Polycount Community Chest Event
Welcome to the Polycount Community Chest Event for Dota 2
The main goal is to produce Dota2 hero sets, wards, couriers or huds - in a friendly and supportive atmosphere here at Polycount. We've suspended the monthly Dota2 contests as well to encourage less competition and more co-operation amongst the community. We want everyone to join in on this parade. If you've ever considered making something for the Dotas, now is the time to come out and give it a try. There won't be a limit on the number of people who will be allowed to join this event. You can join solo or as a team. Every project that is finished in time will be added to the workshop chest collection page. Once the Valve sees the magnitude of awesome that you have created, they will be "forced" to include the chest. They have said over and over that's what they want from us. We are the ones that helped to define that level of awesome. Let us remind them all that the Greentooth is a part of this game and will always be so.
Event deadline: April 15, 2015
This gives everyone from this announcement about two months time to make some ridiculously attractive items and sets. As this event has been spinning up there are some folks that have already been going for two weeks. Congrats, you have a head start for your early participation. The rest of you still have have plenty of time to craft some Dota polys.
Introduction:
To take part, you will need sign up in the original thread here: THE CHEST EVENT THREAD
Tell us, the community what you can do; concept, modeling, texture, animation, particles, whatever. Show us your current workshop on Steam. A portfolio or Polycount sketchbook thread could work. People need to be able to see what you can do and while you don't need to know the pipeline of Dota perfectly, you will need to have some experience in polycrafting already. Even if you are planning on soloing we'd love to see you post a note telling us you are planning on participating. We want to see everyone helping each other as they are each able to.
Some rare unicorns out there will want to contribute to more than just one project here. That's absolutely fine with us. Make sure you can do the work you sign up for first and foremost. If you can't get something done, you ruin it for more than just yourself on this one.
The revenue shares inside your individual submissions are up to each of the teams. Polycount is not going to expect or ask to be part of any of your submissions except for the existing server provider option. That's a slice of Valve's side of the coin and it is definitely helping us keep this place going. If anyone wants to include us beyond that, we can point you at our official Steam account too. 
Theme:
The theme on this one is rather open. You are free to do whatever you'd like. Do something you can be proud of. Make something beyond what you have made before. Make this a personal best for yourself.
There is a lot of discussion on which heroes you should do items for. We leave that up to you to read the threads and make some choices on your own. What you end up making should be influenced on what your own goals are for this event.
Feedback and Criticism:
Again the larger goal of generating some community effort is generating dialog amongst each other. To do that, we need things to talk about. That means we'd like to have everyone post pics of their efforts as they progress. That way we can talk about the tasks at hand.
Remember our basic rule: we want the feedback, the good and the bad. But we also want some thoughts beyond that. Tell them why you have said what you did, again good or bad. As creative people, we need more than just a few dozen "looks greats" without anyone ever telling us the model has no shaders.
The forum is a great place to get your feedback but its not the only one. There is a Skype group chat channel that is always has a few people grinding away at their pixels. Google hangouts are also posted frequently. You don't need to have a cam to participate in these places either.
Extra efforts:
As many of you are aware, the concept of "marketing" is often discussed with Dota2 items. Valve likes it when a project has more than just a snazzy model. This can mean a few nice framed icon images for the store. It can also mean a lot more which many Dota workshop vets are familiar with, such as videos made in Source Film Maker, replacement HUD's for the game, a full re-theming of the map with all new assets, comics; hand drawn or using the game assets, a full 3d chest as the actual community chest, and more. The options are many if you'd like to again try to do something new.
If you have interest in making something to help us all push the community chest forward, please come talk to us. We do plan on talking to Valve on this effort. Our hope is to follow the precedent of previous community efforts in Dota and TF2; a small percentage of the overall chest is awarded to those that make such non-traditional assets for the event.
Final Submissions:
We'll update the specifics such as a header info in the coming weeks. As we get a better idea of just how big this gets, we may need to change how we keep track of everyone and what each team has made.
