SOTM 2008 - May (Despair/Sorrow) - Entry Phase
 

The Signature Of The Month contest is open to all members of the Animesuki Forums. The goal of the contest is to provide a fun and competitive way of showing off and improving the signatures and personal skills of contestants. The winner of each months contest is given the privilege of choosing the theme for the next month.

The contest begins on the first of each month and consists of roughly two weeks of entry creation/submission, one week of voting, and one week off. The entry and voting periods may be extended or shortened slightly as needed.

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Each month prospective contestants are given a theme to base their entries on. This theme is decided by the winner of the previous contest. The theme can be anything, as long as it does not break forum rules regarding inappropriate material. At the end of the month, voters choose which entries they liked best out of all submitted entries and a new winner is decided. Themes cannot be used twice in a row.

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1. Contestants are allowed to create, work on, and submit their entry from the start of the contest until two weeks from the start date. This period of time is specified by the organizer every month. Once the entry period expires, all submitted entries are gathered up and sent to the Voting Thread.

2. Contestants must submit original works. This means you cannot simply cut a picture out, slap your name on it, and call it your own. Claiming someone else's work as your own is also not allowed. Anyone caught doing this will have their entries removed from the contest.

To further expand on this rule:

2A. Unless proven otherwise, all entries made by contestants are derivatives of works made by someone else. Thus, no claim of "ownership" shall be made in reference to the image(s) used in the signature entry.

2B. Misrepresenting someone else's signature work for your own is prohibited and will result in an immediate expulsion of the entry and disqualify the contestant from the current month's contest.

2C. In the spirit of originality, "crop" sigs are frowned upon, but not discouraged; however, the contest organizer can call upon all contestants to show the source of their entry(ies) at any time.

2D. Also in the spirit of originality, new signatures are encouraged. However, if you feel one of your older signatures is perfect for the theme and wish to enter it, you may. Just remember that the signature still has to follow the rules stated above.

3. Contestants are allowed to create as many entries as they wish, but are only allowed to enter one. To submit an entry officially, the contestant must mark the post in the Offical Entry Thread containing that entry with the words "Final Entry", or they can submit the signature to the contest organizer using the private message function.

4. Contestants who wish to keep their entries private until after the submission period can private message the contest organizer with their entry. The entry will not be displayed until submissions are closed, unless the contestant displays that entry publicly.

5. Entries must comply with Animesuki rules regarding signature size. This means each entry can be no larger than 500 x 160, and must be less than 50,000 bytes. They must also comply with forum decency rules. If you think your entry will be offensive or reported to the moderators, don't post it, even as a joke.

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Every month, a new entry thread is created. Each month's entry thread is a central spot meant to give contestants a chance to create and improve their entries as well as their skills, in addition to providing them a place to post their official submissions.

The thread is solely about helping contestants with entries, and as such these things will not be tolerated:

1. Nonconstructive and negative criticism (if you truly dislike something about an entry, be polite and helpful)

2. Comments, questions, or complaints about General SOTM affairs

3. Flaming, trolling, and other uncivil behavior that breaks Forum Rules

Anyone disrupting the thread will be asked to take it privately, to the SOTM Generic Discussion Thread, or if the offense is severe enough - reported to the moderators.

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This months entry period officially starts Thursday, May 1st, 2008 and lasts until Friday, May 16th, 2008. Entries will be gathered and put up for voting on Sunday, May 18th, 2008. Voting will end on the following Sunday.

The due date ends at 11:59 (midnight basically) UTC/GMT. The polling will be up one day later after 11:59 (again, midnight). I will try to be as lenient as I can with last minute submissions but only slightly.

It is up to you as a contestant to know what your time zone is in relation to UTC/GMT. I cannot do this for you.

Here is a site that can help you figure that out: http://www.worldtimeserver.com/convert_time_in_UTC.aspx

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**This is a list of all official May SOTM entries.**

**This post is reserved in case additional space is needed by me**

ICHIIBAAANN!!! As always :D

http://img67.imageshack.us/img67/297...mate2ndlh3.gif

I may recreate this one again.. This sig is done back in 2006 >.<

Altho, Death the Kidd might disagree.. that is one despair emo .. Altho his despair would bring tears (of lol) to us instead :heh:

hehe ^^

Runner up place ^^

http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/2405/mouharzg2.jpg

Just take it from my gallery lol

ROFL.. appearently, my definition of despair (if my collection is to be believe) is desparation act of covering oneself of malfunctioning wardrobe..

I have a whole folder dedicated to it :heh:

YAY!! EMO EMO!!!! XDDD
Well one stupid question though. does this picture is okay for the theme?:

http://img114.imageshack.us/img114/6...rrowin6.th.jpg

@Kina: That looks great as ever.

Photoshop some waterworks into it and I'm sure it'll be just fine. ;)

does my current sig count?? LOL jst joking..... not my work anyway...

this is a great theme because me is EMO... ehehe.. anyway, I would like to see the work of the masters here :P goodluck to all ^_^

Maybe a little irrelevant, but no Zetsubou Sensei sigs here? :heh:

(But seriously, the current ones are already looking good)

@Simple1: That effect looks veryyyy similar to something I attempted before, I was aiming for an underwater look though. XD

The themes are given in their literal sense.
SZS is rather exaggerated and comedic looking "despair", hence not elligible. (And I mentioned the series when I chosed that ^^")

Ah, I missed that, XD.

But no anime is short of it's sad moments, in fact, Shigofumi somehow struck me as I looked at this theme as well. XD

(Even though my own GFX design skills are somewhat....meh....compared to most of the entries I've seen. heh, so maybe that's why I lurk in the SOTM and do not post an entry.)

Anyways, shouldn't hijack the thread too much.

haha don't worry its not my final entries...

that was just an old sig.... better find some good stocks or render ^^

Good luck to all ^^

Party Up
 

It was mentioned in the general SOTM discussion thread that we can work with partners on this. This theme lends itself to my style and my images, but I was thinking of seeing if anyone wanted to team up with me for this month for the fun and experience, and to see what could result from a team effort.

Here's what I can contribute to a project:
* ~2000 fonts (including 10-50 Japanese fonts and 4 years' knowledge of the language), text placement, text effects
* massive HCG gallery
* good ability at cutting characters out of backgrounds
* good ability at finding a matching quote (not my own; found from others)
* tablet abilities (my handwriting and drawing is horrible; I can, however, control window transparency and trace images/objects)

My typical workflow (for reference only - we'll likely be taking a different route):
1. Inspiration by a quote or image (this is usually the message/emotion to be conveyed; SOTM categories designate this now, and both quote and image must match it)
2. Find matching image or quote (depending on which I'm lacking)
3. Orient image such that the visuals convey the right feeling
4. Orient text and fonts to support the image; this occasionally requires that the image be repositioned and reworked slightly. Repeat 3 and 4 until the end result is good!

I'm working with Photoshop CS3 on Mac OS X or Photoshop CS2 on Windows XP (Mac side preferred, but they're interoperable anyway). While I can do some fancy effects, I've specialized more in what I've listed above. My overall abilities deal less with fancy effects and more with finding images, quotes, and fonts that match to provide a message and an emotion. If we worked together, I could contribute a number of "base image candidates" and we could pick one to work on together. As a graphic designer you'd likely provide the magic effects and turn it into something totally unique; once we agreed upon a quote and fonts, I'd go in and add the text as a finishing touch. You'd likely be in the leadership position for this one. A signature with two user aliases on it sounds pretty neat, doesn't it?

This raises a question for Solace, though. I think the idea of teamwork could yield some really cool results and could be quite fun. However, in the event that it results in an "ugly child" of sorts I wouldn't want the two members of the team to feel resentful (I can envision a scenario where one member wants to enter the signature and another doesn't feel that it meets their standards, and other such things). Could a person enter a team signature and also enter a solo signature? It would encourage team entries more than anything as people might not feel that they're taking as much of a risk with it (although it could still result in hurt feelings); if that's allowed, then the next logical question is how many team entries can a person participate in (probably best to limit it to one). Ah, it always gets more complicated when you reason it out than when the idea forms in your head.

If anyone is interested, reply back here or PM me. I have all of my IM services listed on my profile (and also have Jabber/GoogleTalk), but I rarely sign onto them as I get bombarded with IMs from people who say that I'm never on :heh: If we work together you can expect pro-level synchrony with me, including IM and email if you'd like. I haven't started sorting through my images yet; it's been extremely hot this weekend so I haven't been using my external drive, but the temperatures are due to drop sharply starting tomorrow.

Hey cool stuff. I like this theme, a little off the wall, leaves things open, but closes off quite a bit. Good stuff.

Since I'm a little bed ridden after getting the ol wisdom teeth out, I'll take a nice browse through the folders and see if anything is good.

I have a question. I was thinking about using this image and was wondering if her face expression has a sense of subtle sorrow. Can I use it or is it too subtle?

Yes! I was hoping there would be a theme like this. It's harder to pull off, so I want to see how well people can do this. I look forward to seeing the results.

I might try this one, but I might not.

We can work in partners with this theme? Coolies. :D

I don't know who I should work with but hopefully well I don't know. So when we work in the partners with this does this count like so and so worked on this siggy?

Cool theme though.

http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o.../sigaentry.jpg

^My sucky sig entry.

This is not my offical entry but mimi_girl and I are working on the theme since we can work in teams on this:
http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i1...Sorrowgirl.jpg

Version 2 is on my graphic thread