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How to Make a Good Project; No guarantees or refunds.
Topic Started: Aug 4 2014, 12:47 PM (6,480 Views)
Scrublord
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Father Pellegrini
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I'll have to think about that. I might want to do it myself.
My Projects:
The Neozoic Redux
Valhalla--Take Three!
The Big One



Deviantart Account: http://elsqiubbonator.deviantart.com

In the end, the best advice I could give you would be to do your project in a way that feels natural to you, rather than trying to imitate some geek with a laptop in Colorado.
--Heteromorph
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Zorcuspine
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Enjoying our azure blue world

Up to you :)
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Hananas59
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Traveller of the imagination
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Well DK I do most of the stuff you mentioned, still nothing


Though most of what you've said is true
Treading the line between imagination and reality
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malicious-monkey
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Spec Ops
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Like with any creative activity, maybe you just need some practice. There is no "magic bullet" for spec project quality.
Edited by malicious-monkey, Aug 9 2014, 01:12 PM.
"My recommendation would be to just draw things now and draw good things later." - Nanotyranus

Ilion: an illustrated tour of a tidally locked planet
Spoiler: click to toggle

malicious-monkey.deviantart.com
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supermalmoworld.tumblr.com
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Myxini
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Vermiform

Inspired by the recent comments in General Discussion, it might be a good idea to put something in the guide along the lines of 'there can be more than one organism in one niche'.
An Announcement


| Nerites: the descent of life | Buttmunchers (retired) | Antaeus (retired) | Dante (group project; inactive) |
| Fakedex V1 | Lobster Pot | Gross People |
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sockmonkey
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Infant
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I'd add a clear definition of "niche" as well. It's more than just swimming, flying or running.
An explanation of how traits are expressed would be good as well, in that exaggerating or eliminating a particular one can create big changes.
My critters http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/topic/5600402/1/?x=0#post1115485
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Vorsa
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Mysterious tundra-dwelling humanoid
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Troll Man
Aug 4 2014, 12:47 PM
- Double-posting for updates is totally alright.
I never understood the issue with double posting anyway.
My Deviantart: http://desorages.deviantart.com/

Birbs

"you are about to try that on a species that clawed its way to the top of a 4 billion year deep corpse pile of evolution. one that has committed the genocide you are contemplating several times already. they are the pinnacle of intelligence-based survival techniques and outnumber you 7 billion to 1" - humans vs machine
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LittleLazyLass
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Proud quilt in a bag

Prevents thread clogging.
totally not British, b-baka!
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I don't even really like this song that much but the title is pretty relatable sometimes, I guess.
Me
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Read First
Words Maybe
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Zorcuspine
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Enjoying our azure blue world

It's considered bad manners to double post outside your own projects. While it isn't a huge deal, there is a little bit of competition to see who has the highest post count, and people feel double posting in threads that aren't projects are seen as unfairly boosting their post count.
Edited by Zorcuspine, Dec 23 2014, 04:32 PM.
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Empyreon
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Are you plausible?

I didn't see this mentioned anywhere else (admittedly, I didn't read too closely) but I would also suggest having some sort of theme for the project too. It helps your thoughts and efforts scope. Try not to do anything too broad or too narrow, or you end up either aimless or limited.

For Nereus, the whole thing started when I wanted to design a dragon that didn't have traditional tetrapod biometrics. I designed a skeletal frame to fill the shape I had in mind, then I thought, "How in the world could something like that evolve?" After seeing documentaries like The Future is Wild I was inspired to make things as scientifically plausible as possible, so from there it was an easy step then to determine that a creature of that size would need to be on a planet with lighter gravity, and my research into the project eventually led me here. That was... five years ago! From those early steps blossomed new insights into biology and ecology and the tetrabrach bauplan, something of which I'm particularly proud.

Charybdis came about because I was reading Extraterrestrials: A Field Guide for Earthlings, and the part about planets in the range between terrestrial and jovian sizes sparked my imagination. Personal desire led me to build the planet on more of the terrestrial side, but I think it still retains some of that original seed. That conceptual theme was mixed with the other I put into Charybdis because around the same time I was musing up the Charybdans the humanesque test was the hot topic in the forum. I decided to put the humanesque test to the test by making the native sapients have as high a humanesque score while still not seeming too humanesque. Additionally, I had been considering several interesting ideas for ontogeny and systems of sexual reproduction, and a few ideas from those thoughts found their way into the project as well.

So I hope that shows how I've found focusing on a theme can be helpful in finding success with a project. Almost all of the successful projects I've seen have some overarching theme to help focus their products.
Take a look at my exobiology subforum of the planet Nereus!

COM Contributions


food for thought
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LittleLazyLass
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Proud quilt in a bag

Ok, yes this a necropost, but this topic seems timeless enough and important enough to bring this up. But anyway, I think give considerations of recent events the tone of the writer outside update posts within the thread should also have more mention here. Tone of voice and being nice and accepting, even outside criticism, constructive or otherwise, is extremely important in having readers want to see more.
totally not British, b-baka!
Posted Image You like me (Unlike)
I don't even really like this song that much but the title is pretty relatable sometimes, I guess.
Me
What, you want me to tell you what these mean?
Read First
Words Maybe
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malicious-monkey
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Spec Ops
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Agreed, a project will never reach its full potential without participation from the forum community (I can personally vouch for this), and your attitude and presentation has a big influence on how much participation you'll get. In general, demanding feedback is not an effective way to get feedback. Be open to feedback, but don't think you're entitled to it.
Edited by malicious-monkey, Aug 5 2015, 01:52 PM.
"My recommendation would be to just draw things now and draw good things later." - Nanotyranus

Ilion: an illustrated tour of a tidally locked planet
Spoiler: click to toggle

malicious-monkey.deviantart.com
sunriseonilion.wordpress.com
supermalmoworld.tumblr.com
Redbubble - Ilion art prints and more
Commissions are OPEN
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Monster
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Space Oddity

I addition to not demanding feedback, try to be clear what kind of feedback you would like. If you are trying to construct a completely plausible scenario you'll probably be alright since that flavour of project is the favourite and people will just assume that is what you are going for.

However!

If there are one or more aspects you don't really wish to discuss in depth and/or your premise itself is implausible and you know this and do not wish to alter it, then please try to make that clear in your opening posts. Otherwise people will fixate on some of the clearly implausible stuff. For example you specifically want to explore a scenario in which say, bats, are extinct or achieve gigantism or replace birds; this is one where you really should make it very clear that bats being extinct/huge/replacing birds is central to your project and is a non-negotiable aspect regardless of plausibilty. If you don't you will get a bunch of people telling you that they don't think those things are plausible rather than trying to work within the framework you want to set up.
Of course if you try to make an entire project full of stuff that clearly cannot work/doesn't make sense and attempt to present that as plausible while ignoring feedback then you probably won't get the community participation you'd like. It is certainly possible for predominantly 'This happened'-type rather than 'Can this happen?'-type projects/concepts to be very enjoyable and good but you need to be clear about them and present them well or people will think you haven't put thought into it. If you are going to have hand-waved, controversial or cliched things in the project then you need to do them really, really well to keep people engaged. Don't just type out any old thing because you think it is cool and want to pad your project out as fast as possible, really put some thought and time into making it interesting to read, try to make it your own.



Flashlights, nightmares, sudden explosions.

'active'
{tumblr}
{Veles}
{10 Million Years of Rain]

Commissions: Open.



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Paleo_Specs
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Professor
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My projects lose posters about a day after they're started. I tried to get people to come back by updating World of Dragons, but no one really pays attention to my projects. Any help?
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Quote:
 
a species of canid that's always male because the females are in Hell, that commits blood rituals on unborn souls, and assimilates others into its flesh belongs in a competition meant to foster a sensible and mature discussion of evolution.
Nanotyrannus, COM 2016
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Dragonthunders
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The ethereal archosaur in blue

Just adding two tips

Quote:
 
- Don't make a half-assed intro. Seriously. This is the worst. A good, long and descriptive introduction is really important to get people interested in your project. Simply saying what your project idea is is terribad; don't do that.


Quote:
 
- Even if there are no/very few comments on a thing, whatever you do, do not bump your project with posts that only say stuff like "so are there any comments on this update/project/idea?"; people hate this.


For other things be patient, you create a project and wait for a day to be full of messages is really a bad idea, people will be attentive to answer if you can publish full and good quality content, not just type 3 paragraphs of something that seems made for no effort.

Projects

"Active" projects

The Future is Far
Welcome to the next chapters of the evolution of life on earth, travel the across the earth on a journey that goes beyond the limits, a billion years of future history in the making.

The SE giants project
Wonder what is the big of the big on speculative evolution? no problem, here is the answer

Coming one day
Age of Mankind
Humanity fate and its possible finals.

The Long Cosmic Journey
The history outside our world.

The alternative paths
The multiverse, the final frontier...

Holocene park: Welcome to the biggest adventure of the last 215 million years, where the age of mammals comes to life again!
Cambrian mars: An interesting experiment on an unprecedented scale, the life of a particular and important period in the history of our planet, the cambric life, has been transported to a terraformed and habitable mars in an alternative past.
Two different paths, two different worlds, but same life and same weirdness.




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