Design Contest — Celebrate the Many Creative Professionals Who Build Video Games

Vote on Twitter and Linkedin for your favorites:

Nikita Biriukovuch's X_WAY - Twitter - Linkedin
Santi Arderíus' Design Contest - X-ploration - Twitter - Linkedin
Shahar Hod's B_055 - Twitter - Linkedin
Costa Lazar's THEXPLACE - Twitter - Linkedin
Stevan Stanišić's  THE X BUTTON - Twitter - Linkedin

We are not accepting new entries.

TheXPlace is first and foremost, all about our community of professionals, and we want to show off your skills with our first-ever design contest. Who better to design something that reflects just how awesome TheXPlace professionals are than YOU?! 2D, 3D, still or animated, it doesn't matter — as long as it's visual and your own work, we're excited to see what you create!

While logging into your profile, you may have noticed our short looping animation that lives to the left of our login fields.

We want to give you the opportunity to create something amazing that will cycle next to our trademarked default animation. This will showcase the variety of skilled professionals in our community and how exciting it is to be a member of TheXPlace. Read on for details on prizes, the creative brief and how to enter!

Important dates:

March 15 — Registration Opens in Community Events
April 14 — Last day to Register
April 19 — Last day to submit projects
April 21 — Judge's Favorite Winner Selection
April 22-27 — Fan Favorite Voting
April 28 — Winner Announcement

Prizes:

1) Artwork will be displayed to the left of login. The Winners – Judges's Favorite and Fan Favorite– will cycle randomly with our existing animation. Creator credit will be proudly displayed on each piece.
2) A $300 USD gift card for our Judge's Favorite.

Creative Brief:

• The concept can be 2D, 3D, still or animated, but must be visual.  
• The concept must display the X somewhere in the composition. If you need a source file of our existing X, you can check it out in our Dropbox folder.
• We are NOT looking for a redesign of our existing logo, TheXPlace. Explore the X as a creative form and stretch our imagination. This genre is sometimes called a brand logo doodle -- an artwork based on a basic logo form. Check out some examples and inspiration here.
• No need to follow our brand colors or fonts, stick to your own style and let your creativity unfold. Use any background and color the artwork any way you want.
• The dimensions are 1500 x 1500 pixels; 1:1 square ratio. This is so your work will look great even on the largest of screens.
• Don't worry about file size, we'll handle the optimization!  

Who Can Enter:

All members of TheXPlace who have completed a basic profile are eligible to enter. Any professionals who have already gone through our onboarding process and verified their identification are eligible to enter!

Everyone else interested in entering the competition, they must complete a basic profile, log in or create a new account and complete "You, In A Nutshell" and ID-Verification through Stripe. Doing this is pretty simple but here is the step-by-step process:

• Navigate to your profile.
• Click the progression menu on the bottom left for help with your Basic Profile.
• Follow the prompts for "You, in a nutshell" and "Verify that you are the real deal."

How to Enter:

There are to steps to be considered: register on the Design Contest event page, and create a Design Contest portfolio project.

If you are a new member to TheXPlace, navigate to the join page, and enter your information. Use the VIP code designcontest so our team can fast track your screening process!

1) After completing your basic profile, sign up for the Design Contest on our new events page. You have until April 14 to register for the Design Contest!
2) After Registering, create a portfolio project on your profile with the title  "Design Contest - name of your piece." Don't worry, you can delete it from your profile after the contest if you want to!

• Give your project its own unique title but please include "Design Contest" so that we know it's an entry.  
• Write a short description of how you created your piece and what inspired you in the project overview. Please include a link to your socials if you'd like to be tagged during Fan Favorite voting.
• Upload the project in Project Assets. We don't only want to see your final piece! Show us the earlier stages including sketches and screenshots of your progress. You can additionally use a Project Video to very quickly explain your project and show off your personality as well.
• Quickly add the skills and tools you used to complete this project. For Genre, pick a genre you think best captures your work.
• For Platform, you can put browser as we will be displaying the finished piece on a browser. Additionally, for tags, you can put "design contest" and any other relevant tags you think fit.
• Before we can publish the project, click edit settings to upload a cover image, add keywords from your existing tags, and be sure to select Other under type of industry. Agree to the terms and click save!

You can choose to publish or save your project as a draft to complete your work at another time. Projects will be locked on April 20 so make sure your project is perfect before then. If you have any issues and need help, feel free to email events@thexplace.ai for additional guidance.

Judging Format:

A 3-person panel of judges will be comprised of Senior Art directors and animators from our community.

They will be reviewing each entry against our judging criteria:
1) Creative use of the X form 1–5
2) Level of overall Creativity and Originality 1–5
3) Quality of skill demonstrated 1–5

Points can be given to the 10ths place and scores will be tallied to determine the winner.

The top entries will be eligible for Fan Favorite and will be posted individually on TheXPlace's social media accounts. The post that receives the most Likes, shares, retweets/reposts after 1 week will determine the Fan Favorite.  

Both winners will be announced one day after Fan Favorite voting window closes.

Terms of entering:

All entries will be prescreened to ensure they meet the basic requirements of the contest:

1) Logged to your existing account or created a new account. Finished your basic profile which includes You, In a NutShell and ID Verification.
2) Registered on the event page,
3) Created a portfolio and filled out all fields.
4) Followed creative brief

By entering the contest held on TheXPlace, you are agreeing to our Terms of Service, including this section related to the content you share:
By making User Content available through the website or any other services provided by TheXPlace Inc., you hereby grant us the following license: a non-exclusive, transferable, worldwide, royalty-free license, with rights to sublicense, to use, modify, copy, create derivative works based upon, publicly display and perform, and distribute your User Content in connection with operating TheXPlace website.

To read our full TOS.