Points To Note

News Article - [link]

This contest IS giving away two Nintendo DS Lites. I am also seeing what can be done about adding another special prize.

I want to add more prizes, but this depends on money, pretty much. If you want to help, go to www.starofdestiny.com and take a look at the Google ad on the top of the page. I can't actually say what you need to do, but it should be obvious.

If you intend to enter the contest, read the next part closely:

The Character and History sections are now 100% correct. This leaves only the World section. When making an entry, do NOT use the World section, as this will take me some time to go over.

Be sure to tell ALL your friends about the contest! The more people who know, the more that enter, the better the contest gets.


The Art Contest

About the Contest

This is the second contest to be run for the Star of Destiny story! To learn more about Star of Destiny, go to www.starofdestiny.com.

This contest will be open to any member of deviantART. Style is irrelevant so long as it is art.

The contest is based around themes, emotions, and meanings. All entries are to surround one such thing and attempt to portray it through the characters of Star of Destiny. Here are just a few ideas:

1. Family - Tisha and Manaas, without armour, holding a baby Star in their arms.
2. Tranquility - Skye and Star sitting underneath a sakura tree, all snuggled together with their eyes closed.
3. Rage - Dhamus engaging his molten armor as he charges into a swarm of vampires as fury overtakes him.
4. Sorrow - Thranduil and Selenia walking away from Nandoleh, leaving an infant Star behind with the Zatei.


Theme/Emotion/Meaning Limitations

All potential ideas are allowed, so long as they can fit to these limitations:

- The theme used fits the character or characters being used in the piece.
- The theme is not explicit (Sexual content is NOT allowed, for example)

You're also welcome to attempt to show events that occur in the story's history, so long as there is something behind it. Two of the examples above are like that.

If you don't know what to draw, try looking around the website. You don't need to choose a theme/emotion/meaning first. You can choose a character and then draw around that character.


Character Limitations

Any character who is mentioned on the website is permitted for use. There are limitations to this as well, though.

- Do not go creating your own designs for characters who are already designed. If they're in the manga, look at them in the manga. If they're not, look at the piece I consider to be the official design. It's all nicely organized on the site in the Artwork section.
- You ARE permitted to do your "own version" of a character. You can add and remove minor details on a character, make it more related to you, so long as the general design remains the same.
- If a character you wish to use is not designed, racial design elements need to be considered. As an example, elves have dark red hair (males to shoulder length, females a bit longer) and do NOT have pointed ears. If you're not sure if the character or characters you're using have particular design requirements, you can ask me.

For a list of special details (Such as characters who don't have profiles but are valid for the contest), go to here: [link]


Additional Notes

Backgrounds are not required for any entry, but they are very nice. Backgrounds can often help further develop a theme and are recommended.


Judging

The contest will be judged by myself (Writer of Star of Destiny), Cathy (Artist of Star of destiny), and a third unnamed individual. Each entry will be judged in three areas:

1. Art - Basically, how good your art actually is. Shading techniques and the cleanliness of your lines will be factored in here, as well as other related things.

2. Emotion - How much feeling does your entry contain? Does your entry portray the word you told us? This is all about the emotion of the piece and how well you fit the theme to characters in the story.

3. Impact - How powerful an impression your entry left on us. Did it wow us, or did we just shrug it off? This is probably the hardest area to score points on.

Each area will be worth 10 points, and the points will be added up to create an overall score.


Prizes

There are three prizes:

First Place - A Nintendo DS Lite (Your choice of colour, depends on availability) & two DS games of your choice (So long as they are under $50 each before taxes), OR a cash prize of $180

Second Place - A Nintendo DS Lite (Your choice of colour, depends on availability), OR a cash prize of $100

Third Place - A two year subscription to deviantART, OR a cash prize of $50

These prizes can change and be expanded upon. These are just the lowest prizes.


Submitting an Entry

When submitting an entry, you must send two copies of your entry. One copy should be just of the artwork, while the second copy carries your own personal art signature or watermark.

The second copy is what will be shown on the website. The first copy would be used for any extra things, with the artist's consent of course.

When submitting, it is recommend you use a PNG, TIF (lossless), or other high quality format. JPG's, while taking less space, are not a good format to use. You may need to place your entry into a zip file if it's too big.

To submit your entries, e-mail your entry to skye DOT mccloud AT starofdestiny DOT com.

You're also welcome to submit your entries to deviantART, but I ask that if you're a fairly popular artist (500k pageviews or more) that you contact me first before putting it on dA.

At this time there isn't a contest closing date. However, the earliest possibility for this date will be October 31st. There is a LOT of time to submit.

You're allowed to submit multiple entries, but keep in mind only one entry can win a prize.

If additional prizes are added, you can only win one prize.

Any entries that do not abide to any of the limitations above will also not be eligible to win.



Fundraiser for Cathy

And now, onto the second part!

Recently, Cathy, the artist for Star of Destiny, has been having computer issues. We missed last week's page because of it, and I'm worried we may miss more. Cathy's computer is a few years old and is nearing the point where it should probably be replaced. However, given everything I don't quite think she can afford it herself, so I want to help her out. Therefore, I'm starting up a fundraiser to buy her a new computer! You can find a button to donate over at www.starofdestiny.com along the menu. The goal is $2000 CAD, which will be enough to buy her a bitchin' computer that will do her for several years.

If you'd like to help, just hit the Donate button in the menu! Once a week, I'll check on the donations and update the button to let everyone know where we are. There will also be a page containing a list of everyone who donated, along with what they donated.

Edit:

Thanks to the following people for pimping this contest out for me.

*funkyalien
~Kairi-Moon
~NeoSlashott
=shadowoflight01
*raidenokreuz76

If you're trying to spread the word, let me know so I can add you to mah list!

- Skye

Ok, so while normally I don't use what I call "normal" journal entries for Star of Destiny stuff, I kinda felt like it this time, simply because I was going to add onto it.

As I said in my journal about Anime North 2008, next year I'm hoping to get a table with Cathy to sell Star of Destiny stuff. To date, here are some things we're considering making to sell:

- T-shirts
- Bookmarks
- Keychains
- Buttons
- Prints

Of all these options, the first one is the most questionable one for multiple reasons. For one, I doubt anyone besides those who read the comic would buy a shirt. Second, there's the matter of how we do the shirt. I'm weighing the options, though, and I'm going to let the comic's growth decide if I even do it.

However, there is one thing I would like to do but I'm not sure if I can: A book. Yes, a book. Containing probably the first two chapters of Star of Destiny (We're not even done the first one, folks, though we ARE nearing its end), parts for one or two of the many side stories, as well as a written side story. There would probably also be some cool artwork found in it.

The real question, however, is what side stories to put in. Currently, based simply on who has been introduced in the story thus far and who will be introduced by chapter 2's end, these are the options:

- Veon sidestory showcasing some random adventure he has.
- Origin sidestory for Skye/Mav
- Star sidestory, keeping what it would be about secret
- Eternal War sidestory
- Mav sidestory, showcasing important times in his life

Well, these are the ideas I'd want to use for the drawn stories. It's simply a matter of what to choose. So, I'd like to know what you all think: Which sidestories do you think should be used? While there are some I would love to do, I can't yet. Not until the characters are introduced.

On another Star of Destiny note, I've been trying to figure out ways to make it easier for Cathy to do the comic so that we could hopefully switch to doing maybe 2 pages a week. Any ideas? I have one or two, but until I can generate some more money on the site it's not really plausible (cough cough).

Now, what else was I gonna say... bah, I don't even remember. Ok, so instead...

COIN BLOCK!

- Skye

Oh heeeey, I forgot to do this, didn't I?!

I went to Anime North again this year, and it would've been great if I hadn't gotten sick on Saturday. However, it sounds like a LOT of people either went sick or got sick, so...

Anyway, I was with my friends from the Sheridan Otaku Society, one of which is =Resident-Bishounen. So while I don't have pictures, I'm sure others do!

If you went there, did you see the guy in the full Gundam outfit? It was pink and I think based from Seed or Seed Destiny. If you did... yea, he's from the club too. He's also a nutcase for going around in it! I spent a total of one hour around him, and I can't believe how hard it was for the poor guy to get around! He had to go slow in the suit as is, but then SO many people wanted his picture! I'd be surprised if someone DOESN'T have his photo.

Anyway, it was fun overall. On Friday, I hung out with my ol' friends Erick and Karle (Erick was cosplaying as Aang for the weekend, while Karle did a Fire Nation student on Saturday. If you saw a short asian guy cosplaying as Aang and he had a fairly impressive staff and was wearing either a blue and black robe or was doing "Invasion of the Fire Nation" Aang, then you saw Erick). After I parted ways with them, I was hanging in a lobby room where a big screen TV was showing Samurai Jack and people were playing card games and crap. Well, while there, I met a guy who said his friend reads Star of Destiny (We confirmed it by my showing him some comic pages, which he recognized) which made me happy.

Saturday, I started the day by doing two things: Making a silly video and buying a coin block pillow. We turned that thing into a picture whore! You might've seen me and my friends going around with it, letting people hit it while we and others took pictures. The day seemed pretty uneventful otherwise, but it was fun anyway. That night, I sat in on "Dragonball Z: The 3 Brolly's" and had a good laugh. Seriously, THAT'S Brolly? Can someone say hacker? HAH!

Around that point I got sick, went to my room, and tried to sleep. The next day, I left almost immediately because of how shit I felt. Oh well.

And now... A LIST OF EVERYTHING I BOUGHT!

Two cans of Power Up!
A Coin Block Pillow
A print and a keychain of FFX-2's Yuna
A very awesome poster of Renji
And a commission that I'll show at some point.

Next year, though, I intend to do some cool stuff! For starters, I'm gonna be grabbing a table in the Artist Alley with Cathy and I'm gonna try to sell some SOD stuff. I'm hoping I can convince a few friends to help me put a few things together.

- Skye

So deviantART has decided that my most popular deviation, my wallpaper of Yuna, violates copyrights!

For those that don't know, here's a screen of my desktop with it in use:

[link]

The artwork on it was done by my friend, *funkyalien, with his FULL consent.

So WTF is DA pulling? I intend to object to this.

Edit:

Yay! My wallpaper was restored!

[link]

There it is in all its glory.

- Skye

So last night I finished updating all of the pages for Star of Destiny, like I said I would over at [link] , but I've now hit an odd dilemma. I'm not sure if I should just go through each and every deviation and just upload the redone pages, or if I should shove all of those into my scraps and make new deviations entirely.

In one way, it ensures everyone sees the new pages and has the potential to attract new readers. On the other hand, it bloats my DA page unnecessarily and also forces anyone who faved the preexisting pages to refav them.

So I need some opinions: What should I do? Just modified old deviations, or scrap the old ones and create new ones?

- Skye