My first experience with ACROdoodle started out slow, but picked up speed fast.
I first logged onto the website because a friend told me to check it out. The landing page looked great. Simple fun art decorated a well clean and clear designed page. A video explaining the idea was also there to help those who were still unclear on the idea. My friend had told me about the idea already so I skipped the video and looked for how to see content. I was a little discouraged when I saw that I had to log in first to see anything substantial. I always hate giving out information to a little time killing site, which is essentially what ACROdoodle is. However, based on my friend’s recommendation I went ahead and registered for the site. A username, email, password and simple captcha form was all I was as required to fill out to get into the site, harmless enough. (On a side note, I have only received a simple “Thanks for signing up!” email so far, no spam at all.)
Once I entered the site, the fun started. An Acronym was large and clear on the top of the page as well as a fun crayon button inviting me to draw a doodle of my own. Also on the top of the page was the previous day’s winning doodle. I wasn’t sure what “Yesterday’s winner!” meant quite yet, but I found out after scrolling down. The next section on the paged labeled “Leaders” showed the best doodles of the day, their titles, the artist, and how many votes they already had as well as a little vote button to help out your favorites if you wanted. I laughed at some of the fun ideas and drawings and voted for two of the leading doodles of the day before scrolling to the next section. Here I found the most recent submissions to the contest. There were simple and complex submissions, but both had their own values. I found a few that I liked and voted them to get them on their way to the leader section.
You can click on any doodle and go to a page where that doodle is enlarged and gives you other options as well. You can favorite a doodle, flag a doodle if you find it inappropriate, vote on a doodle, and comment on a doodle to share your thoughts on the artist’s idea or art. I noticed on this page that others had commented and saw that they had a little avatar for their comment. My comment had a blank outline of a headshot. I saw how fun the other avatars were and I wanted my own! Each avatar looked as though it had been created on this site, as though they were previous submissions the user had made. I found out later that I was correct. While looking for how I could create an avatar I noticed on the top of the page the username I had chosen when I registered. I clicked on my name and it took me to a profile page. Here I found that I could fill out more information on myself if I wanted, I could see any doodles that I had favorite, and a section for any doodles that I had submitted. Both of these sections were blank, but I planned on getting something in there soon. I also saw where my avatar would show if I had one. There was a little button that said “Create a profile picture” and I clicked. This took me to the drawing application.
The drawing application was very simple to use and although simple, was quite powerful for an online drawing application. The day’s acronym was also displayed on the top of the page incase I had forgotten it (I had). So here is where some difficulty came up. The letters were BIWR. I started to wrack my brain for a cohesive idea using the letters. So many words came into mind, but nothing made sense. After some time I came up with an idea that I loved. Bees Incorporate Wasp Racism. Sounds weird right? Well it was, it was funny in my head and I had an idea of what to draw. So I got down to it. I spend some time creating some fun art that I really enjoyed creating. I knew my idea was funny and had some real chance of getting votes.
After about ten minutes of drawing I had a simple piece of art that I felt good about. I hit the save button on the application and a new page was opened. I saw my finished art here and a field to enter my title. I entered into the title and hit submit. I then saw my new doodle on my profile page and I smiled. I saw that the button that had said “Create a profile picture” had changed to “Select a profile picture”. I clicked and saw my doodle I had just created as an option. I chose it and my avatar was selected. A custom avatar that meant a lot to me already for the exciting struggle I had put into it. I went back to the main page by clicking the logo in the heading of every page and saw that my doodle was the most recent submission. I happily voted on the doodle and again spent some time looking at other submissions with a new appreciation of their creations. I smiled a lot and had a good time commenting and voting on doodles. It was a great way to spend some free time in my day.
