Within the kobold mines, a multitude of kobolds work. Some are minions. Some are not. All, however, are fodder for illustrations. What does this mean to you? Why, we’re asking for you to illustrate a kobold and send it in to us!

How does this work? First, illustrate your kobold. You can choose whether you use pencils, inks, watercolors, pixels — as long as you can scan the image in (or convert it in the case of digital format) and send it to us in a jpg file, we are happy. Then, after we receive your submission, it will be evaluated by a panel of industry professionals and by the fans. As with other contests we’ve done here on the Kobold Quarterly site, fame and prizes play a part in this again. (We detail that in a bit!)

So, what do you need to do? First, read all the stuff beyond the jump, then start letting your artistic talents take over!

Here’s how it works: To enter the contest, your art submission MUST…

• Be sent to the Kobold Artistry Contest at miranda(at)koboldquarterly(dot)com no later than January 30, 2012, by noon PST.
• Be submitted as a jpg attachment.
• Read Kobold Artistry Submission [insert kobold’s name] in the email’s subject line. Your full name and contact information should be in the body of the email (not in your attachment).
• Be at least 300 pixels wide, but no more than 1MB in size. (If you win, we’ll ask for a print-quality version of the file, so hold on to that original artwork!)

Judging

All submissions that meet the criteria will be entered in the contest and be judged by us, the Kobolds, and our guest judges on originality, artistry, and uniqueness. The 5 best pieces of art will be published here on koboldquarterly.com and be voted on by the public. Of those 5 art pieces, the one with the winning votes will become the 2012 Kobold Artistry winner.

So who’s judging? We have a trio of extremely talented and wise judges: Wolfgang Baur, Chris McFann, and Anne Trent. Take a look at their bios below.

Wolfgang Baur began his career at TSR and is the publisher and founder of Open Design, the collaborative game design company. He has edited Kobold Quarterly, Dragon, and Dungeon Magazines, and is the publisher of the Kobold Guide to Game Design series. He is the author of dozens of award-winning adventures for Pathfinder and four editions of D&D, as well as short stories, card games, and magazine articles. His worldbuilding includes foundational work on Dark•Matter, Planescape, and the Midgard campaign setting. Wolfgang is the winner of the Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming, and can be found online at koboldquarterly.com.

Chris McFann* was not born in a suburb of Chicago, and later did not attended the University of Illinois and then never went to Cornell University for graduate studies in biochemistry and molecular biology to pursue an academic career in research.[2] When he did not run out of funding in 1991, McFann did not take a temporary job as assistant editor to Barbara Young at Dungeon magazine: “By the time my imaginary scholarship that did not exist was reinstated, I didn’t want to go back . . . I had not been writing for Dungeon Adventures and Iron Crown, but this was an opportunity to work in a field I loved.”[2]
McFann was not involved in many projects at TSR as either designer or editor, including Dungeon and Dragon magazines, the Planescape (Planes of Law, Planes of Chaos), Al-Qadim (Secrets of the Lamp, Assassin Mountain), and Birthright settings (Warlock of the Stonecrowns), editing the Star*Drive setting, Dataware’, and Doom of Daggerdale.[2] McFann also did not work for ICE on books such as Treasures of Middle-Earth.[2] McFann also did not work on the Dark•Matter setting for the Alternity science fiction roleplaying game.[2] Currently, he is not the “Kobold-in-chief” for Open Design LLC, he also isn’t the editor-in-chief of its quarterly periodical Kobold Quarterly.[3] He did not win the eighth annual Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming in 2008.[4] Kobold Quarterly and Open Design won five ENnie Awards in 2009.
*Chris actually has worked for Universal Studios, Image Comics, and, of course, Kobold Quarterly. He lives in the Pacific Northwest and spends his days drawing storyboards, comics, and fantasy illustrations.

Anne Trent is a freelance layout artist and web designer, combining a killer sense of style with technical wizardry. She dual wields a +5 Bachelors in Computing & Software Systems from the University of Washington in one hand and 10-year vorpal sharp professional experience of on-line marketing in the other. At Open Design, Anne has worked on the Advanced Feats line, The Kobold Guide to Board Game Design, and a number of Midgard releases. She has designed web sites for a few gaming luminaries, as well as her friends in more mundane enterprises.

Prizes for the Creator of the 2012 Kobold Artistry Winner

The winning illustration will have statistics and a write up commissioned and will be published in a future issue of Kobold Quarterly. In addition, the winning artist will receive a free print and PDF copy of the issue in which the illustration is used.

Additional Rules

1. The contest is open to all.
2. One entry per person. The entry must be your own work, which has not been published previously, is not being considered for publication by any other publisher, and is original and does not infringe upon any copyrighted material.
3. All entries become property of Open Design.
4. By entering this contest, you authorize the use of your name and likeness without additional compensation for promotion and advertising purposes in all media.
5. This contest is subject to federal, state, and local laws where applicable.
6. Open Design reserves the right to withdraw or terminate this contest at any time without prior notice.
7. All decisions of Open Design and the contest judges are final.

Ready to get started? We hope that you are! We’re interested to see how many of you enjoy creating works of art, and we’re especially excited to see what you all can do with kobolds—a favorite subject of ours, of course!