Tutorial competition at Graphics World!

Earlier today I announced a tutorial competition for holiday CG tutorials at Graphics World! I like to create custom holiday (Christmas, New Year's) cards for my friends and my family, it's nice to have that personal touch - everyone appreciates it. Keeping that in mind, I figured it would be nice to learn some new tricks and techniques!

The rules of the competition are as simple as they can get. Any graphics program, anything holiday related, new or past work. Competition will run until Jan. 1st, and the winner will claim a Pantone Huey!

Huey is an awesome tool, and in my opinion, a must have for any graphics designer. If you have ever attempted to print your work, or found yourself thinking 'that is not how it looked on my monitor!', then you will know how hard color matching can be. Huey will calibrate your monitor, and more importantly it will automatically adjust your color settings based on the ambient conditions. It periodically samples the ambient light and adjusts your color settings! It can also store multiple profiles for different modes (gaming, design, browsing, etc.)

Depending on the number of entries, I may add a second and third prize. Chances are, these will include some Graphics World gear and/or some placements on prominent spots of the website.

To add a personal touch to your holiday cards this year, or to simply browse the entries in the competition head to Christmas and New Years list at Graphics World.

In other news, the Computer Science department at Waterloo decided to run a contest for a new banner for the cs web-page. The prize is a $150 check for the university store (which is nice) and, of course, the banner will be used on the CS page. So, I decided to give it a shot! Here is a few of my entries:

First banner has a blunt self-plug, you can see my photo (in the blue shirt)! What do you think? Comments and suggestions are welcome!

Nov 23rd: 2nd Place! Shucks. Well, it's still going to be printed as a banner, and I get a $50 check. I was really hoping I would see the banner online! Congrats to the 1st place winner.