[BW Contest] I'll Skin You Alive!

[justin_ator]

Justin Ator and yo man im awesome proudly present...
The BlackWebb Skin Develop & Design Contest

For those of you not-in-the-loop there is a brand new Flash Flash Revolution interface being designed and written. It consists of all the things that have made FFR FFR over all the years, upgraded and revamped to a new height. The engine is currently being developed by Zageron and Velocity, but is an empty shell consisting of no Graphical User Interface. This is where you come in...

Contestant's Job:

To create a unique and attractive skin for this new engine. By building a graphical representation of how you would like the engine to look, we can use your stock images to recreate and animate it! Let your imagination run wild, within the restrictions, and show us your most grand creation. Make it clean or crowded, confusing or calm. Use black and white, or 16billion colours. Make buttons that pulse to the beat, or an 8bit interface that bleeps and bloops as you keyboard your way through it. It's up to you, there are very few limitations.


Restrictions, Regulations, Requirements and Guidelines:

- The size of BlackWebb is currently set at a clean and plesent 850x550. (850px Wide, 550px Long) Please stay within those bounds. Our skinning process can NOT dynamically change the size of a compiled SWF and submitting a skin at the designated size will dramatically increase your chances at winning the contest.

- Do not plan for 2.5D or 3D. We will not program your graphics beyond simple animations.


The interface is complex! This means that you need to account for as many sections as possible. To simplify this I have some guidelines for you:
Think ObjectOriented! This means create buttons before you build the skin. Pick 2 or 3 button designs, create them and reuse them. Each screen should contain the buttons that you have created, or none at all. Don't create 100 unique buttons and graphics because it will make programming the skin impossible.

Tutorials! Read some tutorials online on how to create cool and simple graphics easily.

The Interface Requirements!

- FFR

- Genres/Song List
- Game Play
- Results
- Multiplayer (Object oriented game-play, opponent arrows will not be visible and beyond 2 players will be able to play!)

- SIU
- Profile Chat/Video Chat
- Challenges
- Tournaments
- Tokens/Achievements
- Shop
- Settings
- News
- Level Ranks
- Friends

Acquisition Methods
Purchased using Credits
Won in tournaments
Achievements in: nFFRn, FFR, SIU or Metrivia
Found within the games
Becoming a Veteran, StepArtist, or MusicAuthor


Judging

The skins will be submitted to justin_ator, via PM, on FFR or to his email at justin_ator@yahoo.com. (Please just give links and titles to your creation if using the PMs). You can submit in almost any format you like, as I can open most with Gimp and change them to something else if need be. Please, if you are sending in picture files for each page as your submission, keep it in PNG format, that way more of the quality is kept with a decent file size. If you have any questions, please ask here or PM me.

The submissions will then be distributed to seven of the ten judges, chosen at random, and will be given a score by each judge on a scale of 0 to 10. This is to keep a variety of input, while still allowing participating judges to submit without rigging the system. A skin needs a score of at least 90 out of 100 points to be accepted. Judging will commence as submitted skins come in, and will end whenever Velocity chooses (probably around 10 skins being accepted). Once the skins have been accepted and the judging/submitting ends, the skins will be released to the public to view and vote on. We will declare the voting system and how it will run when that time rolls around. Based on the public's votes, we will have the winners to this contest. Please be aware that only the best submissions will be voted on by the public, and the main point of the vote will be to determine the 'default' skin and to weed out skins that the public really dislike.

Bonus points will be given to submitters for:
- Each Category 'skinned'.
- If the skin is submitted in a Photoshop or Flash file. (Object Oriented! Don't send us a flat image...)
- A central theme is used through out the skin.
- The use of these colors (Since these are technically the site colors).

Scoring Breakdown for Skins:
[0-70] based on judges' scores
[0-10] for number of 'skinned categories'

Bonus:
[10] if the skin is submitted in a Photoshop or Flash file
[5] a central theme is used
[3] use of FFR's site colors as the main theme
[2] use of FFR's site colors as the only colors in the theme

Judges for Skins

1. Velocity
2. yo man im awesome
3. justin_ator
4. Zageron
5. psychoangel691
6. darkshark
7. jimerax
8. nois-or-e
9. TC_Halogen
10. Condoct

Skin Submissions (Title / Artist / [Sco/re] -- Accept/Reject)
This thread has specific breakdowns and tips for the submissions that have been judged.

1. Ex: Bestskinevar / justin_ator / [54/100] -- Rejected
2. - Genesis FFR Skin / Condoct / [?/100]
3. - Press Start FFR Skin / Condoct / [?/100]
4. - Clairvoyance FFR Skin / Condoct / [?/100] ------ Awaiting resubmission as a full skin, I have one page but Condoct is editing it I believe.
5. - nameless 1 / fabledeamon / [?/100]
6. - Crystalline / Hazelle / [?/100]
7. - nameless 2 / Nytmares_R_Real / [?/100]
8. - Dark and Easy / flashpantss / [?/100]
9. - Fracture / Linkisdoomed [?/100]
10. - nameless 3 / null03 [?/100]
11. - Pulse (rough draft) / x_lambourghini_x [?/100]
12. -
13. -
14. -
15. -

If your skin is rejected, try again. There is no limit to the number of skins you can submit, nor the number of attempts you can make. Keep at it and try to learn from your mistakes. If what you are attempting continues to get poor results, try something new. We want you to succeed, and we want good skins.

Use any sort of theme or color schemes you like, make sure it is your own work, take your time, do your best, and remember this one thing:

KEEP IT UNIQUE, AND HAVE FUN.

justin_ator, yo man im awesome, and the FFR Staff

[Velocity]

Since I'll be to busy during the summer along with being absent for 2-3 weeks, justin will be running this and I can't thank him enough.

So I want all you artist or non artist folk to give it your best shot, since any submissions could lead to the future look of Blackwebb.

Have fun people.

[G.S.M]

This sounds amazing! Good luck to anyone who participates!

[TC_Halogen]

Interesting.

I might have some ideas for this.

[YoshL]

any restrictions on dimensions, or what each category has to have in it?

[TC_Halogen]

Dimensions are listed on the OP.

For what each category has in it - it does say on the first post to maintain the layout.

[justin_ator]

Restrictions on dimensions are to that of the BlackWebb window. The 850 by 550. As for what goes in each category, I guess just go with a basic layout unless it is something already in that Alpha engine.

[YoshL]

sorry, i must have failed reading >_>
but i'm definitely gonna put something together for this

edit: so when you say "keep the layout" is it as long as it has the same elements in each page, or does it have to be similar to the original?

(keeping the sidebar there, but altering the category screen around maybe?)

[Poison-]

Are there any qualifications people need to meet to judge?

[Velocity]

Remember that the original engine is listed here:
http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/..._its-scary.swf

Because each section is listed in a sidebar kinda deal, if would help us if you used a similar system that would allow sections to be added and removed easily.

[justin_ator]

Originally Posted by Poison-

Are there any qualifications people need to meet to judge?

Yes, FFR Staff at this point. If no staff want to do it, we MIGHT ask the public.

As stated in the OP, the public will end up having the final vote, so we want to keep it from being public to start.

[Poison-]

I can't see why anyone wouldn't want to do this, it's pretty exciting

[Velocity]

Originally Posted by YOSHl

edit: so when you say "keep the layout" is it as long as it has the same elements in each page, or does it have to be similar to the original?

(keeping the sidebar there, but altering the category screen around maybe?)

The engine is 850px wide. When we started it, we set out 100px for the side bar, leaving 750px for the content of each tab. You can play around with the size.

What we mean by "keep the layout" means if you do any of the categories, keep the layout consistent, and not have different ones from each category to the next.

[Coolboyrulez0]

can I / we get a 850x550 basic layout to work with, or shall it be from scratch which I have no time and patience to design

[justin_ator]

I'll let Velo decide and hand out that, as I don't really have anything to give you in terms of layout templates or the like. I'll add it to the OP if he chooses to drop one here.

[Velocity]

There's not even a layout except for the engine above. Everything is up to you.

[yo man im awesome]

I'll probably end up being the lenient judge here. Don't expect me to hand out 10's though.

*cough*


Anyway, go nuts with this guys, don't hold back! I want to see everyone's best!

[Zageron]

Oh this looks fun.

[justin_ator]

It should be. And @ Velo, haha, I thought they were designing skins, not the engine. ;P

Either way, there you go guys. Get to work! =]

See you around.

[psychoangel691]

I suppose I can judge for this.