[kaho]

As stated in the announcement, if you are confused and have anything you want to ask about the competition, post them here and a staff will answer your question ^^/

Below are some FAQ:

1. How do I submit my work?

Please PM your work to one of the following staff
kaho, litewolf, ニョロロ

You must title your PM with this subject "MNR 2009 Competition Entry"
And state in your entry which division and category you are entering. ie. Corda or Haruka Art or Text

2. How long must my text entry be?

We are going to be flexible about it, but you can keep it to around 5000 words. You can go under it or over it, it is up to you. But no adult content for your text entry is allowed.

3. What size should my art entry be?

Please save it as a jpg, gif, png file under 2MB

4. How do I vote?

Voting is done in a double blind manner to the entry submitter and the voters (of course, staff has access to the data). You submit your entries to us, and we will post them once the voting round starts. However, we will not release your name next to your entry so that your friends can obviously see your work and vote for you; likewise, those who vote for you will also be screened so as to promote their anonymity.

We will be opening the voting in the MNR Livejournal community. It is okay if you do not have a LJ account, you just need to give an anonymous vote stating who you are on MNR for your vote to be counted. Details of this will be added once all the entries have been received.

5. If I have won, how do I receive my prize?

You will be PMed by one of the staff who will be sending you the prize. So your personal info will not be exposed to anyone else. Yes, we do try to ship to everywhere in the world via standard airmail, if you wish for other method of shipment, you will have to pay for it. We are also not responsible for any tax/duty charges.

Feel free to ask more questions if not listed above.

[Murasaki]

So can an art submission be hand-drawn with pencil, and then scanned? Or does it have to be photoshopped, etc?

[kaho]

Murasaki, on Sep 25 2009, 08:59 PM, said:

So can an art submission be hand-drawn with pencil, and then scanned? Or does it have to be photoshopped, etc?

yes it can ^^
Actually, it is precisely the point of an art entry. We dont want photoshopping of official arts, but something original that come from you

[Murasaki]

Another question: does full portrait mean a drawing of the whole body?

[litewolf]

Yes ^^ From head to feet, I know it sounds hard but please try your best ^^

[kaho]

added some FAQ to the first post for your reference ^^

[NeoAngelique]

The prizes can be sent to other countries without problem? or the sending is to usa?

[NYORORO]

NeoAngelique, on Sep 25 2009, 10:02 AM, said:

The prizes can be sent to other countries without problem? or the sending is to usa?

Yes, we can pretty much send the prizes to most countries, provided it's approved by the customs of the receiver's country. So please check to see if the prizes can be accepted by your country's customs. (They usually have a list of what can be imported and what can't be imported.)

Please also bear in mind that we are not responsible for ANY duty charges on the items sent!

P.S. Insurance/registered mail upon request, but the winner has to take care of all the extra costs for the insurance/registered services.

[Saoi]

Um...I'm wondering how the entries will be judged. Like, will they be judged based on originality? Practicality? Quality? Or just which one people like the most?

Also, for the art department, I didn't really understand ^^;; Are we sort of like a reference sheet? Or can we do a CG (if we can)?

[NYORORO]

Saoi, on Sep 25 2009, 03:14 PM, said:

Um...I'm wondering how the entries will be judged. Like, will they be judged based on originality? Practicality? Quality? Or just which one people like the most?

For the ones that are being voted by other members (or 'the public'), it would be impossible to ask them to judge based on a list of criteria. Since no one will follow them anyway 8D. We could try to tell them to look for certain things, but once we do, it's essentially the same as asking others to see things from staff members' perspective. WE'D LOVE KNOW WHAT YOU GUYS THINK! So when it comes to the voting round, voters need to submit comments/constructive criticism just so there wouldn't be any "I LIEK IT BECAUSE IT'S PRETTY!!!" type of comments. Moreover, we would also like to preserve the public's autonomy to decide which "aspect" is more important than the others. Yes, originality and quality are both very important in this contest, but we would not ask people to only focus on those.

So the general thing to keep in mind is to aim for a well-rounded presentation that gets your creation across while making it "interesting" for the public. Don't worry about what the staff members think, unless you're aiming for Staff's pick 8D.

Quote

Also, for the art department, I didn't really understand ^^;; Are we sort of like a reference sheet? Or can we do a CG (if we can)?

Basically, what you do is to draw a full body design of the character you want to submit, and that's all that is required from you. For extras, you may color, add scribbles (to explain what you did with the designs) and any other things you can think of, so go wild with it!

As for CGs, yes, if you can draw a complete picture with your character in a CG, then please, by all means do it 8D! However, the most important thing to note here is that, we do not allow contestants to submit photoshopped (as in taking official pictures and putting them together type of editing) work. It is okay if you are using photoshop for coloring, special effects and touch ups; but DEFINITELY NOT MAKING A "NEW" CHARACTER FROM OFFICIAL IMAGES OR IMAGES FROM OTHER SOURCES.

[Cloudy]

So along with the full body portrait can we submit another picture of the same character doing something else (just like another 1 or 2 pics?)? Like if the character was playing an instrument or just doing something random? Is it okay as long as it pertains to the category and character? Also is any info required about the character like the name? Or is that all optional?

[miku09]

How do we apply for the contest?? Should we PM the staff or just post our application here?

[kaho]

Cloudy, on Sep 26 2009, 03:44 PM, said:

So along with the full body portrait can we submit another picture of the same character doing something else (just like another 1 or 2 pics?)? Like if the character was playing an instrument or just doing something random? Is it okay as long as it pertains to the category and character? Also is any info required about the character like the name? Or is that all optional?

I believe you can. The most standard is to submit a full body portrait, but you can add other angle, a picture of them doing something else if you are willing to draw more.

With the name, I guess it only makes sense if you create a character that you give them a name and how they will fit in with the new story.

miku09, on Sep 26 2009, 07:06 PM, said:

How do we apply for the contest?? Should we PM the staff or just post our application here?

please read my first post.

[Frammenti di Luna]

Um...I am just wondering, are crossovers allowed? Say if I already have a few entries for the Corda art category...then I decided to have a few entries for Haruka art category too, can I just redesign them all and make them into one thing??

I'm sorry if I mentioned something stupid...I change my mind a lot^^;;;;

[NYORORO]

Frammenti di Luna, on Sep 26 2009, 07:11 PM, said:

Um...I am just wondering, are crossovers allowed? Say if I already have a few entries for the Corda art category...then I decided to have a few entries for Haruka art category too, can I just redesign them all and make them into one thing??

I'm sorry if I mentioned something stupid...I change my mind a lot^^;;;;

Unfortunately for this contest, we would like to ask the contestants to stay in ONE CATEGORY ONLY. This is so that the public and staff members will have an easier time to make up their minds when the voting comes around, and to make sure that there will be no ambiguities or overlaps with prizes and whatnot.

However, you will have the opportunity to change your mind at the last minute to choose which category you would like to switch to (if there are any changes).

[Xeiran]

I have a couple of questions about the writing/text section. (I don't think they were covered yet).
First I just wanted to make sure of what we are supposed to do, from what I understand we are supposed to write up an original character/characters Bio(Such as looks, and background), and then make an original story that's around 5,000 for them? I know this stuff was sort of talked about in one of Kaho's other posts, but I just want to make sure that's what we are supposed to do:)

Second, could the characters/storyline not interact with the characters of the series? Like for example if you do La Corda and just want to deal with characters made up for La corda 3 which no one really knows much about.

Sorry if these questions have already been answered, I just want to be sure of what I am doing^^

[kaho]

xeiran:

Yes and Yes on both questions.

[Frammenti di Luna]

Um...I am just wondering......
Is there a category for Angelique art and Angelique text?

[kaho]

no, at this moment we will just be considering Haruka and Corda, Angelique might be considered next year depending on the responses we receive this year

[chemistry]

This is rather exciting!! 8D Although I also have a couple of questions.

1. I'm guessing that the whole point of double blind voting is to eliminate biased voting. However, wouldn't friends/fans be able to guess with great accuracy which art piece/story is from the particular person they want to win (since they would be so familiar with this person's work that the general style would just show through)? That's not to say that this rule will not be effective, it's just that it won't completely ensure that such an incident doesn't occur...

2. On the issue of originality, to what degree of similarity of the work would you consider it to be plagiarism? I guess it's more for text than for art (since tracing etc is quite obvious XD), but since otome games revolve around stereotypes (i.e. shota, oyaji, tsundere) who have strikingly similar backgrounds, even across different settings, wouldn't everything start to sound the same after a while?