Despite high winds, on Thursday Macy's managed to fly balloons in its annual Thanksgiving Day Parade without anyone being injured (or cops stabbing and stomping Barney the Dinosaur to death) That gives me an idea for this week's 'Shop Contest.
Two years ago, Sonic the Hedgehog's reintroduction to the parade was the subject of this contest—so I'm not asking you to rehash that. What I am suggesting, however, is that you take the crowd scene above (or any other you can find) and replace Sonic with another balloon character—the weirder and more esoteric, the better. Or roll up the whole scene Katamari style. You guys are the experts, I'm just the one rolling out the balls before the game.
Source Image: The 2013 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, by Anthony Quintano, used here under Creative Commons 2.0 license.
That should be clear enough. Feel free to use Sonic if something about his pose strikes your fancy, though.
While most of you are smart enough to figure out how to upload images, here are some simple steps to take for those less familiar with the practice.
1. Create your 'Shop and save it to your desktop.
2. Go to the bottom of this post and click "Discuss."
3. This brings up a comment window. Click the icon that looks like a picture.
4. This brings up another window called "Insert Image." Click "Choose file" if you're uploading your 'shop from your desktop
5. Alternatively, you can upload the 'Shop to a free image hosting service. I suggest imgur. Then paste the image's URL into the field that says "Image URL." Note: this must be the URL of the image itself, not the page where it is displayed. That means the URL ends in .jpg, .gif, .png, whatever.
6. Add editorial commentary and hit submit and your image will load. If it doesn't, upload the image to imgur and paste the image URL as a comment. I promise I will look at it.
7. Large-size images may not upload properly, though we have seen some big-ass animated .gifs upwards of 5 MB. If you're still having trouble uploading the image, try to keep its longest dimension (horizontal or vertical) under 1000 pixels, or the whole thing under 2 MB.
Alright! Have at it. Thanks very much for your participation.
To contact the author of this post, write to owen@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @owengood.