Im glad the comfy hanaming made it, but i would’ve replaced something either way if it hadn’t hehe. I know i will definitely do that for the awesome Mineloader from Havocsong 
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Regarding the elephant in the room: we’ve all been there. Everyone’s used preset resources and we all use shortcuts. Did MuSC and NTSS hand draw their lens flares over their excellently rendered submissions? More than likely not. Did I painstakingly apply a glow to every ember one by one? Hell no. No one has time for either of those. The key to finding that sweet spot however is making sure your shortcuts don’t cause a visual dissonance with the rest of your work. I feel like that’s the–(well, maybe not THE) big reason everyone is on a cloud-crusade right now, because it’s a really jarring contrast between the pre-made resource and the art itself.
If I were to offer unsolicited advice, I’d say spend a little more time trying to better align your background assets and your actual art stylistically to help lessen this really noticeable difference between the two. To start it’d be best to use the background as a reference and attempt to draw it in yourself. That way you’re still essentially getting the same outcome you want while also making strides in improving your own skillset. The more you can do without filters and rendering shortcuts, the better your results will be when you do elect to use them. They’ll go from being the centerpiece of your work to the finishing touch. The aforementioned submissions of MuSC and NTSS are great examples of this.
As for the voting, I don’t have an issue with artists soliciting their guild members in these events because the event is for the game which the guild is a part of. Does that not build a stronger community in the game when a guild is loading into their dailies and they see a fanart that they helped put there? Maybe I’m overvaluing that feeling, but it seems like it would be pretty cool. People that choose to have their guild vote for their work don’t need to feel bad about doing so. (I also say this while being in a guild that’s super dead and I still got a healthy amount of votes. Perhaps my experience isn’t the norm but this doesn’t seem like the problem folks are making it out to be)
Outsourcing ones votes through the means others are mentioning isn’t terribly sporting however. As I recall the votes didn’t really surge until it was very obvious that one submission in particular had a disproportionally huge amount of votes from fresh accounts. I have to wonder then, did this prompt others to take similar measures? I can’t say I really blame them if that’s the case, because if accounts aren’t going to be checked in the ways people are asking for then you don’t really have a choice if you’d rather not gamble on being a GM pick. I hate to think that this all flared up because people were afraid that their art wouldn’t be able to stand up on it’s own merits.
As a whole I think this selection is much stronger than this last set of loading screens comparatively, and it’s sort of a shame that that fact has taken the backseat. To everyone who made the cut that worked hard and is honestly proud of your submission, well done and congratulations on your victory!
Personally, I’ll be using my free haircut and dye coupon consolation prizes to snag something classy from the stylist. 
See you next time! (provided the prompt is fun, of course)
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I couldn’t agree more. Not qualifying doesn’t mean you are unfortunate or your artwork is not worthy. It makes me and my friends evaluate our work and do better next time. These word really encouraging. Thank you.
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TOS 2020 XMas Average Population 1500, Top Vote: 136, Combined Top Votes: 537
Apolojnia Average Population 1168, Top Vote: 193, Combined Top Votes: 892
Monster Fanart Average Population 465, Top Vote: 285, Combined Top Votes: 1,166
Most voters are unique accounts.
Some accounts that voted again were created during the Apolojnia event.
This is the event with the most votes in TOS history, ever, at the lowest dip of in-game population.
I think there’s no need to add anything else.
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I probably should’ve screenshot it.
There was a discussion publicly in town about using vpn to create accounts to vote in the contest.
DD"XP"Story 
just for laughs
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Yeah, like the first 3, especially the 2nd one, didn’t receive several votes from freshly created accounts 
Instead of waiting for the vote to end, you could’ve complained when it was still open, but I guess it was detrimental to every other differently-honest artist here 
The one people majorly complain about shouldn’t even be accepted to begin with due of using real-life photography, let alone having suspiciously high amount of votes.
If GMs put rules for the contest and then don’t care about people blatantly breaking them, what’s even the point? It’s pointless to make surveys for other contests now, they should rather explain why people can break rules, partecipate nevertheless and still win. What should we think about that? It doesn’t reflect well on the jury, cause either they didn’t do their job by accepting unqualified artworks, or it was a sham to begin with and they already planned to make some people win regardless of what they presented. And by not removing the disqualfiied artwork we can only think it’s the second one by now. Pick your poison, i guess.
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What part of “instead of waiting for the vote to end” wasn’t clear?
It took only a couple of mins to notice strange votes from freshly created accounts and odd pictures getting big chunks of those when the thread was still up and I’m not even following the forums that much, apart for the drama.
Yet people decided to stay quiet (because they were doing the same thing with new accounts created just to vote their image) then went on full rage mode when the vote was closed and winners were declared.
Ye, sorry, no sympathy
Edit: Kudos to @Csiko , one of the few that didn’t join the “let’s make some accounts to vote for myself” bandwagon
well no one(except for the contenstants themselves) visits the voting thread every hour, everyday just to check who is winning…and no one gives a sht and expecting for that piece to win at all.
Everyone is surprised and got their interest piqued when the results are announced with that “thing” winning with a stupidly high votes - then the riot starts when that thing was brought to spotlight as a winner.
What part of “if GMs put rules for the contest and then don’t care about people blatantly breaking them”
wasn’t clear?
It’s up to the organizers to make sure the rules they made are followed. If they don’t care, it’s pointless.
And they don’t care, as it was shown. Not even when they shouldn’t have accepted for breaking the rules to begin with.
If they enforced the rules, those that created new accounts to pump their votes would be dq as well 
As it should be.
But that’s not what happened, unfortunately.
i think the reason why you don’t see people complain is to prevent drama during the event, because there have been incidents like that happened and it didnt turn out well when the issue is brought up publicly via a new thread.
people also assume that staff will be checking on these anomalies
back then, there is always the option where people can politely ask staff to recheck an entry’s qualification and votes via private message. though i’m not sure if this is still applicable at present times. staff has been unresponsive with tags and private messages on my recent experience
but on my personal experience, i think these cannot be detected if vpn services are used. since i myself have been requesting staff to investigate an entry when it has a suspicious vote spike within the same hour. they always turn out to be clean.
another possibility is asking outsiders to vote for them as well as voting for other entries that they like. this would explain the huge gap on some entries.
which is why i’ve been asking around if people would find it fair if a rule that prevents the occurrence of participants to have consecutive wins in artfests. i mean they are still allowed to join if they want. but their votes don’t count, and they cannot be staff picked, if they already won the previous artfest.
in this way, it is much easier to check the validity of an entry, instead of going through all those accounts to check for duplicates and anomalies, or finding evidence when a participant votebegs outside of the tos community.
and so to minimize the nature of popularity contests
this also minimizes the original issue where people feel that staff picks are kind of questionable or steers to favoritism.
as for the entry in question, unless people can provide evidence that the participant violated the rules, staff will only see the complaints as a form of bullying, and not take any action. simply saying this or that won’t really call for their attention.
as for me, i just want to be in good terms with everyone participating, since enjoying everyone’s works is my primary goal in these events. winning is just secondary. but it doesnt mean i dont do my part to keep the events fair for everyone so that people wont leave a bad taste in the event
which is why i’m kind of pushing for the suggestion that prevents consecutive wins Owo/
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It doesn’t make any sense if you have to cry a river after it’s over.
They kept it quiet just because they were using new accounts to pump their votes up as the “cloud-guy” and as many did in the past, with IMC never enforcing their own rules as usual.
Either way, it’s all good for me as long as it’s drama
Yes, I remembered that something like that already happened in the past, didn’t recall exactly what was so I cba to point it out.
As for the outcome, it really doesn’t matter at this time, does it?
Politely 
Imagine running a contest and not closing the registrations or preventing new accounts from voting some days before.
Anyway, if you see a trend of literally hundreds of new accounts created in a day just to cast a vote, you just don’t make it like nothing happened.
That’s IMC’s part of the blame tho.
What’s questionable is the attitude of some of the so called artists stooping as low as voting for themselves with tons of account just to show how ugly their image is and/or how far are willing to go for their virtual e-peen.
It’s hilarious to read the wot of the guy up there which basically can be summed up with “well, if he did it, it’s ok for anyone else to jump on the self-voting bandwagon”, like two wrongs made one right.
Too bad the voting thread was hidden, it would’ve been a good source of drama and entertainment, at least for me.
“It doesn’t make any sense if you have to cry a river after it’s over.”
-as far as i know, i don’t see participants themselves do that.
“That’s IMC’s part of the blame tho”
-I reckon you are not aware that imc staff have limited manpower when it comes to these things and needed the help from the community ‘w’;;
“It’s hilarious to read the wot of the guy up there which basically can be summed up with “well, if he did it, it’s ok for anyone else to jump on the self-voting bandwagon”, like two wrongs made one right.”
-i’m not sure what this mean?
"Either way, it’s all good for me as long as it’s drama. "
-no shabriri grapes for you Owo;;;
I’m not going to check all the posts, but very few had no votes from new accounts.
But it really doesn’t matter, it’s usually “by proxy”.
You assume a lot about me.
I know that “IMC has limited manpower”, not just for that but for literally everything, they didn’t even translate stuff back then.
It’s just… not an excuse if you want to run a contest, else you get people malding at you 
It means that a guy in a earlier post wrote a wall of text just to say that he felt it was ok if other people made new accounts to vote for themselves just because the “cloud-guy” made it.
Sorry bloo, I don’t get what you mean with shabriri
“I’m not going to check all the posts, but very few had no votes from new accounts.
But it really doesn’t matter, it’s usually “by proxy”.”
-proxy? wait who is this o___O;;;
"You assume a lot about me.
I know that “IMC has limited manpower”, not just for that but for literally everything, they didn’t even translate stuff back then.
It’s just… not an excuse if you want to run a contest, else you get people malding at you"
-i find it that they are not affected much when people complains about it Owo;;;
“Sorry bloo, I don’t get what you mean with shabriri”
no dramu pls 
Someone doing it for you
Yep, they give literally 2 shits about people complaints, which in turn usually causes more drama
The falce guy up there was not wrong, indeed, but if they enforced the rules they’d have disqualified most of the contestants 
Yo, come on, drama is the life and the most entertaining part of this forum.
This thread died quite soon tho 