Masque is not precisely an Original Character Tournament; it is an Anonymous Character Tournament. You, the artist, are represented solely by the character you enter, not by your name, your history, or your reputation. You are not to disclose your participation in the tournament to anyone else, at risk of penalty. Just as your identity is to remain a secret, so the judges’ identities will as well. I will be running the tournament, but because I will know the names of those involved, I will not be one of your four judges. Protecting your identity should be as much a concern as winning the match, as being exposed comes at a high price.

Your character has come to the Usher Manor, a sprawling, ramshackle estate. How they arrived is up to you; however, no force on the grounds compelled them to come against their will. They can start anywhere on the grounds that you’d like, as well. However, once they’re on manor grounds, they can’t leave. Attempting to walk out the gate results in the gate moving progressively further and further away the closer you get; the walls grow too high to climb, the forest too thick to pass through. Your character is trapped until the end of the tournament. Once the tournament has been won, they are free to go – assuming they’re still alive.

That's it.

Alright, so it's a bit more complicated than that. If your identity as an artist is outed, as it were, you will be penalized by one vote for the round you are discovered in. Furthermore, in the event of a tie between an unmasked artist and a masked artist, the match will be decided in favor of the artist who has remained anonymous, regardless of what round the artist was exposed during. If that seems a light penalty, consider this scenario: an artist wins the judges’ votes 3-1, but is unmasked during that round. The vote becomes 2-2, and the victory goes to his or her still-anonymous opponent. Do not be unmasked.

• You may enter up to four characters as a single team, but the majority of the round’s fight must be completed by one character, and your opponent is required to defeat only one.
• Your character(s) must not be already displayed in your gallery. If they are, I’d cover your tracks now and hope nobody’s seen them. This rule won’t be enforced, but it’s here mainly to protect you, the participant, from getting unmasked.
• You must have a reference sheet prepared. This should include information such as physical statistics (age, height, etc.) and at the very least, one set of flat colors for your character(s).
• Species is of no object, but it must be an original character that belongs to you. Should you choose to partner with another artist, the character(s) must belong to at least one of you.
• Supernatural powers are allowed. Weaponry of any sort is also allowed. Neither will help your character escape the grounds. In other words, your character could drive a tank through the gardens and blow away your opponent; that is allowed. However, your character cannot then turn around and shoot their way through the retaining wall and escape the manor. The same goes for powers - even if they can teleport onto manor grounds, for example, they can't teleport back out. They are stuck there until the tournament is over.
• Entries are to be in graphic novel format. How you interpret that is up to you. Flash comics are allowed; animation is not. This is, believe it or not, another rule intended to help the participants. The number of comic artists is a good deal higher than the number of animators on dA, and by submitting animation, you severely narrow down the list of possible identities to no more than a handful. There is no limit to the entry length save your own physical ability.
• You are allowed to partner with another artist/writer.
• Being unmasked does not automatically disqualify you from continuing in the tournament. However, it does make it a good deal more challenging.

Your greatest problem is going to be disguising your style. Artists, especially comic artists, all have giveaways when it comes to their signature style. It’s not just as simple as introducing a new character you haven’t shown anyone else. The following are all key parts in identifying a comic artist’s work:
• The drawing style itself – anime, western animation, realistic, etc.
• The writing style – e.g. poetic and dark, epic and sprawling, fast-paced and action-oriented
• Lettering – font choice, word bubbles outlined or not, character-specific fonts
• Structure – size and number of panels, camera angles chosen, layout
• Shading – color or grayscale, flats vs. gradients vs. painterly, manga-style screens
• Inking – line weights, use of black and white space, or no inks at all
The list goes on, and if there’s anything you’d like to add, by all means mention it. The point is: you will need to push yourself in order to avoid getting caught.

Given that, I actually highly recommend partnering up with another artist, even for something as simple as tag-teaming pencils and inking. The combination of styles will throw the readers off to some degree, and having a partner may inspire my fellow procrastinators to keep to a more disciplined schedule so they don’t let their partners down.

This should also be fairly obvious, but don’t post your prep materials like practice sketches to any site that can be linked to you. If you share your work, be very careful who you’re showing it to. The judges are also anonymous, and they may be anywhere in the OCT circuit. Similarly, I’d avoid disparaging a participant’s work or musing about who you suspect them to be – they, or a judge, might be present as well.

Next, as both a judge and a participant: keep it shorter than you think. Really, while a two-page fight is perhaps overly brief, I wouldn’t go balls-out and aim for thirty pages your first round. Judges don’t have unlimited supplies of time, and they do have limited bandwidth. The less pages they have to load, the more they can focus on your story as a whole without interruptions. You also risk the very real danger of burnout should you overreach yourself. Count on things getting in the way of you completing the round, and plan ahead.

And my final suggestion, going off of that note: quality over quantity. Odds are the people you’re hoping to woo votes from will take ten pages of well-executed art and witty and moving writing over twenty pages of decent art and okay writing. If you are unsure about your abilities in an area – e.g. inking or dialogue – I’d suggest you look for a partner who can help cover that.

You will have the remainder of November and December to prepare for your stylistic shift and/or find a partner. The audition requirements will be announced on December 15th, and the procedure for submitting auditions will be announced on January 1, 2010. Auditions will be accepted through the entire month of January, ending 11:59 p.m. PST on January 31st. There will be 32 spots on the roster; should we fail to ultimately reach that many auditions, the roster will be reduced to 16. The first two rounds will be 3 weeks each, the second two rounds will be four weeks, and the final round will be 5 weeks.

Over the next few weeks I will be posting further information regarding the tournament, including:
- maps of points of interest on the manor grounds
- brief profiles of the few resident NPCs
- entry/ref sheet submission method
- the exact process by which an artist may be unmasked
Keep an eye out for updates, and feel free to ask any questions you may have via comment here or note to me.

UPDATE: I suspect this is going to be asked a lot if I don't draw attention to it now: there will be a system for submitting auditions, entries, etc. In order to keep the journal from being five miles long, I'll be explaining it most likely in the next update. In the meantime, rest assured, there is a way.