On on the crowd of 14 year olds - I think that's exactly the problem we're facing
we started out a couple of years ago with a crowd of 14 - 18 year olds. Since then, of that crowd, most people got lives (schools, work, girlfriend-boyfriend, etc) and although they haven't lost their skills, they've not got any time to work on anything. So they do look in occasionally, but they dont post because they dont make much anymore!
Of those few hundred people, only a few still make art on a large scale, and only a handful is making anything worth mentioning - I'm most certainly NOT including myself into that number, because what I do is very and very average, late night sketches that take 10 minutes a piece, whenever I'm bored of my homework.
That's not the sort of thing you're going to keep a site living with...
We should have gotten new members, from the 14 year old region as well, but not only. We didnt.
If we would have, some of those would now have grown up and be doing brilliant artwork, all the others would just be filling the quanitity. What we have now is a half dead site with all the brilliant people having decided long ago to go to other sites and present their artwork there - and you cant blame them.
There's two fronts we have to fight at, the quality and the quantity.
The quality, let's face it, doesn't come from the 14 year olds. It comes from a handful of brilliant people over 20 who maybe still visit, but mainly are oriented at other websites. WE HAVE TO WIN THEM BACK. Not with contests, with life.
We have to have quanity, and for that we need those 14-20 year olds doing average stuff, we also need them as a future investment for the site, because out of every 100 of them, 1 just might be doing brilliant stuff in 4 years time from now. WE HAVE TO HAVE STUFF TO GET NOOBIES INTERESTED.
We have to have enough interesting stuff for both.
