Category Archives: Challenge Favorites

I was stunned to find 159 entries waiting for me from Character Contest 90 -- you all outdid yourselves. They were universally high in quality as well, which pleased me greatly.

Furthermore, we had quite a few first-time entrants. Welcome to you all! I'm humbled and grateful to anyone who is willing to share his or her creativity with the world.

I do want to say a quick word about the point of these contests in light of so many new folks joining us. The selection process is just one guy -- usually me -- and his opinion of what looks neat. If you're not among the finalists it doesn't mean your work is bad or unappreciated, it just means on that day it didn't happen to beat out a few other entries in my own personal opinion. If you see these weekly contests as a chance to flex your creative muscles and to have fun, you're already a winner before you even start. The rest is just for fun.

Since everyone did such a great job this week, though, I wanted to put up a gallery with one illustration from every person who entered. For those who had multiple entries, I picked the one that I thought was the best. And if you sent some in but don't see one here, please let me know and I'll correct the oversight.

Ladies and gentlemen, your Character Design Contest 90 entrants!

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Many thanks to everyone who took the time to enter our Mother's Day Pop Quiz! We had some fun entries that really gave me a chuckle. Without further ado, here they are:

I had a hard time picking a winner. I liked LogosGal's book cover very much, but I thought it was more super-girlfriend related than super-mom. Similarly, I liked Myro's and LoneWolf6155's jokes a LOT but I had a hard time working through the arrangement of the word balloons. JohnnyGear's Rose Galaxy was sweet, but didn't quite have the visual impact I was hoping for. Mad Doctor's entry, like Skybandit's, was great but a little dark. Cliff's was probably the most cohesive and "Mother's Day" like of all, but I got more "Princess" than "Super" from it.

I liked Atomic Punk's entry, especially the pink bow on the rocket launcher and the funky background. The concept of both Shiboreth's and Gene's was good but I didn't feel like I'd "get" them from just the images. Herr D's was cute but it looked more like they were all just dudes standing around rather than a basket of severed heads.

Kytana's was adorable, particularly the combination of the mask with the PJs.

ManiacMick's entry was solid but the perspective on the book bothered me a little, and I felt like too much space was taken up with the table.

Which sort of left me with NHA247's:

It was thiiiis close to falling into the Gene/Shiboreth category of not quite getting it purely from the visual, but I thought the floating flowers gave it an edge. And I laughed at the idea of a super-powered guy giving his mom dirty laundry to do on Mother's Day.

So congratulations to NHA247, and another sincere thanks to everyone who participated.

Happy Mother's Day everyone!

Judge Woody from "Super Omega Deathbattle Warzone Apocalypse" has announced the winners of the big contest on the game's Facebook page. These nine winners will have their characters fully illustrated in an awesome pose within a promo poster by Livio Ramondelli of "Transformers: Autocracy" and "DC Universe Online" fame.

I'd like to take a moment to thank Woody for his thorough, thoughtful, and insightful commentary on all of the contest entries. He took so much time in his judging, it was really an honor and a pleasure to collaborate with him. Plus, for once I didn't have to agonize over anything, someone else had to!

And now, your winners, along with commentary by the fantastic Woody, who chose all of these on his own with no input from me.

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Judge Woody from "Super Omega Deathbattle Warzone Apocalypse" announced his final round of Honorable Mentions today on the game's Facebook page. For your convenience I am re-posting them here as well, but for the most up-to-date results you should really follow them on Facebook. Tomorrow is the big day when he reveals the nine final winning selections.

Ladies and gentlemen, your final batch of Honorable Mentions, along with Woody's comments. Congratulations to these folks on jobs well done!

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Judge Woody from "Super Omega Deathbattle Warzone Apocalypse" announced his third round of Honorable Mentions yesterday on the game's Facebook page. For your convenience I am re-posting them here as well, but for the most up-to-date results you should really follow them on Facebook. Today he'll be posting the last of the Honorable Mentions, then tomorrow we get the nine overall winners.

Ladies and gentlemen, your second batch of Honorable Mentions, along with Woody's comments. Congratulations to these folks on jobs well done!

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Judge Woody from "Super Omega Deathbattle Warzone Apocalypse" announced his second round of Honorable Mentions yesterday on the game's Facebook page. For your convenience I am re-posting them here as well, but for the most up-to-date results you should really follow them on Facebook.

Ladies and gentlemen, your second batch of Honorable Mentions, along with Woody's comments. Congratulations to these folks on jobs well done!

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Judge Woody from "Super Omega Deathbattle Warzone Apocalypse" has announced his first round of Honorable Mentions today on the game's Facebook page. He'll be doing that all week, leading up to the nine winners on Friday. Your best bet is to "like" their page, as everything will be announced there first.

Ladies and gentlemen, your first batch of Honorable Mentions, along with Woody's comments. Congratulations to these folks on jobs well done!

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Your last challenge was to come up with the best replacement caption for this comics panel:

The funniest suggestions in my opinion were:

• alphaalpharomeo: And then Batman punched his way of a stomach!
• BenK22: The first time Peter saw Claire in a bikini.
• Mr.MikeK: The real Napoleon Dynamite discovered!
• Kaito94: “And then God said: Let there be Michael Bay!”
• Xavierking5: The alien probe proved to have… complications.
• E350: …he launches into an EXTREME HUG.

As you can see, we had some gems. But for me it wasn't really close, as I almost BLOOFed myself when reading the entry of ... Bael!

I'm such a sucker for that movie.

Well done, Bael, let me know what you'd like for your prize!

Many thanks to everyone who participated in Pop Quiz 8, from our first-timers (welcome!) to old friends returning after a long absence (hi Solander!).

Since everyone only gets one entry with these single-day affairs, I like to show them all. So without further ado, your entries!

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We had a huge response to our "Space Pirate" Character Design Contest, thank you all very much! I saw a number of new folks entering for the first time as well, and I wanted to be sure to extend a warm welcome to them. I hope we see you around here for a long time to come!

By way of introduction, I have downloaded all of the submissions and looked through them each. Because there are so many (101!), I can't possibly show them all. Instead I go through and single out those entries that have something really special or unique about them, and show those in a gallery. Those are our Finalists, and I pick the overall winner from that group. Sometimes it's for the overall impact of the illustration, but sometimes it's just for one element that I liked a lot.

If your entry isn't one of the Finalists, that doesn't mean it wasn't good (even VERY good), or that I didn't like it, or that you're a bad person. I just have to limit them to a manageable number and, like on American Idol where sometimes great performers get cut, some fine illustrations will get left by the wayside. That's why I encourage everyone to go through the original submissions one by one, because you might just find your favorite there that I overlooked.

With that said, here are your Finalists (click on any one to start the slideshow -- the name of the artist and the image name is at the bottom):

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