Official MTS 2018 Calendar Contest

Okay, so we're a little late getting this off the ground this year, but here, at long last, is the 8th annual MTS calendar contest! With new and improved rules! (see below for details.)

This year's theme is 'best friends'! Have a pair of sims who are buddies for life? School chums? A sim and their faithful dog/cat/snake/Simbot? We want to see them here! Each picture must feature at least one human sim (no pics with just two dogs, for example. Supernaturals and Plantsims count as "human" sims.) paired with at one other sim/pet who is their best friend. 2 "beings" total. Groups of 3 or more are not allowed.

New rules this year
Seasons, not months
Instead of dividing by month, entries will be divided by season. Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn. Remember that each season has more than just the big holidays associated with it. Winter isn't just Christmas! So get creative and think outside the box.

Photo editing
We are allowing limited photo editing. Edits allowed include:

• Reshade
• Colour, contrast and lighting filters
• Artificial depth-of-field blur
• Adding small "weather" effects. For example, snow falling. However, these edits should be minor and should enhance the in-game season. E.g. you can take a pic in Sim winter and add snow falling, but don't take a pic in Sim summer and paint snow everywhere.
• Other "touch ups" which effect the look of the picture but not the content

Edits not allowed include:

• Photoshopping Sim faces for any reason, including adding makeup, changing expressions, or altering features.
• Repainting flowing clothing, hair or fur to look more "natural"
• Adding or removing Sims, pets, scenery, objects or anything else from the pic
• Moving sims/pets/objects etc around within the pic
• Painting in major weather effects

Flexible image size
We are no longer mandating that the image size must be exactly 1000x750 pixels. However, we strongly recommend this as the minimum size. Also please note that pictures which are not 1000 (width) by 750 pixels may be cropped at the discretion of staff for creating the calendar objects

Vote for your faves!
This year we will be letting the community decide a limited number of winners! Use the "Love" button below entries to cast votes for the ones you think are most deserving!

Enter via Tumblr
Did you know we have a Tumblr now? It's true! And as an experiment, we're going to try opening up the contest to Tumblr entries. Post your entry on your Simblr using the tag "mtscalendar19" (without quote marks). It's just that simple! You may enter one image via tumblr per game, three total. They must all be in separate Tumblr posts. Also note that Tumblr entries will not be eligible to win spots via MTS forum "Love" voting (Tumblr likes don't count. Only votes here on the forum). They will still be eligible to win for staff picks. So if you want the best shot at winning, post on the forum.

Full rules
1. 1 picture per entry. You may only enter a season one time but may enter two seasons per game, a total of six entries. You may also enter an additional 1 picture per game via Tumblr. The total number of entries allowed per person is therefore 9.
2. No place holders. Each spot is only filled once the picture has been submitted.
3. CC is allowed.
4. When posting your picture, please make sure to include the season it belongs to and which game it's from.
5. This is a PG-13 Forum. Your entries may not include adult content, pornography, or other inappropriate content. Any entries that do not adhere to this will be removed.
6. At this point we are not limiting entries per season. However, this may change depending on the number of entries we receive.
7. Do not crosspost the same entry on the forum and on Tumblr. Any duplicate entries will be discarded and MTS forum entries preferred.

How to Enter (MTS forum)
1. Pick a season and take a picture to represent that season
2. Upload the picture to any image host - Tinypic, Flickr, Tumblr, etc
3. Start a new post on this thread - click Go Advanced, and you can click the little "Insert Image" icon in the toolbar, or just copy-paste the image location into some [img] tags. Make sure to include which season your picture is for and which game it's from.
4. Submit your post - doing so will submit your entry.
5. If you want to do two entries, you need two separate posts.

How to Enter (Tumblr)
1. Pick a season and take a picture to represent that season
2. Create a new post on Tumblr with that picture, making sure to tag it with "mtscalendar19" (without quote marks). Remember to include which season your picture is for and which game it's from.
3. We will be following the mtscalendar19 tag as a tracked tag. Every few days we will make a post on the MTS tumblr tagging everyone whose entries have been confirmed. If you post your pic and are not tagged within a week, then double check that you have used the correct tag and followed the contest rules.
4. Multiple entries must each be in their own post.

Duration/Time Period
The contest begins December 6th, as soon as this is posted. Contestants will have until January 3rd to post pictures.

The deadline has been extended by popular demand! The new deadline is January 17th!

Judging and Scoring
Staff will still be deciding at least half of the winners, using the following criteria:

• Theme - Does your picture represent the season you chose?
• Creativity - Originality of idea
• Style - Use of space, props, is it pretty?
• Rules - No forbidden editing, inclusion of season, etc

There will be at least one winner per game, per season. So no game will get short-changed! The current plan is to have one winner per game per season, four seasons, for a total of twelve winning images. However, if we have a lot of entries, this may be expanded.

The exact number of winners determined by "Loves", and the exact metric we will use to determine this, will be decided later, after we see how many entries we receive. But more "Loves" will definitely give a better chance of winning, so vote!

Prizes
A sticker for both winners AND participants, like these.
A calendar will be made for download with each winning image.
And, of course, the blue ribbons for all of the winners.

Questions
Q: I have really great ideas for one season. Can I enter 2 times in one game for that season?
A: No. Participants are only allowed one entry per season per game. You'll have to be selective in choosing your best pic. However, if you have any extra pictures that don't make the final cut, please feel free to show them off in the appropriate thread over in (whichever game's) Sims Pictures forum.

Q: I am not sure what type of picture to enter.
A: Check out these threads: Sims 2 Sims 3 and Sims 4 It has examples of past entries to use as examples.

The picture you post will be your final shot - make it good. Posting a random picture of a christmas tree, easter bunny, yourself, etc to reserve a spot is not allowed and it will be deleted.

Once your post has been added to the table, it may not be changed. Do not change the picture, you may not delete it and enter a new season instead, etc. If you choose to delete your entry, you are removing yourself from the contest and no further entries will be permitted from you.

Contest entries

#	Winter	Spring	Summer	Autumn
1	cillaben TS4	Freelala TS2	TheSweetToddler TS3	Letcupcake TS4
2	writer21098 TS4	emmabaker87 TS2	Bulldozerivan TS4	Lyralei TS3
3	Charmful TS2	Letcupcake TS4	Freya5 TS3	Freya5 TS3
4	TheGamingLioness TS4	Julie J TS4	AndrewGloria TS2	Simsilikesims TS4
5	HobbesED TS2	TheSweetToddler TS3	Freelala TS2	cats12490 TS4
6	PhantomKnight TS2	Julie J TS2	Yosarna TS2	cocoazure TS3
7	Yosarna TS2	attuned TS3	Frogsnack TS3	Charmful TS2
8	Julie J TS3	Colorarity TS4	Influence TS2	peanutbutterjelly TS4
9	Influence TS2	asiashamecca TS4	Treehawk TS2	Influence TS2
10	Jonipoon TS2			Jonipoon TS2
11	cocoazure TS3			hannahsim201999 TS2
12	hannahsim201999 TS2

The Sims 3 - Summer Entry



Two sisters who are best buddies walking around the fields

I gather that chroma keying and mirroring sims is forbidden as well? (falls under moving sims within the pic right?)

A Pretty Messed-Up Date
Scene from: Swappernetters, season 2
==================================================================
Lighting edited with: Photoshop CS6
Method: HDR Toning + Dozinematizerâ„¢ Process
Expansions most used: City Living, Fitness Stuff, Cats and Dogs, Seasons, Get Famous
Custom skintones used: Ricky Male Skin Overlay by Wistful Castle, Ginerva and Valencia Skin Overlays by SayaSims
Custom body hair: Body Hair v. 5.0 by Luumia

Swappernettersâ„¢ is an urban fantasy adventure tale set in an alternate history / bad future of The Gerosha Chroniclesâ„¢ in Dozerfleet Comicsâ„¢; blending elements of political thriller, cyberpunk, "dungeon" punk, and comic book fantasy. Inspirations include Marvel Comics, SatAM Sonic the Hedgehog, Batman Beyond, real-world political events, and parkour-heavy games such as Dying Light and Mirror's Edge Catalyst.

Yes, I am continuing development on this story. However, most of its development has been sidelined for the time being, to focus on Ciem: Inferno, also part of The Gerosha Chronicles but set 15 years prior to the events in this image.

Update: The long version of this story has been moved to DeviantArt.

TL;DR version: It's late August. Tabby and Jordan haven't seen each other in quite some time. The world is a darker, more dystopian place. They're on a date and on a mission to take back their homes from the Icy Finger's puppet government, the Chrome Kite. A friend in the park is in trouble. They must now decide how to save that friend's life.

Tabby's abilities make her a not-quite Spider-Girl, but more powerful than Faith Connors wannabe, a super athlete urban ninja who can also cause temporary paralysis with an energy beam from her hands. And she can run on air; but heats up when she does enough to almost create a plasma shield around herself. (Her power donor, Mapacha del Fuego, was able to do all of this and more, but divided her powers amongst Tabby and two of her friends.)

She not only wants to destroy the "Tug", which keeps Extirpon and the Gray Champion permanently in exile; but also to destroy the new evil regime and rescue her mother from prison. She herself was made a political prisoner, and spent three years in juvie before being abducted and left for dead in a virtual zombie land. To say she harbors a grudge might be an understatement.

Jordan doesn't have powers; but shouldn't be underestimated. Charlie, who's in trouble, can dance really well; but can't run very fast. The Mercury Troopers ("Hgs", pronounced "hogs") and the monster Sicklesaw are closing in. Time to rescue and relay.
=====================================================================
At any rate, I hope you enjoyed the image and the attached story. Here's hoping it makes a good calendar entry.

PS: What's with all the haters?

Most likely, yes. For a previous contest, I submitted for the September pic a Sims 3 image of the Camelry from Camelorum Adventures battling Shakesbear. It...was not every impressive without the added CGI. Without his glowing field of green charged ion particles, Ion Boy...just looks dorky floating in mid-air like that. Lemon Witch doesn't impress if her gloves don't at least light up. And Semaphore's hair being only one color? Kinda pointless. Even so, altering those details would've disqualified the image.

For this contest, they said we're doing generic seasons rather than a month, so the contest holders can decide which image is most appropriate to which month. They also said lighting tweaks are okay, as are adding focus blurs. Just as long as we don't add magic / tech lighting effects, shift characters around, or pull any other crazy stuff like that.

Look at it like it's After Effects rather than Photoshop: You can play with exposure and colors all you please; just don't airbrush everything.

Take, for example, why Andrew Garfield's suit looks so good in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. (The only thing seriously wrong with that film, is that it's very badly written.) They used almost zero CGI on the suit itself, and only when absolutely necessary did they replace the actual Andrew (or stunt double) with CGI. Yet, they tried to get his Spider-Man to look as organic as possible.

Jon Watts in Homecoming, however, had the Stark suit covered up in CGI nearly the entire time it was onscreen, making it look unnaturally form-fitting and fake on Tom Holland's body.

And going back to Raimi: the Spider-Man suits there were only in the most crucial areas ever CGI (like anything involving a pumpkin bomb.) Otherwise, those were practical stunts with real fabric, and it looked more real as a result. (And they had to make a lot of them, as the raised webbing was very fragile in real life. Not fun for Tobey to put on, at all!)

The technical difficulties of editing a Sims image for a calendar are a LOT fewer; but the general principle applies: Do Minimal Surgery!

That's why I chose to do a Swappernetters image this time, rather than a Ciem: Caldera or Camelorum Adventures image. Because those others ALWAYS require lighting enhancements somewhere. Even with AmiSwift's custom meshes, I still need a glowing eye or eyepiece here or a light-up dart shooter readiness indicator light there, or for Lightning Hobo to shoot actual lightning (what a concept!) But with Swappernetters, the Frontliners (the few of them that have any powers at all) are seldom seen doing anything that you or I couldn't do - provided we were in shape and had years of training in parkour / freerunning and MacGyvering. And while they may be resisting an evil regime, they aren't crazy rioters like you see in liberal cities in America today. They may battle supervillains, but they don't require fancy hero costumes. They may be outlaws; but they don't spark as much controversy on a calendar as would an image of a cartoon female chain gang - which is literally the inspiration for Camelorum!

However, since lighting tweaks are allowed, I gave CS6's HDR toning a try. And it worked amazingly well! I just hope the resulting image still looks enough like Sims 4 to be considered for the contest! It certainly looks like a game meant to be taken more seriously than Sims 4 itself was meant to be.

@Pideli - Correct, no chromakeying or mirroring sims.

BulldozerIvan, that was a very long answer for a simple question!
PharaohHound: Ok, thanks!

Hello, I don't think I've ever posted here before I'm a Tumblr user and I followed the 'Mod The Sims' Tumblr account and saw the post about this competition and I decided to enter

This is a Sims 4 Entry and I chose winter as my season. I used various cc for my sims, Reshade and added DOF and snow overlay on this picture

Happy Holiday Season everyone!

Ohh!!! I love the entries entered so far! There's also some super nicely edited ones here as well! can't wait to see more!

FALL ENTRY



Used some lighting ajustments and thats it.
My brother is my best friend, so i though i would picture us when we were young
(We dont that much look alike tho )

@cillaben and @Letcupcake - lovely entries, added you to the table!

"Where did all the bugs go?"

Also, just a quick note to all future contestants, make sure to state which game your entry is for. I forgot to put that in the initial rules (updated now). Usually we can tell, but occasionally it can be tricky. Everyone who entered so far is fine.

Spring - Sims 2

Entry: Winter

Game; The Sims 2
Season; Spring

Oh, @Freelala, that's so sad! Good job!

Wow, this looks really fun, but I've never done it before. I'm interested. Can I just clarify as far as editing, it looks like most things that enhance the look of the photo are fine, but nothing that changes the content of the photo, is that the idea?

@Sunrader - correct, that exactly is the idea behind the editing guidelines. If you have any more specific questions, feel free to ask. Would love to see an entry from you!

@Naus Allien - just a reminder that entries need to be groups of 2 sims, no more, no less. So I can't add your entry to the table at this time. If you would like to take a new picture and make a new entry post in this thread, that would be wonderful.

@emmabaker87 - added you to the table!

Okay. I'll try to take a new one. Thank you for letting me know, PharaohHound.

I was added to the wrong section, supposed to be spring not winter

Building her best friend! (The reason I deleted it...it was because the one I had did not have a person...so please let me be in the contest?)

SPRING ENTRY



Friendships can last a lifetime...

I take it that disqualifies lots that are dependant on VFX to have their proper appearance? I'm currently building a lot I'd hoped to use for the calendar shot, but may not be able to use it because it's intended to appear as part of a dense cityscape that I could not believably fit into a 64x64 space. I'd have composit in a digital matte, be it via chromakeying or another method.