Hey everyone – Joseph here!
Rain World Art Month is an annual event where artists have the opportunity to show off their skills and draw, animate, etc. different art prompts, that are focused on the game Rain World, with each day of the month having a different prompt. The 4th Rain World Art Month is happening right now in March!
I want to take the time to talk about the history of Rain World Art Month, and how it has evolved into an event that artists look forward to participating in.
Year 1 (2020)
Art by: Annoying Flower
Total Submissions: 738
So I actually got the idea of Rain World Art Month watching other artists participate in Inktober. At the time, I was a Discord admin for Rain World and the Discord only had just under 4,000 members. The amazing Rain World community drew fan art every day in the Discord and I wanted something to really bring the community together and attract outside artists into the event. After talking with some of the artists about the idea and some of them having interest in it, I started to work on getting the first ever Rain World Art Month organized.
The very first step I worked on was getting a prompt list created. There are a few ways I could have done this but what I came up with was to create a huge master prompt list that I could use a randomizer to put the 31 prompts. This allows for lesser known or drawn creatures, regions, or other things to be chosen and removes any bias from people choosing the list. After creating a master prompt list of over 100 prompts of creatures, regions, objects, and more, I randomized the list order and got the 31 prompts. I created a rule after seeing the original list that a region and any subregion that is part of that region could both not be on the list as they could be similar. If the combination of prompts broke that rule, I switched them out by the next prompt that was outside of the prompt list.
After getting the framework of the event, I contacted the developers of Rain World, Videocult and the publisher at the time, Adult Swim Games on Twitter about the plan and see if I could get their support. It may be nerve wracking to try to contact the developers but if you are creating a community event most developers will appreciate the work you put into it and will look forward to supporting or watching the event. To be honest, when I first messaged them I wasn’t sure if I would even get a response but I did and I worked with them on organizing social scheduling and keeping them updated on the event.
In the Rain World Discord server, I opened a new channel where people could post their art for the event and on Twitter, I had used the hashtag #rwartmonth which artists picked up and put it in their tweets.
After the event launched, I realized after seeing hundreds of art pieces coming in that I needed a good way to wrap up the event. I decided the best way would be to highlight the artists and I would create a video achieving that. I grabbed 4 different pieces of art from each prompt and put them into the video as a way to say thanks to the different artists who joined in.
I was blown away by the results and could never predict that this was just the beginning of something that I would continue on improving and something that the community looks forward to.
Year 2 (2021)
Art by: Garrakx + Annoying Flower
Total Submissions: 901
With the second Rain World Art Month, I wanted to go bigger and do better than last year. One way I thought about doing this was to add some weekly art streams where the artists can draw whichever prompt happened to appear that day. Videocult stream would be a special stream that would allow the developers to publicly look at the different art pieces that were drawn for Rain World Art Month.
Thankfully with last year creating a master prompt list, it was much easier to randomize the prompt list as I didn’t have to create a whole list again. One thing I did decide though was that a prompt couldn’t be in the RW Art Month prompts for two years in a row which allowed new prompts to be in RW Art Month and keep the list refreshing.
This year I really improved the event’s Twitter presence by posting more and keeping the community engaged. Whereas in 2020 I didn’t really make any posts during the event, in 2021, I had streamer announcements, art count updates, and something Adult Swim Games did that I really liked; art highlights which I adapted into this year myself. I also made a note for artist to include #rwartmonth in their posts so that it would be easier to find and that people could use that tag to keep track of the event.
I contacted Sanshee and Akupara Games to see if they would be interested in supporting the event. Sanshee designed and sells Rain World slugcat plushies and Akupara Games did the porting for Rain World to the Nintendo Switch. Thankfully, both were interested in supporting the event with socials and interest.
Also in 2021, I worked on better keeping stats on the event. I love stats and it can be really helpful in proving to yourself and others that the event is big and worth supporting. I designed a Google Sheet to keep track of the amount of art per prompt, how it compared to the year before, and more. With the stat sheet, I was able to see that there was over 20% more art than the year before and the most popular prompt was Lantern Mice.
Year 3 (2022)
Art by: Turtle | 4slugcats | Miimows | Henpemaz
Total Submissions: 1,279
This was the year I really wanted to break that 1,000 art piece milestone for the event. Only needing 99 art pieces more or a little more than three more art pieces per day – this was the goal I had set myself. The Rain World community managed to do this in 21 days and I couldn’t be happier and thankful when that happened.
So this time, I expanded Rain World Art Month to include 4 different languages working with different translators on the prompts and social posts. All the different languages brought new artists who participated in the event.
I also improved the social media presence on Twitter and prepared better types of posts like an art counter with the goal being 1,000 and five second videos that would show five prompts at a time.
Something else that came up was should we continue using #rwartmonth tag or use an alternative tag like #rwartmonth2022. The idea was to separate the event by year so that they wouldn’t crossover using the same tag. In the end I decided to keep the same #rwartmonth tag as that was what was known for the community, tag would get filled with new art, and people could use the tag before the event to see the art from the year prior.
Year 4 (2023)
Art by: Annoying Flower
Highlight Video: WIP
Link to Gallery: WIP
With that we come to this year. A lot has happened for Rain World since the last RW Art Month. Akupara Games became the new publisher, Rain World: Downpour got released on PC, Steam Workshop support, and more!
Rain World: Downpour is a new DLC that adds so much content to Rain World, including new regions, creatures, slugcats, and more! With the DLC though came a lot of decisions that needed to be made.
RW Art Month normally launches in January, however with Rain World: Downpour also launching in January, I decided that it would be best to move the event to March so that two major events don’t conflict with each other which I communicated with the community once I knew that was happening.
Another question is that should prompts from Downpour be included in this year, only being two months after from launch? Rain World is all about discovery and learning the world around you so I limited the prompts from Downpour and not include any end game content that might spoil people that see it. Next year I may ease that restriction but as for this year I felt it was best to leave them out.
Rain World’s launch anniversary happens to be in March so instead of having a prompt from the master prompt, I decided to have the anniversary be the prompt for the launch day of March 28th. Also instead of having weekly streams, I thought it would be better to have March 28th be the day to have the different streams including Videocult and Akupara Game reviewing art from the community to highlight the anniversary of Rain World.
If you would like to watch the news on Rain World Art Month, follow the Rain World Twitter or join our Discord!