Dash of Inspiration: October Design Challenge

AND OUR WINNERS ARE …

1st Place goes to Michelle Lanoue with PID 1405754

October Dash of Inspiration Challenge 1st Place Michelle Lanoue

2nd Place goes to Ron Magnes with PID 1405010

October Dash of Inspiration Challenge 2nd Place Ron Magnes

CONGRATULATIONS to both of you and to ALL who participated with your fabulous designs. We just loved seeing the different directions creativity and inspiration took each of you, and this was a very close race to the finish line .. Well done!

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Congratulations to our September winners, Barbara Schreiber and Julia Bryant!

The entries for the past two months of challenges has been sparse. We do hope you’ll join us and take advantage of the fun, challenge yourself to create outside the box, and compete for the opportunity to reap the rewards of having your card picked by the GCU Panel of Challenge Judges for free promotion!

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For all the wonderful artists at GCU who paint their greeting card images, this design challenge should be right up your alley! And – with all the exceptional digital tools and tutorials out there for the photographer and digital artist to use to create realistic paintings from photographs – (many of which are free to try) – this month’s challenge should be a lot of fun and give you the reason you’ve been waiting for to experiment with some of these great painting tools!  Okay, let’s get to it …

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October Design Challenge

Theme: Paint the Town … Red

Requirements:

• Paint the town, city, or neighborhood – your own, one you’ve visited, one you’d like to visit or one that exists only in your mind – what’s important is that it LOOKS like a painting.
• Since an entire town painted red may not make for a marketable greeting card (unless you paint a zombie town!) just add a touch of red somewhere in your painting big or small, as long as it’s there (text alone doesn’t count).
• Watch your perspective! Look at my example, see how slanted the perspective was, with the buildings falling backwards in the original photograph? Make sure that your vertical and horizontal lines are straight on your buildings or your submission won’t pass the GCU Review Cycle and if it doesn’t get approved, it can’t be entered.
  
• In order to be considered for the challenge, the image must consist of three or more buildings.

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Entry Deadline: Friday, October  30th, 2015

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October Design Challenge Example

How to Enter: Post the PID (card number) and the URL (public storefront link – please WAIT for the card to be available in the public marketplace, please DO NOT post a link to your Manage Cards area) as a post in the challenge blog. We’ll forward your entry to the jury.

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Category: Any Category / Any Occasion where Home, House, Neighborhood or Location is appropriate.

Tips: From Our House – New Home – Greetings from Your State, Country, Town – New Address

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Rules:

• Submission must meet GCU’s Submission Guidelines and be Approved through the usual Review Cycle  – Fast Track your submission with this in the Notes to Reviewer: August Design Challenge Submission here is the link to the blog post: (include THIS blog post URL)
• Only ONE card per artist per challenge.
• Submissions must be NEW, no existing designs.
• Your entry must meet the Challenge Requirements and Theme or it will not be included in the challenge.
• Stock Card Creations entries will not be accepted.

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BLIND Judging:  We hope each of you enter every month. Entries are submitted anonymously for judging by the GCU Challenge Jury which means that before and during the challenge, judges do not have any way of knowing what artist is beyond each entry. This eliminates any and all concerns with ‘favoritism’. Results will post on the Community Blog – by November 4th. The jury will judge the entries on the following criteria:

• How well the card meets the Challenge Requirements and Theme.
• How well the card speaks to the Category the artist chooses for the card submission.
• Creativity, Execution and Marketability.

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Winners: 1st Place:

• The winning designer’s card and store will be featured on the GCU Public Blog – the blog which customers view and follow.
• As well as featured on the GCU Public Facebook Page – over 22,000 followers, now THAT’S exposure!
• The winning card will be Design of the Day following the announcement of the winners (within 48-hours).
  

  EXCEPTION: Horizontal (landscape) cards can not be DOD due to GCU Home Page space restrictions.  In these cases, GCU will choose a different vertically oriented card from your store to feature as DOD. Thank you for your understanding and apologies for this limitation.

• The winning card will be added to the Greeting Card Universe Design Challenge Winners Pinterest Board – currently GCU’s Pinterest Page followers: 1.2K!
• The winning card, should the artist choose, may be referenced in a new series by the winning artist and he/she may Fast Track all cards in the new series (being sure to give the Challenge URL and winning card PID in your Notes to Reviewer for each card in this series).
•  Winning card will be included in a marketing email to over 100,000 customers!

2^nd Place:

• Your submission will be Design of the Day the following week of announcing the Challenge winners (within 7-days).
  

  EXCEPTION: Horizontal (landscape) cards can not be DOD due to GCU Home Page space restrictions. In these cases, GCU will choose a different vertically oriented card from your store to feature as DOD. Thank you for your understanding and apologies for this limitation.

• Your card will be added to the Greeting Card Universe Design Challenge Winners Pinterest Board.
• Winning card will be included in a marketing email to over 100,000 customers!

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Tips:

Check out these tips, tricks, freebies, and tutorials from our own GCU Community Blog which might be helpful in this month’s Challenge.

Dash of Inspiration: Digital Tablet, Digital Painting

Dash of Inspiration: Image Quality – Excessive Effects

Dash of Inspiration: Submission Guidelines: Composition – Perspective

Dash of Inspiration – A Matter of Perspective

List of some Digital Painting Free Programs and/or Free Trial Programs – NOTE: I have NOT downloaded from this site, therefore this link is not a personal recommendation. It’s a list, if you have experience with the site and/or are comfortable with you computers protection to download, then great – if not, use it as a list to get names of software you might be interested in trying and go search for a site you do trust.

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Participants:

Liz Van Steenburgh

Barbara Schreider

Shoaff-Ballbanger Studio

Betsy Bush

Laurie Schreider

Debbie Overstreet