The Beauty Contest: A way where you can express your artistic talents and your love for Neopets at the same time. On a normal Neopian day, I was happily clicking around in Pet Central and came across the front page of the Beauty Contest. Being a Neopian for a while, I was familiar with the Beauty Contest and how people spammed the Neochats all over just to gain one vote for their pet. My friend had entered the Beauty Contest before and despite her drawing being the best one out of the entries, she did not win. I decided that day to have a go at this “Beauty Contest”. Excuse me for thinking that I could enter the Beauty Contest and win a decent trophy that I deserve.
Sitting down at the keyboard, I decided to try out a new style that would make my Lupe stand out from the others. By using time, patience and plenty of caffeine, I produced a semi-realistic picture of a wolf/dog; Lupe. I had spent two weeks on making this Lupe, and it had taken me forever to understand the new style I was going for. I thought that for sure I would get some sort of trophy for this one, if my pet got a head start with the votes.
I excitedly loaded the Beauty Contest page, uploaded my picture and then wrote a speech for my pet. Low and behold: I received a message saying, “There was an error in uploading your file. Most likely the file size was over the 17K limit, or not in either gif or jpg format. Please check the size of your file and reduce as needed before trying again.” Oh. I forgot. Apparently there was a file limit on 17k. 17k is tiny. 17k is a scribble. What can 17k be? What kind of “artwork” is this? Annoyed, I did a little research. I looked through the past winners and *gasp* guess what? Half of them are OVER the 17k limit. Most of the past winner pictures are thumbnails which means that if the thumbnail alone is over 17k, then the picture must be a lot more! Am I missing something here?
They say their reason for this is that they want people with slower computers to be able to load the page in little time. How is that an excuse? It’s a Beauty Contest. People expect to load good quality pictures of neopet. Why in the WORLD would they complain about slow loading time if they are loading artwork? I doubt that someone with a slower computer and not wanting to load big pictures would want to even step near a Beauty Contest. How is this fun? Finding out that I spent a *while* making a picture just so I can enter and then finding out that I have to 1. ruin it or 2. scribble a new picture. Yay. The joy is coursing through me.
Fine. I’ll just enter it in the Art contest when Lupe day rolls around. Wait… isn’t that in nine months? – seamusharpergirl