Hey all,

Re: About screen I will be announcing the About Screen contest this evening. It will be held again via DeviantART. I plan on it running from 12/22-1/6 (to allow three weekends during the holiday season). Then the community judging portion will be done from 1/7-1/12. As with last time, the top 3 will be passed on to the dev team to determine what best represents the new release. I'm also thinking it would be good to change the number of submissions this go around to 2 per contestant rather than 3 (it seems less likely that we'll get minor variations). But, it still gives people the opportunity to try a couple different ideas.

I was going to launch the contest a few days ago and realized that we were lacking up-to-date packages for Linux (autopackage) & OSX (.dmg). The OSX one is fairly recent, but lacks the refactored and enabled 3d box tool. Obviously the same goes for the APs. Additionally I believe a few other good bug-fixes went in during this period as well.

Part of the reason that I wanted to shoot this pre-announcement to the list was to request that we please have up-to-date packages provided for those platforms (if possible). If we want the artsy people to use the new features, we should see if we can provide a way for them to do so (as they're generally not the compiling type). I also want to see if it would be possible to have packages produced on a semi-regular basis during the contest and bug-fixing phase so that the community can give better feedback.

If anyone has any questions, thoughts, or input... please let me know. Otherwise, I do plan on making the announcement on DA tonight and CC'ing the lists with it as well.

Re: Screeshots Bulia, I have two pieces that rock filters and LPEs. Is it cool to produce the screenshots now or do you think there will still be more UI changes happening soon? It will be VERY easy to produce them since they're the type that shows in-production use vs mini-tutorial style. Also, if you'd like a mini-tutorial style done for LPEs, I'd be more than happy to do that as well. Luckily I have a long weekend coming up and will be able to devote some time.

-Josh