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 550 620 pixels wide (updated to fit the new page size!) 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 for prizes, I haven't got all of them yet, but for now I'll be offering up Kotobukiya's Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha The Movie 1st (pictures here for now, review forthcoming when I receive it), Figuarts ZERO Chopper and Blackbeard (Chopper review | others reviewed), and whatever else I get my hands on in the next few weeks. There's a possibility you'll see a Bishoujo figure or other new stuff up here, so check back whenever I bump this post! (edit: recently reviewed X-23 Bishoujo has been added to the prize pool!)

Good luck, Tomofolk!

December's MM entries: