Hi, I know this is my first post, it's actually my first time registering, have been watching as a guest since round 1. I know, i know, I should be voting, but frankly I'm just really curious about how all this will play out, and think there is some FANTASTIC art here! I'm not here to complain I just want to understand. I respect what this contest is doing and all who are involved with making this happen, I think it's so cool that this contest can make a comic creators dream come true. That being said, as an observer, a few things have...caught my eye.

First off (and I hope the creators don't take offense to this cause this is the only one that has really stuck in my mind) Bonded didn't turn in a completed round 2 and still got 3 YES's, something that has really bothered me this round.

Here's a reference in the round 2 guildlines.

ALL entrants participating in this round WILL BE REQUIRED to present character sketches and bio info for each of their MAIN characters. Please note that Round 2 artistic requirements are fairly specific and MUST BE adhered to IN ORDER TO QUALIFY TO MOVE on IN THE CONTEST.

we do REQUIRE a well rounded entry that complies with the following:

MANDATORY: Main character(s) in a full-bodied FRONT VIEW, 3/4 FRONT VIEW, and SIDE (or PROFILE) VIEW. These are commonly known as a "rotation view" and should at a minimum be inked with a finished look to them. Coloring is optional at this stage, but certainly desired.

Each main character displayed MUST also have at least three FULL-BODIED ACTION POSES of the MAIN character(s) (to add a more dynamic feel for him or her...or them. No partial anatomical cut-offs (in other words, no illustrations where the characters are drawn showing only the top halves of their bodies.

I have read this a few times, and it reads the same way to me each time. All entrants will be required to present at least one main character and the rules of the round must be adhered in order for the project to qualify to move on.

Those rules are, each main character displayed must have a front view, 3/4 front veiw, and side view along with 3 full bodied action poses. The characters at a minimum must be inked with a finished look to them.

I understand Cary said "What we all saw with Bonded, which obviously you didn't, is that the artist is showing movement and action with each character in the colored piece." Which I personally get, but the rules didn't say you could mix the two, it said you wanted 6 different shots, or the project would not qualify to move on.

Secondly, I don't get the whole free votes thing. I understand the circumstances call for the voting deadline to be extended, and Ian I hope you feel better soon, that sounds like no fun at all, but why give them free votes? If they had turned it in earlier they wouldn't have to worry about their votes. I think that they deserve a shot because they turned it in on time, but it was said many times to get your project in early. There's 15 projects, and 10 overall projects are getting cut, so I would think they would just need to try to scrape together the votes, and hopefully people vote to keep in the ones they like. The Fringe Element turned it in earlier, so wouldn't that be unfair to them?

I really hope no one takes offense to this post, I just think this contest rocks and would like to see the guidelines followed to make sure only the people who have put the time in, thus deserving to win, do. I know I will buy their comic and be around to see what happens next year. Some teams have shown very professional entries, and this is what keeps me coming here. As I said before, I am a true believer in this contest and am so happy that something like this is out there to make comic creators dreams to come true.

Thanks for taking the time to read this!

-Davy

I've gotta say I agree with you, Davy.  Perhaps the intent is that artists are allowed to do both the action and the rotations within the same poses and call it done, but if so, it is very unclear.  Thankfully, TLB was on top of inconsistencies in rotations (saw evidence of this in Bonded, People that Melt in the Rain, and Clown Town), but perhaps the contest guidelines should mention this more clearly.  As written, I understood it to mean what it says: "Each main character displayed MUST also have at least three FULL-BODIED ACTION POSES."  The "also" in there implies that it must be in addition to the rotations.  A technical detail, but still an important one, evidently.
I do find it hard to swallow that if certain entries are not fulfilling "MANDATORY" requirements, they are receiving yes votes at all.  If there are guidelines that are distinguished as mandatory, they should be looked at first and foremost in terms of qualifying for a yes vote.  If they are not going to be consistently used as mandatory criteria for all entries, they do not accurately fall under the definition of mandatory.  I am a teacher and boy would my students let me hear it if I ever held some students accountable for items on a rubric and let others slide.  It's just not fair and it's easy to overlook when you're not the one being judged/graded/evaluated/etc.  
I don't mean to be whiny, but I just want this to be an even playing field where it does not appear that favoritism is letting some contestants slip past mandatory rules without adhering to them.
These artists and writers work very hard and the ones who are taking the time to be sure they carefully follow the posted guidelines should be commended.

the point of the free votes: There are 15 projects that turned in materials by the deadline and SHOULD HAVE BEEN POSTED ALREADY.

due to my health issue, they were not, and that is NOT their fault. We are using the free votes to ASSUME that the project doing the worst in the rankings, is at least equal to projects that have not posted yet.

My decision on what to do with the projects that are delayed getting up (up later today hopefully)

is final. I think it is fair. the only people that have ANYTHING to worry about in the rankings, are those that are doing AWFUL already, if your votes per day is less than 15/day - you SHOULD be worried…that size of a fan-base will never get you a successful comic book, and you need to figure out better marketing, period.

Can't argue with you guys much on the minimum requirement side… As a perpetual college student myself, I still see plenty of cases where people are told something is mandatory and ignore it. What do you do? Well, typically in school, you dock a grade accordingly. Once all is said and done, some people will still pass, even if marginally so. If people don't follow the basic guidelines, there really needs to be something very strong to get them through the gauntlet. Unfortunately, very few projects (five or less I'm thinking) actually did follow the guidelines to a t. I was frustrated that rotations did not match, that there weren't enough images, that things didn't conform to the basics, but the alternative is that five projects may have received a yes based on meeting the criteria (or trying to) and the rest should have received three no votes? Likely, of the ones that did receive yesses for meeting the requirements, a couple would have received a no vote for other reasons.

Hope that explains the logic here… All contestants should be embarrassed they didn't even meet the minimum requirements, but even a "C" is still passing in school.

The thing with not getting the image requirements right: If the judges don't feel they get what they need to know the art will work in a comic book…they can vote NO. It's pretty simple. That puts the project with a big axe over it's head that even if they have a zillion voters, if they don't do SOMETHING else to show us in the vote period they can provide some sort of confidence in their work, I'll tell ya flat out, I'll cut them. It's MY final decision, I'm the publisher with a toy deal who wants people to work with that are willing to really do what it takes to be successful.

That's the failsafe that keeps this from being a popularity contest. You HAVE to be able to do the work, too.

I understand the motivation behind supplying the unposted entries with 20 votes, but I also have friends in the contest who sent in their work earlier in the contest and it wasn't posted for a couple of days. Is it fair to supply votes to people assuming their work would've been posted immediately when other contestants had work submitted much earlier that wasn't posted immediately? In addition, I found it odd that when Adam & Comfort were at a convention and unable to judge works like Minions, Soul Bound, and The Hallowed for several days, these works were left in the judges forum and unable to receive public comments nor were the artists able to post additional work. Sometimes, voters give votes based on seeing new sketches (there's evidence of this on the forum for Stitchwork). However, when Adam & Comfort had to leave for a second convention and it was known they wouldn't be able to judge the entries supplied during that timeframe, THOSE (such as Eggfinger, Foxtones) were put in the public forum and received the added benefit of posting work and public comments (and perhaps garnering a few more votes because of it). Should those that suffered from being stuck in the judging forum for several days be given some votes to make up for the ones that may have been lost due to lack of public forum?

Regarding the mandatory guidelines issue: I understand what TLB is saying when he mentions that only about 5 contestants actually followed the Round 2 mandatory rules, but then shouldn't that a problem for those who did not? Since public voting is allowed in this round, I believe that the judges should vote No based first and foremost on mandatory requirements, while supplying feedback on the project, and letting those who got the No vote understand that there are expectations in the professional world. If a comic artist is given a deadline and mandatory guidelines to supply the company they work for with 5 sequentials and they only turn in 3 or 4, is that professional? No. I personally believe that the same standards for each found should be held to the contestants and "policed" by the judges. Let it be a slap on the hand for the contestants, no matter how great their work is, if they don't follow the mandatory guidelines! Heck, they should be pushing that much harder to get public votes to keep them in and hopefully learn a lesson to follow the Round 3 guidelines if they make it.

Lastly (then I'll get off my soapbox), a little constructive criticism that I think would help prevent ALL of the issues regarding late posts, etc. is to have an ultimate deadline for all Round 2 projects to be in, then (before they are ever open for public viewing/voting/commentary) have all entries judged, then post all already-judged entries for a certain period of time for public votes. I think it would remove the issues caused by life (i.e. judges attending conventions, personal emergencies) because obviously these things happen and then they must be dealt with in the most fair manner possible, which can obviously cause some questioning and discontent.

I appreciate being able to see these aspiring comic artists and I know that in their professional futures, they will be held to very high standards. Might as well start 'em off with those high standards for guidelines, etc. now.

gonna make it easy: you'll be offered a refund on your entry fee if you don't like how I'm running this show.

Now, I REALLY need to get those projects up, if ANYONE has any more QUESTIONS about this stuff, EMAIL ME!!!!!!

I've got nothing to add about the voting situation beyond the obvious, that Ian's doing the best he can, I think he's found a fair and equitable solution, and we're moving on. Life happens and if you can't adapt a little bit to things that happen outside your control…I don't know what to tell you.

As to the concerns about meeting the minimum requirements, I think for the most part that's been asked and answered. I felt that while Bonded didn't follow the requirements to the LETTER, they did provide enough material to give us a good look at the talent involved, and made me more than comfortable enough with the submission to give them a YES vote. If you look at my comments to every single round 2 contestant I've not been hammering people overly much about hewing exactly to the requirements unless they were obviously blatant about ignoring them. With Bonded I felt like they interpreted the requirements that way, they were consistent, and they got a YES. With The Voice, Eye, and Hand detective agency they didn't even bother to turn in a logo, made no attempt at turn arounds beyond the one character we couldn't even determine was a main player, and presented a fairly incomplete submission. The difference is vast, and pretty clear in my opinion.

This is not related to the previous question, but it is a contest question, so I thought I'd put it in this thread.   This may have been answered elsewhere, but I don't see it.  What are the image dimensions for round 3 submissions? I'm not seeing in the guidelines any size requirements for this or the next round.

it's in there.

Size requirements are INDUSTRY STANDARD for print-ready comic book full color comic book pages.

you should REALLY know that if you're trying to become a pro in the industry.

the size was in Round 1

"a canvas size of 6.875 inches wide by 10.5 inches tall set up at full bleed, 300 dpi"

only difference this round is CMYK full color…

That was my assumption, but I wanted to make sure since it didn't specifically say in the Round 3 section and Round 2 had different size requirements.  I thought it was better to ask than to assume.

sorry if I sounded snippy. I have not been myself, lots of pain these past 2 weeks especially. No excuse on my part, just…I'm sorry.

I have a couple of questions about the contest after looking through the guidelines.  Are all these comments that people post after the project comes out of judging going to be published in that projects #0 issue or am I misunderstanding that part?  Also I don't believe all of these Round #3 entries are all that PG, specifically "The B Team" has nipples showing, and "Clown Town" is showing an all out slasher scene. Shouldn't this disqualify them or is PG less of a rule than a suggestion.

Clown Town has more implied violence over actual violence. So the subject matter might be mature, but the presentation is not. B-Team's women are covered up, so it doesn't look like a violation from my perspective.

As for the zero issue… Top 3 after all is said and done (votes weighed in against judges votes) and 1 other project (wildcard) will get their own zero issue. The rest are fighting for cover slots to the Mysterious Visions anthology. All will have their 12 page zero issue published, but it will either be by itself (top 3 + wild) and the rest in an anthology.

Yeah just to echo what Erik already posted…Everything but the head bashing are implied rather than actually shown, and you can see nipples in PG-13 flicks let alone PG. Thus far I haven't seen any of the contestants get out of line with the content to where I'd even mention it.

as for comment-printing - we take excerpts as space allows in #0 issues.

I think I get it now, thanks.