Guide to Themed Pet Design Contests

Contents:
Basic Information and rules
What not to do
What are the designs for?
How should you do it?
What happens once you've got your Theme?
Picking traits
Examples of Thread Submissions, Themed Pets and their PB projects
How to get your image, Visual Guide
Glossary- what do those words mean?
- Text
- Images
Complete list of pets in Alphabetical Order
On using existing pets as theme designs

The TL;DR Post



Basic Information and rules:

Dates and Posts:

- Occurring typically four times a year- once for each of the seasonal festivals- the Themed Pet Design contests are a chance to stretch ones creative muscles in the Generator.

- Make sure you read the rules; sometimes there are additional rules as to what you should include or exclude.

- Pay attention to the End Date of the contest.

- Reserving posts is disallowed- make your post once you have at least one design to put in.

- One designs post by a player is preferable- a second should only be made if they run out of space in the first (if you put only one or two images of each pet species to display the designs, this should not be an issue.)
You are allowed to make brief positive comments about other peoples designs, or to quickly explain something to another player, but it is preferable if this is kept to an absolute minimum in the thread.
You can edit your post using the pencil icon in the lower right of the post.

- You can alter the designs in your post at any point up until the End Date.
Designs added after this date may be viable, but might be passed over or missed entirely- it depends on when Krinadon and Faiona get the time to make their design shortlists.


Which species:

- The post made by the Admins will typically list what species they want designs for- or list any species which should be excluded. These days it often does not exclude species, as the species that cannot be found in the Festzone (Puffadore, Ny'vene, off-season Seasonal Fableds) are used for the Exclusive themes that are obtained from the Contest Boards or Seasonal Activities (eg. Brewing in Fall Fest, Flower growing in Spring Fest)

List Example: This list for species in the Lost Grove Themed Pet Design Contest #1

Which excludes the four seasonal fabled pets, the ny'vene, and the puffadore.


Designs, Images:

- Only post designs that you, yourself, have designed. Using other peoples designs is grounds for disqualification from the Contest. Having the same idea basis/inspiration for a design as another person is not the same thing. There can be multiple people with, say, a 'pumpkin patch' luffox theme design, for example, so long as they have all designed their own interpretation.

- Do not use any designs you see in the thread elsewhere, either. Only use your own pet designs, made from scratch. If you are found to be stealing designs you can be reported.
(Also it's just really rude. The only time it could possibly be considered 'okay' in the slightest is if you specifically and openly ask the person who designed it if you could use it for something and got a clear go-ahead *from them* to use it for that. If they say 'no', or don't respond, or give anything other than a clear 'yes you can use it', you do not use it)

- Only submit one theme design for each pet species unless otherwise stated (eg. two separate design threads with different theme parameters, such as one for specifically beach-related theme designs and one for 'anything summery that isn't beach related', as for 2017 Summer fest.)

- To post your design, use the sylestia image codes, which can be obtained by right-clicking the images and selecting copy image URL, or clicking view image and copying it from the URL bar.
(See Post 8 for a more in-depth breakdown, and methods for different browsers)
Off-site uploads of pet images (such as via Imgur, photobucket) are disqualified from consideration.

- Image size 250px is the preferable size; to size your pet images, either add &size=250 if you copied the generators full-view, or alter the &size=150 if you copied from the regular generator view size.
This size means that the pet images are easily viewable but don't take too long to load or take up too much space in the thread.

So when you look at it the code should be structured like this:
https://www.sylestia.com/image_builder_pet.php?species=aeridini&gender=male&E=0&gd1=00&gd2=00&gd3=00&md1=00&md2=00&md3=00&ec=FFFFFF&c1=FFFFFF&c2=FFFFFF&c3=FFFFFF&c4=FFFFFF&c5=FFFFFF&gd1c=FFFFFF&gd2c=FFFFFF&gd3c=FFFFFF&md1c=FFFFFF&md2c=FFFFFF&md3c=FFFFFF&ac=FFFFFF&ac2=FFFFFF&maturity=216&size=150

- You might want to check through extant themes of a species via the Themed Pet Codex to make sure yours is not too similar to any of them. It will also help you avoid giving it a potential theme name that is already used by that species.

- Remember to fill in all colour slots so they work with your design (with the possible exceptions of Accent 1 and/or Accent 2, as not all species have traits that use them at this point), unless you are specifically using white in that slot (and even then, FFFFFF white isn't the best choice- it is better to use something slightly off-white to help control the colour swing)

- You can use any traits, as the traits you use have no significance in relation to the contest. They are for display purposes only.
The Theme Design Contests are for the selection of Non-Majestic Themes, so you should always endeavor to make a design work as a non-Majestic theme. Though designs are sometimes selected to be altered into Majestic themes, this is a very rare occurrence. Restricted traits are best used for showing colour slots that aren't used much by other traits.
Quoting Krinadon:
"I personally think it's better to try and avoid using them, as these designs are always for non-Restricted Themed Pets so they need to look good for non-Restricted Traits. However, some species are kind of limited with detailed Traits outside of their Restricted Traits. So, it's entirely up to each designer how they want to showcase their designs."

And importantly

- You are designing a theme colour set, not a pet.

Contents:
Basic Information and rules
What not to do
What are the designs for?
How should you do it?
What happens once you've got your Theme?
Picking traits
Examples of Thread Submissions, Themed Pets and their PB projects
How to get your image, Visual Guide
Glossary- what do those words mean?
Complete list of pets in Alphabetical Order
TL;DR post
On using existing pets as theme designs


What should you not do?

When these threads come about, there are some things that often occur that are big Do Not's:

1. People design a male and female with different colour sets- this counts as two different designs, as all themed pets use the same base colour set for both the male and female.

2. People design only with a specific group of genes and mutations in mind, ignoring how any other traits work with the colours.

3. People do not fill all the trait colour slots.

4. People design a specific pet, rather than a theme (this one often ties with one or more of the three prior points.)

To stress the point again, these contests are about designing a Theme Colour Set, not designing a pet.

5. Less commonly, a person will use an external image host- this is unnecessary, and the pet image URL is expected.
Using an external upload site for pet images loses all the information provided by the sylestian pet url- namely the colours assigned to each slot. Krinadon and Faiona aren't going to spend an hour trying to meticulously match your colours if you've used an external image host like imgur or puush instead, even if they really like your design; they'll just select a different persons' design instead.

Post 8 covers in detail how to get your image URL from the generator and post it in the thread.


6. Also rarely people steal other peoples' designs, either from already extant pets or from the Generator saves or the like. Don't do that. Taking them and then altering a colour or two doesn't change anything. It's rude, inconsiderate, and not allowed. Don't do it.

Contents:
Basic Information and rules
What not to do
What are the designs for?
How should you do it?
What happens once you've got your Theme?
Picking traits
Examples of Thread Submissions, Themed Pets and their PB projects
How to get your image, Visual Guide
Glossary- what do those words mean?
Complete list of pets in Alphabetical Order
TL;DR post
On using existing pets as theme designs


What are you designing for?

The first post should tell you what kind of theme you should use inspiration for- eg., Autumn, the Beach, Flowers, Summer.
Designs chosen from the threads will either go on to become a Zone themed, or an Exclusive themed:

1. A Zone themed- appearing in the zone as a wild pet of any rarity among Rare, Epic, Legendary, and Mythical.
These pets thus are an absolute maximum of 5-vis, though that would only happen if you, against all odds, found a 4-vis Mythical and used a Genetic Mutator on it.
The vast majority of these pets will be 0v2c or 1v, followed by 4c, 1v2c and 2v.

2. An Exclusive themed- either won or made during the fest. These pets can range from no-vis to 3-vis. They cannot be Mutated, as they cannot be obtained as Tamed pets.

Neither of these have any kind of fixed traits, but rather, fixed colours (within a given small colour swing range)- they are what are known as Tagged Themes. Tagged themes can be searched using the Advanced Search.

3. A Majestic theme, a type of Exclusive theme, is selected from player designs much more rarely. Typically they are Admin Designs (perhaps 5% are player designed coloursets). These do have set traits (those of whatever Restricted trait set they're associated with), but given how rarely a player design becomes one, a theme design should still always take all colour slots and traits into account.

People often make breeding projects out of them, aiming to make 6-vis pets (see post 7 for examples.)

Zone Themes tend to be available for two years running in their respective seasonal festival zone before being cycled out.

The MegaZone/ Lost Grove themes (found in the Lost Grove, the Forgotten Caverns, and the Temple), are found at any time, though much more rarely.

Contents:
Basic Information and rules
What not to do
What are the designs for?
How should you do it?
What happens once you've got your Theme?
Picking traits
Examples of Thread Submissions, Themed Pets and their PB projects
How to get your image, Visual Guide
Glossary- what do those words mean?
Complete list of pets in Alphabetical Order
TL;DR post
On using existing pets as theme designs


How should you do it?

Once you have your base idea/ inspiration, get to designing.
Pick your base colours, and move through each trait- all six of them- working so you get each colour on each trait as best you can with both the base and the other traits.

Tweak them freely as you work to make sure they work to your eyes.

When you have all the colour slots filled out (remembering that some species use A1 and A2 now, even if just for one or two traits), randomly select traits in groups (just flail that mouse around the dropdowns and click, why not) and see how it works with those traits. Repeat a few times, tweak colours as seems needed.

Don't be afraid to go through five different variations of one colour, two, or all. It can take a while to get things working. Sometimes you just can't get it to work right even when the concept seemed sound and you have to do a different theme for the species (sometimes you can reassign the inspiration to a different species and get it to work, though)

Don't be afraid to put them in genchat to ask other peoples opinions on how your colours are working. Having other people looking at them with fresh sets of eyes and thoughts can be very helpful for refining. Also very helpful if you have two or more designs for a species and need to pick which one to use.

Remember that you can change the designs you've used in your post again at any point until the End Date of the contest. Maybe you're just altering a trait to show off the colours better/differently, or changing one colour, or swapping the entire thing to a completely different colour set, it's fine so long as it's before the end date.
Krin and Fai only take the final versions of the posts into account, as they go through the whole thread after the end date to choose the designs.

Contents:
Basic Information and rules
What not to do
What are the designs for?
How should you do it?
What happens once you've got your Theme?
Picking traits
Examples of Thread Submissions, Themed Pets and their PB projects
How to get your image, Visual Guide
Glossary- what do those words mean?
Complete list of pets in Alphabetical Order
TL;DR post
On using existing pets as theme designs


What May Happen:
Okay, so you've got your Theme, now what?

On to posting the theme in the thread.

- Remember only one theme for each species.

- To post the image, copy/paste the image url of your design from the generator and use the 'IMG' button located in the post tools (between the buttons that say 'URL' and 'URL='). Either click the button first and paste the link between the ] of the opening bracket and [ of the closing bracket, or paste the url, highlight it, then hit the button.



- Remember that the favoured image size is 250px.

- It's preferable that you have a name for your theme- or several potential names.
In example, our Snowy Coal Vulnyx design were under "Snowy Coal Vulnyx/ Sooty Track/ Sooty Snow Vulnyx" in the post we put them in.
The name you choose will typically reflect what it is based on/ inspired by.

It should be noted, however, that the name(s) you have for your design is not necessarily the name that it will carry if it's chosen. Sometimes the Admins make alterations.
Examples of a name change are the Witch's Blood Nytekrie, which was originally coined as the Nevermore nytekrie by their creator, Wolvesofdeltora, and the Lilypad sylvorpa, originally named Blooming Swamplands sylvorpa by Xavion.

The same goes for the colours- occasionally- though more rarely- they will use a theme but alter or swap some colours.
(an excellent example of an extreme colour alteration is our own Swallowtail nephini design which became the Black Swallowtail nephini.
Colouration variation example, Our original vs the Theme:
vs
in which what basically happened was that they swapped some of the blues and oranges around.

This was still counted as our design, despite the alterations)

Contents:
Basic Information and rules
What not to do
What are the designs for?
How should you do it?
What happens once you've got your Theme?
Picking traits
Examples of Thread Submissions, Themed Pets and their PB projects
How to get your image, Visual Guide
Glossary- what do those words mean?
Complete list of pets in Alphabetical Order
TL;DR post
On using existing pets as theme designs


Picking traits for your post's images (How many, which?)

The short of it is: However many you want, and any, since it's to show off the colours you've picked. Theme contests are not threads where the individual pets will be made real, so there is no trait point limit to restrict you.

The long is:
There are many variations you can post in the thread- some people do a male and female of the same traits, some do one gender in 6-vis and one in 3-vis, some people two 3-vis, some people include no-vis.

A good plan is to have different traits between however many images of each theme that you post- obviously not a requirement, but it will let you show off more variety in your theme, presenting the ways the colours work.

The thing you want to do when you post is pick a selection of traits to display that you think works really well with your theme design; you're trying to show them off to the best of their ability, making them look good, but also show the flexibility of the design.


Something you may want to avoid is having a male and a female that have the same traits and specifically matching that the name you've given their colour set (eg. a male and female summer fest aurleon design that's called 'phoenix' or 'firebird' or something that show only the fire mutations.)
While it certainly won't count a person out of having their designs picked, it does somewhat give a feel that they didn't fully put mind to how other traits would work with it (it generally raises the thought 'did they think they were designing a singular, specific pet/ pair of pets rather than a theme?')


Now that there are Disruptors for all Restricted Trait sets, you can feel free to use them, as it is no longer impossible for people to potentially make Zone or Exclusive themes have them.

Contents:
Basic Information and rules
What not to do
What are the designs for?
How should you do it?
What happens once you've got your Theme?
Picking traits
Examples of Thread Submissions, Themed Pets and their PB projects
How to get your image, Visual Guide
Glossary- what do those words mean?
Complete list of pets in Alphabetical Order
TL;DR post
On using existing pets as theme designs


Examples of Thread Submissions, Themed Pets and their PB projects:

Tamed:

Snowy Coal Vulnyx
What was posted in the Design thread:

(Designer: Scathreoite)

Some examples of tamed:


(the last girl being 3-vis legendary mutated to be 4-vis)
(Owners: Scathreoite, Scathreoite, Reisari, NightbaneWolf)

A completed 6-vis breeding project:

(Breeder: Chocolat)

Red Wood Draeyl
What was posted in the Design thread:

(Designer: Barcode454)

Some examples of tamed:

(Owners: Junco, Zelly, Lostwords13, Lostwords13)

A completed 6-vis breeding project:

(Breeder: Chocolat)

Mixed Berry Nytekrie
What was posted in the Design thread:

(Designer: Xavion)

Some examples of tamed:

(Owners: Scathreoite, Scathreoite, Electrifying, Rixva)

A completed 6-vis breeding project:

(Breeder: Chocolat)

Exclusive:

Blue Lotus Aeridini
What was posted in the Design thread:

(Designer: Xavion)
(In the case of this post, people were explicitly asked in the rules to include their inspiration images in their post; failure to do so meant the design would be automatically disqualified.)


Some examples:

(Owners: Scathreoite, Xavion, Xavion, Absoluteinsanity)

A completed 6-vis breeding project:

(Breeder: Xavion)

Contents:
Basic Information and rules
What not to do
What are the designs for?
How should you do it?
What happens once you've got your Theme?
Picking traits
Examples of Thread Submissions, Themed Pets and their PB projects
How to get your image, Visual Guide
Glossary- what do those words mean?
Complete list of pets in Alphabetical Order
TL;DR post
On using existing pets as theme designs


How to get your image, Visual Guide

(for the right-click method of getting images in browsers other than Firefox, you can check this thread, which additionally covers Edge, Internet Explorer, Safari)

Using Small preview, + pasting between tags

Right mouse click...


and pasting into pre-placed IMG tags...







and editing the size...




Using Large preview, + highlighting a URL to add tags



and highlighting a pasted image link to put it in IMG tags...


then attatching the Size modifier.


Ta-da!



Let's break down the anatomy of the Sylestia Pet Image code so you can know how to check it:

https://www.sylestia.com/image_builder_pet.php?ec=FAE1FA&c1=C4A8FF&c2=B07DC7&c3=864ABA&ac=682891&ac2=FFFFFF&gd1c=A04AC2&gd2c=E38FDC&gd3c=E3BEFA&md1c=A66DE8&md2c=D3C3DB&md3c=BE85FF&gd1=AA&gd2=DD&gd3=CC&md1=CC&md2=BB&md3=AA&species=faelora&gender=female&maturity=216&size=250
(older version)

https://www.sylestia.com/image_builder_pet.php?species=aeridini&gender=male&E=0&gd1=00&gd2=00&gd3=00&md1=00&md2=00&md3=00&ec=FFFFFF&c1=FFFFFF&c2=FFFFFF&c3=FFFFFF&c4=FFFFFF&c5=FFFFFF&gd1c=FFFFFF&gd2c=FFFFFF&gd3c=FFFFFF&md1c=FFFFFF&md2c=FFFFFF&md3c=FFFFFF&ac=FFFFFF&ac2=FFFFFF&maturity=216&size=150
(Current setup)

This Website's Domain
https://www.sylestia.com/

Location? Folder? I don't know enough about this sort of thing to use the right words
image_builder_pet.php?

Pet colours
ec=FAE1FA&c1=C4A8FF&c2=B07DC7&c3=864ABA&ac=682891&ac2=FFFFFF&gd1c=A04AC2&gd2c=E38FDC&gd3c=E3BEFA&md1c=A66DE8&md2c=D3C3DB&md3c=BE85FF

Pet traits
&gd1=AA&gd2=DD&gd3=CC&md1=CC&md2=BB&md3=AA

Pet species modifier
&species=faelora

Pet gender modifier
&gender=female

Pet age modifier
&maturity=216
(Where =0 is Eggling image, =73 is Hatchling image and =216 is Adult image)

Image size modifier
&size=250

Contents:
Basic Information and rules
What not to do
What are the designs for?
How should you do it?
What happens once you've got your Theme?
Picking traits
Examples of Thread Submissions, Themed Pets and their PB projects
How to get your image, Visual Guide
Glossary- what do those words mean?
- Text
- Images
Complete list of pets in Alphabetical Order
TL;DR post
On using existing pets as theme designs


Glossary- what do those words mean?

Text:

Theme
An official site colour scheme on a sylesti; these are divided into Tagged, Purebreed, and Crossbreed. If a colour scheme is entirely user made- started either with a dye project, Essences, or Regeneration, then it is not Themed, and is instead a breeding project.

Tagged
Tagged sylesti are either wild-caught, made, or obtained in special ways. The tag refers to the purple theme name that can be found in the genetics section of any first-generation theme pet (Blue in the case of Purebreeds.) It also can be seen as a star in their genetics, which when hovered over will show the theme name.
These tags are the method by which these pets are searchable in the Advanced Search.
For the most part Tagged theme pets are obtained during the Seasonal Festivals, either wild from the Fest Zone (in which case, upon appearing, the Log Box will display that you have encountered Rare Enemy), via the Contest Boards, or via the seasonal activities.
As of July 2018, Purebred offspring are also Tagged.
(To search specifically for Purebred pets in the Advanced Search, Make sure the 'Theme' section is set either to 'Yes' or a particular theme, and the 'Include Purebred' is set to either 'Yes')

Tamed
A pet caught or obtained as an egg in the wild. This also applies to pets and eggs bought from the Scale Shop, Puffadore Petshop, and Ny'Vene Shop.
They have italic text in their genetics section stating that they are a Tamed Sylesti.
Tamed pets can have Genetic Mutators used on them.

Exclusive
Pets obtained via special methods, such as the Seasonal Contest Boards. Exclusive pets have higher base stats than Tamed pets.
Sometimes if you look through tagged pets in the Advanced Search you may notice Exclusives
1. if there are one or two of a theme that are Exclusive when all the others are Tamed, then the pets are likely the chosen prizes for the user having had their theme design(s) chosen.
2. If there is a full shift, where it goes from all of the theme being Tamed to all of them being Exclusive, it is possible that either the method of obtaining that theme changed, or they were first available before the Exclusive tag was in place. These Exclusives have regular stats as opposed to the typical boosted Exclusive stats.

You cannot use Genetic Mutators on Exclusives, as they are not Captured pets.

Wheel Theme/Pet
A type of Exclusive Theme; Sylesti themes obtained specifically from the Festival Wheels, which were discontinued in 2015. There are also the Majestic themes obtained from the Black Friday Wheel of Themed in 2016.

(Breeding) Project
When a person is breeding to obtain something such as Max Stats or a certain set of traits; Themed pets are often used for these.

Purebred/Purebreed/PB
Pets that are descended solely from a single theme tag.

Crossbred/Crossbreed
Pets made via crossing two (or more) themes. These are generally not worth very much in terms of Gold.


Images:

First Gen Theme Tag
Purebred Theme Tag

Encountering a Themed pet in a Festival Zone:


Theme pet battle (Themes always appear alone, never with any other pets. They also never have white or green stars, only blue or higher):


Wild-caught/ Zone egg (Tamed) Theme pet profile:


Created/Won (Exclusive) Theme pet profile:


First-gen Theme showing star on Lineage page (showing mouse hovering over star to display the theme name):


Third-gen Purebred Theme of a Breeding Project:


Using Advanced Search to look at Themed Pets of a certain tag (showing the Theme Dropdown menu for the Aurleon species):


Crossbreed Theme (showing theme names of both parents via the *magic of Photoshop oooooo*):

(Thanks to SpaceElf1)
(these lineage images were done before the introduction of PB stars)

Contents:
Basic Information and rules
What not to do
What are the designs for?
How should you do it?
What happens once you've got your Theme?
Picking traits
Examples of Thread Submissions, Themed Pets and their PB projects
How to get your image, Visual Guide
Glossary- what do those words mean?
Complete list of pets in Alphabetical Order
TL;DR post
On using existing pets as theme designs



Complete list of pets in Alphabetical Order

You can copy/paste this list into your post if you want to keep it in order- just leave the ones you haven't done blank.

Aeridini
Aurleon
Bulbori
Draeyl
Faelora
Ferrikki
Griffi
Kelpari
Lighira
Luffox
Lunemara
Lupora
Morkko
Nephini
Ny'vene
Nytekrie
Puffadore
Qitari
Ryori
Sylvorpa
Vulnyx
Zolnixi