Once again, December is almost upon us, and that means it's about time for our Secret Santa Activity.

For those that are not familiar with this activity, the Secret Santa is pretty much an annonymous gift exchanging activity.
The participants will be assigned someone they will have to make a gift for, but at the same time they do not get to know who they are going to be receiving one from, making it a thrilling activity.
In our case the gifts will be pixel gifts, and only those that previously signed up on this thread will be able to participate.
If all this caught your attention, please keep reading


Some things you should be aware of:

• Those willing to participate in the Secret Santa must post in this thread with a message on the lines of "I sign up".
  Posts with questionable replies will be ignored, so please be clear to avoid confusion
• When signing up, please put a few facts about you, anything you like/dislike, hobbies, etc... to make gift making easier.
• You may only sign up if you know 100% that you will be able to make a gift for your partner.
  If anyone signs up and does not deliver a present by December 23rd, he/she will not only be publicly humiliated, but also will be banned from these forums until I feel like it. I might give a little mercy, but you will need a really good excuse and a lot of luck (and I mean A LOT), so don't count much on it.
  Please think ahead and be responsible and do not let you partner down. Additionally if you don't come up with a gift at all, your participation on next year's Secret Santa will be forbidden.
• If you are Adarias, roobv, DrNoodles, rabidbaboy, xegnma, Sohashu or Noveroth, I forbid you to participate in this activity. 
  Unless you pixel last year's gift as an audition for this year's Secret Santa. You will have until November 30th.

The Sign-up for this activity starts today (November 23rd) and will last until November 30th.
So, if you want to take part on this, don't hesitate and do so before it is too late. 
I will be flexible with timezones, but anyone that signs up too late will be excluded.

When this part is over, you will receive a PM (on December 1st) with the name of the person you are in charge of. 
Then you will have until December 23rd to come up with a gift for your partner. 
As stressed before, if you signed please be responsible and do not let anyone down.
Once you are done with your present, feel free to PM it to me.


So remember:

• November 23rd~November 30th - Secret Santa Sign-up
• December 1st - PM Send-out (You will receive your partner's name)
• December 23rd - Last day to send your gift (Please PM them to Robot Santa)

If you have any questions regarding this activity, feel free to post on this thread of PM me and I will take care of it as soon as I can.

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Q&A

What do you mean by "Pixel Gift"?
There is no specific "Gift". Simply pixel something you would like to give your partner. It can be an avatar, an animation, a whole scene, some fan art, etc... whatever, anything goes as long as it is pixelled.

I will be away on December 23rd, Can I still participate in this activity?
You do not have to wait until the last day for submitting your gifts, so as long as you deliver it in time (meaning before or on December 23rd), you are all good to go.
(Actually I would recommend all the participants to send me your gifts as you are done with them)

Can I pixel you something even though you are not my partner?
Sure, feel free to pixel extra gifts for anyone if you have some extra time, but first focus on your actual partner.

I couldnt finish my gift... can I send you a WIP?
Yes, but you must finish it as soon as you can. If I catch you slacking and not finishing it at all, you will be punished.

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Wrapping

On the Secret Santa thread, all the gifts will be hyperlinked with one of these wrappers:



If you would like to choose your own, please state so in your posts (refer to them as b5, d3, a2 etc)
Remember that you will be choosing the wrapper for the gift you made, not for the one you will receive.
(In case you don't choose any, a random one will be assigned).

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Participants

• AdamAtomic
• Adarias
• AlienQuark
• alkaline
• am_pm
• baccaman21
• BG
• BlackDragon
• BruceJuice
• buloght
• cave
• cerealkiller54
• Cow
• crab2selout.png
• Doppleganger
• Doomcreator0
• Dusty
• dyuaru
• eck
• Ego
• elise
• fawel
• Faktablad
• Feron
• Fizz
• Frankiesmileshow
• flaber
• griffy6
• Hatch
• huZba
• ilkke
• infinity+1
• Jad
• JJ Naas
• Joe
• Jolly
• junkboy
• kendi64
• Khris
• Kren
• l3m0n5
• Larwick
• lollige
• MaDsk8tard
• Malor
• marilii
• MashPotato
• Metaru
• Mil
• Mirre
• miscdude
• MrMister
• Nitram
• Opacus
• Pan
• Panda
• pixelGnome
• ptoing
• Redshrike
• Reo
• Rosse
• Ryumaru
• Sabata
• sharprm
• Sherman Gill
• snake
• SolidIdea
• Souly
• spartan_117
• surt
• .TakaM
• Terley
• tocky
• willfauds
• Xeno-Striker
• Xion
• Zenobia
• Zlajonja

The previous one got 888 posts, so uhm, why not have a new one.
Anyway feel free to talk about whatever crosses your mind, but remember: keep it clean, don't spam and behave.
So... there you go.

So, here we are onto the last part of the smiley activity.
The winner entries that made it up to here are:

Junkboy's template


Lawrence's template


Snake's template (the tilted squares)


Now the task here would be to make the remaining smileys to complete the sets. Ideally, it would be neat having someone fixing the templates (the AA on snake's template, or perhaps polish Lawrence's a bit more, etc) before carrying on, but anyway leaving that aside, those participating should try to nail the style of the template they decide to work on as accurate as possible.
If there are multiple submissions for the same expression, only the ones that are more loyal to the original style and have more quality overall, will be included to the final set.
Feel free to contribute for the set you like the most, but they will be added for use only once we get all the smileys needed to qualify it as a complete set (so, uhm 42 or so smileys).
If you decide to make original smileys, (read as: expressions unexistant in the current smiley set) they will only be added if someone makes that same expression for all the other sets.

Ultimately, if anyone decides to make a full set of smileys (regardless of it being based on the winner entries or not, meaning you can make smileys with your own template or templates that were submitted in the first part of this activity) it will be considered for addition.
So if you are up to making one yourself (or with someone else, or whatever) go ahead.

Rules:

• These are the expressions you will be working on: 
  
  
• Your submission must imitate the style of the chosen template as accurate as you can
• Multiple submissions are always welcome
• All designs must be your original work, completely

There will be no due date for this, but as mentioned, sets will only be added for use once they are complete.

So with all that down, feel free to start pixelling and all.
And have fun.




Disclaimer: By submitting smileys, you are agreeing and allowing Pixelation to use them as we might see appropiate. While we won't use the submissions for economical purposes (e.g. sell it), you shouldn't expect to be given credit whenever your smiley is used.

Well, well, since the last set of rules caused a bit of a conflict around, I decided to scrap it away and pick a different way to choose our winners.
Firstly, both winners from the member's poll and the mod's poll will carry on.
Additionally, I set up a new poll with all those entries that had more votes (after the winning entry) since most of them were really close with each other (ranging from 13 to 17 votes)


Anyway, the winner entries are:

Junkboy's entry


and

Lawrence's entry


Congratulations to you both!  If any of you want to slightly update, refine or retouch your entries, now it is the time to do so.




And now the entries you can vote for this time are:

- Monsoon2D (2)


- Panda


- Perciv@l (1 - Outlines) (2 - No outlines)


- snake (2 - ONLY the Tilted squares)


- ptoing


- Faktablad



Once the voting ends, the winner of this poll will carry on (along with the other two) to part the second part of the smiley activity.
Hope this is fair enough this time.

First of all, thanks to all those who took their time to make a smiley template for the first part of the activity.

As for the voting, here is how it will work
- Each of you will have 3 votes.
- The winner of this poll will count as 1 vote for the mod poll (so if you are a mod, please vote on the one at the admin boards). In case of a tie, those tied will count as a vote each.
- The overall winner template will be the one with more votes after counting all votes from the mod poll + 1 vote from this poll

Hopefully that's clear enough.
The poll will run for 5 days.


So without further ado, here are the entries:


- Turbo (1)


- Turbo (2)


- alkaline


- setz


- Pixelfish


- ejay (1)


- ejay (2)


- Presley (1)


- Presley (2)


- junkboy (1)


- junkboy (2)


- robotriot


- philipptr


- Feron (1)


- Feron (2)


- Gil


- The B.O.B. (1 - Purple splat) (2 - Yellow splat)


- dragonrc (1)


- dragonrc (2)


- dragonrc (3)


- miascugh


- ptoing


- Hishnak


- Xion (1)


- Xion (2)


- Xion (3)


- Xion (4 - Bold circle) (5 - Bold square) (6 - no outlines) (7 - Low color circle) (8 - Low color square)


- Kclic


- Rydin


- Draco9898 (1)


- Draco9898 (2)


- Lawrence


- AdamAtomic


- skeddles


- Monsoon2D (1)


- Monsoon2D (2)


- Adarias


- Pixel32 (1 - Square) (2 - Circle)


- Pixel32 (3)


- fil_razorback


- Noveroth


- Ensellitis


- Saxamaphone (1)


- Saxamaphone (2)


- Alevice (1)


- Alevice (2)


- Flame


- Panda


- Alucard (1)


- Alucard (2)


- 1st (1)


- 1st (2)


- Chalk


- snake (1 - Circle) (2 - Tilted squares) (3 - No outlines) (4 - blob)


- RosenCrantz


- Faktablad


- Dusty


- Perciv@l (1 - Outlines) (2 - No outlines)


- CODEONE


- 8bitty


- Muffin


- Xooxer