Since there seems to be a queue forming up waiting for my Scarecrow figure, I'm going to create a contest. The contest is over in just under three days (17th October, 2002 at midnight). The winner gets a copy of the Scarecrow completely free. The contest will work as follows: You must create an image using at least *12* (count them, twelve) of my things. These things can be from my Free Stuff or my Not-So-Free Stuff. But there are a few rules as to the counting: Only 2 lightsabres will be counted towards the total. You can use more but they do not count. Only 2 blasters (energy emission firearms of whatever sort -- blaster, laser, disruptor, phaser, black ray weapon, etc) will be counted towars the total. The Aliens rifle and RiffRaff's Antimatter Laser count as blasters, too. You can use more, but they do not count. Only 2 items from any given 'pak' will be counted towards the total. This means that you can't use all 6 bardiches for a big axe-war picture and count it halfway there. This also means that if you go and buy the just-released Fighting Man Mike, who comes with three props and two clothing articles, he counts as *one*. Using the hair techniques in my Yet Another Hair Tutorial counts as 1 item. Believe me, I can tell. I have plenty of freestuff to make this easy to meet the demands. Postwork is appreciated and encouraged, but I'd rather the original be rendered in Poser not some other renderer, so as not to make it unfair to those with Maya, Lightwave, 3DSMax and so on. (Yes, anyone can download Maya free, but I, for one, can't *install* it because I don't have an NT kernel). Postwork can be done in any program. Photoshop, PSP, Painter, GIMP, even Windows Paint if you think you can pull it off. If you do not have and cannot afford a decent image manipulation program to do postwork in, go to www.gimp.org and download the Gimp -- all the power of Photoshop and completely free. Yes, it's a Linux program but there's a Windows binary available. The winner is the best picture. I'm being deliberately vague. The goal is simply to knock my socks off. The judging will be done by *me* and the goal will be to make a picture that just makes me say 'okay, that kicks ass'. Since I'm the sole judge, the picturer has to please *me*, so here's some homework on what will catch my fancy faster: While the free stuff I've given away, along with the comments for each item no my Free Stuff page, should give you an idea of what I will favour, I'll throw in a little cheat sheet, too: - The Dodger likes anachronism. - The Dodger has a penchant for cheese -- like Victorian sci-fi, 50s monster movies, post-nuclear-holocaust mutants, and so on. His second-favourite comic series is Cadillacs and Dinosaurs (Mark Schultz). - The Dodger is split on fantasy: he despises Shannara, Thomas Covenant, Wheel of Time, Valdemar, and Belgariad but likes Lord of the Rings, Dragonlance, Elric and Cerebus the Aardvark. Conan and similar things (like the Scorpion King and Kul the Conqueror) make the Dodger break out in a rash. That's not good. - The Dodger likes Urban Fantasy. The Dodger did professional illustration for Shadowrun and grooves on Diana Tregarde, even though it rots your brain. - The Dodger is divided on Cyberpunk, too. He loves Snow Crash (Neil Stephenson) and Otherland (Tad WIlliams) but finds William Gibson boring and over-hailed. - The Dodger is a Heinlein fan, and likes some Asimov, but has a limited tolerance for Niven, Pohl, and Pournelle at best (but Ringworld was cool). - The Dodger likes Brom, Keith Parkinson, and Frank Frazetta's better thyroid years. He thinks Larry Elmore is an awesome ink artist but can't paint for shite. The Dodger hates Boris Vallejo and Clyde Caldwell's art seriouisly. - The Dodger is a Goth, whatever that means. - The Dodger is has no particular preference as to 'style' of image as long as it looks good. Look at my stuff (http://www.dodger.org/Recent%20Art) to see how eclectic I am. I like some photorealistic stuff, and some not. Surprise me. - The Dodger will be impressed if you use more than 12. The picture should be a coherent whole, not just a render of Dodger's Free Stuff. It may or may not earn brownie points to use more. (That is, if two pics are deemed identically good and once uses more, that one will probably get the prize). - Emotion and Adventure both tend to catch the Dodger's fancy. Mood lit Victoria Nudes do not. Again, the winner gets a free Scarecrow figure. All entrants receive an Awl Pike prop (not released in free stuff, and probably not for a while). (For those who don't know, an Awl Pike is basically a really pointy 6-metre spear.) Um, let's see... No purchase necessary to win. Void where prohibited. Entries must be posted on Renderosity and not violate Renderosity's TOS and gallery guidelines. Post links to the images here in this thread. Dodger's free stuff is at http://www.dodger.org/friv Pirewyn and Bloodsong are not eligible because they already *have* the Scarecrow. I'm going to follow up with some images of most my free stuff to show the vast array of crap you have to work with, so you can see that meeting the 12 items goal is not in any way impossible.