Well, we have answers! Probably! Below are some of the most common questions we get about Project Open Squish, but click right here to be taken to the FULL FAQ! :)
How does voting work?
If we think that your design will make a good plush, and if it passes all the requirements, then the Squishy fan community will vote on which designs make it into Squishy round-ness! Tell your friends! Tell your fans! And don't forget to answer the questions that voters ask you on your design's page! At the end of the round, the highest scorer(s) (who make it over the minimum scoring threshold…yes, sometimes there are multiple winners in a round!) will be sent for prototype!
Why did you reject my design?
There are many reasons why your design may have been rejected. We get thousands of submissions, and we unfortunately cannot accept everyone, even though we wish we could! We have been running Open Squish for over 10 years now, and we do get so many submissions that acceptances are highly competitive! Some fans are only accepted after trying and practicing for years! It takes a lot of time and practice to get to the professional-level designs that do best in voting. But if you are rejected we do want to encourage you keep working on your skills and try again!
Here are a few tips to better help you in future submissions. Make sure the art for your future designs is very clean and neat; simple clearly defined lines work best. We highly recommend using flat, solid colors and clean, thin black outlines. Digital artwork is also usually the most popular with voters. For inspiration, please check out our In-Process page for some great examples of clean, simple designs. Also make sure that you submit 360s views, because we need to see the side/back/etc. in order to run the design. The best-voted designs are usually digital, but we also accept hand-drawn designs. We use Photoshop here, as well as other Adobe Creative Cloud programs like Illustrator, along with Wacom Intuos tablets. There are plenty of online tutorials that are helpful for when you are just starting out. Digital drawing takes a lot of practice, but the more you do it, the better you will get for sure! And if you do decide to submit hand-drawn designs, as we said above, just make sure to keep them very neat and clean, and scan them in for optimal results.
I submitted a while ago. Why haven't I heard feedback yet?
We have an amazingly huge amount of awesome Project Open Squish submissions, and we try to get you feedback within one month of submission (or sometimes sooner if we can)! We go through them every day, but it can take a little while to get through the volume! Rest assured that we did receive your design and will get back to you with information as soon as we possibly can!
What is a Golden Ticket?
So, a Golden Ticket is when a design didn't hit the voting threshold to win, but we at Squishable HQ thought that it was an especially strong design that we wanted to "win" anyway. The design will go through the payment and prototyping process exactly the same as when someone is voted a winner in Open Squish (only we chose it, instead of the fans). We don't do it very often, but we can Golden Ticket something at any time (occasionally even months or years after they run!). Sometimes we can't get a design just right at HQ, and we realize that one of our Open Squish designers has already nailed it! Or, we just love something SO much, that we just need to give it a try!
