Lots to talk about this week, so I'll get right to it. Congratulations to our final OmniArt 2005 preliminary round winners! In First Place is Matthew McMillan with his creative and beautiful Wind Waker piece entitled "Hyrule Jig." Second Place this round goes to Kenton Alkemi for an absolutely amazing Radiata Stories entry that took the contest requirement of having someone dancing to the extreme! Snatching up the last qualifying spot this round and coming in Third Place is Sebychu and a gorgeous fire dance featuring Hugo and his friends from Suikoden 3. Excellent job as always to our winners and honorable mentions!

Now the real fun begins. Eighteen artists have placed in the six preliminary rounds and are automatically eligible for the OmniArt 2005 Finals which start next week. But wait! We're missing three more people for the Finals! That's right; it's time to pick the three wildcard entries from among the artists who received an Honorable Mention in one or more of the preliminary rounds. This will also serve as practice for you readers out there who will be doing the judging from here on out.

So if you've got a little time on your hands, we'd love to have your input regarding who should take the three wildcard spots. Just follow these simple instructions to make your opinions known to our judges...

1. Check out the Honorable Mentions. Browse over this round and the previous five preliminary rounds via these links (clicking on them will open them in a new browser window):

   Round One | Round Two | Round Three | Round Four | Round Five

   ...and don't forget about the Round Six entries directly above! The Honorable Mentions are all of the pieces shown in those updates except for the larger ones; those pieces' artists are already in the finals. Please note that we're only considering performance in the preliminary round contests, so normal non-contest submissions don't factor in here.


2. Make your list, and check it twice! Pick your favorite artists from all those entries. It doesn't matter if you like just one or a whole bunch; make a list of them and check to make sure they haven't already qualified by checking out the previous round winners list.


3. Reply in this week's Fan Art forum thread. Make your opinions heard in this week's forum thread. You can just list your favorites if you like, but the judges will be more persuaded if you give some good reasons for your picks.


4. Check back Monday night! You've got until Monday at noon Pacific Time to give your picks, and the three wildcard entrants will be selected by the judges using a combination of your input and scores from previous rounds. We'll announce who the wildcard entrants are at 8pm Pacific Time in Fan Art's IRC chat channel (#arthaus on irc.esper.net) and on RPGamer.com later that night. If you're new to IRC, check out the RPGamer IRC FAQ and feel free to use the RPGamer Java IRC client to catch the announcement.

All of the qualifying artists for the OmniArt 2005 Finals are being contacted via the e-mail addresses we have on record for them. If you're one of those artists and your address has changed, don't worry because we'll have all the information you need, including the next challenge, right here next Friday night.

If you're wondering how voting will be accomplished for each of the final rounds, we'll be doing things similar to how voting was done for the RPGamer 2004 awards. All of the entries will be placed online for your viewing, and you'll pick your first, second, and third favorites each round. Then we'll tally up the votes and eliminate whoever doesn't quite make the cut.

Since we now know how many qualifying entries we've received in the last few rounds, I can now give the final value of the Grand Prize pot that the 21 finalists will be trying to win. We added a dollar to the $500 pot for each qualifying entry in the last three rounds, and since we had 71 entries in the last three rounds ... 500 plus 71 ... carry the one ... divide by two ... oh forget it. The Grand Prize will be $600 US dollars.

And finally, if you're one of those 21 qualifying artists and you'd like a head start, or you're just curious, you can join us in the Fan Art IRC channel on Thursday night (around 8pm PST) to learn what the challenge for the first round of the finals will be a day ahead of everyone else. Once again, check out the RPGamer IRC FAQ and Java IRC client to get you going with that.

Good luck to all of the artists, and be sure to check back Monday night to learn who will be the last three finalists.