The community members are not asking for anything to be done or retroactively changed about the current winners. We offer them our congratulations for their creative efforts, for they did not have anything to do with what our main concern has been. Have we reached a stalemate? Riot believes they judged the entries to the best of their ability with regard to contest rules and clarifications; the community members do not. Riot is in a situation where no matter what they do (add more prizes, do another round of the contest with stricter adherence to the clarifications, etc.) would be admitting a failure to judge according to guidelines, and would take away the glory from the current winners.
I admire those who are sticking to their guns in this thread, though, because I feel that simply focusing on what to do for the next contest is disrespectful to the current concerns. By brushing the issue under the rug, we would be disregarding the efforts of those who followed the rules to a T. We keep saying there were many more worthy entries that fit the spirit and rules of the contest without giving you examples to help explain what we mean. These are a few entries I had no doubt we'd see more of, and why:
Boxing Day Blitzcrank by Devanstator: The cleanest 3D Blitz I have seen, and undoubtedly gingerbread. The real reason this should be here is that it is a terribly clever idea! (Boxing Day is the day after Christmas.) Devanstator paid attention to the little details here as well as using ingenuity to construct the piece in the first place. There's "blood" on the gloves and mat, you can clearly see 'pwn' on the gloves, and to use candy canes and red licorice for the ring was genius.
Yordle Cart by davu and co.: Adorable, clean, and detailed. Yes, this is a yordle entry, but the smart use of gingerbread tiling leads your eye first from the cart then to our little yordles. The cart is stunning. Each character is also in their Snowdown skins (haven't seen many Tristanas, either)! Definitely a yordle entry exuding the spirit of the season.
Teemo Sculpture by IshtarBlood, Xagashi, and ObeySolestia: If you're going to present Teemo, this was the way to do it. Obviously graham cracker, frosting, what appears to be cotton candy, and M&Ms come together to make a full sculpture, which is was the contest challenged us to make.
Winter Dominion by Reikii: One of the most detailed and beautiful gingerbread creations seen. While not easily recognizable as League off the bat for some, it was clearly explained as a unique rendition of the Dominion map, which I have not seen others do.
My own: While it may be trite to add my own, I want to use it as an example of original concepts we had expected to see (as opposed to saying it should have made it farther). Unique points: a character recall, a [6"] Mistletoe Leblanc (and Kat and Nid), a Veigar stun around a cake base. Each character is in a Snowdown skin and is easily recognizable, made of gingerbread, and relatively sized to each other (i.e. human characters are bigger than the yordles). The layout of the piece and use of the interlocking gingerbread base is also unique from what I have seen. (The whole point here is the dissent over repeated use of the same characters, individual character cookies, and repeat concepts that were featured when there had to have been more original entries to choose from.)
How do you tell some of these people who spent over a week and a considerable amount of money on materials that though they paid strict attention to the rules and clarifications, the best we can give them is the satisfaction of having made something? What to do, though, is the real question. Do nothing, and you leave many of us wondering what the point would be in essentially wasting our time and talents on future contests if we cannot trust the judges to stick to the same guidelines we were given. I appreciate the sticky situation you're in and the desire to avoid it in the future. Guess a lot of us are just still concerned about the present. I truly wish you the best of luck while sorting this out.
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Member
Lol, I'm excited and eager to see the results. Congrats to those that already won, those that were selected as honorable mention, and to those that didn't make it all the way through. I've been keeping my eye on the forums since the contest opened up and I saw some really great submissions. I'm really upset that it has turned into such a huge debacle here at the end and that Xin is caught in the middle of it. Hopefully next time the rules will be a little clearer and maybe it won't be during the holiday seasons and Riot will be able to answer more questions on it. I think those two things right there is what has really hurt this contest.
