A FINAL REQUEST FROM ME: winners announced! <3

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<center>Leaving my Best Wishes with You...
Before I leave Gaia, I have a final wish for...art! heart

Navigate:
arrow 1. Introduction and News
arrow 2. Prizes!
arrow 3. Subjects
arrow 4. Current and Possible Entries
arrow 5. Rules
arrow 6. Qs & As
arrow 7. Links</center>

As you may or may not know, I'm leaving Gaia for personal reasons. Frankly, I've gotten a bit bored of the site. I can't stand the massive population of Gaia now, since I can't keep up with everything going on. But that's only one reason. My life outside of Gaia is eating up my free time, so I simply don't have the time to be here like I used to. With a comic-in-the-works, murals to be painted, and daily life to attend to, life is busy.
With that said, I wish to give my goodbyes in the form of gifts that I don't need to keep anymore, since I will no longer be on Gaia for very long after this contest. (I want to enter some art contests, maybe to earn a bit of gold for some friends. But I generally just want to enter these contests.) In return, I hoped for some nice art of my characters. So I decided to boot up this art contest and hopefully get a few people interested in doing a final request for me.

<center>THE RESULTS ARE IN!</center>

Overall Best
Grand: Allowei with this picture of Mysila
Not only does this picture display a fabulous know-how of digital art and technique, but it is exactly how I see my character in my mind. The facial expression, the big paws, the stance, the outfit.. (the booties! <3). This artist portrayed my beloved character so much better than I ever could. I feel like they read my mind. ._.

First: Moros Blackspell with this picture of Mysila
I loooove traditional art. I love it even more when the artist can display that they really know what they're doing with traditional mediums and use 'em effectively. Again, this one was a mind-reader. The outfit that I described in her description was picked up exactly how I see my character in it. Plus, she's well-displayed as the weepy little thing she it. =3

Second: Demonic Hisoka with this picture of Cleo and Cal
This deserved a step up from just "best couple". Cleo and Cal are perfectly drawn in this. Cleo is just the right size and "thickness". I really like that one detail was paid attention to. She isn't too tall next to Cal, and not too skinny. The excellent coloring and the headboard in the background make this all a wonderful piece to look at.

Third: [Ding] with this picture of Cal
I love the quiet expression Cal has on. He seems to be repiecing some events in his mind. The headphones were a nice touch- detailed and not distracting. Plus, the overall quality of the digital art blew my mind. Soooft colors. ^^


Best Cal, Cleo, Mysila
Cal: Alexandrea Zenne with this picture of Cal
Cal looks completely..badass! Which is perfect, because this is really the typical way he displays himself (in public, at least =P). I cannot get over how his facial expression looks.. looks like if someone tried to mess with him, he'd bite their head off. =D

Cleo: x_Kitanya_x with this picture of Cleo
Cleo looks peaceful and child-like in this picture. ^^ It's an excellent interpretation of my character because of that. I mostly adore this for how small Cleo seems, which is a really important detail I tried to get out. I also like the original outfit and the hair.

Mysila: Werecoyote with this picture of Mysila
I am really pleased to have this picture in my collection. This is such a unique style that my character's in. And it fits! While looking a bit "grr"-ish, like she normally is, she doesn't seem too powerful or imposing. Which is perfect! Also, the attention to fur detail was just the thing this needed. ^^


Best Couple
Chishirou with this picture of Cleo and Cal
When alone together, this is probably exactly howI'd see these two in my mind. I adore Cleo's expression and Cal awesomely-highlighted hair, too. Plus, the original outfits are a nice touch, fitting into the color scheme nicely. ^^

Best Costume Design
Sora Icefreeze with this picture of Mysila
Not only does this picture have a really unique artistic style, I love how the outfit turned out. Mys isn't a prosperous thing, so the tattered look and the colors show off how she really lives her life.


Best Scene
froggyfluf with this picture of Cleo and Cal
Cleo's and Cal's "sacred" Friday movie night! xD I love that someone did this little scene.. because it's one of those really important things in their relationship. The spiffy coloring style is also a great bonus. <3


Best Traditional and Digital Art
Traditional: froggyfluf with this picture of Cal
Such an awesome inking style. I'm really in love with it. x3 The constrasts between light and dark are very clear, and gives this a really unique look that I don't see very often.

Digital: Shamdu with this picture of Cleo and Cal
I really love the attention to detail in this. The lines are very clean, so they don't detract from the coloring. With the soft, colorful background, the clothing wrinkles and lovely coloring style really stand out.

Honorary Prizes
BadLoki with this picture of Cleo and Cal
I just really love Cal in this, for some reason. He has that badass stance that he's always trying to portray himself as. <3

Alexandrea Zenne with this picture of Cleo and Cal
I really like the style in this picture- very artisticly laid-out. The smoky effect was a great touch, and the colors all blend in smoothly.

<center>Prizes will be sent out shortly, along with a few PMs, just quoting basically what the artists have won. x3</center>

Please, scroll on to the next post!

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<center>What Can I Win?
You give me art, I give you gifts!</center>

Here's all the catergories that your art can be entered into. Each piece is eligble to win just one prize. i.e. you cannot win the grand prize and.."best background", for example. However, multiple entries from an artist can win more than one prize all together, so enter as much as you want!

Overall Best
The picture portraying my characters as who they really are, mixed in with the best display of artistic skill and effort, will win these prizes. This art can be of any character or characters.
Accuracy is the big key here: the character with the best portrayal of who they really are will get the grand prize, most definitely.

Best Cal, Cleo, Mysila
These pictures feature one character, showing the most accuracy and a good show of artistic skill and effort. There is one prize per character given out.
Pictures with both Cal and Cleo in it are *now* eligble for this catergory.

Best Couple
This is a catergory for just Cleo and Cal, showing a typical scene between them. I'm looking, again, for accuracy and a fair knowledge of art.
Remember, all pictures must be at a PG-13 level or under. Don't draw anything you wouldn't want your grandmother seeing.

Best Costume Design
I'm a sucker for well-designed outfits. Since I give artists a choice at a pretty wide range of clothing for each character, I'm putting a prize for the one that is most creative and original.
The art must always fit the character's typical clothing preferences. Meaning: no flamboyant clothing for Cal, no skimpy clothing for Cleo, and no modern clothing for Mysila.

Best Scene
Speaks for itself, really. The picture with a good use of props, background, and typical knowledge of the enviroments my characters live in will win this prize. It should be a typical scene that the characters would be mostly found in (i.e. Cal and Cleo in the smoggy city of Durns, Mysila in a medieval town).

Best Traditional and Digital Art
Again, pretty much self-explanitory. The pieces of art that show the best artistic skill in traditional (real-life) mediums and digital (computer) mediums will win these.
Pictures using a mixture of both tradional and digital art will have a chance at winning these, too, but they can't win both. Either or.

Honorary Prizes
There may be a few extra prizes given out that I'll give to pieces of art that just..have that special something about them. :3
<center>----------</center>

<center>Prize Values</center>
Here's a list of all the goodies you can win. =D
Prize values will always be changing. I also plan on adding some runner-up catergories in the end, if I get enough entries to do so, and more catergories will be added on, hopefully.

Overall Best
Grand: 150,000 gg + Golden Laurels
First: 100,000 gg + Laurels
Second: 50,000 gg + Laurels
Third: 15,000 gg + Laurels

Best Cal, Cleo, Mysila
Cal: 10,000 gg
Cleo: 10,000 gg
Mysila: 10,000 gg

Best Couple
First: 5,000 gg

Best Costume Design
First: 3,000 gg

Best Scene
First: 3,000 gg

Best Traditional and Digital Art
Traditional: 2,000 gg
Digital: 2,000 gg

Honorary Prizes
Unknown 'til the end. xD
<center>----------</center>

Quote:

<center>= approx. 360,000 gp in prizes!!</center>

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<center>Okay, so What am I Drawing?
Draw me my lovelies. heart </center>

You have a choice of three different characters. I'm trying to accomidate many different types of artists here, so I'm very sure you'll have a chance of drawing something!

Quote:

<img src="http://www.pix8.net/pro/pic/3850O2skn/156622.jpg" border="0" align=left>Full Name: Cal Jordan Wintergarden
Age: 21
Height: 6' 1"
Weight: 178 lbs.

FULL Biography: here


Reference Pictures:
(all are accurate)
here (*updated*)
here
here (*new*)

<img src="http://www.pix8.net/pro/pic/3850O2skn/156623.jpg" border="0" align=left>Full Name: Cleo Anne Miras
Age: 20
Height: 5' 0"
Weight: 134 lbs.

FULL Biography: here


Reference Pictures:
(all are accurate)
here
here(*new*)

Extra:
- Cleo and Cal's relationship: here
- where Cleo and Cal live: here

Okay, so what if you can't draw human characters? I have an anthropomorphic character, then. She's my first main character of anything, and I love her dearly, so if I could get one or two nice pieces of her, I could die happy. heart
NOTICE: Cleo and Cal, and Mysila are involved in completely different stories in completely different worlds. Hell, they're not even the same species. So, please, don't draw them together. Cal and Cleo can be drawn together, but Cleo and Mysila can't be, nor Cal and Mysila. It just doesn't work like that. Mmkay?

Quote:

<img src="http://www.pix8.net/pro/pic/3850O2skn/158079.jpg" border="0" align=left>Name: Mysila "Mys" Ti'Neref
Age: 20
Height: 4' 5"
Weight: 97 lbs.

FULL Biography: here


Reference Pictures:
(all are pretty accurate)
here
here
here (from a friend)

Extra:
- Mysila's website

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<center>Current Entries!
Hip-hip-hooray!</center>

SG: 1 | 2
Alexandrea Zenne: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5
Albino: 1
Aiiram: 1 | 2
pushpin: 1
Tomoe Dalmasca: 1
[U.c.h.i.h.a.I.t.a.c.h.i]: 1
Orinsu: 1
Krui: 1
unsolvedenigma: 1
Make Trade Fair: 1
Shimitsu: 1
Lithrath: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
Chishirou: 1
BadLoki: 1
Moros Blackspell: 1
bekita: 1
x_Kitanya_x: 1 | 2
Little Rin: 1
Krystha: 1
froggyfluf: 1 | 2
[Ding]: 1
shewhomustnotbenamed1: 1
Bijinkiada: 1
Demonic Hisoka: 1
Kiyo_Michan: 1
Naryuu: 1
Sora Icefreeze: 1
Allowei: 1
Shamdu: 1
Werecoyote: 1
[-ProcrastinatingSpazz-]: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
neko315: 1 (wip) | 2 (wip)
DaigoBelmont: 1
Pinkclover: 1 (wip)

<center>Contact List
For those interested...</center>
The contact list is now closed, since there's less than two weeks left to the contest. No more messages, guys, so it's up to you to remember!

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<center>Rules of the Trade
Setting a few boundaries never hurt anyone, right?</center>

To make this a completely fair and just contest, you must follow all the rules. If one is broken, you are immediately disqualified.

1. All entries are due on November 17th, 2004. End of story.
2. The contest may be extended for certain reasons, however. I have the right to do this if I feel there are not enough entries to judge from (twenty, at the least) or if a lot of people need more time. But you have nearly five months!, so that should be plenty of time.
3. Keep all images at a PG-13 rating. No extreme nudity or violence, or sexual images. PLEASE. Okay, naked behind shots of the characters are okay, and my characters getting into a bit of a bloody brawl is fine. Weapons are also okay. But please, stay away from the extreme level of this.
Anyone with nudity or bloody violence in their pictures: please send them to me via PM, rather than posting them here. That way, I can warn people before they view the images and such.
4. More than one entry is allowed. Please, feel free to enter as many entries as you want! The more, the better (and probably the better chance of you winning, too).
5. All entries must be hosted on a seperate server. You have to upload the picture(s) you have for this contest on your own space.
6. Any missing pictures at the end will be disqualified. If you delete your entry before November 19th and I can't see it when I'm doing the final judging, then it will be disqualified. It tells me you aren't interested in this contest anymore. Bandwidth problems and other stuff out of your control isn't included here. Just keep it on your bit of webspace and you'll be fine. Also, let me know if you change hosts mid-contest or anything so I don't have to disqualify you in the end.
7. Please chat in and bump this thread. Feel free to hold conversations here or whatever, and give the thread the occasional light bump, but please, no spamming.
8. All prizes are final. Don't ask for more than what is said. I will give out what I promise up above.
9. No whining or begging. If you don't win a prize, then I'm sorry. I still will cherish your piece forever, but I have to choose just one person per prize. Please, don't make my last bit of time spent here any more miserable than it has already been by complaining after the awards ceremony.

More rules to come as they are broken. :>
If you have any questions, comments, rants, flames, whatever, please post them here or direct them to my PMs.

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<center>Questionnaire
Time for a few Qs and As...</center>

If I get a question on the thread about something or other, I'll post it here.

DragonFlie

BTW, are we allowed to create outfits for them or do they have to be drawn exactly as they are?

Oh, good question!
Uhm, for Mysila, at least, she wears just about anything that's medieval-ish in style.
As for the other two, if you look on the first deviantart image reference, it gives a list of what each character likes to wear. I'll let the artists be creative and they can pick from there, but I'd like that to remain in that general area.

In other words, yes, you are allowed some freedom as to which each character wears, but no Hawaiian shirts for Cal, no skin-tight clothing for Cleo, and no pleather, Matrix-y type outfits for Mysila. :>
(question on pg. 1)

DaigoBelmont

I wanna know if they use weapons.

For weapons... Mysila uses an extremely broad shortsword of sorts. (She can't use big weapons; she's too short! :3) It has a hole in the blade that could easily catch thinner swords in, like your usual longsword and such. Simple hilt and everything.. She also has a simple, slightly curved dirk. It looks like this, but the blade is slightly curved, almost like a sickle.
Wish I could find a reference picture for the big sword. I'll let you know if I do, though!

Cleo has no weaponary; she's completely against violence. But Cal feels the need to carry a pistol with him, hidden in a hostler by his left arm beneath his coat or something. Probably looks something like this.
I'm no gun expert, though. I'm better with medevial weapons, so feel free to toy around with Cal's weaponary design.
(question on pg. 7)

Quote:

How do I submit a piece?

Please post your entry here. Give me a link to your image (rather than posting the full image- that way, people with slower connections can view the pages with ease), which character(s) you drew, and anything else you'd like me to know (what you used, how you did it, etc.).
I also love seeing sketches and lineart (clean sketches/lineart are allowed to be entered into the contest; messy sketches are not), so if you have a copy of that on hand, I'd like to see!

Quote:

What do I agree to by entering this contest?

These are my characters. I am only releasing the copyright I have on them to you artists to draw them, not take them, modify them, or keep them as your own. Any art submitted to this contest is free game for me to resize, crop, tint, make into thumbnails, etc. for a personal website of my own where I'll be displaying art of my characters later on. They will be possibly displayed on other websites, as well, but unmodified and only for showing to someone else.
However, I will NEVER, ever claim your art as my own. As an artist myself, I know the rules, and I know what it's like to have art stolen. I would never do that, so anything you submit is guarenteed safe in my hands.
Feel free to sign images, and I would love it if you could include a copyright somewhere on an image, just to keep it safe from art thieves.

Quote:

What kind of art is accepted in this contest?

I'm going to say that practically everything is allowed in this contest. Digital art, traditional art, (clean) sketches and lineart, colored pictures, with a background or not, chibi-fied, realism, anime.. anything!
However, while I do allow every kind of art, some kinds will have a better chance of winning over others. I highly favor styles like anime and realism over things like chibi. When it comes to colored pictures vs. non-colored ones, I look at detail and color use. Sometimes, lineart will prevail over a colored picture.
Effort is the key in contest. If it's obvious your picture is just a little doodle, it won't stand up next to a large, full-colored picture with a background. This is the first things I will look for in pictures: the time that I can see that went into the picture. (Being an artist, I can tell.) However, this doesn't mean that a colored picture will immediately win over lineart or a sketch. Like I said before, clean and detailed lineart may easily beat a colored picture.
Accuracy is just as important. I desire pictures that portray my characters in typical, daily-life feelings or situations. Out-of-character work will either not be accepted, or just won't win. Please pay attention to the details that I list in the character biographies. They're important!

HOWEVER! There are some (hopefully obvious) things that will not accepted in this contest: pictures over a PG-13 rating, stolen/edited/copied artwork, and pictures that do not resemble my characters at all.

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<center>Link to The Contest
Let's exchange links!</center>

Here's a banner for you to use to link to this contest.
(If you're generous enough, please make a banner for me? :> wink

[url=http://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3022457][img]http://www.pix8.net/pro/pic/3850O2skn/126977.jpg[/img][/url]

It should look like this:


Art on this banner is by the wonderful SG. ^____^


<center>Links to Others
These people are running contests, too!</center>

Don't see what you like? Then maybe you'll wanna try one of these contests below:

<center>









</center>

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And I declare this thread open!
biggrin

[DragonFlie]

w00t.

Pretty interesting charac., I'll give it a go at this contest.

[Classical]

DragonFlie

w00t.

Pretty interesting charac., I'll give it a go at this contest.

Aw, thanks. ^__^
Hope to see your entry soon!

[Classical]

DragonFlie

BTW, are we allowed to create outfits for them or do they have to be drawn exactly as they are?

Oh, good question!
Uhm, for Mysila, at least, she wears just about anything that's medieval-ish in style.
As for the other two, if you look on the first deviantart image reference, it gives a list of what each character likes to wear. I'll let the artists be creative and they can pick from there, but I'd like that to remain in that general area.

In other words, yes, you are allowed some freedom as to which each character uses, but no Hawaiian shirts for Cal, no skin-tight clothing for Cleo, and no pleather, Matrix-y type outfits for Mysila. :>

[DragonFlie]

ninja

[Classical]

Errg.. Laggy Gaia is eating my posts.

[DragonFlie]

Classical

Errg.. Laggy Gaia is eating my posts.

I know... T___T;;; *kills WWW, rufus, gino server* Damn retards.. >>;;

[Classical]

::ninjas across the page:: ninja
Stop lagging, Gaia..