Thanks for this, Mythical-Viper! I loved the detailed analysis. I don’t have as much time to do as detailed a breakdown as this but I wanted to share some things I observed too. I am not staff but here are my guesses as to what they like.
-Matching flight familiars is a very safe bet. Every time I referenced a familiar, I won. If you are just getting into these contests or art in general, I highly recommend studying Flight familiars and applying their design elements to dragons. Players enjoy matching familiars to dragons, so I imagine that makes skins like these a good pick. It’s a good way to pick up FR’s art tricks and avoid overworking your design.
-Staff likes punny names, I think. ‘Noodlebranch’ for my nudibranch-themed Spiral skin, ‘Wild Sprite’ instead of ‘Wind Sprite’, ‘Nice View’ on a skin about having too many eyeballs. Make their game fun for them, and you’ll probably make their game fun for other players, too. More serious names of mine didn’t even get honorable mentions.
-Try matching Flight vistas and Flight gods, and be sure to include elements on the dragon’s face. A lot of players look for fest skins that match a fest vista. I imagine staff is trying to select things that players want.
-Matching Flight apparel didn’t work out as well as familiars, for me. Maybe it could work, though. I tried it a couple of times and uh, no acknowledgement whatsoever, lol.
-Flight-appropriate textures that really ‘flow’ with the dragon’s volume, perspective, and lineart are also a good idea. It’s also good practice for gene design if Staff ever opens a position for gene designs. You literally cannot go wrong with gradients, as Viper says here, and I’d also like to add that sparkles and Flight-colored ‘magic goop’ goes with any dragon.
-I had a couple of wildcard wins — Like Snake Eyes for Wildclaw M, an aesthetic that had nothing to do with purple Shadow stuff and was on a popular breed. It was a gambling-themed accent with an eye that changes color depending on the dragon’s secondary. IIRC, it was so off-aesthetic that I was accused of using the fest thread to ‘advertise’ a UMA…which was very interesting... Anyway, I think staff appreciates fun transparency effects every now and then but I wouldn’t bank on it selling the design.
-In my opinion Staff is not realllllly looking for the boundaries of their Flight aesthetic to be expanded/pushed. Sometimes it can still win. My strategy was ‘weird’ entry that pleased me, and ‘safe’ entry that pulled more directly from FR stuff.
-In no way did my high-effort, time-intensive skins ever do better than the ones I knocked out in like a day. It’s not worth destroying your wrists or your sense of well-being for this contest. Use the site’s aesthetic! It’s designed to be implemented quickly and cleanly.