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Link to official topic here

Sent prizes and all that for the second round, but since there haven't been that many people participating, I might reboot this in the future with an official sign-up sheet, and yes the challenges will be longer than a week- maybe ten days to submit, bi-weekly themes.

Personally, while I do like female fashion and Gaia has more items that tend to flatter the female bases, I prefer to work with male base/models, or nonbinary/cross-dressing styles. Maybe there could be a side challenge, like some of the puzzle plays or a spinoff contest based on the catwalk (but open to everyone), that include male models too; they're seriously underrepresented in these challenges.

I designed some male models for my own round of simpler contests, they won't be as intensive as the project catwalk though, and the prizes are simpler (platinum via mythrill coins, a weekly winner gets 10k platinum, second place gets 5k, third place gets 2k as long as they have good entries that fit the theme.)

Tips and tricks:
Genderbending is broken on Avatar Builder, so if you want to keep your avatar's female base and you have an alt account that you can switch to the male base, you can design from another account but post the style on your main, that's what I've been doing with Project Catwalk because I can't see the female base properly.

IF you don't have an alt account and still wish to participate, cross-dressing from the female base is permitted, but not recommended.

Someone requested that I quote everyone when a new challenge begins, so if you want to be on the list, just ask me in this topic and I'll add you. (challenges currently on hold due to low participation)

i really like this idea, mainly because i'm not used to create other avatars than female. i would love to see some creations from people who are used to them! i know there's a lot of great items even for male/non-binary looks. you should definetly do this!

I actually spent hours making male model avis in their underwear rofl so I guess this is going to be a thing.

Anyway, it would help if you might be able to make a guild announcement about the contest I made, and I'm not sure if anyone else might want to help judge (not you or the other official PC judges though since you're busy already, but if anyone else in the guild would like to help, more than one opinion would be appreciated. Otherwise I'll just have to pick the winners myself, which is okay but probably more biased.) I don't have the first challenge title posted yet but I have a couple ideas, and I'll post one of them soon, the challenge will run for a week- maybe six days to enter, one day off to select the winners.

Honestly, I do prefer to see the item list to see that someone hasn't made a super lazy avatar, but it's just a casual platinum contest and it doesn't matter as much. If all poses don't flatter the avatar equally it's okay to post just one pose. All poses with equipped item list a bonus, but not a specific requirement. An entry is just a bit more likely to win if I can tell it wasn't hastily thrown together, all it needed was one of the model's base traits + plaid item(s) + a background + a short description (some looks are good without backgrounds, but I'm a particular lover of nice backgrounds.)

yeah, and sometimes less is more. looks can be equally good with ten, twenty, thirty items depending on what you use (although I tend to loathe stuff like five-item challenges, my average avatar typically has about 16-20 items.) it doesn't always mean you were lazy about it either, and it doesn't have to take hours to make a good entry. My Project Catwalk official entries didn't take overly long, I actually waited a few hours after making mine to post them because I always get a bit worried if I post mine first, everyone else's will surpass it, RIP. Doesn't mean I didn't put full effort into it though, sometimes the look comes together faster than others, and I don't wait too long- glad I didn't either, after seeing the whole post about panel burnout. I've made Gaia Runway entries in as little as 15-20 minutes, other times it's 2 hours lol. It's always better not to put it off until later anyway, as I normally have a bad habit of procrastinating. And a simpler entry with a few items is better than no entry at all or something way too cluttered.

Honestly when I first used Gaia's male base, it felt weird and chunky and took a while for me to get used to as well. Doesn't help that 75% of Gaian items are ultra femme so you have to search extra (I used a bare leg item topic to help find some that were more masculine, and I'm already obsessed with cutter items.) Yours is really nice/cute though, and the contest is mostly for fun (if you weren't having fun I'd be concerned lol.)

Now drawing guy characters takes more work, my sister's better at it (she's talented at figure drawing and sculpting and practiced more, art major in college.) Sometimes I've made some fairly good ones, other times I get lazy RIP (still better at moderately curvy female builds.)