OCTs & You--Commitment & Expectations
Please take care of yourselves, OCTs aren't worth destroying your health over.
Hiya! I’m Vashle— fellow OCT competitor, judge, & host.
I quite literally grew up on OCTs; I have participated in these community tournaments since age 11, and I am 24 as of writing this. I have gone through most major milestones while juggling OCT work, and have learned many things, made many mistakes! Many, many mistakes. Yet I managed to graduate from university with a BA in Computer Science and land a job at a well-known tech company for project management and UX (user experience) design.
Hopefully I can provide some insight on how to manage yourself with OCTs (Original Character Tournaments)! They can be quite fun to participate in, and you can grow quickly as a writer, artist, or both. They can also help you grow skills that will be useful in landing a future job— we’ll talk about that another time, though.
Understanding Your Commitment
OCTs are at least a part-time job with a time commitment as short as a couple months to as long as a 1-2 years. (Pray you do not join an OCT that stretches longer than 2 years.)
As a competitor, your duration in a given OCT is mainly dependent on how far you progress by winning rounds; you may choose to hang around and continue to produce content, but those of us actively competing/participating are expected to produce content. You signed up for it— you should see it through. (Although life happens, stuff gets in the way, and sometimes it’s impossible to finish an entry. It’s okay! Take care of the important stuff and circle back to creating content when your time allows.)
As a host, you’re expected to see the OCT throughout its early beginnings and end. Organizing an OCT can take as little as 1-3 months or longer— perhaps a couple years if you’re really sitting on the idea. The workload is more frontloaded for the host & judges with setting up for auditions, then maintaining the OCT throughout its rounds. Depending on how your OCT is setup, the work during & between rounds varies. We can talk about that another time, though— much of the following information applies to both hosts/judges and competitors.
If you don’t understand this before you join one, let alone multiple OCTs, you are setting yourself up for failure— either in your OCT work, social life, school/work, or health. This leads to the classic work life balance triangle—
But as you can see, OCTs are… almost entirely separate from “real life” activities (real life meaning life away from the computer here, not a statement on lifestyle choices). There’s going to be some compromises.
SOCIAL LIFE
OCTs, if you enjoy the community aspect of them, will become part of your social life bubble. You can make real friends through OCTs, or introduce your uninitiated IRL friends to the drug that is OCTs! I’ve done both— I don’t regret it, but it is still important to get out of the house and touch grass, go to lunch and walk around the mall. Just try not to cancel on your IRL friends too often in favor of getting a few more lines down on a page.
You may also find yourself developing a crush on your peers, or that someone developed a crush on you as you all interact online… That is a long topic for another day, but the short answer is: don’t start an online romantic relationship. (Also, be cautious of developing ships between characters & actively role-playing these romantic ships with other creators.) Far more often than not, online romance is not worth the trouble that it brings.
SLEEP & HEALTH
OCTs are almost guaranteed to cut into your sleep schedule if you don’t manage your time. Managing good health and proper sleep is vital— manage OCT work to complement your lifestyle, not intrude on it. If you sacrifice this, you will be making more compromises in the other areas and it will affect your OCT work. This is a juggling act— we need to keep our arms and eyes in top shape, or we’ll drop the ball… hopefully not all of them. Remember, it is possible to permanently damage your wrists through overuse.
Try using an ergonomic mouse to lessen strain on your wrist while doing other computer activities. Most of us likely spend more time using the mouse to interact with the computer than we do drawing— your wrist pain may have more origins in your 5 hours of using the computer (with poor posture) than it does from 1 hour of drawing. (This actually helped significantly reduce my own wrist pain from overuse!)
Try enabling a night-light filter on your computer screen to limit the amount of blue light you’re exposed to. Let your eyes rest.
Consider multiple work styles to free yourself from a desk, especially if you currently struggle to get away from one. Sketch on paper, write in a notebook, use a portable tablet to draw digitally on the go, etc.— but be wary of using these methods to bring your work everywhere you go!
Practice good posture. There’s many resources online for exercises— included is a few tips from my chiropractor.
Correct your upper back: Stretch your arms out in front of you, palms down. Turn your arms inward such that your pinky fingers reach toward the sky at the same time that you pull your shoulder blades in. You should feel your shoulders pull back, shoulder blades come into your body, and if your neck posture needs work— some light pressure on the front of your neck.
Correct your neck: While holding good back posture, stretch your head back (looking at the ceiling) for the duration of a long breath.
Necks are naturally curved— for each degree this curve “straightens” there is an extra pound of force on your neck & upper back. If you have a very tense neck & shoulders, this extra force from poor posture may be the cause.
Pace yourself. Take breaks. Try using a pomodoro timer to work in small timed sprints & take breaks.
Re-fuel with food. Hydrate. Use a water bottle with time reminders if you have trouble remembering.
Sleep is also incredibly important, especially if you need to drive the next day. Try to get a consistent 6-8 hours every night, depending on how much you need. Waking up at the same time every morning is surprisingly beneficial! Keeping a consistent sleep schedule also helps your mental health.
The best advice I can give for helping your mental state is to make sure your body is getting what it needs— healthy body, healthy mind. (And maybe look for a therapist to help with difficult issues & trauma if you’re struggling, there’s no shame in that. College & relationship issues affected me enough that I needed help from a therapist to vent and ideate coping strategies.)
Please keep in mind that sleep deprivation is just as bad as driving drunk. Do not risk your life trying to cram that last page pulling 40+ hour all-nighters— message the OCT organizers/judges/host and communicate your progress, ask for leniency, and go to sleep. An on-time entry is not worth the life of the creator behind it.
WORK & SCHOOL
Remember, OCTs usually have the same time commitment as a part-time job. Keeping your OCT scope small will help prevent it from cutting into your work & school hours, but you absolutely must be disciplined. Do not work on OCTs during school or work, unless you absolutely have the free time. Boundaries between these types of work are vitally important, both to keep your focus clear and to lessen burnout from overwork.
Don’t sacrifice your grades to try and add that extra polish… Losing an OCT round or not meeting your personal standards does not have as many consequences as not submitting assignments and potentially failing classes do. This isn’t great in high school, and in college it can cost literal thousands of dollars if you need to retake a single course— not to mention how high school scores can affect college admissions and career prospects. Shirking work for jobs that you’re getting paid for has even worse consequences that I don’t want to think about.
If you care about these things, be cautious. It’s not the end of the world if life isn’t going perfectly to plan, but don’t put yourself in a worse position because of OCTs. It’s not worth it, trust me— I’ve forgone school work many times for OCTs and managed to scrape by the skin of my teeth. The stress made me sick for months. It almost killed me. I did come out of this alright, but I did not need to put myself through that level of stress. Don’t be me. Learn from my mistakes, please.
This is a juggling act— we need to keep our arms and eyes in top shape, or we’ll drop the ball… hopefully not all of them.
Expectations
Now that you understand what you’re committing to, you need to ask yourself some questions. Knowing our expectations helps us to set a boundary and leave when that boundary is crossed— this is both to protect ourselves, and to find value in the time that we’re investing by having some sort of direction & purpose.
How invested are you? How invested in your character(s) are you? Timewise? Art-wise? The character(s) you choose will potentially be your focus for the upcoming months, so pick OCs that you enjoy.
What are you looking to get out of this OCT? Is it just for fun? Is it to participate with your friends? Is it for practice? What are you focused on practicing? (Writing, art, characterization, etc.)
Be realistic about how many hours are in the day (24), and how many of those hours you can feasibly put towards OCT work. Most of us can at best put roughly 5 hours per day towards OCT work without making sacrifices elsewhere.
If you’re considering competing in an OCT—
How badly do you want to win? What are you willing to sacrifice to have the clout of being <insert OCT here> winner?
Do you accept that you are at the complete mercy of the judges at the end of the day? That your work might technically be better than your opponent’s, but the judges just prefer that entry over yours?
If you’re considering hosting an OCT—
What kind of community do you want to create? Highly competitive, more laidback, or something in-between? What kind of people do you want in your community, and what kind of people do you want to exclude from your community?
Are you keeping the competitors in mind with your decisions? Are you being respectful of their time and circumstances? Are you setting clear expectations to try and minimize confusion? How much transparency do you want to show with the judging process? (If you’re being honest, this should be as transparent as possible.)
Will you make yourself available to the competitors? To answer questions when asked? Will you help resolve issues during the tournament? Are you willing to listen to feedback?
If you’re considering judging an OCT—
Will you set aside enough time after each round to read through entries at least twice before making a judgement? Are you willing to go back to previous rounds and the audition to read a competitor’s entries in chronological order and see if the works build on each other? (Are characters being developed? Are plot threads being resolved? Were plot details dropped?) Are you actively taking notes on entries?
Do you have judging criteria? (Note: A host may provide a rubric) Do you have priorities when judging (characterization, plot, etc.)? Do you have biases? Are you clearly communicating this information to the competitors, and your fellow judges?
Are you willing to provide feedback on entries you’re judging? What is the goal of your feedback, and what kind of feedback is the competitor looking for? Are your criticisms constructive? Are you bringing attention to areas that were executed well?
Will you communicate your availability close to a deadline so that competitors know when they can get in touch with you, and not add extra stress on top of the deadline crunch?
Thinking through these questions may be disheartening as the reality of OCTs sets in, especially as a competitor to seriously consider your potential host and judges. Understand that OCTs are a collection of community-run tournaments— there’s no authority on who can host, judge, or participate. Hosts can be the most hostile or the most hospitable people you meet. Judges can be incredibly underqualified or overqualified. Competitors range from literal children stumbling across comics for the first time to professionals in the industry.
OCTs are a mixed bag— they can be the greatest experience you’ve ever had, or the most hellish experience you’ve ever witnessed. Consider what you’re getting into before you go off to the races— you might end up running straight into a wall. Let’s try to see that wall before we suffer the consequences of it. :)
Competitors—Research the Host & Judges
First things first, you want to look into the people judging the OCT. Your work will live and die by these people. It’s better to have some idea of what the judges want going into the OCT than it is to have no idea and deliver a product they turn their noses up at. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. You’re investing a significant amount of time into making content for the host’s OCT setting— the least they can do is set aside a few minutes to answer your question.
Vague answers are not acceptable— if hosts and judges are dancing around your question(s), leave. You’ll just be wasting your time with dishonest people.
If the host and judges seem transparent and readily provide information— great! Hopefully they keep their word and do their best to communicate with the community.
See what they say about themselves and their judging biases, if they share that information, and see if they have judged OCTs prior to this one. No judging history does not mean they will be a bad judge. Some judging history does not mean they will be a good judge. There may be true rumors floating around about the host and judges, and there may be false ones. Trust your eyes and pay attention to what the host and judges personally post on their own social media and how they talk to the community.
Watch their behavior, ask questions to learn more about them, and if at the end of the day you find that you’re not getting a great vibe from them— leave! You’re better off biding your time and looking for another tournament that suits you, rather than suffering and pulling your hair out over judges you disagree with and seem to disregard your opinions and work.
Host & Judges—Be Transparent
If you’re not giving your competitors respect, you deserve to have none. These people are investing their time, effort, and energy into making your idea work— you are here to run the machine and serve them, not the other way around. Make the experience as smooth as possible for them, and things should run smoother for you. Every aspect of the OCT should be designed with the competitor’s experience in mind. OCTs are at their worst when they exist for the host & judges to have an ego trip with the competitors at their mercy.
Be clear and upfront with your expectations, your judging criteria, your judging priorities, and your judging biases. Communicate what kind of community you wish to create. Respect your potential competitors by allowing them to make an informed decision of where they may invest their time— they will appreciate the ability to make a better informed decision, and feel like your tournament is better organized.
OCTs— as the whole OCT community— live and die by the people willing to partake in them. OCTs fell out of prominence around the same time DeviantART changed its UI to Eclipse, as the platform became more difficult to use and many people in the community were burnt out for various reasons (life changes, school, drama, etc.). OCTs more recently have been coming back on Twitter, with excitement kicking up for a few large OCTs that reignited the community.
As hosts & judges, we share responsibility for the success of the OCT community as a whole. We need to do the best job that we can to keep these magically fun, competitively addicting events ongoing. You’re not going to be a perfect host, a perfect judge, or run a perfect tournament. There will be mistakes.
Do your best to support your community, listen to feedback, and be transparent with your leadership. The competitors and other community members will support you in turn.
The Importance of Self-Reflection
Take some time to think about how you came here, and what interested you in OCTs—regardless in if that interest is in competing, judging, or hosting. What do you want out of OCTs; what do you want to experience?
Understanding yourself— your goals, desires, ideals, style, workflow, and life situation— is an important skill to learn. Things can evolve, grow, and change. You’re human, that’s what we do. As much as we may hate to admit it, we aren’t creative machines endlessly churning out work. We need sleep, we need food, we need friends. We need to experience life. All of these aspects of being human will come back and feed our work. Take joy in the process of the work and appreciate where you were in the past and how you’ve come to be the person you are today.
Having some understanding of yourself will help give you guidance on what direction you want to take for the future. What kinds of OCTs would fit your style and goals, and what kinds of people you hope to meet? Similarly, what kinds of OCTs don’t suit you, and what kinds of people do you wish to avoid?
Don’t join an OCT out of spite. Join an OCT because you genuinely like the concept and are interested in it. You’re investing a lot of time into this regardless of your reasons for joining— respect yourself and your time. Spend that time where you’ll enjoy it. This will give you, as well as the others around you, a better experience in that OCT.
If you’re ready to proceed, we’ll talk about workload & time management. [Coming soon!]