OK, team, if you've been paying attention, we've been hinting at this week's 'Shop Contest subject for the past four days. We've rounded up a dirty dozen of the most exploitable cosplay pics so far from Comic-Con 2011. It's up to you to bring the more-funny! Your mission awaits inside!
Our theme begins with an image that made Mike and me laugh every time we saw it on Friday: Spy's photo-sappin' mah Birdo, Tinkerbell and Yoshi. Your job is to take any image from our cosplay galleries at Comic-Con 2011 and photobomb the crap out of it. You may use another cosplayer, you may use something from a video game, you may use another completely unrelated image. Just make it funny.
To help, I've selected a batch of 13 starter images for you to use, but again, feel free to grab anything from the previous three days of cosplay, or the comments underneath it, to start your 'Shop.
You know the rules: The 20 best will get rounded up and published at the end of next Saturday. Meantime, I and the rest of the starred commentariat will approve and promote as many as we can so folks can see them and pass judgment.
And now the Sergeant-At-Arms shall convene the grand assembly for the reading of the Kotaku 'Shop Contest protocol:
1. Create your 'Shop.
2. Upload it to a free image hosting service. I suggest imgur. It's stupid simple. No account is necessary.
3. This is very important: You must use the URL of the image itself. In imgur, this is the second URL it gives you after you upload the image. It's under "Direct Link (email & IM)"
4. At the beginning of the comments roll, click "Start a New Thread"
5. To the right of your name, select "Image."
6. Paste the imgur URL in the image URL field. It's the field that says "Image URL."
7. You can add editorial commentary if you want, but then just hit submit and your image will load. If it doesn't, paste the image URL as a comment.
8. This is important: Keep your image size under 1 MB. It will not upload to comments if it is over that size. What's more, we're getting reports that if your 'Shop is more than 1000px tall (vertical), it won't upload. If you're getting the broken-image icon, try resizing to a smaller dimension.
As an added inducement, I want to let you know I do star commenters who send in worthy/funny submissions - whether or not they're chosen for the final 20. This may not happen immediately. I usually start rounding up a gallery by the middle of the week. This is my subjective call, but I do want to recognize as many contributors as possible, and show gratitude for making this such a popular feature on weekends.
Get 'Shopping!