Don't be alarmed, but things are about to get a little SPOOKY around here at the end of the month, and you know what that means - Halloween fanart contest time!
Calling all artists!
Step forth and brandish thy pen (or other drawing implement of choice) as vampire hunters once wielded wooden stakes and silver bullets, for it is DRAWING time! Scribble any of the osu! mascots (official or community) in a Halloween themed piece for your shot at glory, prizes, and the right to survive the coming blood moon!
If you're brave enough to take a stab, you've got 14 days from the date of this post to make it happen, before we pass off all valid entries to the osu! community to once again, agonize over a thoroughly impossible round of voting, as is the norm for these things.
A top selection from the highest scoring entries will make it to the main menu as our Halloween seasonal backgrounds, plus their diabolical authors will find themselves mysteriously granted 2 months of osu! supporter by forces unknown.
Got that? Great! Think you've got what it takes to win? Check out the rules below first - not following the rules WILL make Mocha cry, and you're supposed to be drawing monsters, not being one. Seriously, who even does that?
All entries MUST be themed for Halloween in some way. Pumpkins, spookiness, Gothic architecture, whatever you choose to do, it needs to be instantly identifiable as Halloween. No swimsuits here, ladies and gentlemen. Unless you're drawing a vampire pippi lounging in a pool of blood, in which case, go nuts.
All entries must be suitable for all-ages viewing. A LOT of people will see the main menu entries for a solid week or two. Halloween is oddly one of our busiest times of the year, so if your drawing is in any way questionable (aka: lewd, stupidly gory or otherwise gross), it risks just getting flat out disqualified. Skeletons and classic spooky stuff is fine, maybe even things a little darker, but try to remember that children do play this game.
Artists should use the custom templates provided (PSD template / PNG template) when composing their piece as a guideline to understand where the osu! cookie will be placed on the main menu and during the voting process. Anything inside the dotted circle will NOT be visible during voting phase, and will be heavily obscured by the main menu cookie if it makes it to the game client.
DO NOT LEAVE THE DOTTED osu! COOKIE TEMPLATE VISIBLE IN YOUR SUBMISSION! Please don't do this. It doesn't need to be there when you're done drawing, it just makes your work look worse.
ACCOUNT FOR THE DOTTED osu! COOKIE TEMPLATE IN THE COMPOSITION OF YOUR WORK! We've already said this, but anything inside the dotted circle will not be seen during voting phase and will be very difficult to see on the main menu. You still need to draw something there — don't just leave it blank, but be creative about it. Check out previous contest entries for inspiration!
Entries MUST meet the resolution requirements for a main-menu piece - namely 2732x1536. A script automatically discards entries that don't meet the resolution requirements, even if they're off by only a few pixels. Check your work and make sure your piece is exporting with the right dimensions!
SUBMIT ONLY YOUR OWN WORK! NO TRACING! NO REDRAWING! NO COMPOSITE WORKS! Any artist worth their salt doesn't need to plagiarise. You do you, not somebody else. Don't redraw manga stills or trace or do anything dodgy - draw and win on your own merits, not somebody else's. If you have trouble understanding this fact, you'll be forced to wait a whole year before we'll let you enter a fanart contest again, so get it right niiice and early.
Don't use copyrighted characters from other intellectual properties. You can freely use any of the osu! mascots (pippi, Yuzu, Mocha, Maria) and any of the community mascots (Tama, Aiko, Taikonator, any of the submissions from the Most Manic Art contest also apply), but stay away from using direct representations of characters from other worlds or franchises in your work. Remember that the community mascots are also someone else's creation, so make sure to treat their work with the same respect that you'd treat yours.
All clear? Head over to the Halloween 2019 Fanart Contest listing and enter today!
—Ephemeral
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