This is exactly what I wanted to achieve with these questions! There's plenty of good ideas and comments here

Pezzarinho17 wrote:I guess purely answering the question presented, it is quiet here... There is a tendency to post items and not see any response to them, even the "quick chat" area moves slowly. Spambots are a pain as well though, especially when I keep hoping it to be a response to 3D work I have done!
It's true what you say about the quietness. When it comes to spambots, that has indeed been a problem but the good news is that we have found ways to combat them. Thanks to the countermeasures we have taken, the number of spambots signing up has fallen a lot, and on many days there's not a single bot appearing!
It is a mystery why they target the 3D forum, though.
Pezzarinho17 wrote:I am frequent visitor on the GTPlanet forum, and having MANY times more members helps as there is always something new to read. But I do tend to spend most of my time viewing the off topic area there - funny picture thread, funny gif thread, caption competitions etc. They also have a motorsport discussion area which is good - crazy racing incidents, race discussions, even livery discussions (both best and worst)!
This is pretty much my dream for IMG; besides being a place for posting artwork, it should also be a place to chat with likeminded individuals. I don't necessarily want the heated debates of the bigger forums, though. But this does underline the fact that we have to expand our userbase somehow - I have a feeling that our members avoid posting only because they know that their posts are unlikely to get a response, and that creates a vicious, self-feeding cycle.
Pezzarinho17 wrote:Although we are here to make top quality designs, perhaps open it up to newcomers more? I got involved wanting to join the top ranks, and there only used to be a "best newbie" score to achieve. I still just hope to not come last, but I've had to get to that level pretty quickly to keep involved. Maybe a rookie competition (no podium achieved in competitions to date, and rookies still able to enter main competition if they wish. After a season or 2 (3 / 5 rounds rather than 10) of rookie league, if same people are winning again we can vote that they move on to only competing within top comp.
This has been a big concern of mine. I think a lot of newcomers might think that they're not good enough to be here... and that's totally wrong because IMG has to be open for everybody interested in motorsport graphics, even if they've never used graphical software in their lives.
I mean, my first livery looked like this:
http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c192/ ... attery.gifAnd my first template looked like this:
http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c192/ ... h/mini.gifI can understand why somebody with that kind of quality might not be willing to join IMG... But they should. It should be all about learning and having fun while doing that. So maybe that's something for us to think about - not advertising IMG as the place where awesome graphics come from, but more as a place where people learn how to make awesome graphics.
Pezzarinho17 wrote:Further to above, not everyone owns or knows how to use the top design software. Perhaps therefore we open up an MS Paint league? Can still achieve quite a lot with it and it would be a good way of enticing people to get involved perhaps.
Finally, I have done some 3D liveries before within rFactor and would like to see some more competition using full blown 3D skins!
MS Paint is something that could be experimented with in the 'Other Competition', and if it picks up steam, it could get a forum of its own. When it comes to pixel software and pixel graphics, that's something that we can't overlook. I happen to know that there are very active communities on the internet that are dedicated to creating tiles and sprites for Super Nintendo-style 2D games!
As for 3D, it's not a secret that we've wanted that for a long time. It's just that we don't have enough 3D-oriented people around to get started.
Pezzarinho17 wrote:6. What would you like to see in the blog?
Being honest, I haven't looked at it so far. Thinking about getting people involved again, tutorials are a must. Livery design reviews would be good as well, pointing out what everyone likes / dislikes in a design so it can help make competition entries suit more tastes.
I've thought that livery design reviews might be a good idea. Tutorials in the blog could certainly help draw newcomers to the forum and gain us some search engine visibility so that is something that needs to be done.
Pezzarinho17 wrote:I use Twitter to promote anything racing related so I would be happy to do so there. Facebook is kept to socialising with friends though mainly, as I used to post my blog posts there and apparently people weren't that keen on seeing them all the time...
Perhaps our social media expert Quiksilver can enlighten us on whether we have a Twitter page? I don't know much about it but it does seem like whenever some politician or sportsman posts something in there, it's soon all over the press, so I suppose it could be an easy way to earn a bit publicity.