Category: Cycle News

Welcome to the official start of ENTM’s new Scenic Cycle!

Three brave volunteers will be acting as our judges for the course of this experiment. Two are familiar faces, and one is a brand new community judge recruited via our partners at Hydalaen International / Project HI.

Ni’ko Shae of Cactuar is our most recent S-Rank model winner. He participated in ENTM Tumblr Cycles 10 and 11, and won 1st place in Tumblr Cycle 11. He has proven to have a great eye for colors and his enthusiasm for screenshots knows no bounds.

Odharnait “Ona” Greene of Goblin was the 2018 Monthly Challenge winner, and was the winner of the Community Votes in Tumblr Cycle 10. Ona is currently competing in Instagram Cycle 2 as well. Ona has a gift for conveying emotions and storytelling in her shots, and has inspired multiple rounds in ENTM since her debut.

Our community judge this cycle is Forthyn S’yel of Adamantoise. Forthyn has a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts degree with over 10 years in the artistic field, and has assisted in curating and guiding students in proper composition and perspective in their work – especially landscape paintings and photography! We are excited to welcome Forthyn to the ENTM family.

Thank you to the judges who have volunteered their time. The judges have agreed to provide short critiques each week for all ten photographers, although due to the anonymous nature of the judging each week, they will be unable to provide comments on weekly growth.

The Experiment

Hi everyone! Katarh Mest here, as usual, your friendly cycle-formerly-known-as-Tumblr host, and now the website administrator for our site.

We’ve got two months to kill until Shadowbringers, and a couple months ago we tossed around the idea of a model-free version of ENTM in our Screenshot Fun channel on the Discord. Some folks aren’t so great at taking shots of their characters, but put out absolutely stunning photographic images. So why shouldn’t we allow them a chance to show off too?

And thus, Scenic Cycle was born.

Here’s the plan

• 10 Photographers
• 3-4 Permanent Judges, in pure “jury panel” format
• Weekly Rounds
• Anonymous judging each round, with no community judging involved
• No Eliminations (however if you miss two rounds, you are assumed to have quit the competition and will no longer be judged)
• No character models inside the shot (NPCs may be used but should not be the subject and probably not that close up at all)
• Gpose only, no Reshade or Mods (how do you even mod the environment…?)
• Must have the FFXIV copyright information in the corner (no cropping or third party apps allowed)

I’m also going to do things a bit differently in terms of the “audition.”

ENTRIES FOR THIS CYCLE ARE FIRST COME, FIRST SERVE!

Timeline

I can just hear Rongi now: Kat, you’re crazy! But here me out: We’ve got about two months until Shadowbringers, and a lot of our models like to hem and haw and wait until the last minute to get an audition in. This is, above all, an experimental cycle. Photographers, SPEED is going to be the name of the game. I need to know you can get a shot in within our weekly deadlines and not delay us. And unlike a character shot, it’s pretty difficult to take a bad landscape shot.

• May 4th at 10:00 PM EDT – Entries open.
• May 11th: Photographers announced, round themes send to judges and cast
• May 17th: Round 1 shots due (will be posted the next day)
• May 25th: Round 2 shots due
• June 1st: Round 3
• June 8th: Round 4
• June 15th: Round 5
• June 22: Round 6

This cycle will be a six week commitment. Please do not enter if you won’t be able to participate for the entire contest! I will be running this again, don’t worry! Failure to get a shot in before the weekly deadline will result in a ranking of last place for the week. Missing two shots will result in your being removed from the competition for the remainder of the cycle.

Weekly winners will be announced by character after anonymous judging is completed. Overall cycle winner will be announced on or around June 23rd.

How To Audition

1. Join our Discord if you haven’t already (click on this link to join!)
2. Find Katarh Mest under the Admins and send her a DM with the following: Your Character Name, Your Server, and a landscape screenshot
3. The Entry Round theme is: Stormblood Reflections! Using the Echo filter only. This shot must also be landscape orientation (wider than it is tall), with roll angle of 100. (NO DUTCH ANGLE. NO.) It must be in a Stormblood zone. If your shot does not follow these rules, I’ll return the shot and tell you to redo it. 😛
4. Alternately, send that same information in an email to eorzeasntm at gmail dot com. (You do not have to join our Discord to participate, but it’s a lot more fun when you do. Photographers will have their own dedicated chat room.)
5. Your entry is accepted when I reply back with a Verified Audition number.
6. Once I have my 10 photographers, the entries will be closed. I will follow up with an announcement here.

And about those Judges

I am looking for at least 3-4 folks willing to act as judges. Your responsibility each week will be to rank the photographs in a Google Poll, using golf scoring (with 1 as the strongest/highest and 10 as the weakest) and provide at least one line of commentary per photo, each week. Judging is not limited to first come first serve 😛 But please get back to me ASAP if you are interested.

If you are one of the Top 4 of any previous ENTM cycle, or you have been a judge for us previously, or you are one of our community partners from Hydalaen International, and you have some talent with photography and feel like you’d be a good judge for this crazy contest, please DM Katarh Mest with your character name, server, and a one sentence explanation of why you would be a good fit. (E.g. I won a different landscape contest, I took an art class in college, or I just really like landscape shots and I curate them in a blog.)

Let’s do this!