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!

The sixth annual Art-Inspired Music Contest is coming up fast. I'm sorry for the late notice. Things are a little different this time around, as, well...I'm the organizer of the compo this year.

You probably don't know me. Or maybe you do...I think the only Newgrounds thing I've really done was briefly judge NGUAC back in 2018, otherwise, I've mostly been a lurker on here. I hope you're all ready to create some amazing pieces of music inspired by art from Newgrounds' Art Portal! If that doesn't get you hyped, how about refreshing your memory with last year's winners, found here?

This year, the contest officially starts on April 12 and submissions will be accepted up until June 17.

(I'm still looking for judges, so if you'd like to be an AIM judge or know someone who'd make a good AIM judge, please leave a comment or message me. I'm looking for 3-5 judges, ideally, who are available from the end of the submissions period up until the first week of July (actual date of results to be determined).)

Update: I think we're good on judges now. Thanks to everyone who offered! If something comes up last minute, I'll let you all know.

Be on the lookout for the submission and discussion thread on April 12! Hope to see many of you then. I've been a participant of many music compos, but never organized one before, so this is going to be interesting.

Update: the submissions thread is now up!