Beauty Contest Answers

I've entered the Beauty Contest on and off for about four years. It's a rather interesting experience. The Beauty Contest starts every Friday at 3.15 pm or 4.15 pm NST depending on daylight savings time.

And when it starts and before a new contest you'll probably see lots of 'vote for me' topics on the Beauty Contest board. So let's get started.

To enter the Beauty Contest, you'll need to draw a picture of your pet. You can draw your pet anthro* or quad**; it doesn't really matter as long as the entry doesn't look too human or too much like a realistic animal.

And there are two different styles:

Traditional: This refers to drawings that are done with pencil, pen, pastels and scanned in.

Digital: Refers to drawings that are done in a variety of paint programs.

Once you've decided how you're going to draw your pet, then go ahead and draw them. Keep in mind two things, though:

1. There's a sizing limit on Beauty Contest pictures. This is 75 KB. Also make sure that the type of file is .jpg or .gif as these are the only types of file that will be accepted.

2. If downsizing your entry loses some of the quality, then simply put the original on a petpage.

Now that you've drawn your pet, it's time to enter them in the Beauty Contest. The link can be found here: //www.neopets.com/beauty/upload.phtml

And make sure you enter in time. Try to enter your pet at least a few days before the contest starts to avoid having to wait an entire week before you can let people know that yes, your pet has been entered in the Beauty Contest.

Right, now you've entered your pet, there is one possibility that might happen. And that's that your entry might get rejected. If it gets rejected you'll get a neomail from contest_judge to let you know that yes, your entry has been rejected. There are a few reasons this might happen. One of them is that your entry looks too human or too much like a real animal. Try to make it look more like a Neopet, then resubmit. The other is not a problem with you; it's actually a problem with browsers. Sometimes if you use Chrome or Firefox to submit your entry then instead of loading your entry, it loads a blank entry. Try to resubmit it using Internet Explorer.

So that's entering. Now that it's entered, there are a few other things you can do to get your entry noticed. Put your picture on your user lookup, pet page and your pet's lookup, but don't put it everywhere because this will just annoy other users. And make sure that you put a high quality picture on your pet's pet page if your picture's quality got reduced by the size limit.

Once you've entered, head to the Beauty Contest. This is a part of entering the Beauty Contest unfortunately, but I'll try my best to explain. The Beauty Contest used to be about art, but now it's about art and advertising.

Some tips:

#1 Try to stay on the Beauty Contest Boards. Or if you do venture off onto other boards, at least make the effort to chat with other users.

#2 Read the first post of other users' boards on the Beauty Contest board. Often people will put things like 'say cheese' as an anti-spam. Or ask a question. Make sure you read them just in case. Though hopefully people can tell if you're spamming or not.

#3 Don't spam everywhere.

Nothing gets more annoying than someone posting everywhere, all over the boards (and not just the beauty contest boards!) with vote for me and nothing else. It's sad when these entrants win the beauty contest as there are other pets who had much better entries.

One of the best strategies I've found is to mostly stay on the Beauty Contest boards and chat. Often instead of getting votes I've ended up with new neofriends just from chatting to other users on the boards. And these people usually remember you if you enter the Beauty Contest again. So don't be afraid to chat with other users.

Another tip is to actually comment on other people's beauty contest entries. Commenting shows the other user that you actually took the time to look at their entry. Comment on what you like and don't like about the entry but make sure you're constructive. Simply saying OMG I HATE YOUR ENTRY IT'S UGLY won't help you get any votes and you'll probably be accused of being rude. Instead say what specifically it is that you think needs work.

And this may seem a little odd, but be nice to your competition. Don't make fun of their entry. It doesn't look good to them or to other users. Try and comment on their entry. Wish them luck and may the best species win.

Now that you've been chatting for a while with the other entrants in the beauty contest, which by the way you'll need to do every day, it's time for the beauty contest to end.

Just as a warning, there are two places:

Overall and Species.

Overall places refers to the top three pets. In other words, the three pets who got the most votes of the week. There are only 3 overall placings.

Species: In order to place in species, one doesn't have to get the most votes overall. Instead they just get the most votes in species.

Understand?

Well, if a Bori got say 7th overall, but beat all the other Boris, then he would place in species but not overall. The same goes for all other pets.

And now that you've placed, and know how to enter, what's stopping you? Go and get drawing and enter again!

*Anthro refers to a pet drawn as a human but with neopet features/face.

*Quad refers to a pet drawn as an animal but well, a Neopet of course.