Design an Emblem Contest Winner Revealed

[Soapy]

Design an Emblem Contest Winner Revealed
Posted by Frankie at 6/5/2007 9:08 AM PDT

Remember the contest to design an emblem for Halo 3? Well, the contest is over, the entries are thoroughly sorted, and below, a winner has been selected (although the winner gets the equivalent of jack and squat for a prize!). Bungie's UI designer David Candland went through scads of entries, some good, some bad, some just plan weird.

David Candland says: "Thanks to all who entered. The response I got from the community was overwhelming. I poured over hundreds of entries searching for the perfect choice. After about the first several hundred, I started to see patterns emerge. I was then able to classify many entries into several categories:

Excellent design but unusable. Many times I got entries that looked really good. Some were exceptional. As much as I would’ve like to have used it in the game, it wouldn’t have worked for several reasons – more than 2 colors, less than 2 colors, extremely horizontal or vertical proportions, way too much detail to be recognizable at a small size, etc.

What were they thinking? There were quite a few that fell into this category. Photos of cats, paragraphs of text, a circle, a copy of a Halo 2 emblem… the list goes on. Some were worth a good laugh, others were almost insulting – which brings me to my next category.

I’m not fooled. There were a few choice entrants that tried to slip something through the system. There were several innocuous enough looking icons that revealed their dark side when the secondary was toggled off. And then there were some entries such as one named “h0ll0 tip bullet” that lacked any form of subtlety at all.

Good, but not great. This was the largest category. I had a lot that were worth considering, but due to the sheer number of entrants and the fact that I could have only one make it in, I had to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Everyone’s doing it. One category of entries was the one that was so popular, that I received multiples –tens, even hundreds of versions of the same idea. [Editor’s Note: David originally listed a bunch of the super sweet icons contestants sent in, thus spoiling the fun of you finding them on September 25. Ever curmudgeonly, we’ve now ruined your fun and saved the surprise for when we ship] Well, good news, kids. Your cries have not fallen on deaf ears. The most frequently submitted icons were retooled, refit and refined into a basketful of new icons for Halo 3. I would list the names of all that submitted those ideas, but the list would be enormous, and, frankly, I think you’d rather I spend my days getting the HUD and UI in Halo 3 to look cool. If you were one of the hundreds that submitted one of those ideas, pat yourself on the back and count yourself as a pseudo-winner.

In consideration. This was the smallest category of all. These were the few, the proud, the elite, the cream of the crop – my top picks. There were eleven. These ones could’ve easily made it into the game, had I not been legally bound by the nine page book of rules that dictated there only be one winner. I would like to list your names as runners-up:

* Kyle Corcoran
* Christoph Lucasssen
* David Phillips
* Josh Neave
* Kelly Highland
* Ben (you only gave me your first name, sorry Ben)
* B. J. Privette
* Andy McEvoy


...And the winner. Yes there was one that stood out among the others. Maybe not so much in its visual design as its concept. Since the dawn of time, man has often debated some of the most pressing questions; Chicken or Egg? Paper or Plastic? To be or not to be? Ninjas… or pirates. I had discovered, to my dismay, that I had egregiously underrepresented our swashbuckling, seafaring quotient. An entry by Noah Watkins so clearly pushed this point forward that I couldn’t, in clear conscience, not publish his entry. Call it a spiritual pairing or an evil twin an evil twin, if you will, to the flaming Ninja icon, but I present to you, the latest entry into the Halo emblem catalogue, Noah Watkins' "Pirate."

Although, this next one didn’t make it into the game, I would be remiss if I didn’t share with you one of my favorite entries, Parks Bernard’s “Raging Info Machine" (see bottom image). Parks, I’m speechless. The beauty, the sheer genius of it all leaves me verklempt.


Extra thanks goes to Andrew “AGD Tin Man” Davis for all the work he did on these and my friend, Jeff Cheney for his help as well. Enjoy your new options, everyone, and I’ll see you on Live in the fall!"

Source: Bungie.net : Inside Bungie : News

Discuss.

[Se7eN MasTa]

It looks basic. lol. I am typing with my little finger

[Soapy]

looks like my lil brother drew it

[Muddawg]

the swords arent even straight.........

[SkateBoard v2]

ya i noticed that bs too.......i couldt of created sumtin better than that it 5 minutes

[PAN5Y]

well he won
nothing big u don't have 2 use it

[combatburt]

It looks just like any other gay halo icon.