I finally made up my mind about the winners of the Sandra and Woo and Gaia fanart contest 2013. It really was one of the hardest decisions of my life ;). Well, that might be a slight exaggeration, but I’m still blown away by the sheer amount of fantastic submissions we received. A big thank you to all artists for all the great fanart they drew for us! As you can see, technical skill wasn’t the sole factor for determining the winners, I also acknowledged clever ideas. Also don’t miss all the other submissions we received.

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Place 10 goes to Jessica Chiba. In last year’s contest, the second place went to Jessica Chiba’s drawing of Sandra, Cloud, Woo and Larisa. This year, Jessica’s amazing drawing of Lilith and Ilias barely made it into the top 10 due to the super-hard competition.

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Place 9 goes to Peter Chuchuligov. Now this is a super cute drawing. If I had any emotional connection to The Little Prince, I probably would have placed it in the top 5.

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Place 8 goes to Aile D’Ciel. James Woo is about to face his arch-enemy, Northfeld. I hope he hasn’t swapped his laser gun with a water gun by accident.

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Place 7 goes to Leechuts. I love Leechut’s art style; Sandra has never been cuter. I just wonder how Woo was able to catapult himself three meter into the air. This would have been a worthy #1 if I hadn’t received six submissions I liked even more.

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Place 6 goes to Joshua Stamford. Despite being not drawn as well as the other pictures in the top 10, I love Joshua’s funny parody of Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam. Any other drawing depicting my new favorite goddess would have received a little bonus this year as well.

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Place 5 goes to Ryan Budnick. Nightcarnivores.

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Place 4 goes to Tanushka. You just have to love the weirdness of Tanushka’s drawing. Its unique art style is even outstripped by its even more bizarre content. Dressed like Victorian ladies, Sandra and Larisa enjoy a cup of tea… apparently right after Larisa has set fire to a tree using her rocket launcher flame thrower.

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Place 3 goes to Archie The RedCat. Probably the most conventional drawing in the top 10, Archie’s drawing shines with its feel-good atmosphere and great technical skill. It’s obvious that a lot of time and love for the characters went into this piece of art. Larisa could have used some eyes, though. So it’s just place 3 for last year’s winner Archie.

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Place 2 goes to Giulia Beck. This was one of the first submissions I received, and I’m still in love with Giulia’s clever drawing. I had to take a second look to notice the altered reflections of our three heroes, but then I liked it all the more. You can tell that Giulia gave her very best to make the picture as good as possible regarding her skills.

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Place 1 goes to Omi. While I struggled for a long time with the exact order of the other pictures in the top 10, I decided very early to put Omi’s outstanding drawing of Gaia’s main cast on #1. It’s dynamic, stylish and wonderfully colored. You could easily put that on the front cover of any professional manga. Omi must have spent an huge amount of time on this piece.

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To at least also give the artist on #6 a little prize money, I decided to make a slight alteration to the prize money distribution, mostly taking away some money from #1:

• #1: $125
• #2: $85
• #3: $65
• #4: $50
• #5: $40
• #6: $35

All winners should send me an e-mail to novil@gmx.de with their PayPal account or German bank account information so that I can send them the prize money. If absolutely necessary, I could also send the money with Alertpay and the payment service formerly known as Moneybookers. But that will take a while.

I received such an amazing number of great entries for this year’s Sandra and Woo and Gaia fanart contest that I’m still unsure about the exact order of the top 10, especially the places 2 to 6. Therefore I decided to at least write a blog post about all the other drawings that were submitted. Some of them have such a great quality that I wouldn’t have had a problem to give the prize money to the respective artists. Unfortunately for them, I received 10 pieces of artwork I liked even more. I will post the winners of the fanart contest next week. I cannot thank you enough for all the effort you put into these great drawings!

by Andrea Cabral: A very well-drawn picture by Andrea with a restricted color palette.	by Andy: Sandra and Cloud look a little older in Andy’s drawing. I really like the coloration and shading.
by Antonio Saavedra: A dynamic fighting scene featuring Ilias and Ryn.	by Eliza Mária Sándor: Eliza submitted one of the funniest drawings of the contest.
by Garrett Williams: I would totally watch this! A great idea by our long-time reader Garrett Williams!	by Joxtray: When such a well-drawn homage to Calvin and Hobbes doesn’t make it into the top 10, you know that the competition was hard. Maybe too hard?
by Ksenia: The magic effect with the wolf heads looks very interesting.	by Lorena Rogalla: A very cute drawing.
by Matt Ade: As one of the technically best drawings, this would have been in my top 3 if slaying dragons wasn’t completely out of character for Ilias. The role of dragons in Gaia’s society will be explored later in the story.	by Monica Miguel: A nice group picture of Gaia’s main character.
by Ray Zhang: HEY! LISTEN!! I believe Cloud is legally allowed to brutally murder his younger sister here…	by Vill Kommen: Lilith shows her little magic trick.
by Willie O’ Brien: Our long-time reader Willie O’ Brien came up once again with a clever idea. If Sandra’s face were a little prettier, the drawing would have had the chance to make it into the top 5.	by Zsolt Gyurgyo: Zsolt gives us a nice retrospect of some memorable Sandra and Woo storylines.

Here are all the other entries I received:

• Viviana by Agata Waligóra
• Sandra and Woo by Elanor Fu
• Larisa by Eliza Mária Sándor
• Lilith and Ars by Heather Prescott
• Sandra and Woo by João Bogo
• Sandra and Woo by Kaisyko
• Sandra and Woo by Kimi
• Ilias, Ryn and Lilith by Kymrie Dinsmore
• Viviana by Lenthil
• Ilias, Ryn, Sandril, Lilith and Alissa by Lilyleaf623
• Woo, Lily and Sid by Manuel Kalberer
• Lilith by Mariana Sorc
• Ryn by Michael M.
• Sandra, Cloud and Yuna by Nexus Pau
• Sandra, Woo, Cloud and Larisa by Nexus Pau
• Cloud and Yuna by Nexus Pau
• Cloud by Peter Anderson
• Sandra and Woo by Simone Jensen
• Sandra and Woo by Simone Jensen
• Sandra and Cloud by Stephen Romney
• Ryn, Sandril, Lilith and Alissa by Winged

Thanks to everyone who participated!

On Sunday, I posted the places 11 to 20 of my favorite Sandra and Woo strips which have been published so far. Here is the top 10 of my absolute favorites.

10. [0119] The Departure

There’s no other strip which shows the attitude of all the main characters, except for Woo, in such a condensed way as this one. I really like the escalation from Sandra’s rather normal conversation with her father to Larisa’s eyebrow-raising one and finally to Cloud’s outlandish one. Ye Thuza is partially inspired by my own mom who’s an avid RPG player and active participant of renaissance fairs. I’m sure she would be equally mad at me for forgetting the rope when going into a dungeon. Compared to Ye Thuza, my mom’s kung-fu skills are seriously lacking, though.

↓ Read the rest of this entry…

499 Sandra and Woo strips have been published since 19 October 2008. Since the 500th strip is not yet finished, I compiled a list of my top 20 Sandra and Woo strips so far to shorten the waiting time. I excluded [0498] The Return Of The Empress from the list because that one should be still very fresh in the memory of all readers. I will post my personal top 10 on Wednesday or Thursday.

20. [0430] Software Engineering, Now With Cats!

This is the only Sandra and Woo strip which has been posted on a large number of other websites. I already thought that it will become more popular than a normal Sandra and Woo strip, but I didn’t expect such a spike of interest. The number of daily visitors on our website almost doubled on 19 November 2012 and again on 29 November 2012. I think our version of the famous “Swings” cartoon wouldn’t have worked half as well without the funny last panel.

↓ Read the rest of this entry…

We’re just two strips away from the 500th Sandra and Woo strip. This is the right time for a poll about your favorite Sandra and Woo storyline so far. You can choose between the five winners of all previous polls and the recent story about Woo saving Lily during a thunderstorm since that one seemed to be quite popular as well.

–> You can find the poll in the voting widget in the right sidebar! –>

Here are links for all story arcs:

1. Larisa is mistaken for a junkie by her principal: #60 – #68
2. Sandra and her friends go on a treasure hunt in a factory: #117 – #135
3. Larisa vs. her father’s artwork: #297 – #301
4. Cloud writes a poem for Sandra: #333 – #337
5. Cloud has a “problem” at the beach: #393 – #398
6. Woo saves Lily during a thunderstorm: #471 – #482