Jordan aka FltAdmlWolf Posted October 4, 2022 Posted October 4, 2022 Join our 12th Annual Halloween Avatar Contest! Here's the quick-and-spooky: Each crew chooses a theme – like "Nightmare Before Christmas," or "Mugshots," or "Sesame Street" – then, each person on the crew is assigned a character and changes their forum avatar to an image of that character. A panel of judges (one person from each ship) helps decide the winners! HOW TO ENTER THE COMPETITION Each crew must pick a theme. (You should already have an OOC email thread about it!) For a member of the crew to be considered part of the team, they must: change their avatar here on the forums check in to crew's official thread in this forum (more on that below) with a funny quote, quip, or greeting. (i.e.- "Trick or treat!"). Please keep any other extraneous posts out of this thread as it will be used to count the ship's participants. Regarding check-in threads: The second post in the check-in thread must an announcement of the ship's theme AND confirm that all rules have been followed. Participants must be checked-in to their ship's thread in this forum by Monday, October 25 at 11:59pm Pacific Time. Avatars must remain in their costumed forms until at least Monday, October 31 at 11:59pm Pacific Time. Each crew entering the contest must upload their avatars to the wiki following this tutorial to the letter. Please follow each instructions closely and exactly – your crew will be disqualified if you do not follow the instructions! JUDGING CATEGORIES OF SCORING We've made changes to judging as of the 2021 contest: There are now two winning crews – one each in Originality and Design. Originality of Theme category: Judging in this category is looking for new, fun, creative, inventive, and imaginative ideas. Is this something exciting, adventurous, and inspired? Or has it been done before? Does your theme have unique style and substance? A winning crew will think outside of the box when deciding on their theme and avatar concepts, with a fresh and new approach to the challenge. Important note on eligibility: Crews may not choose a theme that simply mirrors a Starfleet crew we've seen onscreen or in beta canon with your characters faces subbed in – so no "SB118 Ops as the Enterprise crew," for example. You are welcome, however, to create a theme where your characters are drawn in the style of a Design quality of avatars: For this category, we're looking for the technique in the design and how it comes together. How hard was it to create the avatars, and how good is the execution? Did the crew a theme where they had to do a lot of work to create the avatars? If names are present on the avatar, how readable are they? How do the avatars look – is it easy to discern what the characters look like when they appear on the forum? Check out past entrants and winners for inspiration and ideas of what wins here. Important note on design: Avatar designers should ensure that the avatars, as they appear on each person's check-in post, works best. Many ships create a "unified graphic" with all the characters on it, and then just slice that up. But this often leaves text unreadable once each person puts the avatar onto their profile. So focus more on making the avatar appear correctly on the forums. Keep in mind that the unified graphic is not judged or required, so while it's a bit of fun to bring all the avatars together and show the theme, don't assume that unified graphic will win you the contest! Number of crew members checked in: This is a multiplier to the previous two qualifications that discounts your overall score. For example, if the official crew roster (maintained by the ship CO and FO) says there are 12 crew members, but only 5 people are checked-in to the thread, then your multiplier is 42%. This can easily drop you out of first place! JUDGES PANEL We'll ask each ship to send a volunteer – they can't be the ship's CO, and they must not have a chracter on more than one ship. Each judge will rank every ship's entry on the originality and design quality per above. Judges will not be able to rank their own ship in the first position. We'll use Ranked Choice Voting to determine the winner for each category. Once we have the scores for each of the two categories, we'll multiply by the number of crew members checked in, per above. The crew with the highest score in each category will be announced as the winners. FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS How do I change my avatar? A detailed tutorial is found here. What's the deal with the funny quote, quip, or greeting required on the check-in thread? It could be a quote from the character you're using, or something funny that you just make up on the fly. But make it good -- ask your teammates for help if you need inspiration! Can my team use a theme that's previously been used? Yes, as long as you use new images. Where do we get avatar images if none of us on my team are good at graphics? Check out the graphics request forum. Ask nicely for best results! Do the avatars have to look like the characters? No. How is participation counted? What about secondaries and disabled members? The number of possible participants will be pulled from the official ship roster (maintained by CO and FO) on Monday, October 24. We will discount properly marked secondaries and any members who are disabled and cannot access the forums, as per the CO of the ship. When will winners be announced? As close to the last day of October as possible. What do the winners get? Everyone from the winning crews gets the Winner badge. What if I have other questions? Head to Discord and ask them in "🎃the-most-wonderful-time-of-the-year" channel. Forum icon made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com.
Popular Post Jordan aka FltAdmlWolf Posted October 31, 2022 Author Popular Post Posted October 31, 2022 👻 AND THE WINNERS ARE... 🎃 One sec! Before we get to the winners, we've got some folks who need to be thanked: Graphics creators: Every year, you folks dazzle us by making magic – sometimes of the darkest kind! We thank you from the bottom of our hearts for putting your creativity, love, time, and effort into this contest. It means so much to me to see your contributions come alive 🧟♂️ as they bring our community together. Jo Marshall: For the THIRD year in a row, Cmdr. Marshall has been an integral part of compiling this contest, helping to facilitate each step of the process and manage all of the work. Huge thanks to her for all of her help in making this happen! Judges: One member of each ship participating in the contest carefully reviewed all of the entries and come up with our winners. Huge thanks to them for taking the time to participate in that! Ship staff: It's easy to forget that our ship staff have to do a lot of pushing, cajoling, helping, and facilitation to make this contest a success! And this year, many members of your ship staff were part of a long and detailed discussion about how to improve this contest, so thanks to them for sticking it out through that process. ALL OF OUR MEMBERS: We sincerely appreciate your participation every year in this game that helps build our fleet fellowship! Please refer to the rules above to learn more about the two categories we judge: Design and Originality, and how the final scores are modified by the number of people participating. So now... . . . . . . . . . . Who won? First, can I show you a couple of the scariest avatars from this season? Jump scare! Excuse me, I think there's a hair in my coffee?? No way that pompadour will make it through the puddle 😱 This avatar told me there's no crying in baseball! 😭 Phew, ok... striking terror into my heart all the way through the month! So now, the winners are: Remember that both winning crews can add the "Winner" badge, while anyone who created avatars can add that respective badge, as well. Thank you again for another fun contest, and congratulations to the winners! Head to the 🎃the-most-wonderful-time-of-the-year channel on Discord to congratulate the winners. 13 1
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