RULES & ANNOUNCEMENTS: 2024 Halloween Avatar Contest

[Jo Marshall]

Join our 14th 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:
  1. change their avatar here on the forums
  2. 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 28th at 11:59pm Pacific Time.
• Avatars must remain in their costumed forms until at least Thursday, October 31st 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 character 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 28th. 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 "pumpkin-spice-season" channel. 

 

 

 

[Jo Marshall]

👻 AND THE WINNERS ARE... 🎃

One sec! Before we get to the winners, we've got some folks who need to be thanked: 

Graphics creators: We've been doing this graphics things for a few years now, and every year I'm blown away by the astounding creativity from each corner of the fleet. All the time and love that goes into these contests year on year truly make it a fabulous time to get together and do something fun, creative, and chucking us all into a web of spooky unity!

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... 

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Who won? 

First, honourable mentions through the season this time! 

🌌 💥 Huge shoutout to Astraeus for smashing it out of the park with this year’s Super Smash Brothers theme! Each avatar captures that playful Halloween spirit and adds a unique twist, transforming our community into a digital battleground of icons. 🎮🕹️

 

🌲✨ A massive round of applause to Constitution for bringing the Enchanted Forest theme to life in this year’s Halloween avatar contest! The creativity and detail everyone poured into their avatars transformed our space into an enchanted woodland! 🍄🌙

 

 

🌟 Huge kudos to Khitomer for bringing pure Peanuts joy! This guy made me laugh and now I want a Peanuts avatar of my own. It’s been a treat to see everyone capture the spirit of this iconic comic! 🍂🧡

🧱✨Hats off to Amity for constructing an incredibly fun LEGO theme! Thank you, Amity, for this vibrant theme, and thanks to all who joined in for stacking up the fun! 🌈🧩

 

 

 

 

Absolutely amazing work all round! Loved every single entry this year and it looks like the Judges had a hard time, too! They said so, right in my inbox!

All the votes are in, the maths is done, and the calculator is put away from next year.

 

 

And so, 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!

[LCDR Aine O. Sherlock]

Congratulations to both our winners! Amazing themes and work all around!

[+ Vitor S. Silveira]

Congratulations to everybody, as always it's been amazing and I loved all the entries 

[Russell Standish]

Great job everyone. I'm new to Starbase118 and this is my first year seeing this contest. I was truly amazed at how creative and skilled everyone is.

[Samuel Woolheater]

This is so exciting.  Marvelously done and so much creative style.  Looks awesome everyone.  Wow! and Congrats! 

 

[Doz Finch]

Congratulations Artemis and Butler! 🥳

[+ Talia Ohnari]

Congratulations to all the winners!!!! It was an honor to be a part of the judges panel!!!! 

[Alora DeVeau]

@Taelon totally deserves the credit for OEB.  She's an amazing artist!

 

Congratulations winners!  Thank you @Taelon!

[+ TAma]

Congratulations!! It was a tough competition this year!

[Quinn Reynolds]

Congratulations to everyone! Amazing seeing all the creativity and fun in everyone's avatars, they were all fantastic! 🥳

[+ Drex0379]

Congratulations everyone!!!

[+ Sevantha]

Congratulations winners!! And seriously, the competition was difficult, everyone did an amazing job. 

[Samira Neathler]

Congrats to the winners, creators and everyone else. 😁

All the entrees were awesome!

[Karrod Niac]

Congratulations to all our winners!  The Ronin will be coming for you next year!  

[+ Arturo Maxwell]

The real winner here is @Taelon <3<3 

[+ Talia Ohnari]

Also shout out to @Connor Dewitt as he drew all of our wholesome little faces!!! Thanks again Tim!!! 💖💖💖💖

[Tony, aka Rouiancet]

Huge and continuing thanks to @Taelon for the incredible design and art for our entries this year. They're so amazing!! Big, big thanks to @Alora DeVeau for spearheading our process this year, too.

I also love to see all the entries -- this is one of my favorite events of the year! I spent quite a while staring at the Astraeus roster trying to figure out who everyone was...

[T'Mar/Mel]

Congrats everyone! And special shout out and thanks to @Jalana for their amazing work on our avatars!!

[+ Salkath]

Serious respect to all the entries! I don't envy the judges their impossible task this year! 

[Jordan aka FltAdmlWolf]

Incredible job to everyone who created avatars – so creative and well done! It's amazing to look back at the first entries and see how the artistry has improved over the years. I love this contest!

[Alora DeVeau]

I also can't forget to thank @Robin Hopper.  Keegan did an absolutely fantastic job making Denali's avatars.  Seriously, having cereal box characters resemble our PCs even a tiny bit is a feat in of itself!  It was a lot of work and I'm very grateful!