How to Survive the Beauty Contest

The most important thing you will need to do is decide which pet you want to enter. You may want to take into consideration these things when choosing the perfect pet to enter.

1.) Species- You may not think of it as being an aspect of the Beauty Contest but the species can have a huge effect on how well you do. If you watch the number of votes that each species gets, you will see a continuing trend from week to week. One species category that is easy to win in is the Kiko. Recently, the highest number of votes was a grand total of fifty-seven votes! If you can't beat that, then you really don't deserve to be competing. There are many other examples of species categories that have average top placing scores that would be incredibly easy to beat but that is one to look into. If you want to know how easily you can score in a species category then just go to the "Previous Weeks Votes" section on the Beauty Contest page and view your species. If you want to add a few spiffy Beauty Contest trophies to your pet's lookup but found out that their species is a difficult one to win in, then you can consider morphing it into an easy pet for the time being then returning it to its former glory when you have all the trophies you can stand. Now, please don't think I'm saying that the only way to win the Beauty Contest is to have an easy species. That is not what I am saying at all! It is completely possible to win in any species category if you are willing to put up the time needed to succeed.

2.) Favorite Pet- I know I have a pet of mine that I strongly prefer over others. If you are like me and feel the same way then you might not want to enter your least favorite one. Definitely not the Tuskaninny you got for the av and are planning to abandon in three or four days. Wouldn't that just be such a waste of time?

3.) Charisma- Unfortunately there are some pets that are just ugly, and it takes a very skilled artist to capture the glimmer of beauty in it. For example, the Lenny and Tuskaninny are both some of the least popular pets and might be a difficult subject to catch the natural beauty in them. You can also use this to your advantage and make them very ugly intentionally and may get votes that way too but it is all up to you. As a side note, I personally like the new Tuskaninny so don't take this section personally if you happen to own one of these pets.

4.) Difficulty- The Draik is the only pet that stands out to me as difficult, but I'm sure there are more that would be a pain to draw. If you decide to attempt one of the difficult ones, then make sure that you are ready for it and are not easily frustrated. If you do well on a difficult subject, then you could get a lot of votes for your skillful artwork, you never know!

Now that you have see the aspects to take into account when choosing a pet, hopefully you have found a pet in your possession that you think stands a chance of winning with your art skills. If you don't own a pet that you feel fits these criteria, you might want to consider either adopting a new pet or Morphing/Transmogrifying one of your current pets to a species that you think would stand a better chance.

Next you have to draw your pet. Now, before you go grab a existing Neopets picture and start making a few changes to it I have to let you know this. One thing that will lose you many of your possible votes is to copy and paste an image in a document and make a few changes. Although this 'style' is not against the Beauty Contest rules, it is definitely cutting a large corner. In the Beauty Contest Board, this is known as a CAP or a C&P and is one of the most disapproved of things for an aspiring Beauty Contestant to do. Many people would not vote for caps without even thinking twice.

There are two different styles of art normally entered in the Beauty Contest and they are these. One style is images that look like how the Neopets Team draws them. This means that they aren't wearing clothes and do not have any human features. The other type of art entered is human-like pets with long legs and clothes on. Both of these are popular with different members and users will usually vote for either as long as they are well done.

Advertising- this is most definitely the hardest part of the Beauty Contest. For the next 7 days after you are accepted into the Beauty Contest, if you want to win, you should be a slave to your computer. If you don't spend every spare waking moment on the computer you may find yourself with a lowly bronze trophy, or worse, nothing at all! If you have things in real life that you will have to be doing the week you want to enter then I would hold off until you have a relatively free week before you enter.

The new Beauty Contest starts at 4:15 p.m. NST on Friday. The best time to get loads of votes is to be on at that time, right after the new contest starts. There will be loads of boards where people give out loads of "Free Votes." You should be posting on all the boards entitled that or something like "giving out votes" in the title. These people will usually vote for the first of every species to post on the board. When you are doing this, you have to be quick; many people are looking for this person's vote too. That being said, you will need to have a message copied and ready to be pasted. One mistake that people often make is to "spam" boards. The meaning of spamming a board is to copy and paste the same thing into every board without reading the post the owner puts up with his title. People will often say something like, "type 12321 if you read this message." When this happens, what I would recommend doing is putting whatever they tell you to type first, then put your copy and pasted message after that so they know you did indeed read their message.

Once the rush of "Free Votes" has passed you will need to instigate some votes yourself. You would do this by creating your own topic. The only rule I would recommend when making a topic is that you should always post somewhere that you want people's votes and the species you want them for. Apart from these you can be creative with them. Let your imagination run wild. I have used "Uncle Sam Wants YOU... to vote for (insert your pet's name here) the (insert species here)" I have also used some totally random things like claiming that that my pet's species' votes cause illnesses and for them to give them to me quick before they get sick. No matter what your approach is, it is imperative to catch the reader's attention in any way possible.

During Friday before the end of the Beauty Contest, many people are giving out "Free Votes" again, much like the Friday that you started the Beauty Contest, so you should definitely make the best of this opportunity and try to get as many votes as possible in those last few hours of the Contest.

Just a finishing note, if you ever have to miss the first few days (more than one) of the Beauty Contest that you are entered in then you probably don't stand a chance of placing very high, so I would save your energy and try to get into the next contest.