I’m brand new to this, so I’m not expecting a whole lot at this time, but looking to the future, and I note that one of the requirements of the partner program is 5000 syncs in the last month. To those who are now members of the elite, how easy is it to achieve 5000 syncs in a month, and what did you have to do, to get there, and roughly how long did it take you?
I understand the desire for experienced designers on this program, but it seems like a pretty huge ask.
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hi! First off, welcome! I like your designs, nice and clean and you’ve definitely got a style that unifies your collection. I can tell you from my own experience that it can be frustrating in the early going trying to get some momentum. But I do believe in the end that good designs and consistency will get noticed.
Faces that get exposure in the Top 100 (which is based on sync activity, not “selected”) and the featured sections (which are selected by facer staff) will drive syncs more than anything else. Followers too. Though these forums here don’t seem to see a whole lot of activity, I’ve always liked to share new work here, and there’s also a Slack channel which is not super active, but a good place to chat with other designers. And the Powers That Be have been known to engage there too sometimes.
In the end, I think most people will say is do it for the enjoyment of the hobby/art. A lot of people have expectations about becoming partner then get really frustrated that it’s not happening and lose their enjoyment that brought them here in the first place.
Cheers!
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Thanks for responding. I’m in the “happy to do this for the enjoyment” sector, but I begrudge it COSTING ME money to put stuff out for other people’s enjoyment. If Facer was completely free, then I’d be happy to always be a contributor for free too. As it is, $50 for the Facer Premium app, plus $50 for Facer Creator Pro, each year, that’s kind of a big outlay for something I can’t monetize myself to get it back. Especially since I’m in Canada, so $50 is actually $62. As an additional slap in the face, there’s unfair exposure balance between partners and non-partners.
I’m fine with doing this just for the experience of learning for now, but I can see in the future (when my first year’s Facer Premium subscription is nearly up) that I’ll be going one of three ways - either I won’t share anything and keep it all for myself so that I don’t need to pay ANY subscription, I’ll hoard designs until I have a ton, release them all at the same time in the hopes of flooding Facer and getting 5,000 sync’s in a month, or I’ll take all my stuff and go somewhere else. None of these things are particularly helpful to the community or to me.
I think there’s a happy medium there, but I guess its unlikely anything will change to bring back a balance.
Hi @richiebee, fellow Canuck!
I’d like to point out that you don’t necessarily need to use the Facer Premium app, or Facer Creator Pro. I tried the Creator Pro trial, and for features it provides, I found I didn’t really use them, so I cancelled it before I had to pay. To this day, I am using the free version of both, and can still create some fairly complex faces compared to many on this site. My artistic talent pales to everyone else, but the Pro features aren’t going to help with that. Maybe I am wrong VOV?
I don’t have as much experience as many here, but I will say from my little experience here that an important way to get syncs is to be recognized by the Facer staff, so much so that they “select” your face and put up in a category profile. That happened to me once, and BOOM! The sync’s kept coming! I recall it went quite a bit over 5k, but I guess that isn’t the only factor. It isn’t even a face that I am particularly fond of either, but it still gets my most syncs…
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Hi @bradtc. I know I don’t have to subscribe, and that may be the way I go. I guess I’ll just have to see. I paid for a subscription of Facer Premium because it was half price, and I wanted to get a wide variety of faces to understand the market. I probably don’t need to renew it, but would be happy to if I got the money back through downloads. I’m fine with the features of the free version of Facer Creator, but the paid version definitely has some things I’m interested in. It’s early days for me, so happy to go with the flow for now. Actually something else that has put me off even heading for the heights of Partner, is that they want to release faces for both round and square watches. Just as you can’t fit a square peg in a round hole, I think it compromises design considerations to do a single design that works well on both round and square watches. Another silly requirement.
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Don’t worry about the round/square thing. They just don’t want dead space in the corners of square watch screens. What can happen is someone interprets that as “this face is broken” and that’s one more unnecessary email into the already overwhelmed support staff. I design only for round watches, but when possible I allow the base texture to continue out to fill the square corners. But plan B is a “frame” graphic that shows in square watches. But either of those solutions had zero impact on what is seen on round watches.
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Thanks, appreciate the perspective. I’ll have to try out expanding the base texture.
I’ve started putting corner scrolls into some of my round faces or screw heads to make it look like the face is screwed to the inner workings. On other faces I will use the #ZISROUND# tag in the X&Y boxes to move stuff closer to the corners on square watches. This is one that I have “enhanced” for square watches.
The change of date is obvious, but what doesn’t jump out is the floating seconds hand. On the round one it goes around the edge just like normal. On the square version it follows the square edge. The inspection is open on this face so you can take a close look at the workings.
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Nice one. Thanks for sharing the code. I like the screws in the corner idea too. Nice and simple way to make it complete.
Thank You! Here’s a link to one I published today with the corner screws. I also have a “corner cover” that looks like metal that I used also. MAG 1294 Inspection is also open on this face.
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Yeah, that’s a great face too! I’m struggling a bit to get real looking screws with Affinity Designer at the mo, so for now, I’ll use a copy of the centre point on each corner. I gotta say, I’m glad I got a round faced watch. 
Nice face! Those center points look like miniature rivets. I never thought of doing that, it’s a nice look. I may have to steal that idea. 
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Steal away.
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