15th Anniversary Art Contest

With osu!'s 15th anniversary approaching this September, it's time to take a look back at the past from the future with our latest art contest!

On a balmy September evening (the 16th, to be exact) back in 2007, some dude by the name of Dean "peppy" Herbert released the first build of a niche rhythm game designed to emulate the gameplay of the recent cult hit osu! Tatakae! Ouendan! to the public.

The rest, is quite literally... history. A history that includes hundreds of influential creators and contributors and thousands of adoring and supportive players who have taken osu! from a pet project run by one guy on forum software, that is possibly older than your parents, to the sprawling and eclectic behemoth it has become.

And so, as the celebration of osu!'s 15th year draws ever closer, what better way to get the festivities going than with a fan art contest of historical proportions? Thus, we present this contest's theme:

Draw at least one of the official osu! mascots (or community mascots) exploring any part of osu!'s history!

Returning to the wide themes that made the A Place To Belong contest so interesting, we're foraying this time into something just as wide but a little more concrete. If you're a long-time player, you might already be familiar with a lot of the historical particulars, but in the event you're not, check out the osu! wiki for some pointers on where to start. You may also want to consult any one of the many videos put out by content creators on the topic too.

Speaking of pointers, here's a few suggestions to get the juices flowing:

• The mascots enjoying iconic representations of popular maps from each game mode
• Time-travelling mascots crying in despair after they realize they've travelled to 2016 and can no longer play any beatmaps properly
• Mascots re-enacting the spiderman-points-at-spiderman meme with different versions of themselves wearing their old costumes (most applicable to pippi)
• Anything that celebrates some cornerstone moment in osu!'s history
• Any one of the mascots gazing lovingly upon the faces of top players enshrined in the clouds forevermore

As always, you'll have 14 days to yank the masterpiece out of the electrical tubes inside your head and into your drawing program of choice — but only once you've read the rules below first. You wouldn't want to get disqualified, right?

Rules

• By submitting your artwork to this contest, you grant us permission to use your artwork in the main menu client should it win, and to use it in promotional material for both the game (osu!) and the contest (15th Anniversary Art 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. We're just saying here that if you submit your piece to this contest, you should be okay with us using it.
• All entries MUST follow the contest theme (exploring the history of osu!) and contain AT LEAST one of the osu! official or community mascots. One mascot and some historical stuff. Dead simple.
• All entries MUST be suitable for all-ages viewing. We don't know how you could manage to invoke this rule in this particular contest, but one of you would find a way if we didn't add it in, so we're covering our bases.
• 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 every other time someone's tried and they're going to do more damage to your reputation than us removing your entry from the voting will do. 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. One thing unique to osu!'s history is that we really don't like forced advertisement, and attribution that is too large can come across like it.
• 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. The cold, unfeeling machine that processes your entries does not care how pretty your 690x420px submission might be, only that the numbers match.
• 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. The circular spot in the middle shows where the main-menu cookie will be when inside the game. Factor this in when designing your piece, as anything inside it is likely not going to be seen. This doesn't mean leaving a big circular hole full of nothing in the middle! Be creative.
• Do not leave the dotted osu! cookie template visible in your submission!!! ...Deep breaths. We're calm. It's only taken nearly twenty contests but people have finally stopped doing it.
• 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 the community mascots are someone else's treasured creation, so please treat them with the same respect that you'd treat your own OCs and work.

Ready to make your mark on osu!'s history by drawing osu!'s history? Head on over to the 15th Anniversary Art Contest listing and drag-drop your entry onto the fat plus sign any time within the next 14 days. You can also delete and resubmit your entry at will before the contest closes, so don't be shy.

A selection of the top-voted entries will make it to the main menu as our special 15th anniversary celebration pack, and will also score their artists 3 months of osu!supporter, and a unique profile badge made from their own piece if they're any of the top 3.

We're excited to see what people come up with, so get creative, and good luck!

—Ephemeral