I went back to GaiaOnline this week to humor myself in what was going on. I have logged in several times this year to talk to a friend, but that’s about the extent of my interaction. This time, I stayed around for a little longer.
Some sort of PIE event was happening where six Gaian characters were in an eating contest. I didn’t know what I was doing, to be honest. So, the first thing I did was select a contestant I wanted to cheer for. I didn’t know what this meant and didn’t care too much, so I chose the funniest, pathetic looking character: Carl. He’s a very angry and somewhat rabid looking buck. Goofy looking, I’d say.
As per usual, there’s a community forum dedicated to the event and was crazy active. I wanted to see what this contest was about and if I could get prizes of any sort to bling out my avatar.
There are “Achievements” on Gaia now and I’m not sure when they were introduced. Anyways, there are event-related achievements along with the general ones, meaning you can only get these event ones within a certain period of time. I was trying my best to get all of the general achievements I could (such as changing my clothes, updating my status, etc), but could only get so much in such a short time and little investment. Therefore, I was trying to get these pie event achievements.
The one I found tough was trying to get 200 other users to throw pies at me (called “Pie catcher”). Of course, you can only get pies thrown at you if you are exposed in the forums. This means you have to post on threads and be lucky that you weren’t lost in the pool of chaos and thousands of other users.
My solution? I started a thread called “Pie Me! FREE avatar art for the 1st user on every 10 pgs” or something similar. I didn’t want to draw 100 avatars, so I said after 50 pages, I would stop the contest. Here’s the cool part: users on Gaia LOVE avatar art. It’s crazy. It’s funny and ridiculous. Because of that, it’s cute and I’m grateful people are appreciative. Why not hold a thread like this and hope to get pied 200 times? I’d be the person at the top of the thread and users WILL see me.
I started the thread right before dinner and wrote in my thread that I’ll be back with drawings for the winners right after. I was gone for about half an hour. When I came back, the thread was already at 60 pages. I got my “Pie Catcher” achievement, so I was happy.
This was a successful thread!
Anyways, here are the drawings. I haven’t done avatar art in about four years or something. I forgot how easy it was to draw nice looking avatars and how hard it was to draw ugly/cluttered ones. I had much more fun with some than others.
This was also a good opportunity for me to draw again. It’s easier to draw when I set myself up to do something (forced motivation, ahha) and if I know what I am doing.