Halloween Art Contest 2009 - Results are in

Yep, my mistake.

Wow grats Tzu... dunno how ppl can say thats a wintersday costume, maybe you're all salty for getting beaten so bad :F I mean really, its halloween.. you know that holiday where you're suppose to DRESS UP as something.

Jeezzz.

1) i think cause since jora is a norn then it has to do with wintersday. their was quest during wintersday with norns.
2) it was a "art" contest when people think of art the first thing that pops into head is a painting not a costume. xD

so thats my theory.

Ok, i can kind of see it is a flesh golem now in #2 after staring at it for 3 days. My next question is wtheck does that have to do with halloween? This is a halloween theme contest, not "just make any old thing in gw" contest.

Well it's link to Halloween could be that you can consider it as a GW-themed Halloween house decoration. So it can be linked to Halloween.

thats like saying if i took orange paint and painted boo on my house i could consider it a haunt house. lols

If so, then pretty much any monster from GW could've been made, drawn, painted, etc and it would've counted in the contest. The fact is that it is not a Halloween-themed entry at all, and it's not the only non-Halloween entry to have placed. But apparently that fact doesn't matter - it's only a Halloween contest after all. Who's silly enough to follow the contest rules? The judges clearly aren't.

When a submitted artpiece is great, shall it be removed because it's not "purely" Halloween? Sure, people can complain that they would have drawn something different if they knew that they could have gotten away with the "there has to be some element of traditional Halloween in it" implicit rule. But it's only a game.

Which makes the 2 plagiarism attempts so ridiculous.

I only wish that Anet could release most of the submitted artwork, I'd spend an hour or two just browsing it!

Well if there is anything to be learned from this it's that if you want to win 1st place you have to be a cosplayer. I actually looked and 4 out of 5 of the annual Halloween art contest grand prize winners were costumes. In fact we are now on a 4 year streak. Takes nothing away from the contest itself and absolutely congratulations to the winners but, come on Anet...

Oh, and I don't see why folks were bashing last years Gwen. I have to say whoever she is she's beautiful.

Agreed! We had so many awesome submissions just from the Nolani Workshop, I would love to see everything else that was submitted and see what sort of art everyone did. That would be awesome.

The only issue I had with it was that it was a cosplay that was released earlier that year, not made specifically for the contest, and the judges already knew about that piece from before their 'blind' judging. It was very well done regardless and I don't begrudge her winning, however.

Indeed! If it was a hard decision I'd love to see what didn't win! Though I can imagine the resources it would take to upload it all and make separate webpages for each. >_<

The Cardboard Golem is scary. Halloween is about scary stuff. There you go.

honestly every year besides this 1 i have always agreed with the judging..this year anet diddnt even follow their own rules for judging. the costume i agree with even if it is jora..people dress up as things on halloween that have nothing to do with halloween. the bone minion while its cool..has nothing what so ever to do with halloween. it wasnt the guild wars art contest..it was the guild wars HALLOWEEN art contest. so wheres the halloween element?
the bone minion thing does not meld halloween with guild wars.the siege turtle only has pumpkins stuck on it..the other siege tutle on this thread melds halloween better it has a whole halloween themed display. the giant effigy thing or whatever it is nobody can even tell..looks nothing like guild wars or halloween.
we have already had one entry disqualified the one who stole off DA..but now we have found another entry which uses a third party work..the mad king thorn make your own cube thing..and the guy who owns the website even says he does not allow people to use his work for compitition. and anet have not even comented on it as of yet or looked into it when its blatently taken off there. also the tattoo is done by a third person
honestly i dont see why anet even bothered putting rules in place when they dont follow their own rules..and then we get winners who diddnt follow the rules ..and those who did were not even considered. like for example that rit with the tot bags..it did exactly what it was ment to do..it was creative it was nice to look at and it melded halloween and guild wars. it had more halloween in it than that bone minion..in fact the bone minion had none at all..lol.

next year maybe anet should consider calling it the guild wars art contest seeing as they chose winners that had no halloween in them..either that or choose some new judges..the rest of the winners were perfect though and did what they should have done..and im not bashing any1's entry because that bone minion is still amazing and looked like a lot of work went into it..i justt dont see the halloween theme...i still have the greatest respect for the art work though because i wouldnt be able to do it..the tattoo was a good idea not something any1 has done before but it had a third party involved which it should not have the turtle was still good but the other melded halloween better..the cube thingy tho was some1 else idea just mad king thorn stuck on there instead.
this idea has been stolen off some1 else and passed off as the entrants own work without giving credit to the person whos idea it was. i do college essays everyday and while i use others ideas in them..i make footnotes and bibliographys crediting those whom they came from..if i diddnt and still used their ideas my work could an automatic 0 and i run the risk fo being kicked from my university.
as i said i am not bashing any's entry they are all still good but some did not follow the rules as they were ment to..and the judging was..well anet did not judge on what they said they would and maybe should rethink for next year..

I guess with a win you always have to take some salt from the crowd! ^-^

Thanks for kind comments in-game and here!


1.) Costume-making is Art

2.) Costume-making is in the spirit of Halloween.
The tradition goes all the way back to Halloween's roots in Samhain: "It is believed that the need to ward off harmful spirits led to the wearing of costumes and masks. Their purpose was to disguise oneself as a harmful spirit and thus avoid harm" (Wikipedia Article)

It really isn't up to debate.

i still agree tzu what you did is art and a lot of work went into it..i liked both jora from this year and gwen from last year it was amazing and deserved a win..i diddnt even dress up as anything to do with halloween this year it was still a costume though lol

Jora <3
Although the cubee thing is kinda ripped, still, the idea is nice enough to be a winner imo.
Other winners are also deserved winners even if some others should be in winners section too.
You can never please all, but I have an idea...
So how about it ArenaNet? Free mini for all participants???? ^^

The costume/art thing comes up every year. I made my opinion on the matter clear 2 years ago. I am curious as to what order some of the detractors think winners should have been (including Nolani and other entries posted on this thread). Just for fun.

Some of you need to stop going apeshit over something that was discovered on a weekend. I have a feeling they will make a decision about how to handle the cube art submission and make a post about it sometime today. It's a bit silly to expect Anet employees to be on-call 24/7 to take care of issues that could easily be handled during business hours.

The guy gets a few more hours of fame, so what? The prizes won't be given out until later this week, so no real damage has been done. It simply means Anet needs to pick 2 more HM if they choose to remove the cube art. No big deal. To be fair, how could they have known? Until the link was posted here, I had no clue what cube art was and I'm sure most of you didn't as well.

...and um, free mini for all participants? Isn't that a bit of a slap in the face to the people that got honorable mention or higher? It's an art contest, not a give-away.

I think you misunderstood what i meant. It could be seen as GW themed decoration for your house. If you draw/paint whatever a monster from GW it wouldn't fit the Halloween-themed thing imo. But if it was made as decoration for your house (like to put into your front yard or your party room) then i could consider any monster as a Halloween themed as monsters are usually put outside during that time.

Course you could but i doub't you'd win anything

edit: actually thinking about it i think you'd not qualify as it's not GW themed

I understand what you mean, but not only sculptures are used as decoration. Could very well use a painting or drawing to spruce up a Halloween party room. Just because it might be a bit scary and can be used as a decoration is a far-stretch from being a melding of GW and Halloween.

The entries are graded on multiple fronts.

Melding of GW and halloween is important, but you can meld them perfectly and still have a poor entry. It is important to note that the golem took a helluva lot of effort to make and that it was executed beautifully. The presentation is excellent.

If you can argue that a golem is not a creative meld, than neither are any of the mad king related entries because A.net designated him as related to Halloween. It doesn't take creativity to decide to do a Mad King entry. The creativity lies in execution.

First and foremost, congratulations to all of the winners
It's too bad that there are these issues with plagiarism, it's very disappointing. I fell that the cube entry should be disqualified as well, simply because it was clearly stated on the website that the template came from that it was not to be used for a contest.
Tzu before the contest I had mentioned on cosplay.com that I liked your costume so clearly I still really like it ^^
The cardboard Fleshie I think was really cool. I can understand how it's hard to see, maybe it would have been easier for people to visualize if there was a reference picture or if it was painted or something but if you take your time looking at it, it's clear that it is an amazing piece of art. It seems like the pictures were taken of the sculpture on a bed, in which case it's huge! I'm very impressed. I guess they could have stuck a pumpkin next to it to make it more directly related to Guild Wars Halloween, but I don't feel like it's that big of a deal.
The Mad King picture with the glowing hands and evil bunny rabbits in the foreground was also very awesome, I like the creepy whimsical vibe from it.
And finally the tattoo! I think it's very geeky lol but I have seen far geekier tattoos, and to people that aren't Guild Wars fans they'll just think it's some badass pumpkin dude so it's cool in that regard too.
To address the issue of costumes being the grand prize winners for the past 4 years, I was thinking that they should probably have an entry that wasn't a costume win this year just to keep people from feeling that the contest was biased towards costumes. From the way that I understand it, judging is done by people at the office voting for their favorites, and I feel that it's easy for costumes to make a big visual impact on a first impression. However I'm clearly biased since I was one of the Halloween contest winners a few years ago with my entry being a costume :P and I love cosplay

In defense of the Golem, which at first I didn't particularly get, it's both a) kinda scary (unless you're me) and b) it's undead. Undead, like lycanthropes and demons, are especially associated with Halloween, more so than with other monsters (who really connects, say, minotaurs or hydra with Halloween? Not me). Hence, it is Halloween-related. It's not like there's no precedent - remember, the first ever win in this contest was that little Bone Fiend statue.

I'm just waiting for the new winners to be announced. And I certainly hope they are plural, because that cube guy ought to be disqualified as well.

Yes, an entry can be the perfect melding of GW and Halloween and still be poor - obviously those didn't win. And no one here is saying anything bad about the actual golem entry (that I've noticed) - everyone, including myself, seem to be in agreement that it is very well-crafted, creative and has a lot of effort into it. If this was just a Guild Wars art contest, I would be quite shocked if it didn't win and probably on here complaining that it wasn't the grand prize. But there are some of us that don't feel it is a melding of GW and Halloween, which is one of the requirements for the contest. Is it the only one that doesn't meet this? No, but since it is second place it is probably the easiest to notice/discuss.

Creativity hasn't been argued here so I don't know why you are bringing it up. It doesn't take creativity to do a Mad King entry, I agree, but it takes creativity to do something other than just a drawing of the Mad King. The entry with the bunnies blends Halloween and GW together other than it just having the Mad King, and the same with the one where he is standing in his Halloweenish lair with a picture of Livia on the table. They both have creativity in creating a scene. The only one that doesn't do more than that is the tattoo, which many have problems with winning for the fact that it would seem the entry is from the person who got the tattoo, not did it.

Someone said putting a pumpkin next to the golem would've helped, but that's not true. People are defending that it could be a decoration but then why isn't it being used as said decoration? The point is that it doesn't have a Halloween feel to it. Just saying that it's an undead or it's scary makes it Halloween is a pretty weak argument in my honest opinion. That would be like putting a pumpkin next to it and saying that it was Halloween themed. One would probably understand the Halloween reference, though minor and maybe more Autumn than Halloween, but is it really a melding? No.

Edited to add: Btw, I preferred your siege turtle over the one that actually won. Meant to say that earlier in the thread but got distracted.

Standing on a carved pumpkin.

I apologize if I wasn't being clear! The whole idea of my post was to explain that the piece won because of how highly it ranked in other areas, and to point out in relation to the halloween melding comments that the Mad King entries didn't exactly do it much better in that respect.

I don't really have a position myself on what should or shouldn't have won.. I haven't seen all the entries. But I can definitely understand why most of the pieces did win.
Thanks I do wish I'd run into the other turtle creator so I could tip my virtual hat to them.



My only real complaint is that there are not more places. Especially when rewarding a virtual item.

I guess im the only one seeing the huge epic fail on anet for picking the golem as a win.this isnt a basic ol art contest.Golem has nothing to do with halloween.
and to people saying it does cause its undead/demon and those are halloween themed blah blah blah...
In that thinking I can send in a sculpture of a dead sword or maybe a Rit spirit and itll be halloween themed?

All in all, most people who won deserved it, but others I dunno what anet was thinking.

sure why not? you don't have to have a pumpkin to make it halloween themed.

*glances at thread/contest title*

I lol'ed.

Also... Hey Regina! So, um, y'all had a fine excuse to not announce the winners this weekend, seein' as the disqualification happened at the end of the day on Friday and all... but, er, it's 'bout 6 here in PST - ought to be 'bout the end of the work day, don'cha think? Yet that cube thief ain't even DQ'ed yet. And if y'all thought this out pretty well, ought to have had a few runners-up ready to fill in spots. So, it should have taken 'bout half an hour to get all this sorted, na? Guess somebody musta just forgotten to change the site, ya?

Ok you know dang well what I ment.
Supposed to be halloween theme'd not just something guildwars with a slap of glue on it.
Otherwise my little brother would have won grand prize.


He also went all out and did a wintersday one just in case.

Update from Regina's Wiki Journal:

Thanx Inde good to see that they are infact on top of the issue about the cube thingy and any others that were plagiarized.
Again though Congrats to all the people who Won and the people who are going to win, after the disqualifications.
Especailly to all who are getting hated on for there entrys, even the ones I think sucklol

Also a quote from Regina on her talk page :

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/User_...rtwork_Contest

Wonder if it's an indication that she says "entries" not "entry".

while i do agree that costume making is art, i do think that it's unfortunate that you have to make a costume in order to have any hopes of winning first place. some of the other pieces submitted through the years that weren't costumes have been simply amazing and could've held first place. im sure they also took the same amount of effort/time as the costumes.

i think categories definitely would've been a solution to that problem, it's a shame they didn't do that from the beginning.

Anet should not call this a "contest" to highlight the fact that they're trying to make that a fun event. I mean look at the Nolani thread, Tzu's Halloween Workshop (she's not only winning, she's giving away by organising it, like other winners who participated), no one goes crazy about what this "contest" should or should not be. Art is a passionate topic, but we should only keep the "positive passion" and forget the negative one.

Cosplay won consistently because they've captured the imagination of the Anet people voting on all the artwork submitted. It wasn't in the rules (which are subjective anyway, no point in dissecting them ad nauseam) because it's not voluntary. I'm convinced that Anet's art team know well art and the overall judgement of the company is fair. It's not a "bias", it just happens to be that way statistically.

When the "contest" just started, I agreed with KiyaKoreena that they should have kept a big number of winners, even if prizes were less interesting at the bottom. It seems to be a popular event, thus give away a few pumpkins to some great artwork! (well Tzu did exactly that!)

no disrespect to the winner, but i still cant grasp how fancy dress is conceived as an "art" form.

im still lolling at the tattoo guy tbh.

some decent entries, grats.

I disagree 100%. A drawing or painting hung on the wall is a decoration and therefore would fit your definition of being Halloween related even if it was a picture of dogs playing poker. Therefore, I could take a pile of mud, throw it on the wall, call it an Ooze rendition, and therefore it would decorate my wall and qualify as a Halloween piece. Bulloney.

The fact is that a golem sculpture has ZERO to do with the rules of the contest which is clearly a tie in between Halloween and Guild Wars. Shove a pumpkin on the golem's horn and it would fit. The golem should never have won a spot and the judges failed to uphold their own rules.

The tattoo is also a CLEAR 100% violation of the rules. The tattoo artist made the picture, the submitter was just a canvas. Think of it in very simple terms: if i sketch a rough drawing of the Jora costume, or Koreenas golems light, or the awesome Mad King flaming picture #10, and then pay that person $100 or $300 to make it for me, and then submit the work as my own. Will you people complain I did the work and deserve the prize??? Because if the rules mean nothing (which clearly they do not) then you can pay other people to make an art project for you. If the tattoo is allowed to win, then next year my lack of artistic skills in drawing or painting are not going to matter because I will just hire an artist on the net to make me an original work and I will just do the design. Clearly the judges do not have a problem with other people doing the actual art. The tattoo should never in a million years been allowed past the rules committee, but the precendent is now set. Screw it, have a professional win your mini.

I would also go as far as to say the first pumpkin carving should never have made it either. It is just copying trademarked logos which shows zero originality and violates the rules. The second pumpkin was much more original.

Some of the other entries are bad and some are great, but at least they do not violate rules which should once again leave a bad taste in the mouth of anyone who entered (assuming they even got your entry which is another question on my mind). 20 winners, 2 already disqualified, and 2 more clearly violate the rules, and one more is questionable (pumpkin logos). Batting 80% for a measly 20 prizes does not feel good to me.

The contest should have clearly defined categories. There should have been more prizes. And the rules should have been followed by the judges.

Did anyone honestly expect that when Anet puts up an lolarmbraces mini there wouldn't at least be a handful of cheaters coming to the table? I mean sure, this should have been curbed by the judges but no one has internet omniscience. More to the point I bet this thread would be dead and buried by now if 20 people didn't just hit the Guild Wars lotto.

Kha, Scar... shut up.

A Halloween decoration doesn't necessarily have to be plastered with jackolaterns and colored orange and still be a Halloween decoration. By your logic, the charr Halloween mask that appears in game... isn't a Halloween mask.

Halloween has a lot of traditions based on death mythology that can be played with in a submission, not just black and orange colored cookies. Anyone complaining about the "rules being violated" clearly just has a very narrow perception of what Halloween means.


The great thing is, art is subjective. The rules are written overly broad enough that there was no violation for the golem entry. As someone who actually understands legalese, there is no violation.

Edit: Reformed, doubt it, halloween art contest threads from years past (a few of which which also had fraudulant entries that the community called out) were also heavily visted.

i can see both sides of the issue. the golem thought well made doesnt look like a halloween decoration. if it was colored and other odds/ends added to it then i would have agreed it should have won. costumes techinaclly arent/are halloween because i dont remember the true people who made the ritural wore costumes. i believe it was someone else. and with the fruad items that won i would think they could have had someone check into the work to prove they truely made it. but this is all my opnion.

LOL I love when people get tired of saying the same thing over and over and just have to tell the opposition to shut up cause they can't make a real argument anymore.

You should actually try reading what people are saying before arguing with them - nothing in the logic would imply that the Charr mask isn't Halloween. Who is arguing that costumes aren't Halloween?

Just because it is about undead, demons or other monsters and can be used as a Halloween decoration doesn't mean it is a melding of GW and Halloween. The argument here isn't that it couldn't be used as a Halloween decoration but that the actual entry, the actual created object, is not a melding of GW and Halloween. Look at some of the famous medieval/Renaissance artwork of demons and monsters like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sc...er_Anthony.jpg - would you use that as a Halloween decoration? Doubtful, but by some logic here it could very well be a Halloween piece of artwork just because it has demons in it.

This has nothing to do with just coloring something orange or adding a pumpkin or two - this is about providing a Halloween mood to an entry, and it lacks any Halloween mood. As I've said before, if it was just a really well-drawn or painted image of a flesh golem, who would be arguing for it? It probably wouldn't have even placed or been considered by ANet. The fact of the matter is that most people are arguing for it because it is probably the most creativity of all the winners, and because of this people feel it can skip other requirements.

I'm done arguing about the golem. I don't think there's anything either side can say that hasn't been said at this point. If I'm wrong, then I'm wrong, but I'm not going to just stay quiet when I feel there is something wrong with a contest I entered and put hard work in my entry to follow the rules. But honestly, I care more about the tattoo being an entry from the guy that got it and any other work not done by those that entered the contest than this sculpture. I just hope the Wintersday contest doesn't have this many problems (and also that it is to design one of the in-game holiday hats again.)