How to join
It’s fairly simple, join us on Discord, head over to the ‘overpaint contest’ channel, check out the prompt and draw! We do have a deadline you should aim for, but this might be extended if we don’t have enough participants, which should be at least 10.
Just post your finished artwork on this channel and you’re good to go!
Why not Facebook
Facebook has changed a lot throughout the years, and sadly this means that groups can’t be maintained as well as before. It’s also hard to keep track of posts, reach people, to begin with, and have a good overview of who posted what and when. Long story short: We will keep the FB group of course, and keep updating it, but it’s not the place where you can post your submissions.
Who will be doing the overpaints and what will we do
This would be me most of the time (Tessa Geniets) with the occasional guest. I specialize in creature and character design but also did my fair share of character designs and a bunch of landscape and prop designs. Prompts will be centered around this as well.
Although my art fundamentals are solid: The focus will be primarily on the execution of the prompt and its subject. So other than discussing fundamentals like color use, contrasts, composition etc, we also run through things like:
- Is the creature or character anatomically functional?
- Could it theoretically survive in the environment it’s supposed to live?
- How much of the given prompt did you sacrifice for a better result and how much could you stick with it nonetheless.
- What written information did you add to round off the character or creature.
There will be more questions like this, some of which I will come across per specific illustration. The reason why I go about this is because character and creature design is more than just putting something nice on a paper based on a prompt. Most of us want to make a living from art, which means that you have to deal with vague descriptions that can be oddly specific and strangely unclear. It’s hard to navigate through it and it requires you to develop a sense of understanding as well as a lot of knowledge, and a big part of LtL is educating people on how to work with clients and execute prompts effectively.
Video’s of the comments and overpaints will be shared on the LtL Youtube channel.
The contest cycle
The Life to Legend overpaint contest is a monthly contest, but, we won’t pick a winner until there are at least 10 submissions. This means that, if by the end of the month there are fewer than 10 participants, the contest will be moved a month ahead.
I understand that this can be very annoying, but I want to help as many people as I can within my limited time and I want the community to grow as well. So that is why I made this choice. Invite your friends over to ensure that we can do this contest on a monthly basis!
The prompts
The prompts will be announced on the first 3 days of the month when a new cycle is due. We will do so by an @everyone mention on Discord. We will also share the prompt on Facebook, but as the reach is low there, I’d like to ask you to keep your eyes primed. That way you don’t have to worry that you miss out on the announcement.
The prompt can be one that’s made up by me, or with the help of our creature or character prompt generator. If you are unsure about what exactly I mean: No need to ask for specifications. I’d love to see what you will make from whatever information I give you. There are as many different clients as there are people on this world, and not all of them will be wordy, and not all of them will come up with great ideas for you to execute. The brief therefore can be very thorough, or something as simple as a couple of words. The way you should go about things is no different though.
Illustration by: Tessa Geniets
Rules
The rules are fairly simple, just make sure you follow them and you’re good to go!
- Don’t use artworks from other people.
- One artwork per person per contest cycle.
- No overpaints of other artworks or photographs.
- No photo bashing.
- The image should at least be 60×40 cm (or ca 24 x 16 in).
- Do your best. I spend my limited time helping you out for free and sharing information that took me years to collect. I will exclude artworks you didn’t put the effort in.
How we pick the first winner
I run through the submissions and will mostly select on the effort you put into your artwork. This can mean several things, like attention to detail, or how unique or thought-through the submission is. Another thing I will heavily select on is how closely you followed the prompt or brief that was given and how you executed it.
I do not select on style, we want you to bring your own voice, and not try to replicate realism for example simply because my artworks are fairly realistic. I practice several styles myself, you just don’t see much of the other ones. So I really do appreciate and encourage your own unique style!
How do we pick the second winner?
I am aware that selecting with the above points can be a bit limiting. I want everyone to get a fair chance, so we also make use of a random name picker. So our second winner will come from this source! Beware though that when you post your art, whether you’re the 1st or 2nd winner, we will call you out on mistakes as well, like for example not following the brief (something that would eliminate you from being the no1.) or not giving suffice explanations for your design choices.
Just keep in mind that we’re here to teach you, not to be an asshole. We try to be nuanced about it as much as we can, just remember that it’s also your responsibility to properly execute your submission.
Earning additional entries
We use a random name picker to pick the secondary winner of each cycle. To have your name in the picker twice or more*, invite a new friend to join the contest and have that person name you when they place their submission on Discord. Each individual that calls you out will earn you an additional spot on the wheel. Just make sure you have a submission up yourself too for that specific cycle. That’s all you have to do!
*These additional entries are reset every month. The only exception is when you are the no1 winner. Your additional entries will be moved up to the next month.
What will we use the art for
Your art will be used to make a Youtube video so we can help you out and others along the way as well. We will also showcase your artwork on this website and may do so as well on connected social media channels. These showcasing counts for the winner of the contest and may apply to others joining as well. So whenever you submit your art to the Overpaint Discord channel you automatically allow us to use the artwork for these purposes.
To be more specific:
- We may use your art to promote the contest.
- Your art will be used in the corresponding Youtube video if you are the winner. These videos are public.
- We will make a blog post for each contest. This will include the Youtube video and the submitted artworks (up to 5 artworks each time, determined by the random name picker) for showcase purposes.
- If you are the winner, we will use your artwork as the first image in our blog post. This image (the showcase) however is landscape-oriented. This means that we might cut out (zoom in) a part of your artwork.
- If you didn’t win, your art may still be used to showcase you as a contestant in the Youtube video by displaying your artwork.
- We may use your art on connected social media channels like Instagram or Facebook, either to showcase you and/or to promote the contest.
- We will always refer to you by (artist) name and by linking to your website, linktree, or social media channel.
- The art is yours and stays yours, we don’t assume ownership, by joining the contest you only allow us to use the artworks as described above.
Conclusion and Discord link
We hope you are as excited about this new development as we are! Please help us out by inviting your artistic friends to the channel as well! Our permanent discord channel link is:
https://discord.gg/jvmQXGQcKV
But you can also of course invite people directly from Discord!
Thank you, and hopefully see you soon!
