Sunday: Loose Pixels

Entries for the HJC Open will continue to be posted tomorrow. You have until July 16 @ 11:59pm Eastern time to submit your concept. We will then rate the entries on July 17-19!

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The winner of the COTY-June vote was Jake88!

Full Results

Jake88 - 5

Steven G. - 4

TG - 2

David K. - 0

What comes next for Jake's concept? It moves on to the very important COTY - 2nd Quarter Vote!

Thus, S2dio, Steven G, and Jake88 will battle it out in another vote to see who joins Dylan A. in January to determine our 2014 Concept of the Year! The 2nd Quarter entrants are listed on the side of the page in the silver banner. Click on that banner or go to the COTY 2014 tab to see the concepts. Voting ends on Friday and this is a very important vote, so lets see a good turnout!

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The winner of the COTW vote for June 30 - July 6 was Dylan W!

Full Results

Dylan W. - 6

Stephen T. - 3

Mike S. - 2

As many of you know by now, the new COTW nominees have been listed in the black banner on the side of the page. As per the rules, there were too many concepts properly nominated for COTW. So only the concepts that were at least thirded are entered into the COTW. You can click on that banner or go to the CONCEPT OF THE WEEK tab to see the concepts nominated. Voting ends on Friday and anyone can email in a vote. You can even vote for yourself.

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The past couple of weeks I have seen some new people comment and submit concepts here at HJC. This is awesome. Anytime HJC can grow, we all win. The HJC readers are the life of this blog. Without you it's just me typing away and sharing my own concepts.

 For those new people I really strongly urge you to take a few minutes and read the ABOUT/CONTACT HJC page. It has all of our guidelines there as well as how we operate on a daily basis.

I'd also like everyone to take a quick look at COTW rules. A link to the rules can be found at the top of both the CONCEPT OF THE WEEK page and the COTY 2014 page. There are still a few people who nominate concepts for COTW, but I'm not able to count it because they have not done it correctly.

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I was supposed to share this last week and I blew it! Tom V. put together this great catalog of past COTW winners for 2014. Below are a couple of previews, but you can download the entire PDF here (large download). It's really a nice way to present all of the COTW winners and Tom always does great work.

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Loose Pixels

Loose pixels are small squares that have been missed when colour is being applied to that area of the template. It's a very common problem amongst new concept artists. The quicker you can clean up these areas, the quicker you will gain more respect as an artist with the HJC readers. As you become more comfortable with the template you use you'll become more aware of where the loose pixles can occur. Until that time I have highlighted some of the main areas where I see loose pixels.

Oh look, it's our example jersey from last week!

Despite my use of the RBK Edge Template from Sportslogos.net, the highlighted areas are typically consistent for other templates offered here on HJC. Loose pixels can also occur around logos if their backgrounds have been re-colured. Try to use logos with transparent backgrounds or backgrounds that use the same colour as your jersey concept.

If you zoom into each of the highlighted areas, you can see that I have filled in the trouble causing pixels with a bright neon green.

Now if a HJC Writer says that there are loose pixels on your concept, you'll know what they are talking about.

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Do you have an email address?

Seriously, you don't have an email address?

I have, like 4 of them. They're free, how do you not have one?!?!? Go get one!

Now, for everyone who does have an email address, send in your votes now. It's the 2nd Quarter Vote. It's very important. We need to determine our 2nd semi-finalist for the 2014 Concept of the Year!

2nd Quarter Vote (ends Friday @ 11:59pm Eastern)

COTW July 7-13 vote (ends Friday @ 11:59pm Eastern)

HJC Open Round 1 entries (due Wednesday @ 11:59pm Eastern)