Hello everyone!

Good news, the Graphics department will be running the "SHL Graphics Academy" again this season for a third time and also for the first time in almost two years! If you haven't been around last time, check out our results from the first season and from the second season.

What is this about?
The intent of the Graphics Academy is twofold; it will allow us to teach members of the site how to create signatures that will enable them to fund their players' careers, secondly it will enable us to increase engagement and activity in the graphics community.

Description:

We will run classes with those that are interested in improving their graphics skills. This season we will hold a Beginners Class which will run over a number of six weeks throughout the season. Each fortnight a lesson will be set that focuses on one element of player signatures.

Graphics Graders and other experienced sig makers will be assigned to mentor these classes. The academy will run over six weeks, the first week of each lesson will be used by participants to create and submit their work to the class mentors. The following week will be used provide feedback on the submission. This work will be shared with the other members of their class so there will be two types of feedback for participants: peer feedback from their class members and professional feedback from a grader a.k.a. mentor.

Participants will be paid for completing each stage and will receive a bonus for completing all 3 stages. Participants will also be paid for actively providing feedback to peers during each stage. None of it is mandatory, but the more you do, the more everyone will benefit.

Lesson plan Beginner Class:
Week 1: Player render
Week 2: Feedback
Week 3: Logo swap
Week 4: Feedback
Week 5: Text
Week 6: Feedback

Payment:
- $500k per submitted task ($500k extra for giving peer feedback every time) = max $1M per lesson
- Bonus for completing all 3 lessons: $3M
- Maximum payment per season: $6M

When does the Academy run?
We will start on Monday, August 12th

Why is there no Advanced class this time?
We used to run both Beginner and Advanced classes simultaneously before, but felt like it was better to focus on just one due to the amount of time that goes into this. If there is enough interest we might hold the Advanced class again later. 

How will I learn?
Each lesson a task will be set and some useful references will be provided, it will be up to the participants to attempt the task. Once the task is complete, participants will submit their work, and discuss what they found challenging, peers and the assigned mentors will review the work and provide feedback and advice on the areas that were found challenging.

But I don't have Photoshop!
That's ok. There are free alternatives (such as PhotoPea - https://www.photopea.com/) that you can use! In fact we do recommend either Photoshop or Photopea, but if you do use other software, we can discuss options.

How do I sign up?
Just reply to this forum post until Friday, 9th of August. The classes will be run through Discord join the SHL Graphics Discord server (join here!) so we can invite you to the Academy channel. It is mandatory that you join the server if you want to participate and if you don't use the same username on discord as on the forum, please add your discord name to your reply here so we can identify you.

Can I be a mentor instead?
If you would like to help out as a mentor, please get in touch with @Carpy48 directly to see whether you are a good fit. Mentors can get paid up to $1.5M. Update: we should have enough now, but if you still want to join, let me know.

If you have other questions, also feel free to ask them here in this thread.