May 2023 - Challenging

Unfortunately a bit late for family reasons, but: Wohoo, what an unofficial competition month? There were five calls from the community in total, which couldn't have been more different. Thank you for letting me be there.

My recap of the month

After I spending the past four months breathing some life into "two" new worlds and refreshing Elaqitan a bit, this month has been all about world building. Inspired by the unofficial competitions of the previous two months, I called my first challenge and participated in all four calls. The image above is a small nod to all competitions.

My challenge participations:

First I wrote a little fairy tale for Jester´s "Fairy Tale-Challenge". Actually, this was more world building, which I didn't plan to do right away as I'm still scratching the surface and haven't really worked out the culture of my humanoid species yet. But, I took my three favorite fairy tales "The Sea Bunny" by the Brothers Grimm, "The Humpbacked Horse", a Russian fairy tale, and "The Little Witch", an artificial fairy tale, as a model and it arose:

I'm also an absolute fan of silhouette films, as they used to be made by DEFA (German Film AG of the GDR). This is also the reason why the covers of Blue's worlds contain silhouettes. And of course there is the famous Téshán Silhouette Theater on Elaqitan. The fairy tale already contains two image excerpts from it. An article about this is being worked on. Let's see when I can manage to publish it ;-).

In the second week of May I devoted myself Catoblepon´s colored animal condition. I like colors - the brighter the better. So why not invent an effect that amplifies something like that and the Schiller effect was born. Here is the article:

At the end of May, Annie Stein called for her "Under the sea"-Challenge, for which I brought my water forest to life. I've had the idea for this for ages and made the drawing for it in February, but I haven't had the right opportunity to write an article about it yet.

Badges won

by Jester

by Catoblepon

by Annie Stein

by Amy Winters-Voss

My favorite articles from the community:

Many thanks to all twelve participants who submitted an article for my Coronation Challenge Of course, I took the opportunity to draw a small badge for this. Unfortunately, I wasn't completely satisfied with the result, so I had to improve it a little via midjourney before I could distribute it.

The decision was not made easy for me, as there were really a lot of interesting and beautiful ideas. I found it really unexpected how many imagine (wish?) a ruler who can lead and is called to his task by a higher power. Could this reflect the current zeitgeist? Please leave me a comment on this.

I had a lot of fun with the idea and development of this challenge and I hope to publish more in the future. But now to my favorites (mentioned after submission):

Somehow Emily Armstrong has wormed its way into my favorite articles for the 3rd time, but her article about the coronation of the Cream Queen was again so creative, funny, imaginative and totally unexpected that you just have to love it.

Enter the land of Lactasia and learn about the Queen's coronation and enjoy the little homage of cheese, milk and cream.

Have you ever heard of coronation snakes? Neither did I until I read AmélieIS absolutely compelling and great article.

I think it's excellent that she has detached herself from the commonly used isignia and that they have not only a ritual funtion but also a useful function to carry out the office.

Also in the wonderful and successful contribution from Melody Relody animals play an important role.

Here, heirs to the throne are wrapped in Bects, a kind of beetle, to receive the divine blessing to ascend the throne. I hope to learn more about the Bect soon. I also liked the different oaths that the crowned heads and their followers have to take.

The symbolic and very inspiring article by PanthersEye, which was awarded with a wonderfully drawn crown, is also well worth reading again.

She knows how to captivate the reader with ease, successful quotations and a believable story. You should definitely read this gem if you haven't already.