Results

The results are in! On the night of March 3rd, after five hours of deliberation, we finished the difficult task of choosing the winners. We just want to say that we are absolutely thrilled by the response people have shown to this contest. We never expected to receive so many submissions. All told, our gallery proudly displays 81 entries from all over the world, and we are incredibly grateful for the time, effort, and inspiration all the artists contributed to make this contest a success.

The talent level was tremendous, and narrowing down our list of favorites was no easy task. We're not illustrators ourselves, so our technical evaluations were probably not as nuanced as they could have been, but we are huge lain fans who love art, so we based our judgements on what we know. Judging art is completely subjective, of course, and by no means are we saying that our favorites should be your favorites, too. But since we're the ones giving away prizes, it's only fair that we stick to our own criteria. ^_-

That said, here's a brief sketch of the criteria we used (in no particular order) to judge each entry:

Creativity in the portrayal of Lain
Technical skill and difficulty
Continuity of theme/topic
Overall aesthetic feel

...and finally, speaking of prizes, since we had so many great entries, we've included one more Lain cel to give away, which is our new second place prize! Congratulations to all our winners, and thanks again to all the contestants!

(We were going to comment on the winning entries, but I think we'll let the artworks speak for themselves.-Law)