elyzia
C H O Q U E :: the tektek-ing sanctuary
^^ Still heavily under construction, but you might as well just join now that you have this convenient link & reminder that you're reading!
••• [[[ e l y z i a ' s 11th { TEKTEK CONTEST }•.•*
. ¨ ... 14 winners & approx. 1.5 mil in prizes{!!} --- ;;
[[[[ & THE WINNERS ARE ... ]]]]
••[ WELCOME GOODBYE NOTE) ----- ••
Hey guys!
I hope you all thoroughly enjoyed my 11th TekTek Contest to be hosted in this forum!
As many of you already know, this is officially the last contest I will host in this or any public forum of Gaia. This is due to the problem of all the TekTek theft that occurs on Gaia & the fact that Gaia, in accordance to their own TOS, cannot do absolutely anything to penalize or stop people from committing these "crimes". As dissappointed as I am about this being my last contest, I'm very excited by my up & coming TekTek guild C H O Q U E :: the tektek-ing sanctuary, which hopefully all of you will join... Although this is my last contest here, I'll certainly be hosting many more contests within my guild, which aims to provide basic regulation & protection against TekTek thefts/thieves that is unable to be enforced in the more public areas of Gaia.
Also, after giving it a lot of thought, I've decided to do something I've thought about doing for quite some time: create a surprise judging & prizes "section" that awards people solely based on their effort & dedication to succeeding in this contest. In the real world, it's always results, not effort, that gets rewarded. But Gaia is totally not the real world, & I've decided that creating surprise "prizes" for effort alone would be a great way of making this little corner of the world that I can control a bit more "just" & "fair". The prizes & the winners of this surprise judging section will be announced below.
Congratulations to all the winners & participants! & an extra big thank you to defloweredmind for being such an awesome "side contest" feature & host!
xo; elyzia / Kayla
PS: Be sure to check out the winners of defloweredmind's side contest feature in the third post; she awarded prizes to TONS of people, but YOU have to initiate a trade with HER to get your winnings :3
ALSO, some of the prizes seemed inconsistent low to me, so I upped some of them by a bit. Towards the bottom of this point is the section of the original contest thread that declared all the contest prizes for each placing. You can tell which one's I've increased because the old prizes are crossed out.
••[ WINNERS OF "COLLECTIVE TEKTEK"/TEKTEKER SECTION ) ----- ••
[Pictured below each winner are my three favourite TekTeks of theirs that they submitted to this contest (TekTeks that are winners in the "Individual TekTeks" category are excluded from this). However, all the TekTeks on my Favourites List -- not just the three pictured -- by each person were taken into consideration to determine the winners.
For more info on this judging section, read the judging details from the original contest thread below]
//// FIRST PLACE :: EITTA ! {♥♥}
Elyzia's Commentary: I'm so delighted to be able to announce my lovely, lovely eitta as the first place winner in yet another one of my contests (she also won first place in my 3rd contest, over a year & a half ago). Honestly, choosing eitta as my first place winner for this contest was one of the easiest decisions I've had to make in the history of my TekTek contests. I feel like your TekTek submissions to this contest not only had a more definitive style than anybody else's, but they also fit my personal style the very best. I remember you said a longgg time ago something along the lines of how the reason you always make TekTeks that I love so much is that you tend to be very good at understanding people's personal TekTeking style & making TekTeks that accommodate that... That's definitely one major reason for your success as a TekTeker. Just as important as your attentiveness to my style, though, I feel is the awesomeness of your personal TekTeking style. You always make TekTeks that are highly, highly original yet always matched superbly, & always seem to have a unique sort of high fashion "chic" vibe to them... Your TekTeks depict ideally a dreamlike, reality-based fantasy with a bit of a Lady Gaga vibe; they retain just enough of a real life imagine to appeal to people not only on a level of what they'd like their avatar to look like in an ideal world, but also on a level of what they themselves would like to be in an ideal world. The last TekTek that you submitted to my contest that was based completely on the somewhat obscure description of myself in my profile represents wonderfully how you're able to embody a person's characteristics & sense of self in an absolutely amazing TekTek. Honestly, you probably could have won the majority of my past 10 contests, too, if you'd tried as hard in those as you did in this contest; I'm incredibly delighted that you finally had the time & determination to commit yourself to one of these contests to achieve the unquestionable first place win that you've always been so capable of. Congratulations, eitta, YOU are THE TEKTEKING GODDESS :BIG:
//// SECOND PLACE :: JAYLAMEME ! {♥♥}
Elyzia's Commentary: Jay la Mine Mine! xD This, too, was actually quite an easy decision for me. Like eitta, I feel JayLaMeme's one of those TekTekers that can & will excell in any TekTek contest that she really dedicates herself too, & I'm glad you were finally able to dedicate yourself enough to one of mine to earn a high placing & create so many awesome TekTeks for me! You have an amazing talent for making TekTeks that would normally look ugly look absolutely amazing. Your originality, & your ability to execute that originality in an absolutely amazing way, is beyond impressive! Your TekTeks show immense skill & creativity, a top-notch understanding of the style of TekTeks I like, & a top-notch understanding of TekTek itself. Congrats!
//// THIRD PLACE (TIE!) :: OMGFURUBAROCKS & JJILLANE! {♥♥}
Elyzia's Commentary: I simply couldn't decide who I felt deserved to win a higher placing: jjillane or omgfurubarocks. I kept going back & forth between the two in my mind, & eventually it seemed like just making it a tie for third place was the right decision, since I feel omgfurubarocks & jjillane both did an equally amazing job. omgfurubarocks -- it became very clear to me very early on that you were really giving your all to this contest this time around, & it definitely paid off! Your TekTeks are amazingly creative, & perfectly executed! jjillane -- Congrats on winning yet another placing in another contest of mine! Your TekTeking abilities are among the very, very best on Gaia, & as you probably already know, I adore the TekTeks you make me! You do an absolutely excellent job of grasping & adapting to the style of TekTeks that different individuals like (well, the style of TekTeks that I like, at least!), & almost always your TekTeks end up layering exactly right on Gaia!
//// FOURTH PLACE (TIE!) :: PURIFYANGEL & FONYL ! {♥♥}
Elyzia's Commentary: Yes, another tie... After I decided that neither omgfurubarocks or jjillane was going to be the fourth place winner, determining one single person who did deserve to win this placing became impossible. Purifyangel -- You've submitted many TekTeks to many of my past contests, & they've always been very good, but they've never really won much of anything. I'm delighted that I'm finally able to award you with a fourth place win! In the past your TekTeks were always very good, but seemed to fall a bit short of being "amazing". As you may have figured by now, that definitely wasn't the case this round. You're an incredibly skilled TekTeker & are able to execute your original ideas & visions marvelously! Fonyl -- Fonyl Fonyl Fonyl, I bet you weren't expecting to win a placing in this category with so few TekTeks of yours on my favourites list! I just adored each individual submission of yours so much that it made sense to award you a fourth place win instead of somebody who had twice as many TekTeks of theirs on my favourites list each which I liked half as much as I did your submissions. The very fact that you managed to beat really talented TekTekers who had a much larger collection of TekTeks on my favourites list should speak volumes in & of itself for your immense talent & ability to create absolutely stunning TekTeks! Congrats!
••[ WINNERS OF "INDIVIDUAL TEKTEKS" SECTION ) ----- ••
[Because of how many absolutely amazing TekTeks there were submitted to this contest, I decided to only allow one TekTek by each individual person to win a placing in this category.]
//, FIRST PLACE ~
{{ BY: EITTA }}
//, SECOND PLACE ~
{{ BY: OMGFURUBAROCKS }}
//, THIRD PLACE ~
{{ BY: JAYLAMEME }}
//, FOURTH PLACE ~
{{ BY: JOHN REESE }}
//, FIFTH PLACE ~
{{ BY: BROKENJANDERS }}
//, SIXTH PLACE ~
{{ BY: DOMMIESGRL }}
//, SEVENTH PLACE ~
{{ BY: STREETSOFNOWHERE }}
//, EIGHTH PLACE ~
{{ BY: TORGOPASTA }}
//, NINTH PLACE ~
{{ BY: STARZTRUK }}
//, TENTH PLACE ~
{{ BY: J0YZ }}
••[ WINNERS OF SURPRISE SECTION FOR EFFORT & DEDICATION ) ----- ••
//// FIRST PLACE :: BROKENJANDERS ! {♥♥}
PRIZE: 120k
Elyzia's Commentary: Unfortunately you weren't able to win a placing higher than fifth (although Fifth Place is pretty ******** high in a contest like this, considering who you're up against!), but the amount of effort & dedication you put into this contest from the very beginning to the very end really stood out in my mind, & apparently in many other people's as well. You happen to be one of the winners in this section who happened to also make a ton of totally awesome TekTeks, but your enthusiasm & efforts towards this contest were also totally awesome. You were a joy to have around, & I'm delighted to have you as Crew in Choque!
//// SECOND PLACE :: GODDESS OF GREAT! {♥♥}
PRIZE: 100k
Elyzia's Commentary: Goddess, you're one of the most dedicated & optimistic people I know on Gaia. It totally amazes me how so many people who really excel & end up winning prizes in my contests get discouraged & down on themselves so easily, yet you're always upbeat & cheerful & don't seem to get discouraged no matter WHAT happens. You're clearly the sort of person who really follows through on something when they decide to dedicate themselves to it, & that quality will get you very, very far in life.
//// THIRD PLACE :: EITTA ! {♥♥}
PRIZE: 80k
Elyzia's Commentary: Yes eitta, another thing you won a prize in!! All your totally amazing TekTeks aside, I feel your efforts themselves in this contest were extraordinary. From all your comments it seemed like quite an amazingly high percentage of your spare time went into making TekTeks for this contest. There were at least three occasions throughout this contest when you dropped by to apologize for not being around much & explained how you were busy with college & everything where I thought to myself after reading them "... eitta hasn't been submitting lots of TekTeks recently? Really?" not because your awesome TekTeks were something I just totally breezed by or anything, but because you'd clearly become much, much more dedicated to this contest then I realized for quite some time. & your final submission to this contest was THE most thoughtful & meaningful TekTek anybody's submitted to any of my contests, ever.
//// FOURTH PLACE :: KITCAT6363 ! {♥♥}
Prize: 60k
Elyzia's Commentary: You knew this was probably coming heart Despite your obvious "handicap" of being incredibly new to TekTeking in a contest where you were competing against tons of people who had been TekTeking for years, your efforts & dedication in & of themselves both enabled your TekTeking skills to greatly increase, & won you the genuine respect of many people, especially myself. Your enthusiasm & immense dedication to this contest was made most apparent by the fact that you got off to a bad start with me, a worse start with defloweredmind, & managed to TOTALLY change those negative first impressions of you as much as humanly possible. The fact that you even cared enough to persist through & bother with deflowered & myself in instances in which nearly anybody else would have just been like, "******** this, I'm leaving this thread forever" shows immense dedication.
//// OTHER WINNERS :: OMGFURUBAROCKS, IIBINGBING, LHIM0906, GREENYFREE21 ! {♥♥}
Prize: 25K
••[ RECAP: CONTEST PRIZES ) ----- ••
For the “Individual TekTek Category:
First Place: 120k ; Thank You Letter for November 2010; three surprise items worth over 20k [estimated total worth of prize: at least 250k]
Second Place: 90k; Thank You Letter for November 2010; three surprise items worth over 10k.
[estimate total worth of prize: at least 200k]
Third Place: 60k; two surprise items worth over 15k
[estimate total worth of prize: 100k]
Fourth Place: 35k 45k; three four surprise items worth over 5k.
[estimate total worth of prize: 75k]
Fifth Place: 30k 35k, three surprise items worth over 5k
[estimate total worth of prize: 55k]
Sixth Place: 15k 35k
Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, & Tenth Place: 10k
Seventh Place: 20k
Eighth, Ninth, & Tenth Place: 15k
For the “Collective TekTek”/”TekTekER” Category:
First Place: 120k ; Thank You Letter for November 2010; three surprise items worth over 20k [estimated total worth of prize: at least 250k]
Additionally, first place winner in this category will win the special reward of being featured in my next TekTek contest & having everybody make awesome TekTeks for THEM. &, yes, they’ll still be able to participate in my next contest if they want, since that won’t be the entirety of the contest, just one element.) since that's no longer quite applicable, instead the first place winner of this category also wins a big guild-sponsored contest in Choque -- financed entirely by me -- that's a TekTek contest dedicated entirely to people making TekTeks for them!
Second Place: 90k; Thank You Letter for November 2010; three surprise items worth over 10k.
[estimate total worth of prize: at least 200k]
Third Place: 60k 70k; two three surprise items worth over 15k
[estimate total worth of prize: 130k]
Fourth Place: 35k 50k; three four surprise items worth over 5k.
[estimate total worth of prize: 80k]
••[ RECAP :: JUDGING: FORMAT, STYLISTIC ELEMENTS, & SUCH ) ----- ••
NOTE: You’re not “required” to read this section. However, if you’re serious about this contest, you’ll almost definitely want to, & no matter WHAT it will help you to do well in it!
How this Contest Will be Judged
There will be two judging categories, one rewarding individual TekTeks, the other rewarding people for their overall “collection” of submissions on my favourites list.
The prizes for both categories are the same, but the individual TekTek category has more chances to win.
However, people who submit many TekTeks that I really like to the contest have the most chances to win, since their submissions could win them a prize in both the “TekTeker” & “Individual TekTeks” category. However, to make sure people who only submit a couple or even just one TekTek to this contest still stand a fair chance at winning, when judging the Individual TekTek category I’ll only take into consideration two TekTeks by each TekTeker, so with people with more than two TekTeks of theres on my favourites list, what I’ll do is for the Individual TekTek judging choose my two favourite submissions of theres & only take those two submissions into consideration for that category.
Hopefully that makes sense, I know it’s slightly complicated, but people who have participated in previous contests of mine can probably get a pretty good idea of why I feel the judging format necessitates some complexity & definite clarity from the beginning.
Things I take into consideration when judging the contest:
- Above & beyond all else, my personal preferences: I know it’s not objective, I know it’s not measurable, I know I can’t score it with numbers or whatever, but that doesn’t change the fact that these TekTek contests are about me & creating TekTeks for me that I like. Even though my personal preferences aren’t measurable per se, the feedback I give is super detailed, the information I’ve provided in this post is super detailed, & no participant in any of my 10 previous contests has ever complained about my judging (I could go on, but I don’t need to).
- Colour: Balance, Matching, & Schemes: I’d say it’s pretty much impossible to overstate how important all three of those things are to making a good TekTek as far as the general Gaian TekTeker & People-With-Good-Avatars public is concerned, & it’s definitely impossible to overstate how necessary those three things are in a TekTek for it to stand any chance of winning a placing. & I can get pretty damn picky about how “this red is darker than that red” or “you need an item of this colour here & here to balance this out”. & colour schemes are definitely something that I care extra-much about. Obviously, having a clearly defined colour scheme is basic TekTeking knowledge & what everybody knows to do. However, I love much more than the normal person unique & creative colour schemes. On the flip side, if you’re gonna submit a TekTek with a “colour scheme” or white, black, & grey, or white, black, & red, you better make sure it’s kickass as hell in every other way.
- Uniqueness: Originality, creativity, uniqueness… Very important to me. Not much more to say about that.
- Your Effort & Dedication: In the real world trying really hard doesn’t ultimately count for s**t if your efforts don’t yield awesome results. However, this isn’t the real world, not at all, & although nobody will receive any prize in any contest of mine here JUST for trying really hard, effort & dedication does count for something, & could get you surprisingly far for many different reasons.
- Correct Layering: If you’re caught using Dream Free in order to avoid having to conform to Gaia layering standards, you won’t win anything for certain, & you’ll probably be Blacklisted. With many TekTeks, I don’t realize what layering issues they have or don’t have until I try to use them as my avatar after the contest is over. However, throughout the course of the contest my avatar is constantly changing between various submissions that have been added to my Favourites List. If while the contest is still going on I try to use one of your submissions as my avatar & I find that it’s layering is off in ways that can’t be overlooked or fixed by me & therefore make the TekTek unusuable to me, it will be removed from my Favourites List. On the flip side, is while the contest is still going on I use one of your submissions as my avatar & am shocked to find how surprisingly perfectly everything layers, then that will reflect very favorably on you. In my last TekTek contest, correct layering ended up being perhaps THE determining factor as to who won first place & who won a lesser placing.
… I’m sure there are some small things I forgot to mention, but the very fact that I forgot to mention them should show how important they are, lmfao.
^^ Still heavily under construction, but you might as well just join now that you have this convenient link & reminder that you're reading!
••• [[[ e l y z i a ' s 11th { TEKTEK CONTEST }•.•*
. ¨ ... 14 winners & approx. 1.5 mil in prizes{!!} --- ;;
[[[[ & THE WINNERS ARE ... ]]]]
••[ WELCOME GOODBYE NOTE) ----- ••
Hey guys!
I hope you all thoroughly enjoyed my 11th TekTek Contest to be hosted in this forum!
As many of you already know, this is officially the last contest I will host in this or any public forum of Gaia. This is due to the problem of all the TekTek theft that occurs on Gaia & the fact that Gaia, in accordance to their own TOS, cannot do absolutely anything to penalize or stop people from committing these "crimes". As dissappointed as I am about this being my last contest, I'm very excited by my up & coming TekTek guild C H O Q U E :: the tektek-ing sanctuary, which hopefully all of you will join... Although this is my last contest here, I'll certainly be hosting many more contests within my guild, which aims to provide basic regulation & protection against TekTek thefts/thieves that is unable to be enforced in the more public areas of Gaia.
Also, after giving it a lot of thought, I've decided to do something I've thought about doing for quite some time: create a surprise judging & prizes "section" that awards people solely based on their effort & dedication to succeeding in this contest. In the real world, it's always results, not effort, that gets rewarded. But Gaia is totally not the real world, & I've decided that creating surprise "prizes" for effort alone would be a great way of making this little corner of the world that I can control a bit more "just" & "fair". The prizes & the winners of this surprise judging section will be announced below.
Congratulations to all the winners & participants! & an extra big thank you to defloweredmind for being such an awesome "side contest" feature & host!
xo; elyzia / Kayla
PS: Be sure to check out the winners of defloweredmind's side contest feature in the third post; she awarded prizes to TONS of people, but YOU have to initiate a trade with HER to get your winnings :3
ALSO, some of the prizes seemed inconsistent low to me, so I upped some of them by a bit. Towards the bottom of this point is the section of the original contest thread that declared all the contest prizes for each placing. You can tell which one's I've increased because the old prizes are crossed out.
••[ WINNERS OF "COLLECTIVE TEKTEK"/TEKTEKER SECTION ) ----- ••
[Pictured below each winner are my three favourite TekTeks of theirs that they submitted to this contest (TekTeks that are winners in the "Individual TekTeks" category are excluded from this). However, all the TekTeks on my Favourites List -- not just the three pictured -- by each person were taken into consideration to determine the winners.
For more info on this judging section, read the judging details from the original contest thread below]
//// FIRST PLACE :: EITTA ! {♥♥}
Elyzia's Commentary: I'm so delighted to be able to announce my lovely, lovely eitta as the first place winner in yet another one of my contests (she also won first place in my 3rd contest, over a year & a half ago). Honestly, choosing eitta as my first place winner for this contest was one of the easiest decisions I've had to make in the history of my TekTek contests. I feel like your TekTek submissions to this contest not only had a more definitive style than anybody else's, but they also fit my personal style the very best. I remember you said a longgg time ago something along the lines of how the reason you always make TekTeks that I love so much is that you tend to be very good at understanding people's personal TekTeking style & making TekTeks that accommodate that... That's definitely one major reason for your success as a TekTeker. Just as important as your attentiveness to my style, though, I feel is the awesomeness of your personal TekTeking style. You always make TekTeks that are highly, highly original yet always matched superbly, & always seem to have a unique sort of high fashion "chic" vibe to them... Your TekTeks depict ideally a dreamlike, reality-based fantasy with a bit of a Lady Gaga vibe; they retain just enough of a real life imagine to appeal to people not only on a level of what they'd like their avatar to look like in an ideal world, but also on a level of what they themselves would like to be in an ideal world. The last TekTek that you submitted to my contest that was based completely on the somewhat obscure description of myself in my profile represents wonderfully how you're able to embody a person's characteristics & sense of self in an absolutely amazing TekTek. Honestly, you probably could have won the majority of my past 10 contests, too, if you'd tried as hard in those as you did in this contest; I'm incredibly delighted that you finally had the time & determination to commit yourself to one of these contests to achieve the unquestionable first place win that you've always been so capable of. Congratulations, eitta, YOU are THE TEKTEKING GODDESS :BIG:
//// SECOND PLACE :: JAYLAMEME ! {♥♥}
Elyzia's Commentary: Jay la Mine Mine! xD This, too, was actually quite an easy decision for me. Like eitta, I feel JayLaMeme's one of those TekTekers that can & will excell in any TekTek contest that she really dedicates herself too, & I'm glad you were finally able to dedicate yourself enough to one of mine to earn a high placing & create so many awesome TekTeks for me! You have an amazing talent for making TekTeks that would normally look ugly look absolutely amazing. Your originality, & your ability to execute that originality in an absolutely amazing way, is beyond impressive! Your TekTeks show immense skill & creativity, a top-notch understanding of the style of TekTeks I like, & a top-notch understanding of TekTek itself. Congrats!
//// THIRD PLACE (TIE!) :: OMGFURUBAROCKS & JJILLANE! {♥♥}
Elyzia's Commentary: I simply couldn't decide who I felt deserved to win a higher placing: jjillane or omgfurubarocks. I kept going back & forth between the two in my mind, & eventually it seemed like just making it a tie for third place was the right decision, since I feel omgfurubarocks & jjillane both did an equally amazing job. omgfurubarocks -- it became very clear to me very early on that you were really giving your all to this contest this time around, & it definitely paid off! Your TekTeks are amazingly creative, & perfectly executed! jjillane -- Congrats on winning yet another placing in another contest of mine! Your TekTeking abilities are among the very, very best on Gaia, & as you probably already know, I adore the TekTeks you make me! You do an absolutely excellent job of grasping & adapting to the style of TekTeks that different individuals like (well, the style of TekTeks that I like, at least!), & almost always your TekTeks end up layering exactly right on Gaia!
//// FOURTH PLACE (TIE!) :: PURIFYANGEL & FONYL ! {♥♥}
Elyzia's Commentary: Yes, another tie... After I decided that neither omgfurubarocks or jjillane was going to be the fourth place winner, determining one single person who did deserve to win this placing became impossible. Purifyangel -- You've submitted many TekTeks to many of my past contests, & they've always been very good, but they've never really won much of anything. I'm delighted that I'm finally able to award you with a fourth place win! In the past your TekTeks were always very good, but seemed to fall a bit short of being "amazing". As you may have figured by now, that definitely wasn't the case this round. You're an incredibly skilled TekTeker & are able to execute your original ideas & visions marvelously! Fonyl -- Fonyl Fonyl Fonyl, I bet you weren't expecting to win a placing in this category with so few TekTeks of yours on my favourites list! I just adored each individual submission of yours so much that it made sense to award you a fourth place win instead of somebody who had twice as many TekTeks of theirs on my favourites list each which I liked half as much as I did your submissions. The very fact that you managed to beat really talented TekTekers who had a much larger collection of TekTeks on my favourites list should speak volumes in & of itself for your immense talent & ability to create absolutely stunning TekTeks! Congrats!
••[ WINNERS OF "INDIVIDUAL TEKTEKS" SECTION ) ----- ••
[Because of how many absolutely amazing TekTeks there were submitted to this contest, I decided to only allow one TekTek by each individual person to win a placing in this category.]
//, FIRST PLACE ~
{{ BY: EITTA }}
//, SECOND PLACE ~
{{ BY: OMGFURUBAROCKS }}
//, THIRD PLACE ~
{{ BY: JAYLAMEME }}
//, FOURTH PLACE ~
{{ BY: JOHN REESE }}
//, FIFTH PLACE ~
{{ BY: BROKENJANDERS }}
//, SIXTH PLACE ~
{{ BY: DOMMIESGRL }}
//, SEVENTH PLACE ~
{{ BY: STREETSOFNOWHERE }}
//, EIGHTH PLACE ~
{{ BY: TORGOPASTA }}
//, NINTH PLACE ~
{{ BY: STARZTRUK }}
//, TENTH PLACE ~
{{ BY: J0YZ }}
••[ WINNERS OF SURPRISE SECTION FOR EFFORT & DEDICATION ) ----- ••
//// FIRST PLACE :: BROKENJANDERS ! {♥♥}
PRIZE: 120k
Elyzia's Commentary: Unfortunately you weren't able to win a placing higher than fifth (although Fifth Place is pretty ******** high in a contest like this, considering who you're up against!), but the amount of effort & dedication you put into this contest from the very beginning to the very end really stood out in my mind, & apparently in many other people's as well. You happen to be one of the winners in this section who happened to also make a ton of totally awesome TekTeks, but your enthusiasm & efforts towards this contest were also totally awesome. You were a joy to have around, & I'm delighted to have you as Crew in Choque!
//// SECOND PLACE :: GODDESS OF GREAT! {♥♥}
PRIZE: 100k
Elyzia's Commentary: Goddess, you're one of the most dedicated & optimistic people I know on Gaia. It totally amazes me how so many people who really excel & end up winning prizes in my contests get discouraged & down on themselves so easily, yet you're always upbeat & cheerful & don't seem to get discouraged no matter WHAT happens. You're clearly the sort of person who really follows through on something when they decide to dedicate themselves to it, & that quality will get you very, very far in life.
//// THIRD PLACE :: EITTA ! {♥♥}
PRIZE: 80k
Elyzia's Commentary: Yes eitta, another thing you won a prize in!! All your totally amazing TekTeks aside, I feel your efforts themselves in this contest were extraordinary. From all your comments it seemed like quite an amazingly high percentage of your spare time went into making TekTeks for this contest. There were at least three occasions throughout this contest when you dropped by to apologize for not being around much & explained how you were busy with college & everything where I thought to myself after reading them "... eitta hasn't been submitting lots of TekTeks recently? Really?" not because your awesome TekTeks were something I just totally breezed by or anything, but because you'd clearly become much, much more dedicated to this contest then I realized for quite some time. & your final submission to this contest was THE most thoughtful & meaningful TekTek anybody's submitted to any of my contests, ever.
//// FOURTH PLACE :: KITCAT6363 ! {♥♥}
Prize: 60k
Elyzia's Commentary: You knew this was probably coming heart Despite your obvious "handicap" of being incredibly new to TekTeking in a contest where you were competing against tons of people who had been TekTeking for years, your efforts & dedication in & of themselves both enabled your TekTeking skills to greatly increase, & won you the genuine respect of many people, especially myself. Your enthusiasm & immense dedication to this contest was made most apparent by the fact that you got off to a bad start with me, a worse start with defloweredmind, & managed to TOTALLY change those negative first impressions of you as much as humanly possible. The fact that you even cared enough to persist through & bother with deflowered & myself in instances in which nearly anybody else would have just been like, "******** this, I'm leaving this thread forever" shows immense dedication.
//// OTHER WINNERS :: OMGFURUBAROCKS, IIBINGBING, LHIM0906, GREENYFREE21 ! {♥♥}
Prize: 25K
••[ RECAP: CONTEST PRIZES ) ----- ••
For the “Individual TekTek Category:
First Place: 120k ; Thank You Letter for November 2010; three surprise items worth over 20k [estimated total worth of prize: at least 250k]
Second Place: 90k; Thank You Letter for November 2010; three surprise items worth over 10k.
[estimate total worth of prize: at least 200k]
Third Place: 60k; two surprise items worth over 15k
[estimate total worth of prize: 100k]
Fourth Place: 35k 45k; three four surprise items worth over 5k.
[estimate total worth of prize: 75k]
Fifth Place: 30k 35k, three surprise items worth over 5k
[estimate total worth of prize: 55k]
Sixth Place: 15k 35k
Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, & Tenth Place: 10k
Seventh Place: 20k
Eighth, Ninth, & Tenth Place: 15k
For the “Collective TekTek”/”TekTekER” Category:
First Place: 120k ; Thank You Letter for November 2010; three surprise items worth over 20k [estimated total worth of prize: at least 250k]
Additionally, first place winner in this category will win the special reward of being featured in my next TekTek contest & having everybody make awesome TekTeks for THEM. &, yes, they’ll still be able to participate in my next contest if they want, since that won’t be the entirety of the contest, just one element.) since that's no longer quite applicable, instead the first place winner of this category also wins a big guild-sponsored contest in Choque -- financed entirely by me -- that's a TekTek contest dedicated entirely to people making TekTeks for them!
Second Place: 90k; Thank You Letter for November 2010; three surprise items worth over 10k.
[estimate total worth of prize: at least 200k]
Third Place: 60k 70k; two three surprise items worth over 15k
[estimate total worth of prize: 130k]
Fourth Place: 35k 50k; three four surprise items worth over 5k.
[estimate total worth of prize: 80k]
••[ RECAP :: JUDGING: FORMAT, STYLISTIC ELEMENTS, & SUCH ) ----- ••
NOTE: You’re not “required” to read this section. However, if you’re serious about this contest, you’ll almost definitely want to, & no matter WHAT it will help you to do well in it!
How this Contest Will be Judged
There will be two judging categories, one rewarding individual TekTeks, the other rewarding people for their overall “collection” of submissions on my favourites list.
The prizes for both categories are the same, but the individual TekTek category has more chances to win.
However, people who submit many TekTeks that I really like to the contest have the most chances to win, since their submissions could win them a prize in both the “TekTeker” & “Individual TekTeks” category. However, to make sure people who only submit a couple or even just one TekTek to this contest still stand a fair chance at winning, when judging the Individual TekTek category I’ll only take into consideration two TekTeks by each TekTeker, so with people with more than two TekTeks of theres on my favourites list, what I’ll do is for the Individual TekTek judging choose my two favourite submissions of theres & only take those two submissions into consideration for that category.
Hopefully that makes sense, I know it’s slightly complicated, but people who have participated in previous contests of mine can probably get a pretty good idea of why I feel the judging format necessitates some complexity & definite clarity from the beginning.
Things I take into consideration when judging the contest:
- Above & beyond all else, my personal preferences: I know it’s not objective, I know it’s not measurable, I know I can’t score it with numbers or whatever, but that doesn’t change the fact that these TekTek contests are about me & creating TekTeks for me that I like. Even though my personal preferences aren’t measurable per se, the feedback I give is super detailed, the information I’ve provided in this post is super detailed, & no participant in any of my 10 previous contests has ever complained about my judging (I could go on, but I don’t need to).
- Colour: Balance, Matching, & Schemes: I’d say it’s pretty much impossible to overstate how important all three of those things are to making a good TekTek as far as the general Gaian TekTeker & People-With-Good-Avatars public is concerned, & it’s definitely impossible to overstate how necessary those three things are in a TekTek for it to stand any chance of winning a placing. & I can get pretty damn picky about how “this red is darker than that red” or “you need an item of this colour here & here to balance this out”. & colour schemes are definitely something that I care extra-much about. Obviously, having a clearly defined colour scheme is basic TekTeking knowledge & what everybody knows to do. However, I love much more than the normal person unique & creative colour schemes. On the flip side, if you’re gonna submit a TekTek with a “colour scheme” or white, black, & grey, or white, black, & red, you better make sure it’s kickass as hell in every other way.
- Uniqueness: Originality, creativity, uniqueness… Very important to me. Not much more to say about that.
- Your Effort & Dedication: In the real world trying really hard doesn’t ultimately count for s**t if your efforts don’t yield awesome results. However, this isn’t the real world, not at all, & although nobody will receive any prize in any contest of mine here JUST for trying really hard, effort & dedication does count for something, & could get you surprisingly far for many different reasons.
- Correct Layering: If you’re caught using Dream Free in order to avoid having to conform to Gaia layering standards, you won’t win anything for certain, & you’ll probably be Blacklisted. With many TekTeks, I don’t realize what layering issues they have or don’t have until I try to use them as my avatar after the contest is over. However, throughout the course of the contest my avatar is constantly changing between various submissions that have been added to my Favourites List. If while the contest is still going on I try to use one of your submissions as my avatar & I find that it’s layering is off in ways that can’t be overlooked or fixed by me & therefore make the TekTek unusuable to me, it will be removed from my Favourites List. On the flip side, is while the contest is still going on I use one of your submissions as my avatar & am shocked to find how surprisingly perfectly everything layers, then that will reflect very favorably on you. In my last TekTek contest, correct layering ended up being perhaps THE determining factor as to who won first place & who won a lesser placing.
… I’m sure there are some small things I forgot to mention, but the very fact that I forgot to mention them should show how important they are, lmfao.
