2021 Atlas Awards Intro & Discussion

[ChickPea]

Well it's the time of year again....let's talk about the Atlas Awards!

Quick intro for new members... the Atlas Awards are the Guild's 'Oscars', where we nominate and vote for the best maps created during the last year. All Guild members are encouraged to nominate and vote.

I will shortly be posting the nomination threads for our various categories, and nominations will be open for four weeks. But before I do so, a few notes about some changes for this year.

We're making some tweaks again in an effort to limit the amount of work involved, and to address some of the issues with a few of the categories. We asked for some feedback a few months back, and I want to say thank you to everyone who shared their thoughts. The CLs have discussed the comments and this is what we're going with this year...


Best Large area map (Space, World, Continental, Regional) - NOMINATE TWO
Since the beginning there have been problems with overlaps between the World & Regional categories. Every year, we have to tell people their nominations are wrong and they have to be removed. Additionally, the Space category in previous awards has often had significantly fewer entries than other categories. To address this, we're combining these categories into one, based on the area shown on the map. We recognise that this will be a heavily overloaded category, so we're asking you to nominate TWO maps, and there will be TWO winners. In other words, the first and second placed maps will BOTH get an award (if there's a tie at the top, only the tied first-placed maps will win).


Best Local area (City, Town, Village)
This is much the same as last year.


Best Small area (Building, structure, space ship, dungeon)
This is slight tweak on last year's award. Nominate anything that maps a small area.


Best Black & White Map
This is a new category for this year. We feel black & white maps are often disadvantaged against full colour, and this category hopes to address that. Maps can be hand-drawn or digital, but they should be almost entirely black & white, or monochrome.


Your favourite map from last year
This is a tweak on the 'Best Overall' map. The difference between 'your favourite' and 'best overall' is subtle, but we want to see the maps that you simply loved most from last year. For example, you might feel 'Map A' is technically superior to 'Map B', but 'Map B' ticks all the boxes for you and you can't stop looking at it. That's what we want to see in this category, and any style is acceptable.


We're trying to find the balance in these changes between a list of categories that covers most mapping styles, while not drowning the CLs in the work associated with the awards. We feel that it (somewhat) addresses the overlap between different awards, where the same maps could win multiple times. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but having more distinct categories may help give a more diverse set of winners this time. We'll see!

So, onto the nomination process. These are all the eligible contenders for the 2021 Atlas Awards...


VIEW ELIGIBLE MAPS


PLEASE NOTE...
On the thumbnails page, if you click directly on the picture, it will show you only the picture. However, if you click on the title below the picture, it will take you to the thread. When nominating a map, PLEASE include a link to the THREAD, not just the picture by itself. This will save the CLs much time and effort when it's time to set up the polls. So your nomination should look like this:


The sea of the 6 kingdoms by - JO -
https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...170#post416170


Please nominate up to two maps for the 'Best large area' category, and only one map for all the other categories.
You cannot nominate your own maps.
Please keep all discussion to this thread. The nomination threads are for nominations only.
Nomination threads will close on Sun 14th Feb, and voting will start a few days after that, once we've compiled the poll.

If you have any questions, feel free to post them here.

[Greason Wolfe]

You know, after previous discussions about all these categories, I think you nailed it perfectly CP. No confusion in what you've listed/described and, I think, just the right number.

Oh, and thanks for all the work you do on this. I don't know how many hours you put into this, but I, for one, really appreciate it.

[Naima]

As a criticism.
Best large area to me should be split to :
Best large area ( up to continent )
Best world map ( only full scale planets or set of continents)
Best sci fi ( space and beyond ) .
But happy to see the new category of B&W as I sugested in past .

[ChickPea]

You know, after previous discussions about all these categories, I think you nailed it perfectly CP. No confusion in what you've listed/described and, I think, just the right number.

Oh, and thanks for all the work you do on this. I don't know how many hours you put into this, but I, for one, really appreciate it.

Thanks, GW! I appreciate that.

As a criticism.
Best large area to me should be split to :
Best large area ( up to continent )
Best world map ( only full scale planets or set of continents)
Best sci fi ( space and beyond ) .
But happy to see the new category of B&W as I sugested in past .

I'm sorry, Naima, but we aren't going to implement this. You suggested something similar in the feedback thread, and the CLs did discuss it. However, we all agree that it's too problematic, given that there's already confusion between world & regional. So, we decided to go in a different direction instead, and I'm sorry if that's not what you were hoping for. I'm glad you like the B & W category, though.

[jshoer]

My gosh, some of you are so danged prolific **AND** awesome at the same time! Just taking a quick spin through the eligible maps, I have no idea where I'm going to end up! It's been a great year for the Guild.

I think one of the things that makes categorizing maps for these awards hard is that they fit into so many wildly different genres. I don't know how one would pick categories that do them all justice - you've got maps at different scales, but also atlas-syle, fantasy-style, sci-fi, minimalist, baroque, ........ I don't envy the CLs in figuring it out. And I don't envy the nominators and voters in putting forth their favorites! There are too many!

[ChickPea]

Hi folks, just one little comment regarding the thumbnail scraper...

Sometimes, when there is more than one image in a comment, the scraper will show the 'wrong' one (for example, if the comment includes a WIP image in addition to the final map, the scraper picks up the WIP image). This issue has come up before, and we're not sure why the scraper behaves the way it does. It seems completely random in which image it selects.

So, if you're looking at the thumbnails and something seems a little off, click through to the thread, and you'll probably see there's more than one image in the first comment. You'll be able to view the correct image there.

For future reference, if you want to share more than one image in the first comment in a thread, it'd be best to post the main/showcase image in your first comment, then post any additional images in a second comment underneath. (We don't normally encourage double-posting, but there doesn't seem to be any obvious solution to this problem at the moment.)

[J.Edward]

I think that may have been one of the most challenging nominations yet.
I felt like the struggle was having to choose what I couldn't pick.
I felt like I had to leave off quite a few really cool maps.
I was also really surprised by some maps that weren't picked. Interesting.
Good luck to all the nominees.

[Naima]

Thanks, GW! I appreciate that.



I'm sorry, Naima, but we aren't going to implement this. You suggested something similar in the feedback thread, and the CLs did discuss it. However, we all agree that it's too problematic, given that there's already confusion between world & regional. So, we decided to go in a different direction instead, and I'm sorry if that's not what you were hoping for. I'm glad you like the B & W category, though.

Yeh I understant, I feel just tha there are so many maps that deserve their own category but then it can happen that one year there are lots of maps in a category and very few in others... anyway great job with organizing it as usual. ����

[- JO -]

Arriwis & Lyndel - by - JO -

You're way too kind.... but thanks a lot !
I wanted to nominate your map in my favorites, but someone already did !

[jshoer]

Yay! I'm super happy someone else nominated that one.