I'm hoping that some past participants/winners of official design contests could help me here.

I've been seeing lots of variation to how people are entering the design contest. Some put in pictures of the pets with all the traits and then a smaller photo with no traits and only the base colors below. I can't seem to find a consistent number of visible traits either, and when I looked at past winners I saw that many had 0-2 visible traits. Despite this, many entries have 3 or more visible traits. How many traits should contest entries have? Should entries provide that smaller picture of the pet with no traits, or is that optional to give the judges an idea of what the plain color scheme looks like?

Thank you! I hope that this helps other newbies participate in the contest as well.

Edit: Just realized that I didn't change "Enter" to "Entering" when I changed the title while writing this post. Cringing over the fact that I can't edit the title...

Unless specifically stated on the rules post there's no "one way" to do it. Pretty much do what best appeals to you. (Although if you could keep images to max 250 x 250 pixels, it would be appreciated to avoid unnecessary page stretching.)

As Imperium said, there is no 'right' way of posting for the themed contest. This 'contest' is to choose colour palettes for the themed pets that will be catchable in the festival zone during the festival, so ideally you want to show how a few different trait combinations could look in those colours. I usually do two to four 6 visible examples in the colour scheme I'm entering. Other people do 0, 2, 4, and 6 visible variations, still others do 3 visible variations, and others do one 0 visible with one 6 visible. As long as you have all of the colours filled in and you feel that those colours work well with 99% of the traits (I can't think of any themes that are perfect with -every- trait), then you're doing it 'right'.

https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=38590&page=1#2

All of those listed on that post are my past successes with themed pet design submissions. I breed themed pets for 6-vis, so I've always displayed my submissions as gorgeous 6-vis combinations to show off their full potential.

Occasionally I've added in the no-vis as well, like for this festival and the spring one. A few times I've also set up one 6-vis, and a pair of 3-vis which together, still cover all six traits. (So for example: a male with G1 G2 G3, and a female with M1 M2 M3; or a male with G1 G3 M2, and a female with G2 M1 M3.)

I'd say the most important thing is that you show off your designs at their best and don't bother cluttering everything up with anything more than that. Eggs and hatchlings forms aren't essential in the least (I kinda see them as useless to show myself since eventually all pets will grow up anyway) and if you've already got one or two stunning examples for show, don't fill it with countless more that look sub-par. It decreases the effectiveness of those with the wow-factor and just makes the theme look tiresome. Or worse, it will end up displaying some of the not-so-lovely traits which gives the theme a negative mark.

As well, there are some species (*cough*lupora*cough*) where the wings are HUGE and in the way of the body. I've generally done a 5V without wings and a 6V with for my example pairs. :)



So far as sizes go, I'm definitely with Imperium on the size=250 for the pets, since it's the most efficient: it lets you set up pairs side by side, and it still shows off all of the detail. :)