It doesn't matter if you take from the computinghost site or not. I'm doing one that is from and one that isn't. And yours are really cool; I think you have a good chance of winning. And besides, the blue one at trap17 isn't from the site.

Did you mean the first one with the blue text or the second one with the blue background? The latter (I just felt like using that word, no reason) one had that ribbon thing taken from computing host, just a simple photoshop job (one with not much quality, I'd say...). The text effect was also taken from one of the ads of computinghost, but which ad it was escapes my mind. The first one on trap17 was original, but the text was kinda unreadable. Its background was nice, though.

I meant the latter, and I like yours better. I just wanted to point out that you weren't the only one who was doing original work. And since you use flash, do you know how to squash all of the layers into one layer?

Everyone's so 3D and flash and animated. O_o. I was thinking of doing an artsy one. O_o. Would it be very odd?

I think that would be good. And the more different kinds of banners, the better a selection OpaQue will have. Because the real reason to enter ths contest is not for the credits, they can be gained easily enough. It's to keep enough money flowing into computinghost that Xisto can afford to keep trap17 and astahost running. Plus, if we get lucky, Opaque may select one of each kind to add more variety accross the web. I know if every site I went to had the same add for a company, I would think less of that company than if they varied the adds.

Squashing all the layers? All you have to do is select all the stuff on one layer, cut it, and paste in the same place (ctrl+shift+v) on the other layer. I don't know any quicker way to do this. If you do so, Tweens won't work properly though.

An art one might be good. It could make a good impression to customers, making them think that this host is unique.

THe reason I want to squash the image is to make an animated gif. I could then copy each image into another graphics editor and save as an animated gif. That way, OpaQue gets the low byte cost and availabilty to more people benefits of animated gifs, and I get the benfit of less work.

Hmm... Flash can export your animations into gif files for you, so you don't have to manually make them... You don't have to squish the layers either.

I figured it might, but hadn't had a chance to check it out yet, thanks.

Nope, it's a way for everyone to come up with theit own ideas, artsy may be what works. This is meant as way for everyone to express what they know and like to do, the only constraints I know are the sizes we gave. Nobody say it has to be animated.

We are looking into originality and professional looking work

Nils