The Winter 2006-07 Banner Contest!

[NoSanninWa]

Welcome to the new Winter banner contest. You've all seen the great banners we have at the top of our forum. Many of you remember the last banner contest while others have wondered where those cool banners come from. In case you didn't know, they were made by people on this forum. Now is your chance to make a banner that will grace our forum for at least the next season.

Banners may contain anime artwork from any source including your own art. They must be anime related and they must be appropriate for our forum. The theme for this banner contest is the season of Winter. As an exception to this theme we will be allowing any legal banner which includes our mascot, Kairin, since she's so darn cute. All entries should include anime images related to Winter or the Winter Holidays such as snow, New Years, Santa Claus, reindeer, menorahs and snowmen. Feel free to use your imagination, but I will invalidate anything that does not feel like Winter to me, unless it contains an image of Kairin. Kairin is always good! Hopefully we'll see some original artwork of our beautiful and classy mascot. If you want to work with any of the official images created by Kiva128, you will find some of his drawings in the Kairin Fanart Thread. I'll mention that while Kiva128 has granted permission for use of the images that he has released in that thread, other artists have chosen to keep their rights and you should ask their permission. Many people use fanarts in their banners and while we encourage you to ask the artist for permission many times this is just not possible even with the best googling skills. Consequently we wish all artists to know, if you see a banner that contains your fan-art and you haven’t given prior permission for its submission and would like its removal, please contact us.

The rest of the rules:

• All entries must have Kairin or a Winter theme.
• Banners are 760x100 and a maximum of 60KB in size, using the gradiant below as a guide.
• The edges of all banners must blend into the top bar. Please see below for details.
• All entries must be in GIF, PNG or JPG format. Remember, we want the banner to be able to load quickly for the sake of 56Kers so no animations will be accepted and filesize should be kept to 60K or less.
• Each member may only enter 3 banners maximum. If you go over this number you need to specify which banners to use or else your last 3 entries will be used.
• Members will only have until 06:00:00 Tues Nov 21 2006 in GMT to create banners. Check Time Zone Converter for information on what time this is near you. (In EST this is 2am Tuesday morning... or really late Monday night.)
• This thread is to be used for banner entries only. Nominations in this thread will be ignored. However it is the place to tell each other which banners you like, I just won't count it as a nomination.
• After this thread closes, a new thread will be created in which everyone will nominate their favorite banners. Nominations will run for exactly 7 more days, until Nov 28th, 2006 at which time the nomination thread will be closed.
• At this time the 10 most popular banners will be put up on a poll for the entire forum to vote for since more people respond to polls that don't require them to post. Each contestant will only be listed once regardless of how many banners he entered.
• The poll will close on December 5th after exactly 7 days of voting. Polls close automatically so please check the poll for information concerning when it will close in your timezone.
• The three most popular banners will be chosen to rotate at the top of our forum.
• Of these three, One is the winner and the other two are runner ups. The winner is the contestant whose entry got the greatest number of votes. As recognition of the accomplishment this winner will recieve a $35 dollar gift certificate provided by Catgirls.

Disclaimers:

• I may disqualify any banner deemed to be offensive or inappropriate.
• No moderators (of any rank) are allowed to win the grand prize. If by some stroke of brilliant artistry one of us does win, the prize will go to the first runner up.
• All submitted banners become property of AnimeSuki and may be used now or in future years without asking your permission.

If you want to use the AnimeSuki font, there it is. This is optional.

Important: The right and left edges of the banner must blend into the top bar. That means the very edge of the template below must not be covered by any image or else it will look like it has been cut off. If a mistake is made on edge blending we will all try to point it out so that it can be fixed. Banners whose edges are messed up will be ineligable.

Here is our new Winter template:

Make sure you keep the far right and left sides clear of image so that it blends properly at the right and left. Remember that the banner must say "AnimeSuki Forums" Forums is plural! Extraneous text is not appreciated unless it is appropriate as part of the design.

[NoSanninWa]

In case anyone is curious how our new gradiant will look, here's a little mock-up made by our very own Catgirls who is sponsoring the contest and prepared the gradiant for us. As far as I know he is not entering this banner for competition, though I thought he should:

[Shakugan no Shana]

Sweet! Can't wait to see the rest of the banner'ers. lol
Here's one I just made now. Hope it's ok to play around with AS's Font.


*Awaits for permission from a FanArt for the other two.*

[NoSanninWa]

Originally Posted by Shakugan no Shana

Here's one I just made now. Hope it's ok to play around with AS's Font.

It's well within the rules to play around with any font you choose. I'd just caution you to consider legibility. The way you did it has an interesting candy-cane effect, but I wonder if it is difficult for people to read. Since I don't have a problem reading it, 'tis all good.

[Shakugan no Shana]

Originally Posted by NoSanninWa

It's well within the rules to play around with any font you choose. I'd just caution you to consider legibility. The way you did it has an interesting candy-cane effect, but I wonder if it is difficult for people to read. Since I don't have a problem reading it, 'tis all good.

lol You just made me realize that just now xD I guess you are right, maybe it might be a problem for new Forum members if their not used to reading with that Font, maybe I'll change it. I'll wait for a few posts and see what they say.

[Aoie_Emesai]

Ha it's winter time, I think i'll particaipate this time, unlike the Haloween version or it. I better go install some more fonts for Coral 10.

[JOJOS'STAR]

YeaY! ^^ Its started again!! heheh I'm on it.

[Daniel E.]

I have been practicing with a very similar gradient; Adjusting to the official one should be easy.

[Kryptan]

Here's something I made. Hope you guys like it.

[Daniel E.]

Originally Posted by Kryptan

Here's something I made. Hope you guys like it.

Awww, you beat me to the first Kanon banner entry.

Good work.

I am almost done with mine, but I am just finishing tracing the second character in it.

[wao]

Let the influx of "sad girls in snow" begin...

Well OK, mine is not a sad girl in snow. I created this entirely by myself but it's kind of lacking in a "wow" factor. Maybe I should have added more highlights?

(48 KB)

I hope it qualifies, it only barely steers clear of touching the edges.

P.S. It should look OK on screens with cool or warm colour temperatures (unless it's some bizarrely cool one). It isn't from an anime (you can see I attempted to make it Kairin-like and failed)

[Deathkillz]

wow! already another banner contest :P
and LOL i knew it was only a matter of time til some made a kanon banner...just didnt expect it to be this fast

edit : btw kryptan you need to remove the title "kanon" from your banner cause its against the rules ^_^

[Klashikari]

EDIT : this entry is no longer used.
refer to this post for the registered entries.

ugh... not really an original subject (guess it will be filled a lot of Kanon banners XD)



*thinking about 2 other subjects*

i hope you are not obliged to put the 3 at the same moment XD

[Lost]

Originally Posted by wao

Well OK, mine is not a sad girl in snow. I created this entirely by myself but it's kind of lacking in a "wow" factor. Maybe I should have added more highlights?

(48 KB)

I hope it qualifies, it only barely steers clear of touching the edges.

P.S. It should look OK on screens with cool or warm colour temperatures (unless it's some bizarrely cool one). It isn't from an anime (you can see I attempted to make it Kairin-like and failed)

Her ears give her away dont they? But honestly, thats preetty good drawing and colouring, considering you did it from stratch and nevermind it was supposed to be Kairin-like. If you could put decent ears back on her I'd nominate yours. It doesnt have the wow factor but if you take the time to look at it abit more, its nice how you made 'Animesuki' a breath of frosty air from that girl. Hmmm... since its not Kairin, what are you gonna name her anyway?

[Catgirls]

Originally Posted by Klashikari

i hope you are not obliged to put the 3 at the same moment XD

Nope...not at all. You can make banners up to Nov 21 2006. No need to rush all three out in the first week.

[Deathkillz]

well...here goes nothing ^_^
first try...

constructive criticism welcomed ^__^

[npal]

Originally Posted by Klashikari

ugh... not really an original subject (guess it will be filled a lot of Kanon banners XD)



*thinking about 2 other subjects*

i hope you are not obliged to put the 3 at the same moment XD

*nod nod* Hmm... Nayuki banner... *nod nod* nice colors *nod nod* the background really does it... *nod nod*

Yes, I approve

[Katapan]

That's my first banner ever (I finally got around to learning a bit about Photoshop's use...), so some criticism would be very welcome. Of course being my first work I'm not too happy with it, so it'd be nice to hear what could be corrected or made better.



I'm not really sure if the winter theme is shown enough here? There's snow, and um they're wearing winter clothes, and yea...

[Green²]

NoSanninWa is going to kill us v.0.1.0

[Daniel E.]

Originally Posted by Klashikari

ugh... not really an original subject (guess it will be filled a lot of Kanon banners XD)

It's a great entry regardless. I knew you'll end up making something great.

Same goes to you Deathkillz.

Originally Posted by Green²

NoSanninWa is going to kill us v.0.1.0

And I have yet to post mine.

Love the background by the way.