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Bring the art back to the BC
The Beauty contest guide

This is a Beauty contest guide. With pretty much everything on it.
I started this since I felt like helping people and making the BC have less scirbbles. This guide was started on 17.2.2008.
This guide goes from adversting to ms-paint guides. This guide will also involve some tips for the BC.
Point your attention on the right part of the screen. See that bar over there? It's called a navigator. If you want to skip some part or something just click the one you want to read now. Let's get started then!

The basic info

There is some basic info about the BC (Beauty contest) that you should know. First of all, the beauty contest is actually a drawing contest, interesting right? You also should know that people don't like it when you copy TNT's work and enter it. You must draw the entry your self! No excuses for that. Always remember that this guide is just made to help, some people do the BC differently. Not breaking the rules tough.
Speaking of rules, here they are.

All contestants must submit their own work(!) and it must be Neopets-related.

Selling art is against the rules

Buying votes and bribing people is also against the rules.

If you win gold, you can't enter for 4 months.

You can't advertise your friends entry

I think that's pretty much all of the rules. Also follow the original neopets rules.

On the ledendary day of april the 4th the no side-acounts entered rule got canceled. But due to that the prizes also poofed. Exept for the trophies. If you are curious about what the prizes once were here they are.

Overall winners
First Prize - 50,000 NP + one rare item
Second Prize - 25,000 NP + one rare item
Third Prize - 10,000 NP + one rare item

Species Winners
First Prize - 20,000 NP
Second Prize - 10,000 NP
Third Prize - 5,000 NP

Some species are more popular and thus harder to win. Lupe and aisha are both a good example of a hard specie. It's good to find out a bit of the popularity of the specie before entering it. In the BC pretty much any type of art can be entered. Ms-paint.. tradional... photoshop... anything, exept for Sculptures etc.

The BC terms

I just had to put this here. This is a list of BC terms. These are usually used on the BC boards, where you will be doing more than 50% of your adversting. Yay.

BC - Beauty contest
SV - Silent vote
NSV - Non-silent vote
WIP - Work in process
GB - Guild backed
CaP - Copy and paste image
Crit. - Critique
BCB - Beauty contest boards
AG - Art gallery

And now for some... longer descriptions.
Goldban is when you win first place at the BC and can't enter for four months. SV silent vote, meaning that when people vote on the boards (or pretty much anywhere) they won't tell who they voted for. NSV on the other hand is when people tell you when they voted. Some people have a counter on their font to keep track of their Non-silent votes. WIP is when people are working on some piece of art. It stands for Work In Process in this case. Advertspam is a very annoying thing it's when people post the same message (in this case advert for the BC entry) to every board they manage to see. CaP is what the BCers like to call copy and paste image. It's a picture drawn by TNT, but it has been edited a bit and entered in to the BC. Most of the people hate them. GB (guild backed) means entries thats owners have a huge guild that they are adversting to. Thus they usually win. Blah. Most of the people ALSO hate them.

Entering

So you think your entry is ready to be entered? Some people do preview boards to tell other about their entry and ask for critique. Personally I check the pictures anatomy, the shadings and all that before I enter it.
Always remember that the entry must be Drawn by you, neopets related, Saved in JPG or GIF format and sized under 17kbs.
I'm pretty sure you know how to enter once your see the entering page. *pokes navigator*
Sometimes your entry gets rejected, either it's breaking the rules or...

- Looks too 3D
- Doesn't look like a neopet
- Wrong specie (Example; Entering a meerca with a picture of an acara)
- Copied/stole someones work

If your pet has won gold it will be goldbanned, thus it will have to wait 4 months till it can be entered again. Below a screenshot of a goldbanned pet and a normal one.

Me thinks it's time for us to move on to...

The art

Okay, so did you know that everyone HATES scribbles? So when it comest to the art part of the contest, do your best instead of just drawing a stick figure with the ears and the tail of a lupe. I understand that everyone is not good at drawing and want's to enter the fun, but please at least try. It's sometimes good to go over to the BC boards and ask for critique. It helps you improve.
I have also noticed that people on the BC usually like shading and good anatomy. Also a common favorite would have to be 3D or more realistic arts. They usually get rejected, but not always.
These days the BC has alot of scribbles entered (No offence anyone), that's why this is here on the BC guide.

Before you even think of saying all that "I only have ms-paint" stuff I should most likely tell you that some awesome pictures can be done with that program. I personally am a Ms-paint artist. Yes I have photoshop, but I'm bad at usuing it. Always draw with the program/style you are best with. Okay now I should most likely tell you a bit about a thing the BCers call Anthro, furry and quad.

Anthro
Anthro is when an animal (in this case neopet) is like a human. Walks on two legs, has hands etc. Usually anthros have the ears of the specie or something else to tell what they are.

Furry
Also a bit like a human, but more neopet than the anthro is. (Neomail me if you know any better)

Quad
Quad is like most of the neopets and animals. Walks on four legs and looks more like the specie it really is.

Out there are plenty of good petpages with good tutorials for art programs and stuff like that so getting help on drawing is easy. Also the BC boarders will help most likely.

Adversting and voting

Get comfy, this might take a while. Hahaha..
Adversting is important if you really want to win. Of course you shouldn't advert-spam. I think I already mentioned what that means. All of your adversting will be done on the BC boards. It's located between the battledome boards and the customisation boards.

Most of the people have an adversting font. It's a good way to get votes. Just put the link to your voting page on your siggy. Some people also have NSV counters on their siggies. They keep track of their NSV's with it. The font doesn't have to be all that fancy, as long as you have the link to your entry on your siggy.
Making boards is also good, the boards title doesn't always have to be something like "Vote for my wocky", it can be something creative like "This wocky craves for votes". Also there are different types of voters. There are silent-, nonsilent-, list- and manually voters. I guess you want to know about them right?

Manually voters
These people check pretty much every entry in the BC and vote for the best one in the category. I personally like this voting style since it gives everyone a small change of winning even if they didn't advertise too much.

List voters
List voters collect a list of who they are voting for. At the final day they go vote the person on their lists.

Silent voters
These have been getting more popular lately. Silent voters vote for people... well silently. They won't tell anyone who they voted for etc.

Nonsilent voters
These are pretty much normal voters. They tell you if they voted.

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Now let's have a look at some rules that I would like to remind you of.
1. Bribing people for votes is not allowed.
2. Vote trading is also not allowed
3. It's against the rules to advertise someone elses entry.

Now that you know more about the voters and a few of the rules, we could actually move on to the adversting part. Yay.
So Adversting is done on the BC boards ONLY. Of course you can have the link in your siggy at other boards, but the adversting topics stay at the BC boards. If you advertise alot it will be seen at the end of the contest. Don't advertspam tough. It's bad and makes everyone hate you. If you don't want to be an advertspammer then you should always read the first post of the board, no matter how boring it is. It's also good to give a longish comment on the persons entry. Then after that you might give a small hint that you would like to get votes. Most of the people poke or prod their siggy.

It's me. Yay. That's not a really longish comment, usually the person posts on the front post what kind of comments they want.
Alot of people also put pictures complete with links to their BC entries on their user-lookup/pet-lookup etc.

The results

After that one week of hard adversting it's finally the time to see the results.. This guide has a link to the results page aswell. In each specie the top three will be awarded. Also TNT awards the overall winnners of course! I told you about goldban already so you should know about it. Congratz you just survived a whole week of the BC! Unless you are just reading this guide. ^^; If you didn't win, don't get your mood down. Just keep trying! After all the BC is just an art contest made to amuse people. So it's nothing that you should take too seriously.

Art theft

... is wrong. You are supposed to draw the entry your self. Editing an image mady by someone else won't make it drawn by you. Also stealing other peoples art is against the rules. Most of the people who do this will end up frozen.
Also some people tend to enter adoptables and makeables. I personally as a manually voter see all the entries when voting and keep an eye open for art theft.

Dealing with art theft

Under the voting button there is a piece of text saying "Report this entry". Click it.
The person might be frozen in a few days. If you decide to neomail the person who stole your art please be polite.

Art theft is also sometimes seen on petpages. Another user steals a drawing made by someone else and places it on her/his petpage, while claiming she/he drew it. I think that can be reported as well. When you draw someone something it's the best to put your name on it. It doesn't have to be huge. The art gallery is also sometimes a victim of art theft.
Always keep your eyes open for Art theft. It is wrong and should be reported.

BC F.A.Q

This is the part of the guide where people can neomail me their BC questions and they will be here for everyone to see. Want to neomail me now? Click here!

Q:Do you think it's better to submit art to the BC or the Art Gallery? o.o I don't really know which one to do... Because I'm pretty sure you can't enter the same picture in both...?

A: The art gallery has better prizes, but it's also harder to get in to, but in the BC if you advertise alot and have good art you will most likely win. So it depends on what you are after mostly. I'm not sure if you can enter the same in both.. but I do remember someone doing that before.

Art-guide directory

So you need practice or help with your art? To help you I put up a small directory of art-guides. From ms-paint to photoshop. Please neomail Susa if you have any more guides you would like to get mentioned here.

Ms-paint

Photoshop

None

Tradional

None

Paintshop pro

None

Other

None

The end

I hope you dear reader learned something about the BC today. If you noticed somrthing that could be improved, errors or something that is bugging you just neomail me. Also if you think of something this guide should mention once again fell free to neomail it to me.
Byebyes for now!