Introduction

Emoticons (or smilies) are image representations of emotion based actions. The Hive Workshop currently provides a lavish selection of 68 emoticons (25 of which are Warcraft themed) for its users. The purpose of this contest is to provide users with a greater abundance of Warcraft related emoticons to choose from.



The Task
Contestants must create a series of 4 (or an additional 5th one) emoticons in 3 weeks. All submitted emoticons must be Night Elf themed, this does not mean it has to be strictly Night Elves, it can be any sort of unit from the Night Elf Wc3 faction.

Any submissions with other races (i.e. Humans, Undead, etc.) will be discarded. Submitted emoticons do not have to be animated, but contestants may choose to do so. All final entries must be a maximum of 25x25 pixels in size with a transparent background. The 5th optional emoticon can be a maximum of 40x33 pixels in size!


Rules

• No emoticon may violate any of The Hive Workshop's site rules.
• Contestants must create all submitted emoticons from scratch (that means no C'n'P).
• Completed emoticons (.gif files only) must be physically attached to the thread along with a small description of each.
• Final versions of the emoticons must be a maximum of 25x25 pixels in size with a transparent background.
• Emoticons must be identifyable.
• Emoticons must follow the Night Elf theme.
• Contestants may not work in teams or receive any help from others with the creation of their set of emoticons.
• Emoticons do not have to be animated but animating them might prove a plus with the voters.
• You have to show a minimum of 1 WIP during the contest, more are encouraged.
• All final entries must be appropriately titled and contain all 4 icons.
• Any incomplete entries after the deadline will be disqualified.
• Deadline may only be extended a maximum of 1 week and will only happen if less than 3 contestants thinks that they will have their entrys ready before the deadline.
• No guarantee is given that the winning (or any other) submission will be added to THW's forum emoticon selector.

Judging
Judging will be broken down into two categories:

1.) Public Poll 40%2.) Ballot Tally 60%Finally, the contestent with the highest final percentage will be the victor!


Rewards
The top 5 contestants of the Emoticon Challenge #1 will recieve the following rewards:


Contest Dates And Deadline

All emoticons must be complete and submited three weeks after the contest begins.
The contest shall begin on 08 September 2007 and conclude on

add me in hopefully first reply!

Good luck to anyone entering the contest, may you produce a set of high quality emoticons!

Im I eligable to enter? lol
If so, heres a wip of my optional emoticon

Edit:
-WIP Removed, Update can be found here

Only one not able to enter is myself.

I'm definitely in!
I was making a fine dwarf icon, but oh well , I'll try to think of something.

The more the merrier. You can still finnish the other icon and showcase it in our gallery, if it's good enough we might use it for the site.

Isnt 25 by 25 a bit small for the larger amount of detail needed to make it not just an average Smiley Face type? In example, all three of the ones you put in the post are over 25x25

[off-topic]

Our standand emoticons are (mostly) a maximum of 22 pixels in height, although many of them are far wider.

The three examples shown in the contest post are of the large (optional) emoticons.

Here's my WIP of a stony faced mountain giant. Pun intended, though stupid.

You can still finnish the other icon and showcase it in our gallery, if it's good enough we might use it for the site.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the information!
Anyway, here's my WIP.

Ah! Any help with why the image background isn't transparent?
EDIT: attachment moved

Alrighty, I think I've finished the Keeper Icon (Although I may slow down the animation some more - need some feedback)
- "I live!!"

BTW, should I be creating SUPER HIGH RES emoticons, or should I be creating some using the Isometric style like our current smileys?

Herio-san said:

or should I be creating some using the Isometric style like our current smileys?

Click to expand...

Since the smilies should be 25x25 px, I think we should make standard smilies.
Nice KotG smilie, but his left horn is somehow blinking Oo. Or is it normal?

Anyway, here are some of mine. But the height of my smilies are 29px.
Is that okay? Because I don't want to remove their pony ^^
All of these are finished if no suggestions are coming.

Nice, I think the purple should be a bit darker though...
I especially like 1, 4, and 5.
--donut3.5--

darker, hm?
I actually made it a bit brighter. Maybe I can find a midtone then.

/Edit:
Ok I made them darker, look at my old post.

/Edit #2:
Added :'thumbs_up': smilie

DragoonZombie said:

But the height of my smilies are 29px.
Is that okay?

Click to expand...

The contest rules state:

ragingspeedhorn said:

Contestants must create a series of 4 (or an additional 5th one) emoticons in 3 weeks. All submitted emoticons must be Night Elf themed, this does not mean it has to be strictly Night Elves, it can be any sort of unit from the Night Elf Wc3 faction.

Any submissions with other races (i.e. Humans, Undead, etc.) will be discarded. Submitted emoticons do not have to be animated, but contestants may choose to do so. All final entries must be a maximum of 25x25 pixels in size with a transparent background. The 5th optional emoticon can be a maximum of 40x33 pixels in size!

Click to expand...

Although I gotta tell ya guys, it's unlikely that any (standard size) submissions that are greater than 22 pixels in height will be added to the Hive's smiley selector unless they are very, very high quality.

The optional fifth emoticon is a different story: those could be up to 40x33 in size.

Everything is looking great so far guys, a shame that they are a bit too large your icons Dragoon. Is the rule of 25x25 really that important, Wolverabid? Or more of a guideline?

If a whole set of icons all was 29x25 and was used in the database as counter to the orc icons then it wouldn't really matter if they were 29x25 as all of them would be that. They would be more different from the orc faces aswell then. But your call ofcourse.

Can't be helped.

Removed a bit of the hair so it fits the 25px height. I'm a bit sad about it though ...

/Edit: Added Thumbs Up Smilie.

Hey not bad. I might enter this too, if I have time/inspiration...

Okay, well they still look great, so that's out of the way.

I am not really good on creating emoticons.I would like some basic details.It should .gif?i can create one with photoshop??
If u want give me a link.

UchihaSasuke.gr said:

I am not really good on creating emoticons.I would like some basic details.It should .gif?i can create one with photoshop??
If u want give me a link.

Click to expand...

Yes, emoticons can easily be created in photoshop or even in MS Paint! If you're using Photoshop I recommend using the pencil at 1px. If you are using MS Paint just use the pen tool. Also, to save in .gif format just go to Save As..., if you're using photoshop it will say Compuserve (.gif) and if you're using MS Paint it will just say .gif.

the size of the emoticon shall be 32x32 pixels?

Why don't you try reading the rules before posting dumb questions.

Yeah Raging.

Anyway, great smilies, let's see more!

Smile

A cat smiling and otehr things, cant get the transperency to work
their pretty bad






why are they so small?

Night elf theme... I don't believe purple kittens are in the night elven race.
--donut3.5--

they look kinda scary ...

donut3.5 said:

Night elf theme... I don't believe purple kittens are in the night elven race.
--donut3.5--

Click to expand...

Night elfs ride on pathers...

submitted emoticons must be Night Elf themed, this does not mean it has to be strictly Night Elves, it can be any sort of unit from the Night Elf Wc3 faction.

Click to expand...

Ok Raging I would be in,but how much time do we got?

[EDIT by Wolve]

ragingspeedhorn said:

Why don't you try reading the rules before posting dumb questions.

Click to expand...

ragingspeedhorn said:

Contest Dates And Deadline

All emoticons must be complete and submited three weeks after the contest begins.
The contest shall begin on 08 September 2007 and conclude on

30 September 2007 0:00 AM, GMT​

Click to expand...

scary?

HeretoDLstuff said:

Night elfs ride on pathers...

Click to expand...

Those look nothing like the night elf panthers, but I guess I see your point.
--donut3.5--

A WIP....My computer is screwing up colors for me right now, so to ME this looks like a red and peach colored smily, does it look purple\pink to you? I know this awnser has been asked and awnsered many times but: How do I make them transeparent?

Yes, they are completely pink.

....There suppose to be purple not pink! Oh well..

They look just like 255/0/255 to me. And what program are you making them in?

you know i will do it if i can but i suck at art so no
BUT i will take some of the emotocons and turn them into icons if the artists want
(and out them on my site see below)

Here's a second WIP.
Transparencies are now working
EDIT: attachment moved

I like those a lot. They seem quite detailed for the size you were given!
Good job!
--donut3.5--

Looks very good caveman_Joe, keep up the good work.

Wat program did you use to animate it?

Pyritie said:

They look just like 255/0/255 to me. And what program are you making them in?

Click to expand...

The new moniter came today, so I should be able to fix them, im makeing them in corel paint shot pro 9. (Witch sucks IMO)


Also, does anybody have any idea how to do transeparensy? Or any good programs of animating?

Wat program did you use to animate it?

Click to expand...

Or any good programs of animating?

Click to expand...

I used a freeware game creation tool called Game Maker It can save animated .gif's, but it probably isnt worth wasting your time trying to figure out how to animate it with that though.

does anybody have any idea how to do transeparensy

Click to expand...

If you have Gimp, switch through each frame (layer) and use the erase tool on areas that you want trasparent. On the background layer ( it should say the name of the layer on the lower part of the screen), click on Layer > Transparencies > Add Alpha Channel, and erase what you want transparent. There's probably an easier way to do this too, but this is all I could figure out.

If you have Gimp, switch through each frame (layer) and use the erase tool on areas that you want trasparent. On the background layer ( it should say the name of the layer on the lower part of the screen), click on Layer > Transparencies > Add Alpha Channel, and erase what you want transparent. There's probably an easier way to do this too, but this is all I could figure out.

Click to expand...

As I said before, im useing corel paint shot pro 9, and thats the only thing I have. ('cept msn paint) But if GIMPS downloadible I could use it...

I use gimp and it has a PLUGIN for anamation
also if freeware
and OPEN SOURCE
and that reminds me
you need to rm my avatar

If you haven't gotten Gimp yet, here's a link, I think the animation plugin is on there too. You should find it extremely useful.

Ok, I got GIMP now. Its very nice but... ITS SO CONFUSEING AT FIRST! It can seem to do everything BUT the simplest things. How do I chage the size of my brush, and how do I change the color? thats ALL I need to know!

lol...

Is there a window called "Tool Options" up? If not, on the main window (labled "The GIMP") click on file > Dialogs > Tool Options. If it is up, there should be a button beside the word "brush". Just click on it to choose the brush size.
Here's a WIP of the 40x33 icon:
EDIT: Sorry about the unmorph part, for some reason, the frames weren't being refreshed.
EDIT 2: attachment moved

I don't like the unmorph, but the morph is really cool.
At first I thought this was keeper of the grove, not a druid of the claw!
--donut3.5--