It's that time of the year again — spooky month is upon us, and it is time to usher it in with a fanart contest of terrifying (normal) proportions!
The fiendish dead have long assailed the artists of our community around this time of the year with one simple question: do you like to draw?
Should you answer yes, then we welcome you to step forth and draw any of the osu! official or community mascots in the theme of Halloween for fun and glory!
To date, Halloween remains one of our most popular fanart contest themes ever. This should surprise nobody at this point, because drawing our adorable mascots in various forms of spooky shenanigans will never be anything but peak entertainment no matter how you choose to spin it.
Just to keep things nice and clear for everyone, here's what we mean when we say "the theme of Halloween":
Spooky shenanigans
Cosplay as ghastly ghouls, fiendish denizens of the night, or anything else suitably terrifying
Treasure troves of candy
Pranks of an especially frightful nature
Tomato juice vampires
...and much more! Consult the entries from previous years for inspiration if you need it!
Artists brave enough to delve into this night of horrors will find they've got the usual 14 days to stitch together their finest creation for the masses to vote on, but only if they've read the rules first down below.
As is the norm for these contests, a selection of the most voted entries will make it to the in-game main menu as our Halloween 2021 Seasonal backgrounds, and will also nab their artists 3 months of osu!supporter as an extra prize. The top 3 finalists will also have their entry immortalized on their profile as a bespoke profile badge, until our servers turn to dust or the heat death of the universe, whichever happens first.
Onwards to the rules!
By submitting your artwork to this contest, you grant us permission to use your artwork in the main menu of the osu! client should it win, and to use it in promotional material for both the game (osu!) and the contest (Halloween 2021 Fanart Contest). You retain all rights to your creation and you can sell it and distribute it however you like — it is your work, after all. This is the fine print. Make sure you always read this in future contests you enter, as not all of them do we what we do here!
All entries MUST be themed around any of the osu! (or community) mascots wrapped up in Halloween shenanigans. Keep to the theme! This is a Halloween contest — it should be about Halloween at a first glance.
All entries MUST be suitable for all-ages viewing. Witches wear ROBES and ROBES generally cover things. Halloween is usually pretty good for this, but still!
SUBMIT ONLY YOUR OWN WORK. REDRAWING AND COMPOSITE WORKS ARE NOT ALLOWED. Plagiarism sucks. Don't do it. Someone in the comments will call you out for it as has happened before and they're going to do more damage to your reputation than us removing your entry from the voting. Use only your own work — brushes and the like are fine, but that's it! Don't redraw someone else's work.
ARTIST ATTRIBUTION (names, social media handles, etc) MUST BE LIMITED TO NO MORE THAN THREE LINES TOTAL AND CONFINED TO EITHER THE BOTTOM LEFT OR BOTTOM RIGHT CORNERS OF YOUR ENTRY. Being proud of your work is good, just do it in a reasonably small spot of your work. Please understand that we're not very fond of anything ad-related in osu!, and attribution that is blaring enough can be considered as one.
Entries MUST meet the resolution requirements for a main-menu piece — namely 2732x1536. THIS IS CHECKED BY A SCRIPT AND ENTRIES THAT DO NOT MATCH THIS REQUIREMENT WILL BE DISCARDED AUTOMATICALLY. This is the #1 reason for entries not making it to voting phase. MAKE SURE YOUR ENTRY MEETS THE EXACT RESOLUTION REQUIREMENTS ABOVE. Check your work after you've exported it and BEFORE you submit it. The ghoul butler that processes entries in this way is brutal and will discard your work without mercy, so make sure it's the right resolution!
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 you draw that is inside the dotted circle won't be seen during the voting phase, because we super-impose an osu! cookie over all entries during the voting phase to simulate what they're going to look like on the main menu. Please accommodate for this in your drawing!
DO NOT LEAVE THE DOTTED osu! COOKIE TEMPLATE VISIBLE IN YOUR SUBMISSION! You have all been very good these past two years about this and we finally feel comfortable enough to yell at you only once about it this time (but do keep reminding each other about it in the comments).
Don't use copyrighted characters from other intellectual properties. All the official osu! mascots and the community mascots are fair game, but please avoid using representations of characters from other worlds or franchises in your work. Remember also that every community mascot is someone else's treasured creation, so please treat them with the same respect that you'd treat your own OCs and work.
When you're ready to work your artistic magic, head on over to the Halloween 2021 Fanart Contest listing and entomb (or submit) your entry forevermore. And by forevermore, I mean exactly 14 days from the date of this post. It turns out eternity is a lot shorter than everybody thought. Who knew?
As always, have fun, and good luck!
—Ephemeral
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