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THE 5 RULES

Last year, over a dozen pictures were disqualified because the artist had not read the rules carefully enough. Don't let it happen to you! :-o

1. YOU MUST CREATE 100% OF YOUR ENTRY. COPYING FROM OFFICIAL SOURCES IS NOT ALLOWED. This is the most important rule of the contest! The drawing, the IDEA, and the POSES of the artwork must be completely yours. Artwork CANNOT be based off of official pictures, either from RK or from OTHER anime series. Also, artwork cannot be based off of some other fan's artwork. If I can recognize which official picture or fanart you used to help draw your pic or character, then the resemblance is too close, and your picture will be disqualified. You can use official art to help with poses, but ONLY IF YOU CHANGE THE POSE ENOUGH so that it doesn't look just like the original. You can draw scenes that are in the series or OAV's, but you can't draw them from the same angle with the same poses. The following is a list of everything that is not allowed. If you don't understand this list completely, or if you have a question about your entry, please feel free to ask me or show me the pic if you're not sure. I won't disqualify you if you show me the pic just to ask. NO EYEBALLING or heavy referencing of screencaps or official RK canon art. Eyeballing means looking at a picture and copying the pic as you draw. It's fine for practice, but it's not for a contest. It is not fair to the people who came up with their own poses. NO TRACING. Tracing means putting a picture under a piece of paper and following the picture's lines with your pencil. NO PHOTO-EDITS OR PAINTOVERS, please. Photo edits are when you take a photograph and digitally alter it in some way. Paintovers are when you paint on top of a photograph. YOU MUST MAKE ALL BACKGROUNDS YOURSELF. NO PHOTOGRAPHS as backgrounds even if you took the picture yourself. No images that you happened to find on-line. NO WALLPAPERS, please. COLLABORATIONS ARE OKAY IF all involved artists agree to participate in the contest. Please provide information as to which artist did what part of the pic. NO STEALING of other people's works and claiming them as your own. This one should be obvious, people. If I catch you submitting stolen art, not only will I disqualify your picture, but I will NEVER accept any artwork from you ever again. If you find a contest entry that you think has been stolen or referenced, please contact me and let me know. I take this rule seriously, folks. Last year, over a dozen pics were disqualified. If you're thinking of sneaking a referenced pic through.... With several rabid RK fans as judges, odds are, we'll find it. EDIT: 08.Jun.2006 - Please contact me privately via e-mail for theft/reference reports. Thanks!

2. ART CAN BE DONE IN ANY STYLE OR MEDIUM. As long as you follow the theme, you are encouraged to be as creative as you want. Creativity is a huge factor in our judging of this contest. As long as your picture is about RK, then crossovers and AU type pics are okay. Any style of artwork is acceptable: anime/manga style, realistic styles, etc. They're all good. In fact, using your own style (instead of the canon artwork style) is highly encouraged. Traditional and digital media are both welcome. If your entry is a 3D work (like a sculpture), then send a photo of the sculpture with a card or piece of paper (in the picture) stating your name.

3. NEW ARTWORK ONLY. Sorry, but you can't submit stuff that you did months ago and posted at other sites. Artwork must have been finished after April 1, 2006.

4. IMAGE SPECIFICATIONS. This rule is extremely important! Read it very carefully. Any image that does not meet these specifications will be ignored. JPG or GIF files only (preferably JPG). No other formats will be accepted. No PNG, BMP, TIFF, PSD, PDF, DOC, etc. allowed. No submissions by snail-mail. Pics must be less than 1000 pixels in width & height. Please do not lie about the picture size on your entry form. Scanned images are often much larger than this, so be careful. Also, Windows and IE tend to automatically shrink images for viewing so that they look smaller than 1000 pixels even if they are really much bigger than that. Don't be fooled. Always check your file properties. Files must be less than 200kb in size. Please make sure images are oriented right side up. Unless a pic is supposed to be anything other than upright, please don't send me images that are rotated sideways or upside-down. (Yes, people have done this in the past. Several times, actually.) If your image dimensions or file sizes are too large, they will be returned for you to fix. I will not fix them this year. IMAGE HELP PAGE If you don't understand these specifications, check the Image Help Page. If you're still confused, please find a friend or family member to help you. Please do not aske me to make exceptions. If you don't have a program to shrink and convert your files, I highly recommend IrfanView. It is a small, FREE program that's very easy to download, install, and use. You should be able to figure it out yourself, but just in case you're still confused, I've got instructions (with pictures) for it at the image help page.

5. PLEASE NOTE THE FOLLOWING RESTRICTIONS: Maximum of 3 entries per contestant. No NC-17 level pictures! Many regular visitors at this site are minors, so please try to keep pics at a PG-13 level. R-rated pictures will be dealt with on a case by case basis. No racist, sexist, or otherwise hurtful themed pics. Judges cannot enter the contest. Obviously!

SUBMISSIONS

READY TO SEND IN YOUR PIC? Please fill out the form no matter how you plan on sending an entry. Only the sections in red text are required. The rest is all optional. Thanks so much! CLICK HERE TO FILL OUT AN ENTRY FORM WHAT HAPPENS TO SUBMITTED PICS? All submitted pics will be uploaded to my website. There will be a special contest page in the fanart section that will become a permanent page of the site. Sometime during or after the contest, I will incorporate all contest pics into the regular fan art gallery. For people who have never submitted pics before, I will make a profile page for you. As you can see from the fanart gallery, profile pics contain your name (or alias), e-mail, and website URL. If you do NOT want your artwork incorporated into this website, or if you want your e-mail or website info withheld, please check the appropriate square on the entry form!

DIGITAL ART RESOURCES

BUT WHAT IF I HAVE NO SCANNER AND NO DRAWING PROGRAM? Don't give up just yet. There are plenty of excellent free drawing programs available on-line. FREE ART PROGRAMS: Art Rage: This program simulates traditional media very well. The only thing to remember with this program is that if you want to make your picture into a JPG file (the kind of file I require for my contest) you'll have to EXPORT the picture as a JPG file. The program doesn't allow you to just save as a JPG. The Gimp: I've never tried this one, but it's supposedly like a poor man's Photoshop. Oekaki Board: You can always use the oekaki board at this site. It's free, and it doesn't require you to download anything. ART PROGRAMS WITH FREE TRIAL PERIODS: In other words, the program normally isn't free, but you can download a free sample version of it and use it for a short while (usually about 30 days). Open Canvas 4: Personally, I've never been able to get this program to work on my computer, but other artists I know have used it and say it's really good. I'll take their word for it. Adobe Photoshop CS2: Photoshop is one of the best art programs out there. I use an older version of it (version 7.0) for all my art. The program is very expensive and takes up a lot of space on your hard drive compared to other programs, but it's very good. If you're interested, you can click on "tryout" in the "Download" menu for a trial version.

JUDGING

PANEL OF JUDGES Hakubaikou: Artist, website tinkerer, hitokiri cuddler Fevereon: Artist, weapons maker, SHMUP nutty Akai Kitsune: Writer, artist, red fox type person thingy Dlin: Artist, KH2 enthusiast, occasionally dips elves in chocolate Conspirator: Writer, devious conspirator, enshrouded in mystery Co-Conspirator: Artist, editor, sneaks about in the shadows Kimaya: Artist, daydreamer, RPGer extraordinaire Mio: Writer, artist, sometimes sounds... Irish? More judges to be announced.

CATEGORIES & PRIZES

Click here to see the current list of categories and possible prizes. Prizes may change slightly depending on availability and the state of hakubaikou's bank account. Heh. I'm thinking of including some Gaian prizes (for those who participate at GaiaOnline.com), but I need to check on whether or not such a thing is allowed first. More on this later....

SPREAD THE WORD!

PLEASE HELP PUBLICIZE THIS CONTEST The more contestants there are, the more fun this will be. Click here for contest banners.

Rurouni Kenshin characters are the property of creator Nobohiro Watsuki, Shueisha, Shounen Jump, and Sony Entertainment. This is a non-profit fan-site for entertainment purposes only. Permission was not obtained from the above parties. If any of the above parties or their representatives have a complaint regarding any fan artwok posted on this site, please e-mail me, and I will comply with any stated requests.