Frankly, doing this challenge over the day, a new MLP episode comes out, was an awful idea. Several artists like to draw something about a new episode right away and might be too busy to do the challenge. I know of at least one case, where an artist considered doing the challenge but turned it down because of the new episode. Not saying that this is the sole reason, there was low participation, but I’m sure it’s a significant factor.

Seems like a pretty weak reasoning to me, given it started yesterday, before the episode came out.

Not to mention the episode didn’t even air until halfway into today.

And also given that a lot of people don’t get to see the new episode the day of and we personally keep our challenges based on new episodes until the start of the next week.

On top of that the weekend is really the only time such a challenge is feasible at all. So it was either yesterday or tonight it’d launch. And the night of the episode is a worse idea.