Come one, come all! Welcome to the 6th Annual E4 Art & illustration Contest! Any and all are welcome, and we have 4 diverse categories from which interested contestants can select. Anyone from any range of skill or talent can find one to enjoy. Please do not let a lack of artistic skill or experience discourage you from entering. See the categories! It is free to join and is a blast! Please take a few minutes to read the rules below, should you wish to enter. Contestants must understand & follow the rules.
We are currently in:
Sign up period (ends September 20th 10pm EST)
Submission Period (ends October 6th)
Voting Period (Ends October 13th 11:59pm EST)
RULES
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To enter, your account must be at least 2 months old as of this thread’s creation. Simply post in this thread indicating your category(s). Max 2 categories, one per category only.
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To submit, post quality pictures / uploads here in this thread, ONLY during the submission period. Do NOT do so before then. You MUST name your art piece(s).
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You are allowed to include multiple Pokemon in your illustration—the sky is the limit! However, one must be the focal point, or main subject of the artwork. Imagine your card in an art box; trainer card concepts and full arts are allowed, but must follow this rule.
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Do not plagiarize. Not only will that get you disqualified, but that’s just… lame. The use of any AI or prompted automation of any kind is prohibited and will disqualify you.
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Dimensions: Please submit art with a ratio of 4 width by 2.25 height (ex: 16x9, or 4000x2225), or as close to that as possible, in the highest quality resolution you can. Everything is accepted, but just know your image will be cropped/stretched to fit the placement if outside of dimensions above, should you win. Full arts 2.5 width x 3.5 height.
VOTING
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Voting is anonymous, through our google form ballot. All contestants MUST vote, ranking top 3 of each category. Contestants CANNOT vote for their own piece. ALL of E4 is welcome to vote as well, and is encouraged. Didn’t sign up? No prob, vote for your fellow E4ians anyway.
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Non-contestant accounts must also be 2 months old. Mods will be cross checking info, so no funny business, or we will know, and there will be serious consequences.
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To submit ballots, click HERE
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Voting is easy! We have provided a grading criteria document (below) to refer to, but this is not required. We trust that contestants and non contestants alike will rank the art based on the best of their objective judgment of the quality of art. Should a tie happen for first place, a tie-breaker round will commence.
PRIZES!
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As per tradition, The 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winner of every category will be awarded a unique No. 1, 2, or 3 digital, high res trophy card! See our lovely banner for a sneak peak at the trophies you can obtain!
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1st place of each category also receives a digital illustrator card with their winning artwork placed within! We cannot distribute physical cards. Check out last year’s winners!
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1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners of each category will be awarded a respective 2026 placement badge, courtesy of @gareth! Just like other forum accolades, you can view these badges on your profile and display your award title!
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1st place winner of each category will also receive an ebay gift card, of a small, modest sum. We do not wish to have this be the main motivation for entering, but rather the art and passion—this is a cherry on top prize.
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Judge’s pick. The organizers award one entry of our choice based on its adherence to both the criteria and overall demonstration of mastery of its category and outstanding quality. The awarded will be be given their own illustrator card (if it didn’t already win 1st place), and invited to create next year’s 1st place trophy art! You are not obligated to accept this. Last year’s winner was niece, who made trophy #1.
THE CATEGORIES!
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Child drawing. Inspired by the wonderful, historic illustration contest submissions. This is for all kinds of artwork, handmade or digital, that embody a child-like quality to them. Look at the far left artwork on the banner for examples. Any style, anything goes! Low skill level? This is the category for you! Technical skill is not a criterion.
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Recreation. For those who want to recreate/revamp any preexisting Pokemon design or entire Pokemon illustration. You can either recreate a whole artwork from the TCG and wider non-TCG, or recreate a preexisting design with an original or altered background. You are allowed to expand on it in any way, including use of color or detail, but if the basis from which you are building already exists, it falls in this category. *For this category, you MUST submit, along with your art, a citation of the original. Either post the card, or reference it.
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3D Virtual. Use photoshop, image capture, or a similar program to use imagery from the wide, official video game franchise (and spin-offs), creatively, to make your own art with them. This is for any kind of submission that uses Video Game Pokemon media that you manipulate artistically. This might be a good category for you to make use of pastiche or collage style, or simply make use of video game images, but would like to alter in ways you enjoy. NO POKEMON SNAP, new or old, will be allowed. You MUST be using official, pre-existing Pokemon media and assets from the Pokemon video game franchise. However, if you want to create an original computer-made background (or alter/add to a video game background with original assets created by you), you may do this. We have provided a list of all games from which you can use. This has not been updated since 2022, all games released since are allowed. This is always a less popular category, please consider this one as we may have to change this category in future.
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Original Creation. This is any original creation of any kind that does not fall within the above category parameters. Hand drawn or computer/photoshop made, doesn’t matter. It just has to be from scratch. If you are intending to do CGI, but it is your own work, this is still your category. You can also do sculpture or 3D printing in this category. Anything original, period. You want to go as wild as Morii style, but your own invention? Go for it! Let your creativity reign free!
A tip: you can view the first and second, third, fourth, and fifth art contests’ submissions to get inspired, or, if needed, to see what kind of art belongs to which category. You are always welcome to post here or pm @azulryu or @brendantheclayboy for any questions.
We are very pleased to bring this back to the forum for year 6, in both the spirit of Pokemon, and the spirit in which they are created for us fans to enjoy—the very illustrations/designs themselves. In the spirit of neutrality, transparency, and sportsmanship, us organizers do not participate. But we of course get our art urges out in our designing the trophies! We will, however, not miss out on judging, as we will be casting our own ballots as well!
Many thanks to all who’ve continued to lend their help and time, and to those who helped make it a reality in the past. We always have very special thanks to these fine people for their original, past, or ongoing efforts to contribute and make it better than we could on our own:
kingboo64
ReinaSierpe
gareth
fourthstartcg
andrewvt36
Koala
And of course the mods/admins for accommodating our continued tradition!
Contestant sign up list (closed!)
Child:
- Dyl
- pikachutcg
- mrbubbles
slowqueenfateSolemnStar- banks
- Fazool
- MaxyMaxy
- ayoveer
Vertemes- camrok37
Recreation:
- crindy
- dromanyte
- Rattlesnake
- lyleberr
- pikachutcg
- niece
- lookaclara
- northerninfernape
- skipper
SolemnStar- cyberurchin
- bbobrob
Professor_Broke- totodile_in_pursuit
- dogstolethings
- kamex
- Corylus
- Silphnaut
3D:
- banks
- Fazool
- quietcomputers
fiery
Original:
- crindy
oxidelake- dromanyte
- Rattlesnake
- lyleberr
- Silphnaut
- niece
- KantoHustle
- lookaclara
slowqueen- fate
gengarbrigadepokemedz- nick15
pfm- skipper
- cyberurchin
- bbobrob
- Ragdajin
Professor_Brokegenoshatotodile_in_pursuitchrisundrumquietcomputers- dogstolethings
- citriina
- tediorso
Corylus
