CURE TUTORIAL: CHARACTER RING
Previously on "How to Cure," we covered how to add new series and new characters to Cure's database. Today, we'll be talking about the Character Ring.
Introduction
You may not have noticed anything interesting this last week if you've only been visiting the English side of Cure. However, if you happened to visit http://ja.curecos.com, you would have been greeted by this.
Dude check it out it's me ^_^ How did my picture end up on the front page of Cure? Each week Cure holds a themed contest called the Character Ring. This week's was "One Piece characters NOT in Luffy's crew." An odd theme, but the narrow parameters were pretty helpful- the last few weeks have had a ridiculous number of entries. Previous contest winners and themes can be seen here. They range from particular series (Reborn!, Prince of Tennis, Axis Powers Hetalia, etc.) to much broader topics ("short-haired characters," "blonde characters," etc.).
How to enter
First, make sure you have a photo in your public gallery that corresponds to that week's theme. Then, go to http://ja.curecos.com/ring/ and click the blue button under the theme title.
This will bring you to a screen where you choose the photo you want to enter. Unfortunately, I don't have screenshots of this process at the moment- I may add them tomorrow, once I can access it again. There will be a few fields to fill out. First, you want to choose a theme for the next contest. This can be a series, an artist, an attribute, whatever. Choosing a series is the easiest thing to do, and it'll look like this:
NAME OF SERIES HERE の 全キャラクター (or "All characters from NAME OF SERIES HERE")
This field is NOT for writing your character name, or what theme you're currently entering! This is a mistake I see a lot in non-Japanese-speaking entrants! Do it right!
The other field is for a comment, and you don't actually have to write anything if you don't want to. When I entered America into the Hetalia contest, my comment was "America loves motorcycles!" Alice (for the "characters using your natural hair" contest) was "My hair is short now! I cut it in July." And for Dr. Kureha, I just used her line "Happy kai?" So it obviously doesn't have to be anything serious. But whatever it is, write it in Japanese. Use online translators if you need to- I use a combination of Google, Babelfish, and Nifty.
After submitting that information, you'll get a screen asking to confirm your picture and words, and once you okay that, you're in! Sit back and wait for votes. :)
Voting
If you want to vote in the Character Ring, you get three votes. Voting for yourself is allowed. You can vote multiple times for the same person, if you want. However, since new entries are added to the contest throughout the week, it can be a good idea not to blow them all at once, just in case something awesome shows up a few days in that you want to vote for.
Other stuff
I thought you were only allowed to enter in solo pictures, but I'm not sure if that's right. I see a few duos around, so I'm unsure about that one.
Tall pictures are better than wide pictures. You get a bigger thumbnail.
If you win a contest, you are allowed to enter and win in the next one. However, this seems like rather poor sportsmanship to me, so I'm going to advise against it. The girl who won "short hair" then suggested "natural hair" and won it. Doesn't seem cool, personally. Your mileage may vary.
If you win
If you have the most votes, your picture will go up on the front page of Cure! Also, your theme will get chosen for the next week's contest. Assuming I stay in the lead until the end (which seems pretty likely now, I'm almost 300 votes ahead of the nearest competitor), the next week's theme will be CLAMP characters!
The contests are kind of broken. Once you're in the lead, you tend to stay in the lead, for the most part. Most people will just click on your photo from the front page and vote, not bothering to look at the other entries. This is awesome if you're in the lead. It sort of sucks, otherwise.
Contests last a week, starting at around noonish on Friday in Japan. That's about 8pm PST on Thursday for those of us on the West coast. So get those epic CLAMP photos ready!
Why winning is awesome
Check out the comparison of my stats from two weeks ago to this past week. Sorry that the first one's in Japanese, I didn't think about it when screencapping.
8-22 to 8-28
8-29 to 9-4
Obviously, I don't know anyone else's stats, so I can't say whether this would be awesome for the other Cure-ians on my flist. But that spike in traffic seems pretty damn awesome to me. XD
In other news
My hands are finally back to normal. A few weeks ago, I got this gross heat rash all over them. This faded into massive, massive peeling. I did some very stupid things to my hands to cut short the annoyance factor, things which led to extending it rather a lot- as well as subjecting me to a LOT of teasing from my roommates. If you recall, something similar happened last August. If it happens again next year... yeah, I should probably go see a doctor about it. My brother suspects it's some sort of allergy. shrug
Oh, here's some more screencaps, this time of my cosplay.com gallery. Last year around this time, I was all a-weirded out by the popularity of one of my Tsubasa photos. So I was taking screencaps every week or so, trying to find a pattern or something. Anyway, it's amusing to compare how much that one not-great photo ("Fai and Syaoran") has gone up this last year.
September 4, 2007 vs. September 4, 2008. ~3700 hits. Man, I really wish I knew where those were coming from.
And kiralikescake mentioned this over the weekend, but last week we both had some definite weirdness involving out Hetalia costumes over on ACP. Major hits racked up. Don't have any screencapped proof of that, though.
The end. Long post is long.
Introduction
You may not have noticed anything interesting this last week if you've only been visiting the English side of Cure. However, if you happened to visit http://ja.curecos.com, you would have been greeted by this.
Dude check it out it's me ^_^ How did my picture end up on the front page of Cure? Each week Cure holds a themed contest called the Character Ring. This week's was "One Piece characters NOT in Luffy's crew." An odd theme, but the narrow parameters were pretty helpful- the last few weeks have had a ridiculous number of entries. Previous contest winners and themes can be seen here. They range from particular series (Reborn!, Prince of Tennis, Axis Powers Hetalia, etc.) to much broader topics ("short-haired characters," "blonde characters," etc.).
How to enter
First, make sure you have a photo in your public gallery that corresponds to that week's theme. Then, go to http://ja.curecos.com/ring/ and click the blue button under the theme title.
This will bring you to a screen where you choose the photo you want to enter. Unfortunately, I don't have screenshots of this process at the moment- I may add them tomorrow, once I can access it again. There will be a few fields to fill out. First, you want to choose a theme for the next contest. This can be a series, an artist, an attribute, whatever. Choosing a series is the easiest thing to do, and it'll look like this:
NAME OF SERIES HERE の 全キャラクター (or "All characters from NAME OF SERIES HERE")
This field is NOT for writing your character name, or what theme you're currently entering! This is a mistake I see a lot in non-Japanese-speaking entrants! Do it right!
The other field is for a comment, and you don't actually have to write anything if you don't want to. When I entered America into the Hetalia contest, my comment was "America loves motorcycles!" Alice (for the "characters using your natural hair" contest) was "My hair is short now! I cut it in July." And for Dr. Kureha, I just used her line "Happy kai?" So it obviously doesn't have to be anything serious. But whatever it is, write it in Japanese. Use online translators if you need to- I use a combination of Google, Babelfish, and Nifty.
After submitting that information, you'll get a screen asking to confirm your picture and words, and once you okay that, you're in! Sit back and wait for votes. :)
Voting
If you want to vote in the Character Ring, you get three votes. Voting for yourself is allowed. You can vote multiple times for the same person, if you want. However, since new entries are added to the contest throughout the week, it can be a good idea not to blow them all at once, just in case something awesome shows up a few days in that you want to vote for.
Other stuff
I thought you were only allowed to enter in solo pictures, but I'm not sure if that's right. I see a few duos around, so I'm unsure about that one.
Tall pictures are better than wide pictures. You get a bigger thumbnail.
If you win a contest, you are allowed to enter and win in the next one. However, this seems like rather poor sportsmanship to me, so I'm going to advise against it. The girl who won "short hair" then suggested "natural hair" and won it. Doesn't seem cool, personally. Your mileage may vary.
If you win
If you have the most votes, your picture will go up on the front page of Cure! Also, your theme will get chosen for the next week's contest. Assuming I stay in the lead until the end (which seems pretty likely now, I'm almost 300 votes ahead of the nearest competitor), the next week's theme will be CLAMP characters!
The contests are kind of broken. Once you're in the lead, you tend to stay in the lead, for the most part. Most people will just click on your photo from the front page and vote, not bothering to look at the other entries. This is awesome if you're in the lead. It sort of sucks, otherwise.
Contests last a week, starting at around noonish on Friday in Japan. That's about 8pm PST on Thursday for those of us on the West coast. So get those epic CLAMP photos ready!
Why winning is awesome
Check out the comparison of my stats from two weeks ago to this past week. Sorry that the first one's in Japanese, I didn't think about it when screencapping.
8-22 to 8-28
8-29 to 9-4
Obviously, I don't know anyone else's stats, so I can't say whether this would be awesome for the other Cure-ians on my flist. But that spike in traffic seems pretty damn awesome to me. XD
In other news
My hands are finally back to normal. A few weeks ago, I got this gross heat rash all over them. This faded into massive, massive peeling. I did some very stupid things to my hands to cut short the annoyance factor, things which led to extending it rather a lot- as well as subjecting me to a LOT of teasing from my roommates. If you recall, something similar happened last August. If it happens again next year... yeah, I should probably go see a doctor about it. My brother suspects it's some sort of allergy. shrug
Oh, here's some more screencaps, this time of my cosplay.com gallery. Last year around this time, I was all a-weirded out by the popularity of one of my Tsubasa photos. So I was taking screencaps every week or so, trying to find a pattern or something. Anyway, it's amusing to compare how much that one not-great photo ("Fai and Syaoran") has gone up this last year.
September 4, 2007 vs. September 4, 2008. ~3700 hits. Man, I really wish I knew where those were coming from.
And kiralikescake mentioned this over the weekend, but last week we both had some definite weirdness involving out Hetalia costumes over on ACP. Major hits racked up. Don't have any screencapped proof of that, though.
The end. Long post is long.