Greetings Handlers!

The following rules and requirements apply for the Winter 2024/2025 Gopherit Art Competition.

Prompts/Themes/Ideas:

You are free to come up with any concepts for your art, using ideas from the videos, book, your imagination or any relative content. The core philosophy behind Gopherit is to encourage handlers to pursue their dreams and "gopher" anything they can imagine. This could portray burrowing rodents playing sports, doing activities, using their psionics, fighting any of their various opps (IRS, birds, fish, hyrax, etc) or just chilling. Remember, these are powerful entities and elite operators. I trust your judgment and the community to make these choices. If you're struggling to come up with an idea, I'd recommend watching some videos, I've made several hundred. If that doesn't do it for you, I also am working on a book and recording the chapters as audio as I complete them, so that's another source. 

General:

• Gopherit WILL NOT use any submitted material outside of the competition without compensating the artists. We reserve the right to offer any participant compensation for their art outside of the competition. If an offer is made, it will be at the third-place award amount, and the artist will receive the same recognition.
• Gopherit reserves the right to modify rules based on the number of submissions. For example, we may need to add preliminary rounds if there are too many submissions.
• Please read the entire competition rules and requirements for submission. If after reading you have any questions, please send them to contact@gopheritshop.com

Submission Deadline:

• Submission deadline: November 30, 2024, by 12 PM EST.

Submission Requirements (Please read carefully):

• Please submit your entry to contact@gopheritshop.com by the deadline. Include your name or pseudonym and Instagram profile for tagging/credit. This is how you will be referred to during the competition.
• If you would like, please include a signature or any sort of personal touch on your art to showcase you, the artist!
• Your submission must be in a digital format, (TIFF or PNG preferred for quality).
• The aspect ratio for your submission should be roughly square or rectangular, a 4:5 aspect ratio is preferred to fit printable space but anything from 1:2 to 2:1 is acceptable if it suits your concept.
• The resolution must be at least 300 DPI (dots per inch)
• Art may include a background or be standalone with a transparent background. Please consider that the art will be featured on apparel and other merchandise. If you are unsure what this will look like, I invite you to take a look at the previous competition winners.
• Art may be color or black and white, again, please consider background transparency and ultimately how this will appear on apparel as a graphic.
• Gopherit will not tolerate any sort of profanity, racism, or adult content. Gopherit is for all.
• AI art is strictly prohibited; all art will be screened.
• Artists are limited to 1 submission per competition.

Selection Process:

• Selection of winners will be voted on publicly by followers on Instagram. We will follow a simple head-to-head bracket with single elimination.
• Contingent Ruling: If there are more than 28 submissions, a “scramble” round will be initiated, where groups of 4 will be voted on and the top 3 will progress to the heads up rounds.
• Once the submission deadline closes, we will begin posting one matchup per day between 8:00 and 10:00 PM EST.
• 24 hours after the final matchup of a round is posted, all voting will be finalized and captured. This will determine round winners and subsequent rounds. Matchups will remain open for voting for the entire round.
• Seeds will be randomly determined.
• We will review each full round of heads up matches and post a summary of results and the bracket.
• There will be no moderation of artists promoting their entry into the competition. However, we reserve the right to disqualify an entry if we feel there has been any unethical or unfair behavior.
• The top three winners will be selected and awarded as outlined.

Awards:

• ALL participants will receive recognition on Instagram for their work. They will be tagged and promoted as part of this competition.
• The winning submissions will be awarded prize money as shown below by placement. They will also be added to the artist spotlight on our website and featured in a post as winners of the competition.
• The winning submissions will be featured on official Gopherit merchandise.
• Gopherit reserves the right to award additional artists based on performance during the competition, awarded at the specialty award tier.
• Award Prize Pool!