Results of the Gaia artwork contest 2018 – Top 12

It’s time! Time for the top 12 of the Gaia artwork contest 2018!

The submissions are ordered from place #12 to #1. As you can see, we’ve received an amazing selection of great art this year again. I was a bit worried if we’ll receive enough worthy entries for a contest limited to just Gaia, but the quality of the top entries was once again exceptional and surpassed my expectations! Please show your support by visiting the artists’ websites and/or by writing a comment in the comment section of this blog post!

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Results of the Gaia artwork contest 2018 – Places 13+

Our yearly Gaia artwork contest ended on Sunday. Today, I’m showing you all the submissions that didn’t make it into the top 12. There are some very nice pieces of artwork among them, so you should definitely check them out as well. In a couple of days, I will post the top 10!

First, let’s start with the unplaced submissions in alphabetical order, then let’s continue with the submissions placed between #13 and #20. Show your support by visiting the artists’ websites and/or writing a comment in the comment section of this blog post!

To our gold and diamond patrons: As usual, I will later offer a convenient download archive containing all submissions in their original size.

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Gaia artwork contest 2018, with $750 of prize money!

Some of you were already waiting for this news post: It’s time again for our yearly artwork contest! This time, however, the contest is only for Gaia related artwork! So it’s actually the Gaia artwork contest 2018. The reason for this is that there will be a special Sandra and Woo 10th anniversary contest later this year since Sandra and Woo will celebrate its 10th anniversary on 19 October 2018!

Nonetheless, the best entries of this year’s Gaia artwork contest will receive a nice sum of prize money. The total prize money is $750! If your drawing skills are just average, you will still have the chance to become one of the winners by drawing something funny, clever or innovative. To participate in the contest, your artwork must reference Gaia in some way. You can also submit other types of art such as 3D models, action figures, fanfiction, or even (photos of) a cosplay costume.

  • 1st place: $200
  • 2nd place: $150
  • 3rd place: $125
  • 4th place: $100
  • 5th place: $75
  • 6th place: $50
  • 7th place: $30
  • 8th place: $20

Please send your entry in an e-mail with the subject “Gaia artwork contest 2018” to novil@gmx.de. You can attach the file to the e-mail or put a link to it in the e-mail’s text body. You must submit your entry until (including) Sunday, 26 August 2018. If you have a website that I should link, please put its URL into your e-mail as well.

Additional information about the contest:

  • You can submit several drawings or other types of art, but you can win at most two prizes.
  • Please do not publish your artwork on other websites before the end of the contest. After that, you can post it anywhere you want.
  • You can sign your work. But a large, ugly watermark will reduce your chance of winning.
  • Digital images should be sent in their original size in a lossless format, for example as a PNG file with full color depth. If you draw the image on paper, you should send me a large, clean scan of it in a lossless format, for example as a PNG file with full color depth. However, you can’t attach files larger than 25 MB to your e-mail.

Poll results

From 10 June 2017 to 26 July 2018, the following eight polls ran on the Gaia website. It’s time to present the results:

Poll from 10 June 2017:

Poll Nr. 41

I’m not surprised that Viviana received the most votes. It’s interesting to compare the new results with the same from 1 October 2013. Back then, Viviana already received 50% of all votes. Lilith had a significantly higher vote count at 27%. Ilias was at 10%, Ryn at 7%. Alissa got 4% of all votes and Sandril 2%. So not all that much has changed since then.

Poll from 10 June 2017:

Poll Nr. 42

Breaking All Barriers was sometimes criticized for being too slow. But overall our readers really enjoyed the chapter. The Tower in the Sky and Monster suffer a bit from their role as intermediate chapters that set up future plot lines. My personal favorite is Breaking All Barriers as well.

Poll from 10 June 2017:

Poll Nr. 43

San de Vertis has been in a good number of pages since the poll ran, so I guess she would receive some more votes today.

Poll from 10 June 2017:

Poll Nr. 44

Yeah, that’s also my personal order. Viviana also looked cute as a redhead, but blond suits her best.

Poll from 10 March 2018:

Poll Nr. 45

Probably not too surprising given Gaia is a high-fantasy comic with scientific elements. I’m not a big fan of comedy fantasy as well. Most comedy fantasy sucks, in every medium. Is it especially hard to write or does the genre attract the worst writers?

Poll from 10 March 2018:

Poll Nr. 46

Most of our readers don’t read many webcomics. 72% read 12 webcomics at most. In the poll from 1 May 2014, that number was only 60%. This is just another data point that illustrates that we have left the golden age of webcomics, for a good number of reasons:

  • Bad work ethic of many webcomic creators (missed updates, endless hiatus) soured the opinion of the interested audience about the medium
  • Several popular long-running webcomics have become stale since their creators ran out of ideas
  • Comics are not an optimal medium for mobile viewing on the small screens of smartphones
  • Increased competition from social media

Poll from 10 March 2018:

Poll Nr. 47

Our readers like to have a look at the comments, but few read them religiously.

Poll from 10 March 2018:

Poll Nr. 48

Only 16% of our readers have bought a book collection from more than one webcomic. That’s a quite low number. It’s no surprise that so many webcartoonists struggle to make a living when you look at numbers like that.

There are four new polls that appear randomly in the voting widget in the right sidebar:

  • Are you male or female?
  • Are you in a steady relationship?
  • Since when have you been reading Gaia?
  • What are your three favorite comic genres? (a specific comic is often part of several genres)

My visit of the Comic Con Stuttgart 2018

After my visits in 2016 and 2017, I also visited the Comic Con Germany in Stuttgart (site map of the main hall) last Saturday. It was once again a lot of fun. I met several German comic artists, bought comics and original artwork, and saw an enormous number of cosplayers with great costumes. In this post, you can have a look at all the photos I took with some added commentary. You can click on each photo to see a larger version of it.

While it was still quite crowded on midday and the early afternoon, there were fewer visitors compared to the last two years. According to a newspaper article there were around 40,000 visitors instead of 50,000 visitors. That led to a better experience overall because making your way through the crowded floors was often a challenge in the last years. I hope that the convention stabilizes at the current visitor number to area ratio in the future.

In the first part of my article, I want to give you an impression of several parts of the fair. In the second part, I want to show you some of the artists that were present there and the comics and artwork I bought from them. The area where independent artists showed their work was significantly increased in size this year. In the third part, I want to show some amazing cosplayers. In the last part, I want to show you some impressions from the massive LEGO area.

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