Covention season is upon us and that means a lot of things –  but for the sake of this post, it means art contests! New York Anime Fest (which is joining with New York Comic Con for the first time this year) has opened up its annual mascot design contest with snazzy prizes and a one month submission time.

“Announced May 1 at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s Sakura Matsuri and running until May 20th, Kinokuniya, theOtaku.com, Del Rey Manga, and the New York Anime Festival welcome artists and anime fans from around America to think about what “Anime”, “New York City”, and (because we’re in October) “Halloween”, mean to them and draw these thoughts into an original character. Whether it’s big, small, a towering mecha, or chibi, we want to see your entries!”

The grand-prize winner will not only have the fun of seeing their artwork used on all NYAF”s official merchandise but will also receive a copy of all the material the art is used on, 10 free passes to the event and 50 volumes of Del Rey manga!

All entries are due May 20th with the finalists announced on June 1st. Then, after a month of voting at their Kinokuniya bookstore in New York, the official grand-prize winner will be revealed at the end of June.

Good luck to all the entrants!

A bunch of interesting news and previews this past week – what better way to spend a lazy Sunday than getting caught up on a bunch of them! From contests to continuations, there should be a little something for everyone in this lengthy round-up of the week’s what-have-yous:

RightStuf’s most recent sale is on Tokyopop books, including their boys’ love imprint, BLU. Until February 1st, you’ll save at least 33% on each book. Perfect time to get caught up some series and get your hands on the recent ones – which include lots of fantastic new licenses including Alice in the Country of Hearts and Deadman Wonderland.

More information about Yen Press’s upcoming adaptation of Twilight has been released. The book will be a hardcover edition costing $19.99. It’s already one of the top-selling books on Amazon right now! Entertainment Weekly has an image of the cover and an interior preview. On a related note, Shannon Garrity has a great – and amusing – post comparing Twilight with most modern-day shoujo manga.

Fans of the series rejoice – Descendants of Darkness (Yami no Matsuei) is returning! After an eight year hiatus the supernatural manga laced with all that glorious homoerotic tension (perhaps biggest understatement of the new year so far) will be returning to publication with the release of its twelth volume in Japan. Viz Media has the English license to the series and has published up to volume eleven, last released in 2006.

DeviantArt is currently holding a contest: Ponyo Make A Splash – Online Banner Creation Contest. They’re looking for ad banners designed for use on the website to promote the upcoming DVD/Blu-Ray release of Studio Ghibli/Disney’s Ponyo. There are four different banner templates for designers to submit banners in. As for the prizes, “…each of the four winners will recieve a $500 Visa gift card, a devWEAR bag of Winner’s choice, a copy of Ponyo on DVD, a devWEAR shirt of Winner’s choice, and a one year Premium Membership to deviantART.”

After the continuation was pushed back to Spring 2010in early 2009, it looks like Yu Watase is finally able to put Fushigi Yuugi‘s prequel series, Genbu Kaiden, back into her busy production schedule! She posts about it over on her personal blog, though no complete translation is yet publicly posted of the entry. Viz Media has released the currently available nine volumes of the series. (via Manga Xanadu)

Lastly, the fairly-silent-in-recent-months publisher, GoComi has posted an update of their status via their forums. There isn’t a lot of specific news but they assure readers that despite some economic problems, they’re still plugging forward and going at it their best. Unfortunately a number of titles have gone on hold. You can read the whole post over there which also includes information of the potential future of their website community, the popularity of 07-Ghost and word about the status of books sold through their online store. (via @danielle_leigh1)

Digital Manga announced on their blog yesterday their first giveaway of the new year. From today (Wednesday, January 13) to Tuesday, January 19 – anyone who rents or purchases-to-keep any title on eManga will be entered into a draw to win a copy of Taishi Zaou’s one-shot boys’ love story, Electric Hands.

“In most ways, Fujino is a typical high school student; his mind wanders during class, and he often finds himself lost in a daydream. But the odd thing about Fujino is that his daydreams are starting to revolve around a peculiar fetish for hands – specifically, the sleek, beautiful hands of his classmate and tutor, Takie. Hours spent admiring an attractive set of appendages is one thing, but Fujino is in for the shock of his life when a brush with Takie’s hands gives him a literal jolt. What makes a current pass from Takie through every part of Fujino’s body? How will Fujino’s fellow students react when each accidental contact sends him skittering across the room?!”

Along with the book, the winner will also receive a shikishi/shitajiki pencilboard signed by Taishi Zaou herself! The winner of the draw will be announced the following day.

AnimeNewsNetwork has officially announced the start of their 2009 Holiday Logo Contest. The contest is open to “to any and all residents of the planet Earth and neighbour parallel dimensions” and, while potential prizes are not yet listed, they promise a value of at least $500-worth.

Entries must be created to certain size specifications and Nina from their weekly web-comic. I recommend checking out the comic for not only inspiration and reference but some good anime-related laughs as well.

The contest catch however? Only four days until deadline! All entries are due December 20th at midnight (EST). If last year’s prize lot is any indication there, though’s more than enough reason to snap up your art supplies and get crackin’!

Two new contest calls are out for artists so sharpen your pencils and dust off those tablets (though may you artists out there keep your tablet much better dusted than mine!).

First off Viz Media is looking for fan art submissions for upcoming volumes of St. Dragon Girl. Via Twitter (@viz_media): “AM: Calling All Artists! Fan Art needed for future volumes of St. Dragon Girl manga.” The most recent volume of St. Dragon Girl is volume five and it’s available on store shelves this week.

Meanwhile over on her DeviantArt journal, Svetlana Chmkova is holding a contest for fan art to potentially appear in the next volume of her currently running series, Nightschool. Winners will be published in the third volume of Nightschool, due out from Yen Press in April 2010, and will be sent signed copies of the book when it’s released. All entries must be submitted to Yen Press by the fast-approaching deadline of December 28th along with a fanart consent form available on their webpage.

Today’s AnimeNewsNetwork has posted its list of winners for the recently held Canadian-exclusive contest for tickets to Evangelion 1.0. Congrats to all the winners!

And as another reminder, the first showing of Evangelion 1.0 hits Canadian theatres across the country September 30th (next Wednesday!). The Empire Theatres’ website has information on participating locations including word that each theatre will again be holding cosplay contests for attendees with prizes and goodies for the winners on the premiere night!

I’ll be attending the Halifax showing as both a fan and promoter for 2010′s Animinitime events, so I hope to see lots of friendly and familiar faces there :)

Reusing the above graphic because it’s cool and relevant. AnimeNewsNetwork is holding a contest giving away tickets to 67 showings of the upcoming Evangelion 1.0 film, coming soon to Canadian theatres. ANN is giving away 310 tickets in total and it’s one ticket per location per winner. The giveaway ends on September 19th so head on over for a quick and easy chance to see the movie compliments of ANN and Eleven Arts Inc.

Yaoi Press has posted the results of its previously announced Caption Contest. You can currently head on over to their contest page to see the winner, along with the runners-up and honorable mentions. Congrats to the winners! For the shiny posters, I would’ve loved to enter but conflicting interest or something like that no doubt.

Speaking of which, the panels used in the contest are from Yaoi Press’s newest anthology, Happy Yaoi Yum Yum which just had a release of volume one. I was allowed the opportunity to letter a couple of the stories (which was fantastically fun, let me tell you) so the book already has a special place awaiting it on my bookshelf along with being a collection of work from some talented creators. If you like your yaoi porny and your story’s funny, I recommend checking it out.

With Yaoi Press’s contest out there for the writers, here’s a contest for the artists out there. In celebration of the upcoming release of King of Fighters XII, a fanart contest is being held with some pretty sweet prizes.

Bad news is that it’s only open to residents of the United States. You’re losing out on a lot of fantastic potential entries, KoF!

For US residents, the contest runs from April 21 to July 31st and entrants are invited to submit their fanart using the handy upload system set up on on the contest page for a chance to win $1000, consoles, and/or copies of the game! Sharpen your pencils and dust of the tablets, those’re some fine prizes for a shiny game.

From now until the deadline of June 22nd, Yaoi Press is holding a Captain Contest in connection with their weekly gag panels, Yaoi Not Actually. Entrants of the contest must take the images provided for the contest and give them some amusing dialouge that will likely be entertaingly out of context.

The prize for the funniest phrases? A copy of Yaoi Press’s upcoming first volume of Happy Yaoi Yum Yum and sixteen gorgeous 11×17 posters of various Yaoi Press artists’ work. You can check out the contest page for all the details. And don’t forget, if you win the contest and are wondering what to do with all those pretty posters, remember who told you about the contest, alright? ;)

The folks over at Manga Recon are holding a contest where the winners can recieve free tickets to see Viz’s upcoming theatre release of Death Note: L, Change the World. (Note: Contest showings are for the US cities NY Metro Area, Denver, San Francisco/San Jose/Oakland, Peoria/Bloomington). The  entry method? Writing a Death Note inspired limerick or haiku of course!

The contest is open until 11:59pm April 26, 2009 so if you’re in the area of the ticket offers, head on over and enter your limerick. Sounds like fun and while the contest prizes aren’t applicable to me, I’m still more than a little curious about the entries :) Fun idea for a contest!

On top of the initial offer for those who place orders for the upcoming Doki Doki books, today Digital Manga posted about a raffle where readers can win even more prizes. Lucky ducks!

From now until March 30th, those who order (including those who’ve already ordered before now) volume one of Train Train and Princess Princess Plus will be entered in a raffle to win one of the following:

7 shikishis signed by both Mikiyo Tsuda and Eiki Eiki
10 copies of Princess Princess vol. 1 signed by Mikiyo Tsuda
10 copies of Dear Myself signed by Eiki Eiki (18+ members only are eligible for this prize)

You can see examples of these prizes on their blog. Image previews of the previously announced promo items, ‘fukuseigenga’, have also been posted.

So as if the books themselves weren’t awesome enough! I’m jealous I can’t order from Akadot retail myself (American shipping prices and custom charges = no-no for me). So everyone order and enter and know I wish you all luck as a Mikiyo Tsuda and Eiki Eiki worshipper fan ;)

You can read a full press release about the raffle here.

A few things of note today while I attempt to finish one of the way-to-many partially finished reviews sitting on my desktop :)

 Amazon.ca has a listing for Kambayashi Chohei’s science fiction light novel, Yukikaze. As there’s no artist listed, I’m making the assumption it’s the light novel and not a manga (not sure if one exists?). New news, old news, either way it’s good news for fans like me! I absolutely loved the anime and have awaited the day I’d get a chance to read the original novel. According to Amazon, that day will be January 19, 2010.

 Freelance manga adapter, Ysabet, has a LiveJournal post with a credits correction pertaining to the upcoming volume two of Shinobi Life. Contrary to the book, adaptation credit goes to her while the translation was done by Lori Riser. Also, Ysabet lives in the same city as me so how cool is that? Pretty darn cool because Halifax is awesome like that.

 Speaking of LiveJournal, Digital Manga has taken to the community site with two accounts for its imprints: one for June Manga and another for 801Media. They also have another account, june_manga_chat, where they invite questions and discussion pertaining to their titles, while the other two accounts seem primarily for newsletter and preview-type posts. (Source: The Yaoi Review)

 And speaking of Digital Manga, their imprint 801Media has recently announced the winners of their 801-chan Contest. Entrants were invited to script short 4-panel strips as seen in the back of their books starring the imprints mascot characters. Six winners were chosen (including myself, yay!) and they’ll all have their scripts drawn into the full-colour strips by the original artist and the strips will then be published in future releases. Congrats to all the winners!

Tenth day of December anyway. Some random fun/entertaining/otherwise interesting links for you today :)

The new trailer for Fox’s upcoming Dragonball adaptation, now titled Dragonball Evolution, is currently up and ready for viewing! My thoughts remain generally the same as before, obviously not a faithful adaptation but still looks like fun! In fact, I think now it looks even more fun. Go check it out and see what you think.

AnimeNewsNetwork has the first of its free streaming anime up for viewing now! No complaints about free, legal anime :) Currently you can watch Kite: Liberator, Girl’s High and Ramen Fighter Miki.

Also ANN related: Their annual Holiday Logo Contest has begun! Momentary ANN-fame and anime boxsets await the winner. I’m entering the contest in the slim hope I could get my hands on the CLAMP School Detectives boxset! Going to be fun to see all the cute submitted artwork starring their AnimeNewsNina mascot when the entries are displayed.

And a little late on the update, but for those (like me) who’ve missed Gia‘s site updates, you can now rejoice at her return on her website, AnimeVice. Extra goodies include some video updates such as fun look at the inside of Viz Media’s office. Envious of their working space? I think so.

And lastly, for the yaoi fans, Yaoi Generation has preview pages up for its first release, Breath by Chifumi Ochi. So if you’d like to take a look, then by all means! I recommend viewing the images in full size since the preview window shrinks them down and makes ‘em fuzzy.

A reminder to Canadian anime fans; the first Bleach movie, Bleach: Memories of Nobody, will be playing in select theatres across the country tomorrow, October 20th. Even if you’ve seen the movie, there’s nothing quite like watching it on the big screen. Remember, the more you go to anime in the theatre, the more you’re supporting it and up the chances of more being played!

While I’m not sure of what kind of special events are happening elsewhere, I know the Bayer’s Lake Empire Theatres in Halifax will be having a special Bleach cosplay contest before the showing so those interested should definately show up a bit early for some fun and prizes :)