Mascot Contest.. for another site! ><.. but prizes!...

[mugenjohncel]

- CONTENT NO LONGER RELEVANT -

[Misuzu]

Hmmm, all the pretty girlies... but what if the mascot was a sweaty chubby otaku with ashtray-thick glasses and lots of acne? Kind of the stereotypical player of the VN

You know, ironically, I've met a lot of visual novel players, both here and in Japan, and the majority of them don't fit that stereotype =D. A lot of them were more nerdy looking then the big sweaty chubby thick-glassed otaku we've come to classify ourselves as =D.

[PyTom]

An idea, for those who want it (and I'm not sure if this will appeal to Misu):

Play up the news aspect of visualnews. So you'd have a bishoujo girl, in a stereotypical news reporter outfit. Say, with a fedora (with press pass) and holding a notepad.

Or something.

[Misuzu]

Hehee... I actually like that idea. So far AstCd2's and mugenjohncel's do a good job at that. Though I guess it's debatable right now as if to mugenjohncel's submission is a holding a notepad or a sketchbook =D.

[mikey]

Is it too late to suggest a different name? Maybe something not derived from the name VN, but a simple normal name - I think Anime Web Turnpike had it nicely done, their mascot was called Trixie Turnpike. It didn't sound Japanese at all costs, I liked it a lot.

The problem for me is, Bini-tan doesn't evoke anything (also, beware of the Visual / Kinetic News mascot Bikini-tan ^_^). Similarly, I think I saw somewhere a Wikipedia VN mascot called Wikipe-tan - which also doesn't go down the tongue very well (and this from a person whose native language includes words like "zmrzlina").

So all I'm trying to say is maybe give her a simple name that has some related meaning - for instance Tomoko (wisdom child), or Hitomi (eye). Well, something like that.

[Misuzu]

Bini-tan is just a random compression of the transliteration of VisualNews we invoked for the sake of having something to call a mascot that doesn't exists yet.

The winning mascot itself will have a name, decided by the artist and me. In fact, they'll have a personality, history and what not >.>;;. If I can find some people who want to contribute artistic skills, they may even have their own 4koma strip >.>;;

So Bini-tan would become like a title to them, to be used if you have a preference of "tan" names over the mascot's real name.

And uh yeah... that was my thought's on what I was going to do with the mascot.

[Piroshiki]

Hoho... And I have an idea, too. Count me in.

Play up the news aspect of visualnews. So you'd have a bishoujo girl, in a stereotypical news reporter outfit. Say, with a fedora (with press pass) and holding a notepad.

Nooo! My precious idea has leaked!

Kidding, I'm fairly sure at least 10 other people have thought about it already...

[lordcloudx]

bikini-tan eh?

[F.I.A]

Hoho... And I have an idea, too. Count me in.

Play up the news aspect of visualnews. So you'd have a bishoujo girl, in a stereotypical news reporter outfit. Say, with a fedora (with press pass) and holding a notepad.

Nooo! My precious idea has leaked!

Kidding, I'm fairly sure at least 10 other people have thought about it already...

Yup, just what I had in mind, and PyTom beat me to it.

I will see to it if I can contribute some work.

[lordcloudx]

edit: previous pic was too big.

[Misuzu]

After slaving away for quite a few hours to make these look nice, I present the official contests page for VisualNews! =D.

There is updated info on the Mascot Contest (which all submitters should probably read and also read the changelog on the submssion thread). Also the page for the Logo Contest is now up if anyone is interested in that.

Now that I've got some decent looking pages up, I don't feel ashamed to say this. Spam away that page if you like! =o. The more submissions, the merrier ^^.

[Misuzu]

Hmmm, all the pretty girlies... but what if the mascot was a sweaty chubby otaku with ashtray-thick glasses and lots of acne? Kind of the stereotypical player of the VN - instead of the stereotypical heroine of the VN. That could be cute. And it would make sense calling him Bini-tan, since for instance a Trekkie is the one who watches Star Trek, so Bini-tan (Binnie) logically would mean someone who plays VNs...

Well, the above is meant as a joke, but there's an alarming amount of cute girl/animal mascots around which look basically the same - the otakuish Bini-tan would definitely be different.

Hrmm... and idea just struck me, you could draw a hybrid of both ideas! A female bini-tan otaku girl. She'd obviously have a disgruntled look on her face... cause well... shes a female otaku who plays eroge and shunned by Japanese society xD. For some reason, Ogiue from Genshiken keeps popping up into my mind =D.

[mikey]

Ingenious. I really mean it.

[bitter mode] Too bad the bishoujo machinery dictating everything will mean that bini-tan is going to be the stereotypical skinny not-so-obviously-but-still sexy girl anyway. [/bitter mode]

Well, then at least give her frameless glasses

[lordcloudx]

Too bad the bishoujo machinery dictating everything will mean that bini-tan is going to be the stereotypical skinny not-so-obviously-but-still sexy girl anyway.

a loli is fine too.
see? she's neither sexy nor skinny.

http://pictureposter.allbrand.nu/pictur ... nyutan.png

[Misuzu]

I really want a cute gothic dress loli girl... but thats just my personal preference and don't see how that could be integrated to news without being blatant that we just wanted to draw a goth loli with a notebook or laptop xD.

For that matter... why is there no laptops? We are a "internet publication"! Why are all the mascots using "obsolete" technology! =P

(Not that anyone has to do any of those, I was just randomly getting bombarded with ideas that I realized hadn't been used at (or selfishly injecting personal preference into the contest xD)).

Now to the real content of my post: >_>;;
lordcloudx, I modified your submission a bit for the actual contest page... as the words Lemma are still written over Australia >_>;;. I'll update the contest page tonight with the new submissions.