Hey Guys,
A lot of you have probably noticed that submissions haven't been approved for about 1-2 weeks. This is because my internet bandwidth expired for the month, so I wasn't able to load any detailed webpages (this including DeviantART). I have gone through and approved them all now, but unfortunately any submissions that were sent in more than 7 days ago have expired, due to the settings the group has been set to. This is my fault because I should've expected my bandwidth to expire. Because of this, I've made a few changes to the group that hopefully you guys will like:
  • The maximum number of submissions per day has been changed from 1 to 3.
  • Submission requests to folders has been changed from 1 week to 1 month.
  • The competition end date has been changed to now end in a little less than 48 hours time.
  • I'll hopefully be fixing up the favourites section to have the best submission every week added sometime soon.
Once again, I'm really sorry for anyone who I screwed up, I'm a complete chump.:ohmygod: Anyway, good luck for the competition everyone!

~zero557
Hey guys,

Merry Christmas! I would've made this post earlier but I was celebrating Christmas myself! I hope you guys all got a bunch of awesome stuff that you wanted for Christmas. If you got any Minecraft-related stuff feel free to submit it to us as artwork and we'll accept it (as long as it goes in the right folder!).

I've also decided to extend the competition to the 31st of December, just so people don't miss out, so if you haven't submitted yet, now's your final chance!

Recently Telltale Games, the guys behind awesome games such as The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us, have announced their latest title: Minecraft Story Mode! Telltale will be collaborating with Mojang to make a narrative-driven game similar to their previous games, however this will feature new characters and won't be official lore with Steve or anything like that.
Don't expect it to look exactly like Minecraft, but it will of course be in the blocky theme. It's supposedly coming out sometime in 2015, but I wouldn't expect it early as Telltale are still making the Game of Thrones game and they have also have said that they will make a third season of the Walking Dead, although that probably hasn't started development yet. A lot of people are quite nervous about this game, but I have absolute faith in Telltale Games, and they haven't let me down before. Long story short: new Minecraft game, hooray!

That's all I have to say for now, so until the new year, Merry Christmas Minecrafters!

~zero557
Hey everyone,
It's that time of the year again! The time for egg nog, Christmas carols, bad jokes from crackers... well let's face it, most of us will be playing Minecraft instead. Keeping with last year's idea, we will be hosting a Minecraft competition for artwork. This year I hope to make the competition a little more organized (even though I did forget again, I'm terrible :S), so let's get the ground rules down:
:bulletgreen: Your artwork must be submitted into the 'Minecraft Christmas Competition 2014' folder
:bulletred: Your artwork must be submitted by the 25th of December (we will allow some extra time for late submitters, but don't count on it!)
:bulletgreen: Your artwork must be Minecraft related AND Christmas related (last year we had some people who gave in non-Christmas related artwork which sadly wasn't accepted because it didn't meet the requirement)
:bulletred: Your artwork must be AWESOME. How else will you win the competition? :)
:bulletgreen: To claim your prize if you win, you must own a Steam account
:bulletred: There is no limit to the amount of entries you can make into the competition

Now, onto the part that everyone looks forward to: the prizes!
:bulletgreen: 1st Place: 1 Bastion Steam Key, and a spot on the voting panel for next year's competition!
:bulletred: 2nd Place: 1 FEZ Steam Key
:bulletgreen: 3rd Place: 1 Binding of Isaac + Wrath of the Lamb Steam Key

Here are some tips on what to do when creating your artwork:
:bulletred: Visual artwork is preferred over other artwork such as fan fiction, but don't let that discourage you. If you are more of an author than an artist, create a written piece! It's not a rule that visual artwork will win :)
:bulletgreen: The easier your artwork is to view, the more chance you have of winning (e.g. if you have a texture pack, make screenshots of it for us to see)
:bulletred: When it comes to artwork, quality beats quantity
:bulletgreen: If you take a look at last year's winners, you'll notice that they not only are themed as Christmas, but they FEEL like Christmas.

Steve's Christmas Cabin by LockRikard

Forgive my unprofessional description, but LockRikard's 'Steve Christmas Cabin' felt so home-y, warm, and cozy (I can practically feel the heat coming from the log fire!) I couldn't resist voting for it, it just really captured what Christmas feels like.

This year we are hoping to have the results of the top 3 by the 31st of December IDEALLY. Christmas miracles can happen, but there are no guarantees, so cross your fingers. That's pretty much all I have to say about this year's competition, if you have any questions about the competition that I haven't answered let me know in the comments below, as well as your hopes for this years competition. For now though, let the Minecraft Christmas Competition 2014 commence!
~zero557 :santa:

EDIT: The folder is now live, so you can start submitting already!
Hey Guys,

It's been a while since the last post (half a year!), so I thought I might as well let you know how things are going.

We're slowly getting more and more popular, as I'm seeing more and more artwork submitted everyday. This is great to see, let's keep up with the awesome art everyone! Most people have also gotten the hang of the folder system, which is great to see to. It just helps keep things tidier and easier for someone to access a specific type of art they might like in particular, or if they're looking for inspiration for their next big build.

That being said we still get a few submissions every day not going to a specific folder, which is a shame because it's the artist who doesn't get their work shown. It's really easy to submit to a folder, all you have to do is click on the folder that you want to submit to, and then press the 'Submit to This Folder' button. Some people do know how to submit to a folder but submit to the wrong one, and that's perfectly fine because sometimes you'll envision your artwork as something different to what other people see it as. The most common error we'll get is people submitting artwork to the 3D Block Art folder, when it actually belongs in the Digital Art folder. To help this I've changed the names of the Pixel Art folder to In-Game Pixel Art, and the 3D Block art folder to In-Game 3D Block Art. Hopefully this will help with the confusion!

Also 1.8 came out quite recently (the Bountiful update), featuring some awesome stuff such as a ton of new commands, ocean monuments, slime blocks, sponges, and banners. I think that the new commands are definitely going to help out map makers in particular, as command blocks are becoming more and more dynamic with every command they add for it to use. Sea Lanterns are going to be great, and I think they'll become the new Glowstone decoration-wise. Banners are probably my favourite part of the update, faction servers are going to absolutely love them! Another few of my favourites are the slime blocks and the return of sponges. It's great that we can finally have trampolines in Minecraft, and I always liked the use of sponges so hopefully they'll be a great resource to have. What do you all think of the new update? Give your thoughts in the comments, along with your favourite part of the update! Apart from that, keep up the great artwork everyone!

EDIT: I also forgot to mention that Minecraft has also been acquired by Microsoft recently for $2.5 billion dollars. It'll certainly be interesting to see what happens to the game over the next period of time, and what Microsoft will do with Minecraft (or not do). If you would like to know more about it, you can visit Mojang's article about it here: mojang.com/2014/09/yes-were-be…
~zero557
1st Place: LockRikard, with his artwork 'Steve's Christmas Cabin'!
lockrikard.deviantart.com/art/…

2nd Place: K-Pepper, with her artwork 'How to Decorate your Minecraft Tree'!
k-pepper.deviantart.com/art/Ho…

3rd Place: mixlou, with his artwork 'let's celebrate'!
mixlou.deviantart.com/art/let-…

4th Place: bossguy132, with his artwork 'merry christmas'!
bossguy132.deviantart.com/art/…

5th Place: TheLegendaryArkaius, with his artwork 'A Horizoncraft Christmas'!
thelegendaryarkaius.deviantart…

6th Place: Lanaeyaa, with her artwork 'MERRY CHRISTMAS! - Minecraft'!
lanaeyaa.deviantart.com/art/ME…

Congratulations to LockRikard, K-Pepper, mixlou, bossguy132, TheLegendartArkaius and Lanaeyaa, you've done this group proud! Your submissions are truly great works of art :D
And especially well done to LockRikard, K-Pepper and mixlou, as you guys have managed to secure a prize! Terraria will be going to LockRikard, K-Pepper will be getting The Binding of Isaac and Super Hexagon will be going out to mixlou. You should receive a note through deviantART very soon about attaining your prize. This was a blast to do guys, and I can't wait to see the submissions for 2014's Christmas Competition! Thanks to everyone who participated in this competition too, it was great seeing a wonderful variety in all the art that was submitted. Enjoy 2014 everyone!
~zero557

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