Ubuntustudio 16.04 Wallpaper Contest

Ubuntustudio 16.04 will be officially released in April 2016. As this will be a Long Term Support version, we are especially anxious to offer an excellent customer experience on the desktop. Therefore, the Ubuntustudio community will host a wallpaper design contest! The contest is open to all Digital Artists and Amateurs, most especially Ubuntustudio enthusiasts. We hope to collect the coolest, most beautiful, inspiring, innovative and downright slick desktop wallpapers. Each artist may submit up to 4 pieces. The Ubuntustudio community will vote on and select 16 final Ubuntustudio Wallpapers! (See what we did there? 16? 4? Clever, eh?

If you are enjoying Edubuntu, Ubuntu, Ubuntu-Kylin, Ubuntu-Mate, Ubuntu-Gnome, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu or Ubuntu-Server we formally invite and welcome your contributions as well!

If you are interested, take a look at the Ubuntu Studio wallpapers over the years. Otherwise ... GET BUSY! Adapt! Build! Draft! Draw! Design! Edit! Render! Shoot! CREATE! Show us what you can do with Ubuntustudio's graphic design, video and photography tools!

Contest Schedule

• Submit Entries: January 10, 2016 - Feb 10, 2016
• Review and voting: March 11, 2016 - March 15, 2016
• Results Announcement: March 18, 2016

Entry Submission

Please email your submissions:

• TO: sits07care@photos.flickr.com

• CC: linux4creativehumans@yahoo.com

• SUBJECT: Xenial Xerus Wallpaper Contest

Include your contact information, and a fewer than 50 word title and description of your work. You should include production notes e.g. "Created in Blender".

Design Guidelines & Resources

This information is meant to provide guidance and resources to users who want to submit art to Ubuntustudio or related projects.

Content Rules

Do not break or bend the Content Rules!

• No illustrations some may consider inappropriate, offensive, hateful, tortuous, defamatory, slanderous or libelous.
• No sexually explicit or provocative images.
• No images of weapons or violence.
• No alcohol, tobacco, or drug use imagery.
• No designs which promote bigotry, racism, hatred or harm against groups or individuals; or promotes discrimination based on race, gender, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation or age.
• No religious, political, or nationalist imagery.

Composition

• Generally logo use on the wallpaper is discouraged but tastefully done exceptions will always be considered.
• Avoid high frequency images. ( A soft focus is one way to achieve this )
• No version numbers. Some individuals may desire to use an older theme, or use the latest theme in their older version of Ubuntustudio. Let your submission be about choice and do not use version numbers in your artwork.

• Avoid text, it calls for attention too much and will likely look bad when scaled. Plus it can't be translated easily.
• Be careful with small patterns, they might become uneven when scaled.
• Consider how the wallpaper will interact with the panels, icons and windows.

Constraints

• The final dimension should be 2560 x 1600 pixels.

• Submissions must adhere to the Creative Commons ShareAlike 3.0 license.

• Attribution must be declared if the submission is based on another design.

Screen Resolution and Aspect Ratio

It is important to note the diversity of displays which Ubuntustudio needs to support. Although the desired image format is 2560 x 1600 pixels the composition should support a variety of image formats.

Typical screen resolutions:

Desktops

Laptops

Tablets

File Formats

• Use PNG format for bitmap files (ie any files in which fewer colors are repeated throughout, especially when the colors are in large blocks). Use JPGs for photos and final images in order to reduce the file size, as this format can cause visible compression artefacts.
• Make the XCF source files available, if you happen to work with GIMP
• Use SVG for vector art.

• Work generated with proprietary applications like Photoshop and Illustrator is acceptable, but files in their formats are useless for many of us. To avoid compatibility issues, you are STRONGLY encouraged to use F/Loss tools such as those so abundantly available in Ubuntustudio! Consider Blender, Darktable, Gimp, Inkscape, LibreOffice Draw, Krita, Mypaint, etc.

Templates

An SVG template for use with Inkscape and an XCF template for GIMP. Both have a 2560 x 1600 pixel canvas to use the largest commonly offered resolution, currently. "Passepartout" layers allow to see how things will look when this space is cropped to conform to other common aspect ratios.

This simulates the effect the "Style: Zoom" setting in "Appearance Preferences: Background" will have: the image is scaled up or down such that it fills the screen without distorting it. If the aspect ratio of the image is wider than that of the screen, it will be scaled to the same height and the areas on the side will be cropped. If the aspect ratio of the image is taller than that of the screen, it will be scaled to the same width and the areas on top and bottom will be cropped.

Ubuntustudio Color Samples

Ubuntustudio Circles

You may use these official Ubuntustudio Circles so long as you comply with Ubuntu Brand Guidelines.

• Black on White circle

• Blue on White circle

• White on Blue circle

• White on Black circle

CategoryArtwork