Even though I asked in a previous journal entry for people NOT to ask for critiques, we still get quite a few "why was this declined?", quite a few "my work is better than their work, but why did you let their picture in and not mine?", and quite a few "my work expired, fix it!!" comments. So let me respond to all of those right here:

We are SERIOUSLY under-staffed. A year ago we had 30 active admins contributing, voting, doing critiques, etc. Then people lost interest, got distracted with RL stuff, or just kind of fell off the face of the earth (or, better yet, some contributed their art but wouldn't do any of the voting or critiques). So after all that, we now only have maybe six or seven active admins helping run everything. That means when we are split on voting, we sometimes don't have anyone else to step in and break a tie for us, and a picture expires. Because of this, we recently reduced the number of votes it takes for a picture to make it in. However, this means at times the quality will vary-- now only three people have to vote Yes for a picture, meaning if those three people all happen to be strict voters, your chances go down. If we have three voters who like everything, your chances go up. We don't have the well-rounded system of voters we once had, and a split vote sometimes means a pic ends up in voting limbo if we don't just vote whichever side has more votes, yes or no.

We'd really like to get a few more contributors, but here's the deal; contributor submissions get voted on too, just like everyone else, so you don't just get a free pass. You need to be ready to vote on at least ten-twenty submissions a day (though more would be great if you could swing it, since we get about 80 submissions a day now), and once we get critiques open again we'll need you to help with that. We only allow contributors in if they have a pretty decent gallery, update their sites frequently, and can speak English fair enough to do critiques and answer questions.  Yes, you may be turned down, so keep that in mind before you apply. If you want to note us with some samples of your work, you may. If you just link to your gallery we will probably only look through your more recent works.

Also of note, we will demote any contributors who go inactive for three months from contributor to just a regular member.

So there you go! Please don't ask for critiques just yet-- once we get new contributors we are going to work out a better system to answer questions and such, but for now we've only got a handful of people who can really do anything at all. To those of you getting expired entries, we are SO sorry. We've had a lot of those and that's why we decided to make this entry and explain what's going on, and to invite anyone who is pretty confident in their work and  thinks they can help out to help us out.

If we can't find anyone, we may just have to make this a free for all site, but that would greatly lower the standards of our group and there are already tons of groups out there that accept any and all submissions. We'd rather offer a challenge, but right now it's a bit tricky.

Well it was certainly tough voting, because there were so many beautiful entries... but without further adieu, we present the winners for the mascot contest!

First Place
FranyBerry
stooberry.deviantart.com/art/A…

Second Place
RammsteirNails
rammsteirnails.deviantart.com/…

Third Place
El-Seluvia
alyssa-el-seluvia.deviantart.c…

Honourable Mention

kohiu
usagi-kan.deviantart.com/art/A…

Ruurin
ruurin.deviantart.com/art/Anim…

R-no71
r-no71.deviantart.com/art/AA-M…

elehoernchen
elehoernchen.deviantart.com/ar…

peloke
peloke.deviantart.com/art/AA-m…

Prize winners will be contacted and the icon will be changed (at last!) within the next few days, so hang tight!

All of use here on the staff team would once again like to thank you so much for all the entries! Without our members, this group would never have been able to grow as much as we have (and still are!)

-AnimangaArtists Staff Team