Twilight Princess Contest

(Prior to changes, last update Sept 15th)

The Judging System

We have decided put a judges panel together to judge everyone’s artwork when the contest is over. The main reason for the panel of judges is because we want the contest to be as fair as possible. If one person were to grade all the works, that would just be a reflection of his/her personal taste, not a neutral evaluation of the work.

The scoring system will not be too complex: distinguished grades will be given to different aspects. Therefore, we will attempt to compose a competent panel of judges, each with their own speciality or point of interest. However, all judges have to rate all the works, and every aspect. When every judge has rated every aspect of every work, the results will be gathered and processed, to create the final result. The judges’ individual scoring will not be made public.

The People’s Vote

On another note: We will also implement a “people’s vote” system. As stated in the rules and guidelines, there will be no prize for the winner of this popularity contest. We have not fully optimised the construction of this system, but it will roughly be like this: At a certain time, I will announce that we will stop accepting submission on a certain date. That day, the last submission(s) will be posted, and at the same time, the voting system will be opened. At the bottom of every post (entry) something like this will appear:

The votes will be open for a set amount of time (which hasn’t been determined yet, because it depends on the amount of submissions we receive), but let’s say it lasts for a week or two weeks. After this period of time, the voting system will freeze, and everything will stay the way it is. We will then determine which entry received the best rating, and that entry will win the “people’s vote”.

The Judges

- lildragon: the main organisator of this contest, 21 years old. She has just graduated as Bachelor in Visual Communication, with Illustration as her major, and will be doing her Master next. Her aspirations of the future are to publish a children’s book with her own art on the professional level, and to publish her own manga as a hobby. An illustrator herself, she will try to judge the works primarily according to skill, and all the aspects involved in making a technical correct drawing or illustration.

- Epo: the webmaster of the site, blog and forums, 21 years old. He takes care of all the technical aspects involved with organising this contest. He has just graduated as Bachelor in Japanology, studying at the Catholic University of Leuven, thought of as one of the best institutes for all things Japanese in Europe, and will be doing Master in Japanology next. Since he is not involved with art as the other judges will probably be, his view on art as a whole is not as important. However, he has been a huge fan of the Zelda series since he was a kid, and he has played (and beaten) all of the Zelda games, which makes him familiar with most of the monsters, characters, storylines, amongst other things. Therefore, his focus while judging will rest on the average Zelda-ness of the artwork, the average Zelda-feel that surrounds the work, if it retains that special Zelda-touch gamers all over the world always find in Zelda games, but never find in other games.

- sythiar: The technique judge of the team, 24 years old. She is soon to finish her Master’s degree in Biology. As a scientist in mind and an artist at heart she has both a deep appreciation for the craft of picture making and an analyzing eye for the detail and structure of a picture. Her personal goal is to find a good part-time job and work as an illustrator in her free time. She will judge the pictures by how well a certain drawing technique has been applied, but also by performances of character anatomy and overall composition of the piece. Sythiar’s DeviantArt.

- SaiyaGina: 22 years old, currently graduated from Graphic Design carreer, willing to get a major in Illustration the next years, but now she’s working in various projects as an illustrator and comic artist, in Europe, the USA and Mexico. Her aspirations for the future are to get involved in a magazine as a illustrator and/or editorial designer, and also to develop her own manga publications, or drawing comics for publishers. She’s a great appreciator of art, especially of coloring. I don’t judge the technique used, if it’s cell shaded, soft shaded or more like a painting, but I judge on how it was made, the effort taken, and the color scheme, you can tell the feeling of art more from the color scheme, than the detailing itself, which isn’t disregarded, of course the detail of the coloring, such as the volume, the light sources, shadows, and the contrasts are very important, I’ll judge the whole content. As a Zelda fan, I’m very into to the magic that the color plays not only in characters, but also the whole scenes that get involved around them to create that taste of legend. SaiyaGina’s DeviantArt.

Want to become a judge?

We are aiming for 5 or 6 competent judges. There is only one downside to being a judge: you can’t participate in the contest. If that didn’t put you off, and you think you got what it takes, take a look at our requirements:

- Age: preferably above 18, but exceptions may be made.
- Skill level: it’s very hard to determine the ‘right’ skill level to be a judge, so we can’t make any requirements on this aspect, other than requiring that you provide a recent, relevant work with your application, with some feedback on your own (!) work. This way, we can determine if you are able to correctly describe an artwork with all aspects involved (composition, color use, anatomy, perspective, frame, symbols, etc).
- To have a gallery where we can review your work (Deviantart, Sheezyart, your own website, …)
- Willing to devote time to judge (hopefully ;-)) a large amount of works.
- Not really a requirement, but it would certainly be a plus to have a feeling with the Zelda games, and Twilight Princess in particular.

Please send your application to epo [at] chello [dot] be (I’m not typing the full e-mail because of spambots who may pick it up, so please type it manually.)