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Calendar Contest - thanks for the entries!

Posted: Sun May 05, 2013 12:33 am
by Bruce N H
Announcing the Classic-Castle Calendar Contest (CCCC 2013)!

Later this year Classic-Castle will be producing an official calendar, illustrated by YOU. Each month will be illustrated by a LEGO Castle themed photo, and the twelve photos will be chosen as part of a contest. Photos could be anything, ranging from a close-up photo of a Castle figure, to a full scale castle covering multiple baseplates. Any scale or building style is acceptable - micro, fig scale, miniland, sculpture, mosaic, etc. The emphasis here is on presentation, not necessarily on MOC building. Your prize is inclusion in the calendar, which will have photo/builder credits and will be marketed to the greater LEGO community.

Who can enter - Anyone in the larger LEGO community is free to participate.

To enter - Submit your photo to the Classic-Castle Calendar Contest Flickr group. If you do not have a Flickr account, you can sign up for a free account here. By entering the contest you are giving your permission for Classic-Castle.com to use your photo in the calendar or in the promotion of future contests.

Entry limit - Each person can enter up to five photos. However, you can only win one of the twelve month slots.

Photos - Photos must be ready to be included in the calendar (that is, we will not crop the photos, balance the colors, etc.). Photos must be in landscape orientation, and the size must be at least 3300x2550 pixels. -Edit- I hadn't realized that there was a 2048 pixel size limit for non-Flickr-Pro-users. If you are a non-Pro-user, post the largest photo you can, maintaining a roughly 8.5x11 aspect ratio. Ideally, if your photo is selected, you could e-mail me a copy at the higher resolution at the point we actually produce the calendar.

Subject matter - Anything castle-related is relevant subject matter. This could be fantasy or historic. Historic will be broadly interpreted as post-Roman Empire, pre pirate-era. Non-European castle subjects are welcome (e.g. Ninja or Persian). Castle-relevant licensed themes are welcome.

Seasonal entries - Seasonably appropriate photos will be considered for inclusion on appropriate months - for example, if a number of Christmas-themed photos are submitted, one of them may well be chosen for December.

Text - text is allowed in an image, though not encouraged, except that you are not allowed to include your name, nickname, or website as text in the image. Builders/photographers will be credited on each page of the calendar, but we want to keep this credit constant from month to month rather than have each person watermark their image in a different way.

Time frame - You can submit any photo/new MOC produced after January 1, 2013 - note that this means you can submit something you have already posted online in the first half of this year. The deadline for submissions is July 1.

Calendar - Details will be posted sometime in October, so you'll have time to order calendars before the new year (or as Christmas gifts!). Calendars will be produced by a third party service such as Lulu.com. Prices will probably be somewhere in the US$10-20 range. If possible we will also look for a similar service based in Europe to minimize shipping costs.

-Edit-
Some clarifications for the rules. I know, the deadline was yesterday. I'm just putting these here as a placeholder for next year's contest while these are fresh in my mind.

Customs/non-LEGO parts: Customization is allowed. Reasonable non-LEGO parts are allowed (e.g. custom flags or sails, use of string, etc). Photographing LEGO creations in non-LEGO environments is allowed - e.g. you could place your MOC or figs in a natural setting, or on rocks, or interacting with other toys, or whatever. Custom parts by AFOLs who create and sell accessories/decals/etc are allowed. Clone brand parts are not allowed. And, yes, we realize there is an inconsistency between those last two rules.

Seasonal entries: Remember that this is for a calendar. As such we welcome entries that would be appropriate for specific months. For instance, snow covered scenes would be given special consideration for winter months, or forest scenes with colorful leaves for autumn months, etc. Courtly love for February, spooky scenes for October, yule-tide feasts for December. Depictions of actual historical events for those months when they actually happened. This may give an advantage to seasonally appropriate MOCs, but should not be construed as a guarantee of inclusion over more generic MOCs.

Re: Classic-Castle Calendar Contest 2013

Posted: Sun May 05, 2013 12:35 am
by Bruce N H
Hey all,

I just wanted to follow up the annoucement with a few thoughts for you to consider as you are preparing your entries. Realize that this is ultimately a presentation contest more than it is a MOC contest. If you have the coolest MOC in the world, but you've got a horrible photo, you won't be chosen. On the other hand, something as simple as a single minifig might be chosen if it is a great photo. If your photo is out of focus, poorly lit, uncentered, etc, it almost surely will not be chosen. If you've got a MOC sitting on your kitchen table, with the rest of the room visible in the background, it won't be chosen. Think about how you can present your work creatively. The following examples are either old or are on non-castle subjects, but they might give you some ideas for dynamic presentation:

Consider point of view. Here are three photos of Tony's Cathedral. Each one has different advantages:
Image Image Image
Okay, the middle one would be out since it's not landscape orientation, but I included it because of the different point of view. The left-hand photo shows the whole MOC, which is great, but the second one (again, imagine that a comparable photo was taken in landscape orientation) seems more dynamic. The third interior shot also has great advantages, as it is taken from the fig perspective. The right-hand photo shows how powerful it can be to take a photo from a fig's point of view within the scene, as opposed to some disembodied point of view hovering over some scene. That leads to the next thought.

Think about the surroundings of your MOC. You could present it against a plain background, as with Bricksonwheels' truck.
Image
Or take a photo in some real setting, like Pedrolego's warehouse manager, taken in a real warehouse:
Image
Or photoshop your MOC into some setting, like Jared Burks' Tardis:
Image
Or else take a photo where the whole thing from edge to edge is LEGO, like pretty much everything Keith Goldman ever did:
Image

Your entry could be a massive MOC, as with Rocko's King's Castle:
Image
Or even something as simple as a single fig, if the photo is good enough, like S.kosoris' Loki:
Image
Or you might want to add in effects, either with real lighting or fog effects, as in S.kosoris' ghost:
Image
Or with photoshop trickery (which is certainly allowed), as in Delgax's Emperor Palpatine:
Image
Or, again, place the fig in some setting, as with Pedrolego's skier:
Image

Anyway, I hope those have given you some inspiration. We look forward to seeing what you come up with.

Re: Classic-Castle Calendar Contest 2013

Posted: Sun May 05, 2013 1:03 am
by soccerkid6
Very cool project, I'll probably enter some pictures though I don't really expect to get featured as I don't consider presentation my strongest suit.
Might buy one of the finished calendars, would be neat to have :)

Re: Classic-Castle Calendar Contest 2013

Posted: Mon May 06, 2013 8:49 pm
by Eklund
Does it matter if there is text in the picture (like the one below), or does it not matter?
Image

Re: Classic-Castle Calendar Contest 2013

Posted: Mon May 06, 2013 9:50 pm
by Bruce N H
Eklund wrote:Does it matter if there is text in the picture (like the one below), or does it not matter?
Let's split the difference and say that text such as the name of the castle is okay (though not encouraged), but not the builder's name. We'll try to be consistent about how we credit the builders/photographers.

Bruce

Re: Classic-Castle Calendar Contest 2013

Posted: Mon May 06, 2013 11:28 pm
by Eklund
Alright, Bruce, I'll keep that in mind. Thanks for the quick reply.

Re: Classic-Castle Calendar Contest 2013

Posted: Tue May 07, 2013 10:46 pm
by Mark of Falworth
Very cool! I'll see If I can put something together for this! :)

Re: Classic-Castle Calendar Contest 2013

Posted: Tue May 07, 2013 11:18 pm
by Bruce N H
Some inspiration regarding presentation - examples of things that would be great entries, if they were Castle themed:

Image

Image

Image
(maybe this one is too dark, though)

Image

Bruce

Re: Classic-Castle Calendar Contest 2013

Posted: Wed May 08, 2013 3:45 pm
by AK_Brickster
Bruce N H wrote:Photos - Photos must be ready to be included in the calendar (that is, we will not crop the photos, balance the colors, etc.). Photos must be in landscape orientation, and the size must be at least 3300x2550 pixels.
Flickr seems to only allow a max resolution of 2048x1559 pixels

Re: Classic-Castle Calendar Contest 2013

Posted: Wed May 08, 2013 5:26 pm
by Bruce N H
Oops. :oops: I didn't realize that non-Pro users had a size limit (and I'm a non-Pro user, so I should have realized that, I just always edit my things down before I post them online). I've changed the rules accordingly.
BTW, thanks for being the first person to enter!

Bruce

Re: Classic-Castle Calendar Contest 2013

Posted: Wed May 15, 2013 11:17 am
by andhe
This is a great idea! Look forward to seeing what people come up with, and the final product.

Shouldn't it be CCCC 2014 though? Assuming it's a calendar for next year?

Re: Classic-Castle Calendar Contest 2013

Posted: Wed May 15, 2013 3:47 pm
by Bruce N H
LOL. I thought of that, but figured it would be too confusing to announce a 2014 contest. So the 2013 contest is for the 2014 calendar, and if this works out well you can expect a 2014 contest for a 2015 calendar, a 2015 contest for a 2016 calendar, and so on.

Also, a clarification I forgot to add to the rules at the top of the page regarding subject matter:

Subject matter - Anything castle-related is relevant subject matter. This could be fantasy or historic. Historic will be broadly interpreted as post-Roman Empire, pre pirate-era. Non-European castle subjects are welcome (e.g. Ninja or Persian). Castle-relevant licensed themes are welcome.

Also, I've edited the rules above to include the rule on text in images prompted by Eklund's question earlier in this thread.

Re: Classic-Castle Calendar Contest 2013

Posted: Wed May 15, 2013 11:45 pm
by digger1221
This sounds great! Can't wait to see how it turns out! :)

I'll have to see if I can come up with something calendar-worthy...;)

Re: Classic-Castle Calendar Contest 2013

Posted: Mon Jun 10, 2013 10:59 pm
by PsychoPixie
Hmmm definitely going to give this a try!!!

Re: Classic-Castle Calendar Contest 2013

Posted: Thu Jun 20, 2013 2:46 pm
by Bruce N H
Just a reminder - the deadline is less than two weeks away.

I've seen lots of great MOCs posted to the forum in recent weeks. Now all you need is to just take a photo that fits the rules and spirit of the Calendar Contest.