art jam: Suck At Something September

[xixxii]

hello! let's have a little month-long codejam challenge! why not!

sometimes the desire to make things which are good can get in the way of making things period. i think that it is important to give yourself permission to do a bad job and give yourself room to suck at things! this challenge slash jam slash whatever is intended to help you warm up, get unstuck, try new things, or otherwise put a bit of pep in your web crafting step.

your mission, should you choose to accept it:

BEFORE THE FORUM CLOSES FOR THE LAST MONDAY IN SEPTEMBER*, YOU MUST
1. announce a good idea here
AND THEN
2. badly execute that idea
AND THEN
3. post your finished work here in this thread
AND THEN
4. give your own finished work ONE (1) sincere & specific compliment and ONE (1) sincere & specific critique

* that should be, i think, approximately, 19:00 September 29th in UTC-4, aka eastern time, aka new york USA. convert to your timezone as needed.

! PRIZES !

after i have looked at everything (probably october 1st, possibly october 2nd, later if i get hit by a bus or something), everybody who participates will receive from me:

• a forum gift celebrating their participation in Suck At Something September,
• an award certificate celebrating their participation in Suck At Something September, and
• one (1) sincere compliment and one (1) sincere critique on their submission (if you want)

WOW!!! COOL!!!

your initial idea can be as ambitious, silly, impractical, weird, pointless, difficult, or impossible as your heart desires, and "executed badly" can be interpreted however you want.

the general idea is to allow yourself to make the bad version of something you may think "i would, but i can't make that because i don't know how to do [xyz]" or "i wish i could do that, but it just isn't practical" or something similar about. you can make it, it'll just be bad - so do it bad. if you don't know how to make a div do something, brute force an approximation with what you do know, or attempt to learn and give up halfway, or implement a broken version that doesn't work at all.
try to resist the urge to edit mistakes, polish things, or keep bashing your head against something you can't figure out. just let it suck, give up and move on to the next thing; if the next thing is "declaring it finished because it's pissing you off too much," then so be it!

if you fail at something, do a bad job, disappoint and frustrate yourself, make a bad web page, break your whole code, make a mess, or otherwise Suck At Something, then you have succeeded at Suck At Something September. great job!

the thing you make would ideally be a web page, but if you would really really really prefer to suck at making a sculpture or a painting or something else that is not a web page that's acceptable.
you do have to put it ON a web page though.
if you would prefer to make something that's not a web page because you are too good at making web pages, then you ought to try being bad at making web pages instead. it's good for you!

the rules

• your idea does not have to be good actually. it can be a mediocre or bad or funny idea instead if you don't have any good ideas. it just needs to be something that, when you have the idea, sounds like it'll be fun to make.
• you have to have fun. having fun is MANDATORY
• you gotta post your idea before you start working. if your end result ends up a totally different idea, please don't edit the post! seeing your journey from idea to result is part of the fun!
• if you haven't finished your thing on september 29th and the forum is about to close: yes you have!!!!!!!!  PENCILS DOWN, POST IT UNFINISHED.
• all compliments and critiques must be sincere and specific. this applies to feedback you give other people in the thread (if you choose to do that; you don't have to) as well as the feedback you give yourself ( MANDATORY )
  
  • "i think i did a pretty good job" and "this page sucks, ugh" are not specific. that's no good!
  • "i like the color i used for the background" and "i think the paragraphs would look better unjustified" are specific. that's good!
  • i can't judge your sincerity, that's for you to wrestle with on your own time.
• when you post a link to your completed page:
  
  • please include a note if it might trigger seizures/migraines/eyestrain/nausea/other physical symptoms (typical causes include but are not limited to: rapid and/or bright flickering and flashing, very very bright colors, scrolling/moving patterned backgrounds, very small text, and loud sudden noises)
  • specify if you would or would not like to receive compliments and/or critiques from other thread posters, and respect the wishes of your fellow participants. if someone doesn't want feedback, don't give them any; if someone does, try to give them some. (i will not give you your prize of one (1) compliment + critique if you do not want it, but you do gotta tell me!)

the thing i will be sucking at this september is running this event and making prizes for it.

[BlazingCobaltX]

What a wonderful idea! I didn't even know Suck At Something September was a thing, otherwise I wouldn't have shafted so many impossible-seeming page ideas. I have to look around and gather some inspiration for something I want to try, but I definitely wanna participate.

EDIT: Got it. I'm gonna rehash my original shelf idea: Try showing off my merchandise by emulating the design of an actual shelf with HTML/CSS.

[tertiaryapocalypse]

oh, this is the perfect opportunity to get something down for root zero! this september ill be making a shitty web version of a game i want to make :-) looking forwards to this! 

[pysgodyn]

I've always wanted to make a really simple point-and-click game using HTML and CSS but I've always put it off because it seems like it would end up sucking and I would regret putting all that time and effort into it but I guess this gives me the perfect opportunity to make something that sucks... I see a lot of potential for me to learn something during this too!

I would like to primarily make my own assets for it but we'll see how that goes, a majority of it might end up just being text. I don't really have any inspiration from other point-and-click games going into this either but I feel pretty confident I can make a compelling story. I'm also not expecting it will be very long either but, I do have a lot of free time leading up to the date this event ends. 

[imnotjahan]

One thing that's been on my bucket list for a while now is to make a compiler. I figure I'd wait until I knew a bit more, like how to code assembly, or how a compiler works at all, but eh. What time better than now to try

[Rose]

I might try my hand at drawing an image with a CSS gradient

Example site showing a bunch of these off. It's just 1 single div and a bunch of CSS gradients layered over each other. Blows my mind.
https://cssdrawings.com

Tutorial:
https://css-tricks.com/drawing-images-with-css-gradients/

I always admire these and I'm totally non-artistic so it'll be a challenge for me!

[jack_dawlia]

might have a go at a little thing ive been wanting to do for a while - a little digital pet game page :D (kinda inspired by gify pet!)

gona be a whollleee bunch of js i gotta learn @_@ but best way to learn is to do a project imo ^_^

[muttthecowcat]

I just found this and I really want to participate!!! I likely won't be making a webpage - hopefully either traditional art or pixel art. I tend to want it to be perfect, so doing some bad art is just what I think I need this month 

[candycanearter07]

This sounds like a really fun* idea!! I think I'll try to work on making a gallery page for a bunch of my artwork and make it extra retro feeling so I can get more use out of my neocities supporter storage :) This is also like the third time I'm going to attempt to do the "typing out text" effect so third times the charm?

[candycanearter07]

This sounds like a really fun* idea!! I think I'll try to work on making a gallery page for a bunch of my artwork and make it extra retro feeling so I can get more use out of my neocities supporter storage :) This is also like the third time I'm going to attempt to do the "typing out text" effect so third times the charm?

I completed it! I know its a really basic ui, but dangit i like the terminal asthetic!! Also it takes like quite a bit of my file storage for all the images but its worth it ^^ I put it up on my page here and will try to update it in the future

[greyskieshappymind]

I was gonna pass this up, but incidentally I stepped up to be a Game Wizard (prefer it over Game Master) for the first time ever for an indie TTRPG. I'd be happy to submit the oneshot game rules sheet I wrote for the first session :]

[xixxii]

happy mid-september! i hope everyone is having a good time with their various projects.

congrats to @candycanearter07  - your trophy has been delivered. here's your other prizes!

"your certificate"

everyone's will be written by MEEEE and have a different success sticker 

[close]

one (1) sincere compliment: the font you have looks great with that blur effect!
one (1) sincere criticism: having a custom cursor with no pointer version seems like a waste on a page that's all links! you should add a version of the cursor for when the mouse is hovering over links.

[alexela64]

this sounds really cool!!
I hope that for this I can make an rpgmaker or point and click game, and host it on its own site! eventually I want to make the site into a wiki for the game as well.    hopefully i can get a nonzero amount done on it before the End Times!!1!
I've been wanting to make an rpgmaker game for a while and i think tying that in with my webmastery could turn out to be really cool. THen again i feel like this might be a little ambitious... we'll see lol.

[candycanearter07]

one (1) sincere criticism: having a custom cursor with no pointer version seems like a waste on a page that's all links! you should add a version of the cursor for when the mouse is hovering over links.

Thanks!! I think the font was ripped straight from DOS. The custom cursor was inherited from the site-wide css file, but I might go and redo the cursor sprite for the site. They're pretty old and having a new sprite for em would be pretty nice. I'm not actually sure how to set a separate sprite for the link hover though ^^

[BlazingCobaltX]

This is my entry. I made it within a day and chose not to build further upon it because I lack time the rest of this month. And it had to suck, sooooo here is an attempt at an actual shelf display.

My original intention was to display the merchandise I have on my IRL shelf like this. All images would be displayed in a lightbox gallery with explanations, but I literally don't have time to figure this out at the moment. My original idea was also to put this shaped border around all my merch pics instead of a square, so it would look more dynamic. As it stands now, this page is a mock-up more than anything.

Sincere compliment: I am genuinely surprised this worked in the first place, considering all I used is padding. It's actually making me think that this idea is still realistic. It just would take a long time to make it look pretty.

Sincere critique: I don't think it's very practical to make this work with just padding; if one picture is too big it all moves around. It would be better if the pictures were 'anchored' to the shelf.