The rules are simple! You don't need to have narrative text in your story, as Scarecroodle and others have proven, in order for it to be good or acceptable. We've had folks make their entries look like comic strips as well, which is also encouraged, creative, acceptable, rad, you name it. There isn't really a minimum or maximum amount of images, although I think one of our readers figured out what the max amount of BBCode image lines are allowed in a c-blog post (it's.. a lot).

Your images must be at most 620 pixels wide in order to fit in the page properly, otherwise something's going to get cut off. There isn't a limit to how many images you post, since you're hosting them anyhow. In order to get some images on your blog post, just put them up on Flickr, Photobucket or any of those free image hosting services and link to them using BBCode tags (the line with the [IMG]<text>[/IMG] tags).

If you don't have a Tomopop log-in account, you won't be able to create a blog entry. If you're new to these contests, this is your first step! It's quick and easy, and once you're through, you need only click on the "create new blog" button at the top of the page, and title it with "Monthly Megapixel: <your story title here>" to be entered in the contest.

Lastly, those of you who don't live in the U.S. or Canada are not excluded from this contest. The only thing we ask is that you cover the shipping if you are to be prized on something. This way, we could open the contest to everyone! I promise it won't cost you an arm and a leg, too.

Remember, it doesn't have to be a photographic epic — if it's all you can come up with, you could submit entries with just a few beautiful and descriptive images and it's just fine. It's all about being creative and hitting the mark with the contest theme, by any photographic means possible!

If any of you are having issues with the editor and getting your post up, just send an e-mail to me (kristina [at] tomopop [dot] com), or Brian ([at] Tomopop [dot] com), or even our tips@ mail so somebody could get to it. Sometimes a post won't show up on your end and cause some confusion, but will still be visible to everyone else; things could be a little buggy here and there. Just don't panic! I will accept all entries that were completed on time as long as we could see your post, even if we had to recover it after the due date.

As I mentioned earlier, this contest is being sponsored by HobbyLink Japan (whee!). The three main prizes will be Chibi-Arts Kotetsu and Taito's Persona 4 Chie and Yukiko (separately). They're all rad, and depending on how many entries we get, I'll toss in some extra prizes on the side, so don't you worry! I also still have some Peanuts Formation Arts figures, also from HLJ, that I can give away. Let's make it another good month!

Also, it's opinion poll time! Do you like the regular Megapixel format? Is it too much work, and not enough fun? Speak up! We got so many entries for the last contest, that I'm wondering whether I should condense this a little more? What I like about Monthly Megapixel is it challenges everyone to get creative and have fun with their figures, and I add prizes to sweeten the deal. Should I do more "Micropixel" style contests in between, to give y'all breaks from these bigger contests? Because I can totally do that. After all, they're my contests. I call the shots. Leave me your feedback in the comments section below!