I, at least, put effort into it to warrant confidence enough to win. Unfortunately that wasn't the case, but I've since taken a moment to reflect on why.
I think it was creative enough. Having played the game, there aren't any existing two-bladed swords which I know about. A simultaneous strength and weakness it had was that it was both uncreative in it's design as it was fitting.
I had designed the sword to fit into one of the games factions, the Guardians. Throughout their gear and general aesthetics, in architecture, armour and everything else, they make use of a similar colour motif and theme. Gold, white, blue, angels, fists, wings - a sort of holy look, fitting for a faction of god worshippers. I stuck to this theme because I wanted to score full marks on the Rift-appeal, but it may have knocked down the points I scored in creativity because it wasn't anything new, or perhaps anything they had seen before.
Even so, I felt like I succeeded in that regard. Showing the artwork to family and friends, they found it hard to distinguish which was official art and what I had produced.
I also presented it on the default template that we were given and neglected the visual presentation aspect of the contest almost entirely, and only came to realize it upon seeing winning entries.
The grand prize winner was the one who did not neglect this - perhaps not such a coincidence.
The second and third place winners (after it was discovered the original second place winner was cheating by using unoriginal / not his own artwork) did the same as me, however.
This is my personal favourite sword amongst the winners - outside my own, of course. But I can perhaps see why it won. It could fit into both factions, rather than just one.
The third place sword I did not like so much, but I cannot deny it is a brilliant work of design.
After the contest, I took to the media to find out what I did right or wrong. I got some feedback from Rift on Facebook.
I also took to the game's forums to post in the relevant forum thread.
I did indeed realize that my sword would be hard to model if it was to resemble the artwork at all, and that a concept that could be more easily replicated would perhaps be more likely to win. Even so, I've learned a lot from this contest that I can apply to my work in the future, and I eagerly look forward to the next contest.
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