Aaaaaaaaand TIME!
The deadline has come! The time is up! The Audition Round is officially OVER. As you can see from the Audition Journal I received a ton of amazing potential contestants and I am going to have one hell of a difficult time narrowing this down to 32.

You now have a day to take a breather. Chill, rest those weary fingers, watch a few horror classics, eat some candy, and check out the competition! Round One will start this Friday (the 19th) and will run to November 2nd. The 32 chosen contestants will be paired together and sent to randomly-selected locations in the Palace to commence their first battles. I've also got some fun-filled extras in store to make things even more interesting for both the chosen contestants AND the spectators!

To everyone, a HUGE THANKS for your participation and support! Whether you're chosen or not, you all did a fantastic job and I hope you'll stick around and watch the Haunted chaos unfold.

SADCAT always wanted a palace to call her own. Searching the local palace market, she was delighted to discover a big beautiful palace for a price so suspiciously low that it had to be AWESOME. Upon meeting the seller, SADCAT discovered that the low price was due to a slight pest infestation. Nothing she couldn’t handle for that deal! The seller threw in a gift certificate to Old Navy and SADCAT was sold! A palace and new pants! She was having a great week.

Unfortunately it quickly became apparent that the pests infesting this house were not the sort that could be humanely trapped and released in the neighbour’s yard. SADCAT’s Palace was infested with—get ready for this—g-g-g-g-ghoooosts!

And, to a lesser extent, cockroaches.

SADCAT wasn’t too keen on sharing her fabulous palace with a bunch of ghoulish dead people. They kept her up all night with their awful ghost music, they rearranged her Lord of the Rings action figures, they made a complete mess of her Pokemon Trading Cards, and occasionally they lured a passing stranger into the Great Hall and crucified them to the fireplace. It was truly an irritation.

After an entire 24 hours of this, SADCAT had gone completely insane. She made a deal with the Master Ghost—a shadowy creature that lived in the rafters and smelled of bacon—that should she present the palace ghosts with a sacrifice of exactly 32 unsuspecting people (a well-rounded number consistently and conveniently divisible by 2 and therefore a number of pure evil) the ghosts would leave the palace forever.

And so, under the guise of a kickin' Halloween party, 32 characters were invited to SADCAT’s Haunted Palace. 32 characters have come…

But little do they know their weekend plans will involve spooks and specters, creepy crawlies of all shapes and sizes, and a bacony voice in the rafters encouraging one fight after another. Will all of the characters survive to enjoy another Monday?

No, they won’t. Only two will. And those two will battle the Master Ghost himself! One character will be named Palace Saviour, and SADCAT, her sanity returned to her, will reward them with fantabulous prizes.

Once contestants are chosen (scroll down for information about entering with an audition comic), the story will begin. In each round you will be provided with a short narrative to give you a starting point for your comic. Characters will then be paired off and each pair will be designated a different area of the Palace (the Great Hall, the Cellar, the Unnecessary Hall of Mirrors, and so forth). While you will be given a vague description of the area, it will be up to you to bring it to life!

In your comic you must portray your character in a confrontation with the other, leading to the other character being ‘terminated’ in some way (your character might directly hurt or kill them, or they might be taken out by a ghost, a falling chandelier, or a possessed suit of armour—be creative!).

You will have two weeks to complete each comic, at the end of which contestants will vote on a winner for each pairing (you will vote on every pairing except your own by sending a note to SADCAT—failure to cast your vote will result in a one vote deduction from your own comic). Each round will have a deadline; if you fail to meet this deadline, you will forfeit and your opponent will win.

In the event of a tie vote, the winner will be determined by a best 2 out of 3 coin flip.

There will be five rounds in total, the final round involving the last two characters going up against the Master Ghost. The voting for this round will be determined by all of the contestants that have already been eliminated.

*****AUDITIONING*****

Audition comics must be received by October 17th
(11:59pm EST the night of October 16th)
Send links to your comic deviantion(s) and the name of your character to *SADCAT.

The first phase of this contest consists of the Audition Round. As laid out in the introduction story, 32 characters will be chosen and invited to SADCAT’s Haunted Palace. These characters will then face off against one another in the next themed round as the spooky story continues to unfold.

Your audition comic can be as complex or as simple as you like, so long as it consists of at least one page introducing your character into the story. It can be coloured or black and white, but no rough sketches please.

Contestants will be chosen based on the creativity of their original characters and introductory comic and not on artistic talent alone. It would be nice to have an eclectic mix of personalities, ideas, and styles!

******RULES FOR ENTRY******
There are only three rules one needs to follow when sending their audition.

#1 – Your character must be your own original creation. He/she/it can be of any species, and can use any powers or weapons they might have on them.
#2 – Your comic, though encouraged to be as creative as possible, must somehow involve your character being invited to SADCAT’s Haunted Palace for the weekend.
#3 – Please have your comic available to access as a deviation in your gallery, and please link back to this journal post in the description.





******PRIZES******
1st Prize (Palace Saviour) – 1 Year Subscription to DeviantArt; 1 DeviantArt Wishlist Item Granted
2nd Prize – 6 Month Subscription to DeviantArt




******FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS******

Q: My character has a dual personality/second self/pet/possessed toy/etc., can I still audition them?
A: Yes. So long as this is how the character always appears, and the secondary self or creature is not a distinctively unique character on their own, that's fine. The one-character rule is in place for the sake of your opponents who will have to draw them.

Q: I've never drawn a comic before... can I still audition?
A: Sure! You never know how you'll do until you try.

Q: What kind of mediums can we use for our comics?
A: Traditional or digital medium is fine, so long as it's done in a comic format. No photography comics this time around, please.




******PALACE LOCATIONS******

In each round, contestants will pair off and be sent to a different area of the Palace (which will be picked for them at random). These locations include...






If you have any questions at all, please contact SADCAT! She may have lost her mind from ghostly meddling, but her knowledge of contest rules remains undamaged.