Slight edit--
added in better character description, and new references.
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Alright, enough people are showing an interest in this, and it hasn't even been too long, that I figure I might as well announce it.

CONTEST!
Theme: To concept and re-design my pre-existing characters.
Current Due date: MAY 15th (You have a little under two months.)

Contest information:
Often times, I see artists get stuck with a single idea for a character, and feel unable to change them. However, with an open mind, the possibilities for making these characters more interesting is quite endless.

Your job is to take an existing character or species of mine and re-draw it however you want. This means that you can do anything from designing an aquatic Meradragon, to giving Islenteon a new outfit, to re-designing a species of mine into something you find a little more interesting, even to taking a character and re-designing their personality.
I am trying to make this contest as open as possible. It's entirely based upon creativity, and while drawing is the main medium, you could write up and entry, sculpt one, or any other way you have of expressing your idea.

Entries are due April 15th, and the deadline will be announced if it changes.

Rules:
Rules are VERY simple for this contest.
1. You can enter as many times as you'd like, but can only win one prize if you're chosen.
2. entires must have SOMETHING to do with the original concept. I want people to be as creative as they'd like, but if you enter a picture of a hot pink, male, dog, and say it's the new design for Mera, with no explanation, you probably won't win On the other hand, if you entered a hot pink, dog figure, but kept her personality in store, and kept a few aspects of her showing through, that would be more creative.
3. You can draw whatever content you want in the images, up to R for violence, but please, nothing lewd. sexual in nature doesn't bother me, persay, but I'd rather not see pure pornographic images.
4. If you have any problems, or questions, feel free to note me. If you'd like to try something highly original, still, feel free to. I won't be angry about changing the characters. In fact, that's still something I encourage.
5. Just enjoy yourself!

Judging: Judging will be done upon the grounds of creativity far more than art skill. This is to level the fields and make it something anyone could join. More specific judging criteria might be announced later.

Prizes: You know this is what you wanted to see, right
Okay, right now, there are three prize fields: If a lot more people than expected join the contest, I'll actually increase the prizes, such as adding possibility of a subscription, or just increasing the amount of art you get. This is just their current standing:

1st prize: Gets a full out commission piece. digital. character and background, similar to this: [link] [link] Or, if traditional, done on bristol board like this: [link] (or colored similar to this: [link] )
2nd prize: Receives a single character simple background piece. Traditional or digital. [link] [link] [link]
3rd prize: Receives a sketch commission. [link] [link]

Characters:
[link] anything on this page is fair game for you to re-design, but I'll list ten specific, better known characters you can modify here:

Mera dragon: [link] [link] [link] [link]
Mera has a simple design. She is green, with yellow spikes, rather arrogant, prideful, and a wanderer. More muscular in build, and, obviously, a dragon.

Mera Eisna: [link]
[link] [link] [link]
Mera eisna technially represents me, but why can't her design reflect something else?
She's currently a depiction, anthro or feral, of a brown eisna with brown hair, and two stripes on each limb, ears and tail. The fun thing about this is that if you take her, since her design depicts me, you can try and see if there's another animal, or idea that you think could better represent me (or just a silly one for the fun of it)

Biddinal: [link] [link] [link] [link] [link]
The biddinal is the guardian of the underworld and the dead. Traditionally depicted as a brownish feline with iridescent wings. (which only manifest in their own realm). However, the older design presented them as a lot darker, with chains and stitches and gothic ideas.

Eisnsa: [link] [link]
Eisna are similar to biddinals, except non magical. They're feline in build, with lizard-like tails, and a mat of hair like a mane on their head. Rather large creatures, and quite intelligent. Can have a variety of markings.

Ion: [link] [link] [link] [link]
Ion is a Tarusk. A Brightly colored, intelligent, griffon-like species. He's bright green in color, and works as a pilot and mechanic on a smuggling ship. He has two antennae-like structures on his head.

Islenteon [link] [link] [link]
Isletneon is human-formed, but an immortal. He's tall and rather passive, yet determined. Often carries a staff with him. A friend to sitharians

Sitharian: [link] [link] [link] [link]
Sitharians are upright dragon-like beings with bat wing ears. They're highly magical, and rather xenophobic in nature. They like dance, tattoos and ritual, and are generally depicted a grayish tone with blue tattoos.

Teramin [link] [link] [link] [link] [link]
Teramin is cursed with a split personality. One side of his is sorrowful, but not evil, and the other side is all the dark aspects of himself manifested in full. As his normal personality, he sees this dark looming shadow behind himself which has the ability to control objects or manifest itself shortly. It's undetermined if this is in his mind, or real. As his shadow personality, he doesn't actually have a shadow.

Sequr: [link] [link] [link]
Sequr is a horse of the desert who is part unicorn... a deadly, carnivorous species on Tisitan. He's highly intelligent, but unable to speak, and he has the remnants of fangs in his mouth. Mostly gray-black in color.

Lazcross: [link] [link] [link] [link]
Lazcross is a dark phoenix, but one who used to worship the sun. He can't come out during the day, and gets his powers from the light of the moon. He's purple-black in color with red eyes, and he's rather depressive.


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I will post updated references for these in the next week if possible.

Edit--
Inspiration:
Okay, this project was inspired by the concept art I have to do for my digital illustration class. Ask what an artist wants to be, and the most frequent answer you'll get is "I want to do concept design" This is a coveted office, and it requires a lot of work to get up to the level to be able to do such. I don't know if I'll get there, but I'm putting in extra work to get closer to that level.

Whatever, all of this was inspired by the design process I've been going through for a gas-mask cowboy image I'm working on for class. I'll post a deviation with the final designs when I get there, but here are the process works:
Several pages of silhouette sketches, first: [link]
followed by refining a few of the designs into thumbnails: Here's one page: [link]
Well, when I presented these to my professor, he liked one thumbnail in particular. I tried to flesh this out, actually, the guy in the red, but the design became too complicated and lost the earlier simplicity of the thumbnail. I was sketching the other night, thinking about it, and came out with a monster: [link]
This got me thinking back to an older deviation: [link] and I started to think that the guy reminded me of a gas mask wearing fellow in a poncho.

... thus, I design a gas mask cowboy [link]

... I figure he should ride something, so I try and work out a design: [link]

I'm liking the bottom left one, so I just give it a saddle: [link]

so on so forth. I'm going to do a piece around this later, but basically, yeah. Concepting. What I enjoy about concepting, so far, is that you can just open your mind, and try new things, which was what I was after in this contest. Wanted to see how unique people can get their ideas. If you work in the field, someone will give you an idea, and ask you to work around it. that was sort of what I was going for.

hahaa, No. I don't expect anyone to put this much work into the contest. Just wanted to share process work with you, that's all