Hello everyone! Katarh Mest here. It’s been a hot minute since we ran a cycle in ENTM, thanks to life eating our host’s faces and us waiting with bated breath for our long promised graphics update.

Well, now we can exhale and start taking screenshots like crazy again. I tried to give everyone a good solid six weeks to work through Dawntrail MSQ but I understand that everyone plays at a different pace, and with different priorities, so after some consideration I’ve opted to not make Dawntrail zones required for this cycle.

Key Dates: ENTM Scenic Cycle III

• August 18th: Cycle Auditions open and call for judges open
• September 1st: Cycle Contestants Announced
• September 5th: First Scenic Cycle III entry due
• Weekly due dates after that
• October 11th Final entries posted

Wait, who are you guys again?

ENTM, Eorzea’s Neo Talent Management, aka the screenshot contest formerly known as Eorzea’s Next Top Model, is FFXIV’s longest running screenshot contest! We’ve been running multi-week contests since 2013 on the official forums, Tumblr, and now on our permanent website. There are other, bigger, and of course more officialler screenshot contests (including those run by Square Enix themselves, but also our good friends at Gposers and Eorzea Photography and everywhere else) but our particular niche is long form contests with judges providing critiques and feedback for each submitted shot.

(Feel free to go check out our archives! Admin Katarh is in the process of uploading some of the newer contests from the last few years since they’re in the blogs but not organized into archives.)

How do ENTM contests work?

Each week, our contestants provide us a shot on the theme, and the shot is displayed on this website and on our Discord channel for public viewing, commentary, and community voting. For our Classic Cycle, Fresh Faces Cycle, Copycat Cycle, and Fashion Cycle, a single named character is the main focus on the shot. (We’ve also done some crazy Renovation Cycles, YouTube Cycles, and Instagram Cycles in the past as experiments!)

Judges rank each shot, and provide critiques back to the contestants. Shots are ranked based on theme, composition, and manipulation of the in-game engine.

So what is Scenic Cycle?

Scenic Cycle is our still life, landscape, and non-fashion photography challenge. Unlike other cycles, where a contestant is named and voted on by that name every week, the photos submitted for Scenic Cycle are anonymous and don’t contain any characters. Scenic Cycle is all about the environments of Etherys. You know, the scenery. Judges will provide votes and critiques based on the name of the shot.

Who can enter Scenic Cycle III?

Anyone can enter! ENTM contest are open to anyone that plays FFXIV and loves taking screenshots! You can play on PS4, PS5, PC, Mac, or even XBox now, as long as you can scrape a high quality screenshot and send it to us weekly.

ENTM is a “vanilla” contest – no mods or Reshade are allowed. This puts everyone on an even playing field. (With the graphics update, it’s not even really necessary any more.) Internal Gpose filters and your own photographic skill are plenty enough to capture the world of FFXIV at its most beautiful.

To apply to be a contestant please fill out this Google Form: Applications for Scenic Cycle III Contestants Katarh Mest will be in touch via Discord to verify your entry and to request a single vanilla scenic screenshot as proof that your system is capable of handling unaltered images.

Warning: There are limited slots! ENTM Scenic Cycles are limited to a maximum of 12 contestants. Only the first 12 confirmed contestants will be accepted! We also must have a minimum of six contestants for the contest to launch, so don’t be shy about entering! I will make a separate announcement if we hit the cap before entries are closed.

Who are the judges?

Judges will be chosen from previous ENTM winners and community volunteers. Anyone with some basic knowledge of art or photography who is willing to provide honest but kind feedback to our photographers (whether that’s in the form of walls o’text, drunken poetry, or bullet points) is welcome to apply to be a judge.

Judges are tasked with ranking each shot from strongest to weakest every week and then giving each shot some appropriate feedback about what was done well, and what might have made the shot stand out a little bit more.

To apply to be a judge please fill out this different Google form here: Applications for Scenic Cycle Judges

Please >>>click right here<<<< to join the ENTM Discord community if you have not done so already!