The end, is at last here!  All the winners have been notified via email and I'm slowly getting information sorted out to start awarding prizes.  After nearly 3 months, it's time to bring this years event to a close.  Overall, the 2006 GUI Champs was a resounding success!  We saw entries come from all over the globe, we were given some of the best icon art we've seen in years, and several of the Visual Styles have made it into my (and many others') permanent rotation. 

There were a number of "lessons learned" form the event this year, items we will take heavily into consideration for the 2008 GUI Champs when crafting rules and competition events.  A few I can share with your right now are:

1. No Wallpaper Event in 2008
   The idea was that we wanted to make the competition more accessible to a wider array of artists.  However, we did not realize how much would be submitted and have to be checked for technical and quality requirements.  This made the event very time-consuming from a moderation perspective.  Add to that the fact that wallpaper quality is extremely subjective, selecting qualifiers and judging them was extremely difficult.  The cost versus benefit of this event wasn't what we expected.
    
2. Finalist Selection Will Be Re-Thought for 2008
   There was a lot of commotion over winners in a few events this year, but that was because they were finalists to begin with.  The process of allowing finalists to be selected purely by public vote didn't work as well as we had hoped.  There will be a new process in place for 2008 that will hopefully ensure better overall selection.
    
3. There Will Be More Ramp-Up in 2008
   One complaint we received from several skinners was there wasn't enough time to build an entry.  Another time issue we suffered from was not being able to announce prizes and sponsors until several weeks into the competition.  For 2008, there will be a greater amount of "ramp-up" time to properly build excitement for the event, get the word out, get sponsors and prizes sorted out well in advance etc.  This will hopefully give everyone plenty of time to compete, and plenty of time to spread the news.

For those of you wondering about some of the numbers on the competition, here are a few figures...

Contest Stats:

• Duration: 80 Days (11.42 weeks, or nearly 3 months)
• Eligible Entries: 316
• Registered Teams: 26
• Events: 9
• Medals Awarded: 27 (36 counting Honorable Mentions)
• Unique Winners: 23
• Cash Prizes: $4,900
• Software Prize Value: $2,657
• Physical Prizes:
  • 2 NVIDIA EVGA Video Cards
  • 3 XBox 360 Game Consoles
  • 1 Alienware Multimedia Laptop
• Total Unique Visitors: 540,000
• Total Pageviews: 1,730,000

Those are pretty good numbers!  Of course, we can't talk about the success of the competition without taking a moment to thank some of the people who made the event this year possible.  First we want to thank all of our sponsors for contributing prizes, linking to our news stories, and helping promote the GUI Champs to ensure maximum exposure.  Specifically we would like to thank:

Prize Sponsors

Alienware

The fine folks at Alienware were extremely generous and donated the single coolest prize we've ever given away in a competition.  The laptop they offered up for the top competition prize is nothing short of a stunning piece of hardware.  We hope to continue to work with the fine folks at Alienware in future events.  I would specifically like to thank Claudina, our primary contact for the event.

NVIDIA & EVGA

NVIDIA and EVGA ponied up two outstanding graphics cards for us to give to our top Visual Style and Icon Package artists.  Thanks to Jim at NVIDIA and Joe at EVGA  for helping get us these prizes.

DeviantArt

DA provided a free one-year site subscription to all of our medalists, helping fill out the prize bag for our winners.  They were also extremely helpful in spreading the word about the competition and bringing artists to the site.

Eclipsit

Rounding out our prize goodie bag to winners was software maker Eclipsit by donating copies of Microangelo Toolset 6 to our winners.

Site Sponsors

The following sites provided us with much-needed traffic and media attention by linking to our stories, posting stories of their own, and encouraging rather lively debate on their own forums and comments areas.  Without the help of these sites, we would not have reached nearly the level of success as we did. 

Competition Judges

Several of our sponsor sites, in addition to contributing prizes and event coverage, provided a judge for the competition.  We've been very quiet so far on who these people were to avoid griefing or assaults on the judges for their decisions.  Now that the results are final and the event over, I would like to publicly recognize our judge panel for the very hard work they put in judging the events this year.

Final Thoughts

Thanks again to all of our sponsors, judges, community members and especially the skinners and artists who helped make the 2006 GUI Champs the best yet!  We learned a lot from this year's event that will help make the 2008 GUI Champs a much better competition and look forward to seeing you all back here then.  We've seen the emergence of some absolutely outstanding artists, especially in the area of Icons, and I very much hope to see more of their work in the skinning community between now and 2008!  Remember, if you made an account here for the competition, you automatically have an account on WinCustomize.com, so if you have any other icons, skins or wallpapers sitting around that didn't make it into the competition, then head on over and upload them there!

See you in 2008!

-Zoomba

All of the individual winners have been announced.  JJ Ying took first in overall best skinner, with evilhomer145 and Dexter2005 taking second and third respectively.  Three XBox 360s, an Alienware Laptop, two video cards from NVIDIA/EVGA, and a ton of cash and software are now accounted for.  So what's left?

Top Teams!

We have a fair bit of cash sitting aside for the team categories ($2150 to be exact) and now it's time to do the breakdown on how the teams actually did.  The scores for each team were calculated by adding together the total points of the medals members received in a category.  If everyone who had been unaffiliated had joined a team, they would have had the second place team overall at 23 points.

Congrats to all of our teams.  Captains should expect an email to discuss prize distribution before the end of today.

Top Overall Visual Styles Team

	Team	Points
	Pixeleros	12
	eico studio	8
	UIRSS.com	8

Top Overall Icon Package Team

	Team	Points
	UIRSS.com	18
	eico studio	6
	penGUIn	5

Top Overall Team for the 2006 GUI Champs

	Team	Points
	UIRSS.com	33
	eico studio	15
	Pixeleros	12

To start off "wrap-up" week, now that I'm back from vacation I've updated all of the medal counts, schedule and winners circle sections here on the front page.

I will begin emailing winners later today to discuss getting prizes distributed.

UPDATE: I need contact information for knightpan.  The email that was used to register the account bounces when I attempt to send an email.

• Top Teams Announced
  There is a little bit of extra cash set aside for our most successful teams.  The winners will be announced on Tuesday.
• Prizes 'n' Stuff
  We were waiting until the end of the competition to get in contact with all the winners about prizes (to avoid confusion over duplicate prizes).  I will start emailing individual winners next Monday asking for relevant contact information for cash and prize distribution.
• Medal Counts, Country Tallies, Misc Statistics
  A few people have pointed out that the medal counts are out-of-whack.  They're not listing any medals for the three "Best Overall" events.  I will be taking care of those relevant files and have them updated by the end of the day Monday.
• Wrap-Up news post
  Once everything has been taken care of, I'll be doing a little wrap-up posting listing who the judges were, some thanks to people who helped make the competition a success, a few "lessons learned" items, and what you might be able to expect from the next GUI Champs.  No date on that post, but it should be by the end of that week.

This year, we put up $12,000 in cash, software, site subscriptions and prizes.  Artists from every corner of the globe sent in their work hoping to get a piece of the pie.  We've given away two fantastic video cards from EVGA and NVIDIA, we've handed out XBox 360s, thousands of dollars in cash and more software than you can shake a stick at.  But, the main course, so to speak, remains yet to be awarded.

The Alienware Area-51 m5750 Multimedia Entertainment Laptop.

Just to tease you a bit more, here are the specs:

This beauty of a machine was set aside for the overall best artist in this year's competition.  The skinner who showed the greatest degree of skill spanning the multiple events run.  The winner was determined based on a points system for medals awarded.  Here was the scoring method:

• Gold Medal - 5 Points
• Silver Medal -3 Points
• Bronze Medal - 2 Points
• Honorable Mention - 1 Point

If you go back through all the events, it should be immediately obvious who won, but for those of you looking for some more numbers, here's a little break-down:

The winner, of course, is skinner and artist, JJ Ying!

JJ Ying showed the greatest degree of skill and versatility of any of our contest entrants with his outstanding wallpapers and WindowBlinds skins.  Azenis and Edisso were his two strongest entries and both generated a pretty strong user following and were definitely crowd favorites in any event they were competing in.

I want everyone to give a round of applause and a hearty congratulations to JJ Ying for his outstanding performance, and this extremely cool computer!  I know I'm jealous!

His medal-winning entries:

Azenis 2 Wallpaper	Edisso Wallpaper
Edisso WindowBlinds Visual Style	Azenis 2 WindowBlinds Visual Style