The theme for the month of September was “Beginnings” and we had five total entries for this round.
Please click on each image below to view it full size. Use your browser’s back button to return to this blog post. Then vote for your favorite image using the embedded Google poll below.
Voting will close on October 2nd, 2023, at 11:59 PM EDT.
If you are having trouble using the embedded Google poll above, please click on this link to open it in a new browser window instead: https://forms.gle/NVmp2FAqBtHt96R38
Hello! We’re back after a break for the month of August with a new challenge for September. The theme for this month is Beginnings, in honor of the Rising event. Entries on this theme will be accepted until September 22nd, 2023.
To enter, send a direct message to Katarh Mest on our Discord channel. The prize is your image on the front page of our website for the next month, and the right to choose the next theme.
Please >>>click right here<<<< to join the ENTM Discord community if you have not done so already!
ENTM contests are open to the general screenshot community. You do not have to have participated in any ENTM contest before. You must, however, be a member of our Discord community to see the winner’s announcement. ENTM monthly contest screenshots must be “vanilla” – no mods, no Reshade, and no post processing allowed. You must include the FFXIV copyright notice on the shot to allow us to post on our website for voting. Please submit one (1) original screenshot for this contest, not used in any other contest before or posted on social media. Also please include the character name for voting. No other restrictions apply beyond these and the challenge theme as described above. Do not taunt happy fun ball.
The theme for July was Chocobos with any interpretation allowed. The winner for July by a landslide was Alastor Izunia with this shot of a tender moment of a sleeping chocobo next to its owner.
Congratulations!
Alastor Izunia
The website may look a little different today – WordPress has been upgraded to the latest version, and we’re reverting back to our original theme of WP 2017. No other theme has quite looked as good or suited our needs as well, and it’s been upgraded to be compatible with WP 6.3 so I threw it back onto the site skin.
Only about…. two weeks late. My apologies, but I had a family emergency, a planned vacation, and then we were wrapping up CC14, so I failed to send out my image reminders as planned and had to extend the entry period.
But thanks to the extended entry period, we now have five images to share! The theme was simply Chocobos and it was, as always, fully open ended with no restrictions. Please look at each of the images below and then vote for your favorite using the Google poll below.
Voting will be open until Friday, August 11th at 11:59 PM Eastern Time.
I’m also experimenting with an auto post sharing feature. If this works as advertised, we’ll ideally have auto posts made to our Tumblr account going forward, and may expand to further platforms for our next full cycle. Social media is hard enough without having to manually cross post, so the more we can automate, the better!
Email addresses are not recorded, but sign in is required to prevent ballot stuffing. If you are having trouble using the voting form embedded above, click this link to open it in a new tab instead: https://forms.gle/YbvULDEJCBZ4jknD6
Six week contests are just long enough, we’ve found over the years, through trial and error. Long enough to give our models enough of a challenge and inspire learning and growth, but not so long that the models and judges get burnt out and have the contest stop being fun.
We started with 8 models this cycle, and finished with 6 (IRL always comes first.) And while we had some incredibly close rounds, we have a clear top three now that we’re at the end of the cycle.
I want to thank all the models who stuck with us throughout the contest. Without models, our contests wouldn’t exist. Through nine years of ENTM, we have helped coach hundreds of models, but each contest starts with you guys taking a risk and putting yourselves out there, sometimes having never done a screenshot contest before. Even if you didn’t win, I hope you learned something from the feedback, and are inspired to keep taking more screenshots (and if you want, please send me a screenshot of chocobos for the monthly contest ASAP.)
I also want to thank the judges for contributing their wit and wisdom each week. Judges like Ona and Elessia are the backbone of our contests. Outside community members like Judge Blix bring in a crucial, fresh perspective (because we can sometimes get a little bit too cliquish in ENTM without a new pair of eyes.) And Judge Escher provided valuable back up services to our primary judges, prepared to step in at any moment should something go awry for our main three. Thank you guys, thank you from the bottom of my heart.
And now, it’s time to announce some winners!
In third place…. Gadriel Nephilim!
In a sea of Au Ra and female characters, Gadriel’s unique Elezen male definitely stood out week after week. Gadriel won second place multiple weeks, and consistently scored well from our judges. Congratulations!
Gadriel Nephilim
In second place and also our Community Winner, Damian Montclair!
Community votes are an important part of ENTM. They act as tiebreakers when the judges are divided (and that definitely happened a few times this cycle) and also allow our models a chance to share their work with their friends and followers on social media. Damien is an ENTM veteran and brought that fierceness week after week.
Congratulations!
Damien Montclair
And now, the end of six weeks of screenshot torture, drunk ramblings from Judge Ona, a new perspective from Judge Blix, and quietly kind recommendations from Judge Elessia, we have a new S-Rank model in the ENTM family.
The winner of Classic Cycle 14 is Val Viscera!
Val came in as a newcomer to ENTM and knocked it out of the park on the first try. Throughout the cycle, Val was neck and neck with Damien, but at the end of the scoring, had enough of a boost from judges votes to claim the crown. Judges praised the careful attention to composition, color, and light in each shot from Val. Some of the submissions were right up against the deadline as Val worked hard to make them as polished as possible.
The stars were bright at night last week (even though I don’t think any of us live deep in the heart of Texas.) But after all the votes were in, the winner for the final round of Classic Cycle 14 was Damien Montclair!
Damien Montclair
I have to crunch some numbers in my spreadsheet this afternoon, but with this final week under wraps, there’s only one thing left to do – declare the S-rank model for this cycle of ENTM.
Thank you to everyone who participated in this cycle, and thank you to our judges for taking time out of their summer to provide us with their insights. The only way to get better at anything is to keep practicing, and feedback is a crucial part of that process.
It’s the final week of voting! I’m posting this from the Otakon XIV track (“we have Fanfest at home”) so hopefully the voting forms come through correctly.
The final week’s challenge was one of our favorite scenic style themes, Starry Sky. Our models were asked to include a starscape in any zone, any location, and thanks to Endwalker, we’ve got our first 24/7 options.
Please look at each of the images below. You can view them in closer detail by clicking on the center of the image. Use your browser’s back button to return to this blog post. Then vote for the strongest image using the Google poll embedded below. Remember that ENTM uses golf scores, so the strongest shot should be #1.
Sign in is required to prevent ballot stuffing, but no email addresses are collected. If you are having issues voting using the embedded poll, please click on this link to open it in a new tab: https://forms.gle/9uHEG1xMw2gHuwwT9
This was our closest week of voting yet, with community votes stepping up to break what would otherwise be a multi-way tie from the judges. But after everything was added up, the lowest score and our winner for this week belonged to Damien Montclair. Congratulations!
Damien Montclair
We have ONE MORE WEEK of ENTM Classic Cycle 14 to go. I hope everyone has had fun and been inspired by the creativity of our models for our short summer cycle.
Starting with our next cycle (likely sometime this fall) we will attempt to do better about cross posting to social media automatically using tools from WordPress.
We’re on to the home stretch of Classic Cycle 14. With six models remaining and scoring so tight I had to break out a magnifying glass last week, it’s still a wide open competition these last two weeks!
Our models were asked to present a “fairy tale” style shot – that is, to take a free style shot (battle, scenic, or fashion) and slap it in one of the Gpose frames with some filters to make it look like it came out of a picture book. They could choose an existing story for inspiration, or write their own fairy tale with a picture worth a thousand words.
Please look at each image below. To view the image in full size, click on the middle. Use your browser’s back button to return to this post. After looking at each image, vote using the embedded Google poll, with 1 as the strongest shot of the week on down. Voting will be open until Tuesday, July 25th.
Sign in is required, but no email addresses are collected. If you are having trouble voting using the embedded poll, please click on this link instead to open the poll in a new tab: https://forms.gle/LGahtKzZNyFisnuH7
Battle shots are always one of the tougher rounds in ENTM – it’s so hard to balance out the character, the opponent, and the action and make it look stylish. Judges and community were all over the place with their votes (so much so that fractions of a point determined the community winner again this round) but once everything was added up, the final winner for this round was once again Val Viscera.
Congratulations!
We’ve still got two more weeks to go, and based on the math behind each week’s scores, it’s still any model’s contest to win.
On the administrative side of things, Judge Blixis having to step down due to IRL / personal reasons and will regrettably miss the rest of the competition. Judge Escher has agreed to fill in for the remaining two weeks. Thank you Blix for your first time judging for ENTM! Hope IRL gets sorted out for you soon, for the better.
