Tuesday, August 01, 2006

We won!! We won the Flickr Colour Contest!!


Imagine my surprise when opened my email to see a message from Quentin saying that he received a free month of Flickr Pro for his entries. Cool! I went to my next new message and that one said that I was one of the contest winners. What? You're kidding!! Then I went to the Flickr Blog post about the contest results and low and behold there are Adam and Dova busily coloring (or colouring) their Flickr entries (yes, that is the winner above!). Now, this photo was not even one that I thought would be a contender out of the (no less than) 39 pictures that I entered. I hadn't even titled this one! Between working and barely sleeping, here is the chronology of events that led to a complete obsession with this contest.

On July 19th, Flickr is down with these 2 circles and an invitation to enter a coloring contest. Bummer, I thought, a coloring contest? Not really up my alley. Quentin was online bugging me to enter. So I printed out a few sheets thinking that I would give them to the kids in the morning.

Flickr was up in a couple of hours and Quentin quickly posted his entry. It was really funny, so I was inspired to color my own. At this point, I didn't see any other entries up yet (could he have been the first?), but after about a 1/2 hour they started coming in.

This is my first entry. I scanned it, posted it and went to bed. I was really impressed by all the creative entries that were being posted so far and began thinking of cool entries that I could create the next day. The second circle of this entry reminded me of a moon, and I am moonfever0 as well, and wouldn't it be cool if I made the earth and the moon? Doug had fallen alseep in Adam's room, so my mind kept churning this idea around until I had no choice but to get up and head for the computer.


Not having Photoshop or Illustrator did not deter me from somehow figuring out how to get these graphics into the Flickr circles using nothing but Paint. There is no such thing as a circular selection tool!! It wasn't easy and took me about an hour. So around 1 AM I posted my masterpiece. The next day, I got some great comments and it still remains on page 5 out of 54 of the "most interesting" entries. I'm still proud of that, not being a graphic designer and all, but just an imagineer.



The next morning, I set the kids into motion and the winning picture was taken in this session with their PJ's still on! They were happy to color first thing in the morning before getting dressed and eating breakfast. I went off to work and copied about 25 more pages for us to do in the evening.

While I was at work, a friend suggested that I use Powerpoint to create the images and I did another entry with Adam jumping in the circles. Still not simple to do, but slightly easier than Paint.




After I got home from work, the insanity started. It was a messy process (see Dova's hand) and luckily Crayola washable markers easily comes off the rug. After posting our crazy pictures, I even decided to play with fd's Flickr Toys and build a composite of all our efforts. I did the spider web one at work as well with a sharpie and highlighter. I didn't have a ruler to use, so I used the edge of a microtiter plate sitting on my desk.





Last but not least, my very last entry was posted 2 days after the contest. It was what I had intended for the 2nd circle of the first post, but for some reason couldn't do after many "practice" tries. I attempted to fit the entire rainbow in the circle, ran out of colors and continued in the next circle. Dova was doodling next to me as well, but by then I was all "contested" out.


Here are some things that I noticed about the contest.. Heather, a Flickr employee, added my winning photo to her favorites the day after it was posted. Nine of the other winners are also in her favorites (and she like Chihuahuas). Five of the winners were in her original Flickr lemons post. All of the winners were not "technically brilliant" (like the ones that I like below), but more "creative" and not over the top. I'm still wondering what it was about my photo that caught her eye, besides the cute kids. All this burst of creativity has really gotten me interested about graphic design and maybe taking a course in it. Alas, I will probably settle back down to earth and stick with making pretty dialogs in C# for work. Just as a side note on winning.. I really didn't need a Pro Account since I just paid for 2 more years last months (at 48 smackers), but I see no end to my Flickr addiction, so I'll take it!

Here are some of my personal favorites from the contest (2 are fellow winners):
flickr lady Pickle and Flickr flickrcolourcontest color me flickr I found my flickr!   Lego's Hard At Work Flickr Mandala Arrggh! My tubes are clogged Cheesecake

5 comments :

Anonymous said...

I believe the link for announcing the winners is here.

And congratulations.

Anonymous said...

Congratulations on the win....and even more on the passion your whole family put into creating all your contest entries!

It truely was a family affair, and one you can all be proud of.

Nice blog entry describing the whole sequence too....it's great because it not only describes the schedule of events, but the excitement that seemed to be building as you and the kids really got into it.

BTW: Thanks for mentioning my entry, and for posting a shot of it.

Anonymous said...

You're nuttier than I even thought.

Terry & George

Anonymous said...

Nice story mommy bytes. It sure does become an obsession - as soon as Flickr tubes were clogged I was determined to come up with something creative. My shot that won was similarly one I almost didn't tag with flickrcolourcontest, because it was more about the creative act than the end point. Now, there must be a lesson in that.

Congratulations on your win!

Anonymous said...

Congrats on your win... I came across it while viewing other peoples photos!

I am glad they picked more than one of us to win... so many great entries!

Cheers... 1978seymour