Skary tees are now available in the store! Mister Creazil and the Plague Kid are waiting to be worn by you, but they're currently in limited supply. Get yours while you can! All orders will be fulfilled by the good people of PrintMojo.

In more news, do you know about Auxiliary Magazine? Rena Finkel recently interviewed me for Auxiliary, and that issue is now available for free online and in print in just a few days. There's lots of other good stuff in there too. Check it out!

Also, the Show Your Allegiance Contest was a spectacular show of talent! The judges and I loved all twenty-two of your entries, and we were sad that we had to pick just one. And that winner was Katrina Pomerance with her handmade doll! Katrina has won a Mister Creazil tee for her adorable creation. Congratulations, Katrina!

Katrina's doll

Cynthia Cheng's delightful comic about the process of making her submission was the first runner-up, and we couldn't just let her slip by without notice. She'll be receiving a little something in the mail as well. Yay, Cynthia!

Cynthia's comic

The other entries will be posted to the Skary.net fan art gallery soon. Again, thank you to all of you who entered!

There are fewer than three days left to show your allegiance and win your choice of the new Skary tees. Are you ready? I'll tell you now that you may have to step up your game. The entries we've gotten so far are top-notch. Picking a winner will not be easy! See what you're up against? (And these are only a few of them!)

Katrina's doll

Candace's Music Video:

Anna's Flapbook

And this one from Liz and her sister made me laugh:

There are plenty more where those came from, but yours can only be one of them if you submit it by 11:59 pm Pacific, July 29th! Details here if you need a refresher.

Rory recites "Agony"

Cynthia gives us a making-of comic for her illustration:

Asa's niece is unequivocally Skary:

What you're winning:

your choice of one Plague Kid tee OR Mister Creazil tee in your specified size.

What you're going to do:

Show us how much you love Childrin R Skary in whatever way your creative brain can invent. Make a video, write a story, paint a picture, compose a song, organize a parade (that one might be a bit over the top)... anything you want! Just so long as no one gets hurt, it's legal, and you can submit some version of it online. Keep in mind that your submissions may be posted to Skary.net, so don't do anything that's going to haunt you when you become a senator in a few decades.

Who will win?

That's to be decided by a panel of judges who will base their decision on your creativity, uniqueness, effort, and overall Skariness. So, don't worry if you don't have any fancy camera equipment, you're not a master ar-teest, or English isn't your first language. If we can tell you really love Skary and worked hard to show it, that's all that counts. But only one person will win! You can get help from family and friends, but you must be the primary participant, and you alone will receive the prize should you win (but do name your helpers if you have any. They at least deserve credit).

Send your entry by July 29th via the form below!

More Rules (we always gotta have 'em):

1. Your entry must be submitted online with the form below. Not in person or by snail mail; sorry. You may post it anywhere you want, so long as there is a version that my judges and I can view, and you have sent me the link or file. The exception to this is Facebook. DO NOT SEND LINKS TO FACEBOOK. I always get submissions from people's Facebook pages, and 99% of the time, I don't have access to them. So, let's just throw that one right out. No Facebook.
2. You may only submit one entry. But if you make a mistake or do a better version, you may resubmit. Only your final effort will be considered, however. This is to make sure you're putting your best effort into it. This is about quality, not quantity. This also means you can't just resubmit fan art or previous contest entries you've sent me before.
3. All participants are welcome, regardless of country. However, my judges and I primarily speak English. So, if your entry depends upon the spoken or written word, we ask that you provide an English translation to accompany it. You may get help with translations.
4. While you may get some help if you absolutely have to, the idea and as much of the execution as possible must be yours. You may parody something else for your entry, but you cannot copy or steal. If it's discovered that you've stolen someone else's work, OH MAN, you will be in so much trouble. Like, banned for life from ever entering anything of mine ever again. Probably a pox on your house, too.
5. Your entries are due no later than 11:59 PM Pacific, July 29th, 2010. No exceptions, even if your entry is really superduperawesome. Winners will be announced August 1st, and shirts go on sale for everyone else August 2nd. That gives you two weeks! Snap to it!

Lastly, please remember that you are wonderful, and so is your entry even if you don't win. There are always a lot of entries, and they can't all win! I sometimes get very sad messages from people who feel like they have failed because they weren't picked. Don't do that. It's just a t-shirt. A really lovely one, if I may say so myself, but not worth sacrificing your well-deserved pride over.

Update 7/30/10: Contest is over! The winner will be announced this Sunday.

From Liz (age 15), Brazil, who says, "Well, I thought my own country could be a wonderful place for a Skary vacation, so my artwork is in Rio and the kid is looking to the dead child she just buried in the sand, the parents looking for him behind. Kinda creepy, I think my grandma didn't like it, but I did. I used acrylic colors to paint it, hope you like my first Skary drawing :)"

Liz, you get your choice of any Skary print, signed by me. Check your email for details!

Of course, every entry I received was absolutely wonderful. I might be biased, but even so, we all got a good chuckle out of these as we were judging them. It was hard to make a choice! All the other entries are proudly displayed within the Fan Art gallery. Much applause for each of you!

There are many other new fan art submissions unrelated to the contest that have just been added to the gallery, so be sure to check 'em all out! They're really quite snazzy. (Is it appropriate to label drawings of wicked, deadly weaponry-toting little children as "snazzy"?)

You have until 12am, Monday the 22nd to send me a Skary picture in any medium (digitally drawn, pencil, paint, Crayon, photo, whatever you like). But the theme, you see, is vacation. How would a Skary child enjoy a trip away from home? Send me your picture using the fan art form. Judging will take place all next week, and the winner will receive any print of his/her choice (signed, of course) from the Skary ImageKind store!

Rules (gotta have 'em):

• Your artwork must be original and by you and you alone!
• You must use a current email address when you submit your pic. Your email won't be shared with anyone, but I need a way to get in touch with you should you win!
• File type must be jpg, gif or png. No bitmaps, please!
• Entries will be accepted from anywhere in the world
• Theme must be "Skary vacation"

Remember: the deadline is 12am, March 22nd, 2010. No exceptions!

1. Find the last of the Micronesians
and tell them my name
Their beloved songs
will tell you the place

The domain suffix for Micronesia is .fm. So, "the last of the Micronesians" means Last.fm. "Tell them my name" refers to my username, which is, in this case, my actual name. Which amounts to http://www.last.fm/user/katytowell. Finally, the location of the piece is given in the title of a track that I have marked as a Loved Track. (It's also right there in Recently Listened Tracks.)

2. go to The place where our every Word
Is spoken by the sialia bird,
be careful lest you fail, my friend;
These birds will carry you unto your end.
They'll wrap you up in silken suture
Exactly as they did the great sea creature,
but never mind this. come follow me...
look to the background. you will see!
fear not if it seems your skill is bleak.
for below the horizon Rests the gift you seek.

A sialia bird is a bluebird. Birds tweet. Who has a blue bird for a mascot? Twitter. So, the piece is hidden at the bottom ("below the horizon") of my background image. Oh, and the great sea creature wrapped up in silken suture and carried by the birds? The failwhale. And just in case this was all too cryptic for you, I also spelled out TWITTER with every capitalized letter.

3. And by the side the horned beast waits
with great displeasure on his face
'Tis he who'll take you to the spot
where all the words have been forgot
Find the treasure at its source
Look for a name - and the prize, of course.

In the sidebar of skary.net is a picture of Mister Creazil. Click him, and you'll see what appears to be a page with no content. But view the source of that page and you'll see this hidden somewhere therein:

Evelyn's getting nervous. What took you so long?

http://skary.com/wp-content/uploads/lbp.png

4. Consider everywhere I go.
Look in the past and then you'll know.

This one was simple. I posted the location of a piece in a comment on an old, old Facebook post at http://facebook.com/childrinrskary.

5. Find me where the memories flicker
How empty is the stream!
But if you add my name, it'll be much quicker
and there's more than it may seem.

The piece was uploaded to my new Flickr account at http://flickr.com/katytowell. But the piece itself was (at the time - it's public now) accessible only to people I add as friends. To find it, you had to add me first. I would reciprocate, and then you'd see the piece.

6. There was a crooked man, and he had something once,
and it bought him a folder containing all things new,
within which was another for Evelyn's nickname,
which had a ping to it like "pea ell cee oh!"

"The crooked man who had something once" refers to the crooked sixpence nursery rhyme, which was the inspiration for one of my other sites: http://crookedsixpence.com. I added a folder called "new," inside of which was another folder for Evelyn's nickname (actually, three different folders with three different possible nicknames for Evelyn - Lyn, Lynn, and Evey) and placed inside it a PNG file called plco.png.

So, there you have it! All clues to Evelyn's Puzzle explained and clarified. Congrats again to the winner, and much applause for everyone who tried! This wasn't an easy one; I admit!

domain

suffix

Remember to send your completed puzzle to me when you've found them all!

There was a crooked man, and he had something once,
and it bought him a folder containing all things new,
within which was another for Evelyn's nickname,
which had a ping to it like "pea ell cee oh!"

This is the final clue! Remember the rules!

Evelyn's puzzle is nearing completion. Only two more clues left! So far, every piece has been found by at least one person. I don't know if any one person has found them all together. Yes, it's hard, but you didn't think I wouldn't make you work for that original sketch, did you? ;-) Here's your fifth clue:

Find me where the memories flicker
How empty is the stream!
But if you add my name, it'll be much quicker
and there's more than it may seem.

Check back next Wednesday for the clue to the sixth piece. And don't forget the rules!