So, the holidays roll around once again and what better way to celebrate, (and avoid the family), than to spend your time arranging coloured cubes in an artistic fashion to a set theme, better known to us, as the Christmas Artbot contest? We’ve got 5 categories again this season and we want to see your best. There are no movment part restrictions this time but I will give bonus points for creative uses of the new eyes, (or any other cosmetics that may or may not be given away throughout the next week). We’ll pick our favourite five (along with two runners-up for each category) and award some prizes. The week afterwards we’ll hold a public vote and let you guys pick, from the top 5, an overall ‘best in show’ Robot and make that a ‘Featured Robot’ in the CRF.

The Brief:

Design a festive-themed robot based on one of the following five categories:  

• Santa’s Other Ride - What does Santa drive when he’s not delivering presents or his Sleigh has broken down?
• Holiday Elves - Santa’s little helpers, wood elves or Members of the Thalmor it’s up to you, as long as they are wrapped in tinsel or have a Santa hat.
• Santa Claus / Mrs Santa Claus - A classic, bonuses for creativity.
• Alternative Holiday celebrations (Yule, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa etc) - This is a fairly open theme, just leave out the big red fat man.
• Festive Animals - The classic Polar bear and penguins or do you prefer a Dog with antlers? The holiday season is for every species, show us how the echidna celebrate!

  Each robot uploaded must include the term ‘DB18’ at the start of the title, and the Robot description must include the category number eg: Cat 1, Cat 2 etc. In addition, this time we’re doing something a little different. All submissions must also have a Robot showcase uploaded to Youtube. This showcase should be between 15 and 30 seconds long per robot, and should show a 360° view of your robot. The robot will not be judged on the quality of the video. All videos should be called “DB18 Artbot Christmas 2017 “Name_of_Robot””. You should put the Category number in the description. We recommend OBS to record your footage as it’s free and easy to use but feel free to use and software you like. Here’s a link - https://obsproject.com/ If you need some help recording footage for the competition here’s a great tutorial for OBS - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQqRKsHI0oA

The Prizes:

Five winners will be chosen;  each will receive one week of premium membership or 25 Protonium crates if the winner has lifetime premium. In addition to this, each will receive a mystery cosmetic to be revealed soon. The overall winner’s robot will become a ‘Featured Robot’ in the CRF (Community Robot Factory). Please note that failure to include both the DB18 term and the Category number in your submission will result in it being excluded.

The Rules:

• Follow the brief
• Submissions must be your own work
• You can submit as many Robots as you like, however will only be eligible to win one prize
• Competition period: Monday 11th December 2017 - 23:59 (UTC) Sunday 17th December 2017
• Entrants must design a Robot based on the given theme during the competition period
• The judges decision is final and correspondence will not be entered into over why one Robot was picked over another
• Entrants must upload their robots to the CRF and a have a video showcase.
• The term DB18 must be included at the beginning of the robot title when uploaded to the CRF
• The term "DB18 Artbot Christmas 2017" must be included at the beginning of the Video title when uploaded to Youtube.
• The submission category must be included in the Robot description.
• By entering the competition you grant Freejam permission to use your design in future promotional activity.
• HAVE FUN! (this is the most important rule)

Special thanks to E__tech and knapp_daneben for use of their robot designs in the above image. You can find them both on the CRF as featured robots.