I am announcing a new contest which I hope to have up within a few days that was just given the go ahead by admin and I do hope that you guys will enjoy it.The theme is a Darker Shade of Christmas,but this isn't a reference to horror as the idea is to strip the holiday of the imagery created by decades of commercialization and bring it back to something more in line with traditional fantasy.No cute little elves in green costumes here as the more generic elven may only wear a simple loin cloth(an example only lol)and also include females (never understood why people only realised there should be female elves only recently).Faerys,trolls and other traditional fantasy characters will be the primary focus,but there can be things a bit darker like werewolves or demons,the trick is that there will be absolutely "no violence",moderate mayhem maybe but any image with violence that is left in the contest will be eliminated from winning.

The standard TOS will apply to this contest and it will be a closed vote so as to prevent a certain type of troll from being an issue.Instead,I will be selecting a panel of ten judges who will rank ten of their favorite images from the contest in sequence of their choice...the top 4 winners will recieve larger prize packages and there will be 6 runner up positions that will each recieve a great prize and the best news is that everyone who enters will recieve a consolation prize just for entering that will be supplied by my great friend iLona.

Here is a partial list of the sponsors I have been able to contact so far who have contributed prizes so far.

Romanceworks
iLona
Richabri
Danie and Marforno

I have contacted several other possible sponsor since proposing this contest about two weeks ago,but I could not contact them to confirm their participation because I only recieved confirmation yesterday...so things may seem a bit rushed,but hope to have things up by Tuesday or Thursday at latest.

The idea here is to take the fantasy that many of you are already familiar with and invest the spirit of Christmas into it...there is no requirement that these images may only contain fantasy characters,you can have normal everyday settings as well with a fantasy character element added somewhere within the image.An example of this would be a couple sitting in their home before a comfy fire while behind them faerys are stringing popcorn around their tree or a troll is peering in their window eyeing their presents.

All images should be original works for this contest and only one entry per member allowed...I'm still trying to round up other sponsers that I've already contacted and hope to make this one memorable for you guys as you've been great friends and I hope to bring this all together to show everyone how much I enjoy being here among you.Stay tuned...will try to update as often as I can and to the people who approved and sponsor this contest I offer my humble gratitude;)

If the end goal of learning is genius...why are most geniuses failures at learning?