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All Out War at the Beauty Contest


by baby_beagle1991

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“My pet is so beautiful! I think I’ll enter him/her into the Beauty Contest!”

I’m sure we’ve all heard it at some point or another. Everyone adores their pet and they all think that they have the pest pet around. I won’t deny it. I worked very hard for my pets and I think they deserve some recognition some time. I also like to spoil my pets. So, what better way to spoil your pets than to give them a trophy of their own? We have trophies on our user lookups and we flaunt them all the time. Don’t our hard earned pets deserve a trophy as well?

Well, let’s start with the basics. What is the Beauty Contest? Put rather simply, the Beauty Contest is a competition where you want to get the most votes for your picture. But what picture? It is a picture that you draw of your Neopet. Sounds fairly simple, right?

The Beauty Contest is sectioned off by the species of pet, though you still want to get as many votes as possible. The winners of each species (the ones with the most votes in the species) get a trophy for their pet as well as neopoint prizes. First place gets 10,000, second place gets 5,000, and third place gets 2,500 neopoints. But, for the overall winners, they get 20,000 and a rare item for first, 10,000 and a rare item for second, and 5,000 and a rare item for third. Now, this may not seem like a large amount of neopoints, but don’t forget your trophy! The trophy shows up on your pet’s lookup and it corresponds to whatever place they got. Gold is first, silver is second, and bronze is third.

Unfortunately, you do not get a trophy or any neopoints if you do not place. :(

Well, how do you get votes? Advertise, advertise, and advertise! There is actually a board made specifically for advertising your picture! Oddly enough, it’s called the Beauty Contest board! Or, in Chatspeak, the BC board. A smart thing to do is place the link to your entry in your neosignature so that people can simply click the link to see your entry. And it prevents you from having to copy and paste the code many times.

Now those are the basics. Let’s get on to the more detailed section. Let’s start with the picture itself.

Your picture must be of the pet you want to enter. So, you cannot draw a picture of a Draik when in reality you have a Kau. And you can also not enter that Kau into the Draik category. Your picture must also look like the pet you are entering. So you don’t want your Kougra to look too much like a cat or your Quiggle to look too much like a frog. Try and leave some of the characteristics that make that Neopet a Neopet.

Now this doesn’t mean you have to limit your creativity. There are tons of options that you can do to make your picture look unique.

There are some categories that are harder than others. The hardest categories to win are Draik, Cybunny, Lupe, Kougra, Gelert, Zafara, and Kacheek. The easiest categories are Skeith, Moehog, Buzz, Grarrl, Lenny, Lutari, Meerca and Tuskaninny. The ones that are hard are due to the massive amount of people who enter in those categories. The easier ones are obviously easier because they have fewer people enter.

On that note, you do NOT have to be the best artist in the world! But you do want it to look nice. Put a lot of effort into your picture to try and make it look its best.

Now your pic must be in JPEG or GIF format. It also must be under 17K bytes. This means it can’t be too high quality, or the image must be smaller. What I suggest you do is use a small, low quality picture as your entry, and then post the full, high quality image on the pet’s petpage so that everyone else can see the full image.

Well, that seems simple enough. Draw a picture, submit it, and advertise it. But wait! You submitted it, and it isn’t showing up!! The new Beauty contest starts every Friday at 4:15 NST. So if you submit a picture on Saturday, it won’t show up until the next Friday! But don’t wait until then to start advertising. Go on the BC boards and advertise your picture as a preview for the next week’s competition. You’ll get your picture known and hopefully people will remember it, and, in the end, vote for it! And that’s what it all comes down to: votes.

Ok, so the week has finally come. You’re in the competition! What now? Remember what I said before? Advertise, advertise, and advertise! That’s the best way to get votes. Go onto the BC boards as often as possible and advertise your entry! There are a few ways to advertise, though. You can create your own board, or you can go to others’ boards and advertise there. I suggest a combination of both.

But they have really weird lingo there. How do I translate it? Don’t worry; I can help you there as well!

BC – Beauty Contest

Preview – A entry that will be in the following week’s competition.

Free Votes – These are your best friend. These people will basically vote for you so long as your entry looks reasonable. GO HERE FIRST!

Silent Voter – These people do not tell you on the board if they voted for you or not.

Non-Silent (verbal) Voters – These people will post on the board if they voted for you or not. They usually post something along the lines of, “Your vote has been cast for *Insert pet name here”.

Manual Voters – These are people who go through each category and vote based purely off of art. This is why you want your piece to look good!

Crit – Stands for ‘Critique’. The person will look at your piece and tell you what you can improve on for next time.

AdverSpam – Simply posting, ‘Vote for me!’ or, ‘*pokes siggy*’. Try and be a bit more personal. Talk with the person, read their first post and be friendly! If you are nice, you’ll probably get their vote.

Custom Design – A design that is not known to neopets. It is a design that no other pet has and is original to that pet alone. It can include clothing, scars, weapons, markings, etc.

Neopets Pose – An entry whose pose is simply traced or copied of a Neopets image. These usually don’t do as well as original posed entries simply because, well, BCers like originality!

Now there are a few rules. You cannot vote on your side accounts and you cannot enter your pets on your side accounts into the Beauty Contest. And on the BC board, you can only advertise your own entry. Understood? Good!

So you’ve advertised all week, and you think you got some good votes. You wont know how many votes you’ve obtained until the very end. Then you can click on previous week’s results and look for your pet.

Hey! You got first place!! But this means something else. You’ve been Gold Banned! This means you have to wait FOUR MONTHS until you can enter again. This prevents you from getting the gold again. But hey, gold banned is a good thing! Why? Because you got first!!

So what are you waiting for? Work on that preview for next week’s competition! You won’t regret it.

 
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