Fanzing will begin offering DC Comics Desktop Themes in the year 2000. Since several contributors have been jazzed about contributing wallpapers and other elements, we figured we'd make it the contest for winter/spring 2000. Don't worry…although this contest has some formatting standards which need to be met, it isn't that hard. The best part is that the content is all up to you!

Full information, resources and suggested ideas are available on a page we recently created called Creating Desktop Themes for Fanzing. Contributors to Fanzing can find it at Contributor's Central.

Although Ye Olde Editor is by no means an artist, I recently began making my own icons and cursors and it is EASY. If I can do it, you can certainly do it. Axialis has some small (2 megs each) shareware programs you can download for free, if you'd like to try your hand at it. They're pretty cheap to register, too: only $14 each for the cursors and icons programs. HOWEVER, for the artistically proficient but technically challenged, there is an easy solution to doing the desktop icons: just send me the four very small, square images and I can try to make them into icons for you.

Do NOT go raiding existing themes for icons, cursors, sounds or other elements. If necessary, there are plenty of theme sites which distribute such design elements.

Collaborations are okay. If you'd like to team up with other people to put the theme together, try posting a message on Fanzing's Message Board.

As for EXCLUSIVITY…I'm loathe to allow any one person to claim a popular character and deny the others the chance to also do a wallpaper/theme of the same character. So what I'm going to do is this: when you pick your topic or idea, e-mail me. If it's on the suggested topics list, I'll mark it as "in progress"; if it's not, I'll add it to the list and mark it. It's entirely up to you if you want to pick one which someone else is doing. This isn't a bad thing, as your artwork and concepts will look different.

Anything else you need to know is available at Creating Desktop Themes for Fanzing.

ONE MORE THING: The winner of this contest gets a prize! That's right, the winner will receive his or her choice of a Fanzing T-shirt, mouse pad or mug. (If something goes wrong with our plans for this merchandise, I will substitute something else of equal value.)

So here are the specifics:

1. Read our document on Creating Desktop Themes for Fanzing, which is available as a link at Contributor's Central as well. It has full details.
2. Create an 800 x 600 pixel wallpaper (required), the four desktop icons or icon-sized images (recommended), and as many other components for a desktop theme as you are able to do (optional).
   
3. Wallpapers MUST be original artwork; no scans or photomanipulations. Cursors and Icons can be either, although handmade cursors and icons almost always look better.
4. Fanzing will put a semi-transparent Fanzing logo in the bottom right of all wallpapers (because we'll be distributing these freely on download sites), so try to leave that corner free of important action. You'll be credited in the theme's "readme" file, but feel free to put a small signature in the bottom left.
5. Send it in to [email protected] by May 28, 2000.
   
6. If you are sending numerous elements, please batch them all into a Zip file using a utility like WinZip, NetZip or McAfee's Zipman if possible. (ALL are very easy to use.)
7. If you can turn in the finished theme, do so; if not, don't worry about it. Numerous theme-making utilities abound; you'll find resources at the Creating Desktop Themes for Fanzing page.
8. A panel of judges will pick the best one. The results will be announced in the May issue.
9. ALL viable wallpapers/themes will be used! However, if a wallpaper is submitted by itself, we may offer it only as a wallpaper (without doing all the work of making it into a theme).

Have fun!