Well, it seems like it took us forever... but we're finally ready to announce the winners! I'll keep this pretty short, because I know most people just wanna get to the goods. We received an ASTOUNDING collection of entries; you guys blew us away. We want to stress that even the entries that didn't win are full of the love of the game that brings us back to Bungie, time and time again. As we said, there will be a separate batch of prizes for the 'under 18' crowd; we simply couldn't let them go unmentioned. (Details will be forthcoming.) There's also a special prize for Geoff Chang, for his Battle Rifle model. It's in a class by itself... and Geoff will be receiving a pretty unique award for it; if you've paid attention to the Bungie webcam recently, you'll have seen red and blue MC action figures. The blue guy has a special mission... but the red guy will be headed to Mr. Chang.
Enough. Head over to the Entries page and check out the entries. You can get a larger image by clicking on the page image, if you so choose. And consider this a work in progress; most of the artists submitted explanations of their work and bios; we haven't had time to convert these to web-friendly form yet, but we'll be doing so over the next week or so. Come back for more info! Additionally, the Gallery Showing we promised will happen - just a bit later than we expected. It's currently set for July 5, 2003. There will likely be a Halo lanfest occuring onsite that day (no promises, I haven't confirmed the details with Miguel yet), and we'll certainly put up another batch of photos, showing the pieces in a gallery environment.
And once again, thanks to all who participated, from entrants to judges to fans who pushed us on with their enthusiasm. You all rock.
We'd really like to apologize for the delay in posting the results of this contest. Rest assured, nothing's been cancelled, all the prizes (including the cool Bungie schwag) are still there... we're just waiting on the boxes. Well, box, singular. The pieces we brought with us to the E3 Fanfest went back on a truck to Bungie Headquarters... it was cheaper that way. (They were shipping tons of stuff home from E3 anyway; seemed like a no-brainer at the time.) They're still on that truck, unfortunately. As soon as they arrive at Bungie HQ, they'll be shipped back to us, postehaste... and we'll finish the judging process. Winners will be announced just as quickly as we can arrange it.
In the meantime, we have a change that we'd like to describe. When we went over the artwork that came in (over 20 pieces in all), it became clear that there were two distinct categories: there was artwork from folks with formal training; often with beautiful presentation, great technique, stuff you'd pay money for, as is... and artwork from a younger crowd; often on notepaper, less polished, but still showing real heart (and getting to the essence of this contest - a demonstration of love for The Bungie Way). Objectively, these two classes of work cannot really be compared; you simply cannot put a sketch on notepaper up against a framed oil and expect the notepaper to win a prize. This seemed unfair to us, however; the group that SENT the less professional-looking work certainly INTENDED to have a shot at winning.
We talked to Bungie... and it looks like we'll be able to provide a second group of prizes to the younger crowd. It won't be cold, hard cash, or framed artwork by a Bungie artist... but it'll be T-shirts, and games, and other Bungie tasties... we really do want to show our appreciation for all who entered.
There'll be more details on this situation as we get them.
Quick Update, May 12, 2003: We just wanted to clarify that the early-bird entry deadline has passed; we've made our decisions on which pieces we'll be able to take with us to the Bungie Fanfest 2003. Any pieces we don't take (but that arrive before the contest deadline of May 16, 2003) are still eligible for all prizes, and suffer no penalty for not being displayed in LA.
An extra bonus: With the announcement of Bungie's latest fanfest taking place at the E3 Expo in mid May, we have decided to offer folks a chance to have their work shown sooner rather than later. Here's the deal: if your art arrives on our doorstep by May 9, we will consider taking it with us on our trip to LA where it will be shown to other adoring Halo fans. We want to be absolutely clear though:
Questions? Drop us a line.