I also used Airtable this year to keep track of entries as they came in, along with scores and Fan Votes. The thing I liked most about it was that I could format the same data and use it for different purposes within the database. For instance, after inputting the entry name, title and URL, that is one piece of data that supports a ton of different fields, from anything to the composer, the duration, even judge and fan scores. I could use a part of it for the Master List and another for the judges' score sheets. If someone happened to rename their entry, I just had to make one edit and boom, everything is now updated across the board. I also didn't have to worry if a judge decided to sort or move around columns, which was quite nice.

Another thing I liked a lot about this system was that it made it easier to determine stats as I could ensure everything was linked up properly and not worry about misplacing a formula at some point down the line. By linking up Artists to their Inspirations, for example, it was very easy to tell how many of an artist's works were used as inspiration for this particular compo.

Unfortunately, I think I didn't do a great job onboarding judges onto the base. I originally built an Interface to make it easier to focus on the scoring aspect without the rest of the tables getting in the way, but I didn't realize that inviting the judges there would actually just send them to the base instead of the Interface.

Anyway, here's a bit of what that base looks like. For the results, I duplicated this base and removed a lot of the parts that were used to check on entries and their art inspirations.

Next Year

I've thought about some things I'd want to do or try a bit differently for next year. One great thing, however, is that LD-W seems very likely to be a judge for AIM 2024 and that's a big load off my plate. But here are two thoughts I have for next year:

• Some more refinements to the scoring system. This is my second time doing scores for AIM and I think we might need to add something just so there's not so many ties. This could be adding another category for scores (not sure what though) or allowing a precision of 0.1. Or I could come up with a more consistent tiebreaker system. I don't really know yet.
• Distributing reviews among judges. It might help, as reviewing 82 entries really eats away at the time. The downside is that each participant only receives a review from 1, maybe 2 judges. But that seems par for the course compared to previous AIMs. It would certainly be a lot more feasible to get judging done on time, I think. It might also help if certain judges with more experience in reviewing in a particular aspect strongly, that judge might be able to offer perhaps more valuable insight compared to a judge who doesn't have much familiarity with that aspect.

But other than that, I'm tired.

I love being a part of this community and listening to a wide range of entries. It really makes me happy to read Author Comments about how people take time to ensure they make it to AIM and I'm appreciative of you all for sharing your music with me and with everyone else.

While I will continue to help out with getting the AIM 2023 album ready, I feel like I need a moment to focus on other aspects of my life that aren't AIM-related. I am going on a short trip at the end of the month, so I do have that to look forward to. I also really need to work on my sleep schedule because it absolutely sucks. I've made a habit of going out to the gym every morning at 6 AM but I still only get like 2-5 hours of sleep on workdays. Coffee can only help so much.

Thank you all again for being a part of AIM and making the contest something I get to look forward to every year. 💜

The submissions period is now over, but you can still view the submissions thread here: https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1523981

As we near the end of March, the time for this year's Art-Inspired Music Contest (or AIM for short) draws near. This year is a special one as it marks the contest's 10th anniversary! (More details on this below.)

First off, let's go over what exactly AIM is about for those who may not be familiar.

Contest Info

AIM is an annual Newgrounds contest where composers create an original piece of music inspired by a work in the Art Portal. Entries are then evaluated by judges and the winning entries go into a compilation album, available on the AIM Bandcamp!

The contest operates in 3 main sections:

1. Preparation (now until April 21) - You can't start working on your entry yet, but you can search for art you'd like to use for your entry during this time. This is also a chance to think about whether you'd like to be a volunteer for the compo by becoming a judge, a promo artist or by donating some prizes.
2. **Submissions (April 21 - June 19) - This officially begins when I post the AIM 2023 Submissions thread in the Audio Forum (April 21). At this point, you are allowed to start working on your entry, up until the deadline of June 19.
3. Judging (June 19 - TBA) - The submissions period ends and the judges take time to go over the entries. Non-judges also have the chance to vote on their favourite track, which shows up as a bonus winner on the compilation album. There is no set date for when this ends, but in past contests, it's typically been about 3-4 weeks due to the large volume of entries.

Once judging concludes, a results thread is posted and prizes are distributed.

What you can do now

• ✅ Consider becoming a judge or donating a prize or two (see "Volunteers" section)
• ✅ Have a look around the Newgrounds Art Portal and pick what art you'd like to be inspired by. This is also a good time to reach out to the artist if you're planning to use their art, e.g. as cover art for your track, etc. (Please note that A rated art is not permitted to be used as inspiration for the compo.)
• ✅ You must be a scouted musician in order to participate. If you're new to Newgrounds and not a scouted musician, you can take this time to try and get scouted so you don't have to worry about it during the submissions period. You can find more info about scouting by visiting the Newgrounds FAQ and going to the "Audio Portal Questions" section.
• ✅ Ask questions about the compo in the comments below if you have any!

What you should NOT be doing now

• ❌ Don't start working on your entry until the submissions thread is posted. Yes, time zones are weird and it might even be a day later for you than what is announced, but the posting of the submissions thread will officially be the indicator of when you can start working on your entry. You can also join the NG Audio Pub Discord server, as I plan to also post a link to the submissions thread in the #aim-general channel. For the record, I'm in the PDT time zone and the plan is to have the submissions thread posted at 12:01 AM that time zone.

Volunteers

AIM relies on the assistance of a few people in the community. If you're interested, here's some of the ways you can help:

• Judges - I'm looking for 3-4 users to join me in judging the entries. Ideally, these will be users who have reviewed music on Newgrounds and are 18 years of age or older. (NOTE: Judges cannot submit entries.)
• Prizes - This is a fairly large compo and it would be great if we had a sizable amount of prizes for the winners. Something music-related would be nice, but stuff like Steam keys and a cash prize are also great.

If you're interested in helping out with any of the above, please either DM me or leave a comment below and I'll reach out to you via DM whenever I see it.

Roles Filled

• Promo Artist - @BingoWaders

FAQs

This year, I put together a document (or updated I guess, since I think I might have shared one last time) with a list of questions that have been frequently brought up in past AIMs. You can find this document here. Feel free to ask any other questions you have in the comments.

The 10th Anniversary

As stated at the beginning, AIM has officially hit its 10th anniversary and it is a very exciting time for one of the founders and the previous organizer of the Art-Inspired Music Contest, @ThatJohnnyGuy. This is what he had to say:

10 years ago, in 2013, I came up with the idea of an art-inspired music album, so I made a couple of songs inspired my artwork on Newgrounds from artists I really liked. I thought it was an interesting concept and I've not heard of it before, so I wanted to do something different. When I showed my friend @Phyrnna (previously HalcyonicFalconX), she said, "What if you made it into a tournament?" and that's where the idea of the competition was born.

I had very low expectations, but when I pitched the idea to @TomFulp and he put it in the calendar and promoted it as an official NG audio contest, I was floored. I never expected him to do that, but the first year was a really big turnout!!! The earlier contests of course had some rules to tweak and add, working out the kinks, but once I last lead the contest in 2016 (I think? 2017?) and I felt content with how it was, I knew I was able to pass it down to someone as I moved my focus to other things in my life I needed to prioritize.

@Random-storykeeper has been doing a great job with it, and it's great to see it still going 10 years later because of her! Another thing I wanted people to get out of this contest, was getting feedback from others to improve their craft, like a workshop that goes on for a few months to learn something, but also have fun with it. I never expected the contest to get as big as it has or go on this long, but it's very cool, and I'm honored that you all love it that much!

@Phyrnna couldn't participate in this, but she sends her best wishes to you all! This year I'm going to be picking my 3 favorite songs at the end of the contest, to take part in this special anniversary edition of the contest. Happy 10 years, thank you all for keeping the contest alive! Good luck!

Thank you, Johnny, for trusting me as the organizer for this compo. It was surprising as I wasn't really on Newgrounds that much. AIM has opened me up to a lot of amazing talent in the audio community and I'm glad to be a part of it.

And with that, get ready for the AIM 2023 submissions period starting Friday, April 21! See you when the submissions thread is posted!

The AIM 2022 compilation album is finally out on Bandcamp (link), which means my time with AIM is pretty much done for now.

This year's AIM was great, but I feel a bit more exhausted from it. I guess because I was trying to find the time to go through all the entries while I was dealing with other stressful moments in my life and it was becoming quite the challenge. One big takeaway I got from doing AIM these past few years is that the participants really want feedback in the form of a review. It's understandable - don't get me wrong - but I think I let it get to the point where I was trying to push myself to leave larger quantities of reviews with each passing AIM and it's become too much for me to handle.

That's not to say I hate leaving reviews or don't want to. I love providing details and context and analyzing an entry to provide some insight as to how I experienced their work. The issue, however, is that leaving an in-depth review is extremely time consuming and mentally taxing. It's listening to an entry multiple times and parts of it even more and trying to document all these thoughts into words. Multiply this by 91 entries and the task of reviewing all of them becomes impossible.

I'm grateful and appreciative that every year, I've had judges like @Troisnyx and @Quarl who did have that time and commitment to write out reviews for every entry and I really wish I had that time and drive to do the same. I don't expect any judge to leave reviews for every entry, especially given that I cannot do the same.

It's a significant part of the reason why a scoring system was introduced to this year's AIM, even though I was reluctant in past years. It at least gives some sense of how the judges experienced every entry, even if that cannot always be put into the form of in depth reviews. The scoring system is super new and there's opportunity for refinement - though it's something I'd need to look into.

Shoutouts

So yeah, AIM 2022 - great year, but I definitely need a break from it. But before I go, I wanted to mention a few non-winners that I really enjoyed:

Night Rain by @CattyxOwOriginals

The groove in this one is super catchy. I quite enjoyed the bassline.

Anamnesis by @JoMoMusic

I like how this one starts out like it's going to be a silly little jingle then gets into one of the smoothest comforting loops I've heard all compo. I like how the bell line gets referenced later on in the track - that was one detail I didn't even catch the first few listens.

Neo-Noir Nights by @LuckyDee

Holy crap, what a melody. I really love the development of that melodic line, especially when the accompaniment and basslines gradually enter and slightly adjust the way it is heard. That break at 1:56 where everything but that guitar drops out is golden.

3am Waltz by @Zechnition

This piece is effortlessly replayable even after the number of times I listened to it when reviewing. I'm still enchanted by the blips and embellishments that sparkle within. And that ending is <3

Rock 'n' Roll by @UncouthkidAC

I love that this captures the emotional angst of being young and done with everything. That sense of adolescence really connects the music to the art.

Shining Lights by @xZiriusX

I didn't really like this one on first listen, but when I was in my slog of finishing up listening to every entry and giving a rating, it started to resonate with me more and more. That loud business that turned me away from the track became this perfect representation of being in this crowded space where everything just gets to and overwhelms you and that connection made it become one of my favourites from this compo.

The submissions period has now ended. Check out the current submissions here or in these playlists: 1 and 2.

The Art-Inspired Music Contest is back and starting up soon! For those unfamiliar with the concept, composers pick one piece of art from the Newgrounds Art Portal and create a piece of music inspired by said art.

The submissions period begins on Friday April 15 this year, so you can start searching up artworks you'd want to use as inspiration, but no creating your entries until the submissions thread is posted.

In the meantime, I am still looking for:

• Contributors for the prizes.

If you're interested in contributing to any of the above, feel free to send me a message or leave a comment below and I'll get in touch with you as soon as I can.

Also, if you have any questions before the contest starts, you can also ask them here. I look forward to hearing these future entries!

AIM 2021 begins! Submission thread: https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1468445

The Art-Inspired Music Contest is happening this year on Friday April 16, 2021. In this compo, you create a piece of music inspired by art from the Newgrounds Art Portal. More details and the rules will follow in the official submission thread (to be posted on the start of the compo), but they're probably going to be the same as the previous years' rules, so check out last year's submission thread here for an example of what to expect!

You can start searching for art, but you cannot start creating your entry before the submissions thread is posted on April 16, 2021. For now, there are a few matters that need to be addressed now:

Considerations

There's a couple of things I want to touch on for this year's compo - judging and voting for the fan favourite.

Fan Favourite

I do love the idea of having a fan favourite vote, but it doesn't seem like not a lot of people actually vote. Thankfully, we've managed to get a Fan Favourite winner by default when all other contenders were actual winners, but it would be nice to have a system that was a little more fan controlled. I remember touching on this last year, but I'm thinking of making it so that people can vote on more than one entry simultaneously. The question is whether it should be a ranked voting (eg. award 1, 2 or 3 points to three of the entries) or equally weighted votes (eg. you can vote for 3 but all votes are worth 1 point). I might lean more towards the ranking system as I think it might allow for a clearer winner. What are your thoughts?

Judging

Judging in previous years was usually pretty lax. Here's my previous post about how we judged the entries for 2020's compo. While the current system does allow for a quicker selection of winners, it doesn't really allow for all participants to easily get feedback for their entries. It's something I do think about a lot in regards to the competition. Feedback is great, but giving decent feedback can be extremely time consuming and if rushed, then it just becomes about the first impressions of an entry, which I don't know if that makes for a necessarily good merit of judgement. Either way, I've previously been super iffy about implementing a straight-up points rating system. Judges on AIM could use their own points system in the past, but it was never put in place across the entire panel. Maybe it would be good to have a standard on that front.

Judges

As per usual, AIM requires three other judges to evaluate all the entries. UPDATE: We now have a full judging panel, thanks! @Troisnyx has stepped forward to be a judge again this year, so we just need two more judges to fill the panel.

Promo Art

This year, Troisnyx has also offered to do the promo art, so thank you!

Prizes

So far, prizes have not been super clear this year, but generally more stuff gets offered during the submission period, so that may be the case once more. As per usual, winners get to be on the AIM compilation album, but aside from that, there's not a lot that has been confirmed yet. If you have some ideas for prizes or want to donate prizes for this contest, please let me know in the comments.

I hope to see you all participating, in one way or another. Remember, don't start your entry until the submission thread is posted!!!

The judging process for AIM 2020 proved to be challenging, and picking out 20 winners from the 88 entries was going to result in some great entries not making it into the final list. There are plenty of entries that I really love that didn’t make it onto the album at all, and I’m certain the other judges have entries that they really love that didn’t make it onto the album too. Nevertheless, decisions had to be made, and I wanted to make sure that the winners took into account the evaluations of every judge as best as I could do.

Taking Over

I took over organizing AIM from RealFaction, and one of the questions I asked before AIM 2019 (the first of these contests that I ran) started was how to judge the entries. Basically, in the past, each judge would list out their top 20 entries (which included their top 3 entries), then the organizer (who would also be the judge) would compile these lists and tally up the votes. Entries in which every judge picked, for instance, would be considered runner-ups at the very least. 

Last year, I was able to use this system to determine both the runner-ups and top 3 entries without much trouble. Most of the judges’ picks had overlap in terms of who they thought should be winners, so it was easy to extrapolate this data and determine the first, second and third place from it. I assigned 3 points to an entry ranked first in a judge’s list, 2 points for the second and 1 point for the third. Based on the rankings, the first place winner for AIM came out with 8 points (it appeared in all of the judges’ top 3 lists), the second place winner had 5 (appeared on two judges’ lists in 1st and 2nd place) and the third place winner had 2 points (appeared on two judges’ lists in 3rd place). While there were other entries that would have scored a higher amount of points, they only appeared in one judge’s list, so entries where at least two judges picked them would be prioritized. 

The judging process mostly takes place over Discord, and I use Excel / Google Sheets to compile the data. 

AIM 2020

This year, picking out 1st, 2nd and 3rd place appeared to be more difficult. I do think part of it has to do with the amazing turnout of entries this year - 88 entries compared to last year’s 43. When the judges put in their picks, there was almost no overlap. Some of us debated a bit over whether we needed a more refined points system for determining the top 3. Ultimately, after every judge’s top 3 lists were in, only one of the entries had overlap - the first place entry. This ended up being 1st in two of the judges’ list, while every other entry in the judges’ top 3 lists only appeared once. 

Seeing as second and third place would not be possible to extrapolate from this data alone, unlike last year, I decided to compare the top 3 against the picks for the top 20 runner-ups. There ended up being exactly 3 entries in the top 3 list in which 3 of the 4 judges had picked to be at least in the runner-ups (the rest had only appeared in 2 or 1 of the judges’ top 20 lists). Of the three entries that appeared in 3 of the judges’ runner-up lists, I proposed the following:

• 1st place would be the entry that appeared 1st place in two of the judges’ lists, as well as appearing in 3 of the judges’ top 20 lists.
• 2nd place would be the entry that appeared in 3 of the judges’ top 20 lists and was ranked 1st by one judge in the top 3. 
• 3rd place would be the entry that appeared in 3 of the judges’ top 20 lists and was ranked 2nd by one judge in the top 3. 

I proposed this lineup to the judges on Discord and asked if they were okay with it, if they wanted to make any changes, etc. They were fine with it overall, but requested that an explanation be made as to how we came to this process. 

From there, the rest of the top 20 was determined by comparing the judges’ top 20 lists. Out of the 88 entries, 50 of them appeared at least once in the judges’ picks. There was one entry that ended up in every judges’ list, but only as a runner-up. I asked if anyone felt if it should get a spot in the top 3, but the judges, overall, felt it was only suitable as a runner-up. I then included all the entries in which 3 of the judges had them in their top 20 lists, along with the entries in which 2 judges picked them and they had a placement somewhere in the top 3. We now had 11 of our winning entries set. There were 9 remaining spots to fill, and 11 entries left that had appeared in two of the judges’ top 20 lists. So I posted these 11 tentative entries and from there, we determined two entries to eliminate to narrow the list down to 20. 

In the end, I tried to keep the judging process similar to last year’s (and similar to how the previous organizer determined the winners) and use the judging data to objectively (or as close to objectively as possible) figure out the top 3 and 17 runner-ups. Only about 23% of the entries could actually make it as the judge’s winners, compared to the near 50% of the last contest. An entry that did not win was not necessarily “bad” by any means. As with any music compo, judging comes with a considerable amount of bias and it’s okay to not agree with the decisions made. Just know that the winners were not determined solely by any single person by their own particular list. 

I'm happy to announce the official start of AIM 2020. I encourage all of you to join. Yes, you.

The submissions thread, with all the details you need, can be found here!

I've finally hit the Publish button for the AIM 2019 album. Check it out if you haven't already! There are some great entries and really, there were some entries that I was quite disappointed didn't make it into the album. Perhaps I will make a playlist of these entries that I wish got into the album. But regardless, these picks were a result of choices made by my wonderful judging panel and myself.

These past few days, I've been listening to all of these entries, figuring out some sort of order for the runner-ups, downloading all the entries...even when the compo was over, it felt like there was so much left to do. I think the best thing to come out of this compo was just getting more involved with the Newgrounds community than I ever had prior to this. Last year, I was a judge for NGUAC, but I felt incredibly out of touch with the community in general and parts of the judging period took place when I was unavailable, so I felt like I didn't contribute much at all. This year, however, I didn't really have a choice to not get involved once I agreed to organize AIM, because, well, I was the organizer.

I think the most stressful part of organizing the compo was at the beginning, when I wasn't 100% sure on what to do. I tried to look up previous AIM threads, but they all seemed so scattered and it was hard to make out which threads led to where, especially when it came to finding the results and the Bandcamp in general. Honestly, I kind of wish I had the ability to edit the OP of the Submissions thread so that I could add links to the results thread, the full playlist of accepted entries and the Bandcamp album. It was weird having to bump the submissions thread to just add a link to the results thread, but it felt necessary, especially for archival purposes in a forum where threads are bumped out quite regularly.

But I digress. There were a lot of entries I enjoyed listening to, and I truly appreciated the wide variety of styles and interpretations of pieces of art. I wanted to review a lot of entries, but only got around to reviewing eight of them. Maybe I will go back and review some of the entries, but I make no promises. It's all about whether I have a lot to say about them or not. :P

Fun fact: I actually did consider entering the AIM Contest back in 2016, but ultimately didn't because I wasn't confident that I was able to make something that would hit the 3 minute mark. Three years later, I can say that I can hit that time duration quite consistently depending on the type of piece I make. On the flipside, I'm currently in a compo where the objective is to make a piece that is less than 30 seconds, which 2019 is finding to be quite the challenge, haha.

Well I'm rambling way too much for a news post. Thanks for reading this far if you did. Again, I'm appreciative to have been this involved in a Newgrounds related event. It's been a blast.

The AIM Contest 2019 Submissions thread is now up, which means the contest is officially OPEN and you can start working on your entries! There's still a couple of rough patches to iron out, but for the most part, we are ready to accept entries. You have until June 17; good luck!

You can find the submissions thread here!