Original art. Fair competition.

Who may enter

Arizona students in elementary, junior high, or high school may enter. Parent or legal guardian consent is required for entrants under 18. Exact grade boundaries, eligibility date, and verification procedures will be stated before entries open.

$3,500 prize purse

• Elementary overall winner: $1,000.
• Junior high overall winner: $1,000.
• High school overall winner: $1,000.
• Crowd Favorite across all school divisions: $500.

Each $1,000 award recognizes one overall winning entry across the three art categories in that school division: T-shirt design, comic cover, and comic pages. There is not a separate cash award for each art category. Crowd Favorite is determined by valid public votes after fraud review.

Proposed entry limits

One entry per category per student, for a maximum of three distinct works per competition. A comic-page sequence counts as one entry; its page limit will be published. The same or substantially similar work may not be entered in multiple categories. Duplicate accounts do not create additional entry allowances. A guardian may assist multiple children, each with their own artist profile.

Original human-made artwork

The student must create the artwork. No AI-generated imagery, generative fill, tracing of AI imagery, plagiarism, or work created by a parent or other person. Ordinary non-generative digital drawing tools are permitted. Keep sketches, layers, or progress photos; the team may request them to verify authorship. Automated AI-detector scores alone will not determine disqualification.

Do not incorporate third-party characters, logos, photographs, or other protected material without permission covering the competition's uses. Any permission to use TSL characters or brand assets must be expressly defined in the final rules.

Proposed fair-voting rules

One vote per verified voter per entry during the entire voting period, not one vote per day. Votes belong to individual entries and are not pooled across an artist's entries. No bots, fabricated identities, purchased votes, automated voting, or offering money or rewards for votes. Sharing a gallery link with friends, family, and schools is permitted.

All approved entries should receive the same voting window. Vote totals remain provisional until review. Suspicious votes may be removed; an entrant is disqualified for manipulation only when evidence connects the entrant or their representatives to the misconduct. Shared school or household internet connections alone do not establish abuse.

Review, judging, and disputes

Entries remain private until approved. Publish the judging rubric, tie-break procedure, deadlines, and correction or appeal period before opening. Judges should disclose conflicts and recuse themselves where appropriate. Proposed safeguards include excluding organizers, judges, and their immediate families from prizes, and verifying winner eligibility and authorship before payment.

Entries must be suitable for a student and family audience. No threats, targeted harassment, explicit sexual content, or disclosure of private personal information. The final rules will explain removal, disqualification, and contest interruption procedures.

Artwork license · proposed language

The artist retains ownership of their original artwork. As a condition of entry, the entrant grants Impact Legal, PLLC a nonexclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license, for the duration of copyright and to the fullest extent permitted by law, to reproduce, publicly display, publish, distribute, and adapt any submitted artwork for website galleries, promotion, advertising, merchandise, apparel, comics, and other commercial uses. This license applies whether or not the entry wins and permits sublicensing to vendors and partners as necessary for those uses. Except for an awarded prize, no additional compensation is promised.

The intended website-display license is perpetual. Final language must address edits, credit, withdrawal, statutory rights, and the enforceability of a minor's license. The entrant and, where applicable, their parent or guardian must separately acknowledge the commercial-use terms. This artwork license does not authorize perpetual retention or publication of the child's personal information.

Privacy and parental consent

Use a public artist alias; do not publish contact information, birth dates, school details, or private process evidence. Collect only necessary information and remove location metadata from published files. For children under 13, the production flow must address required notice and verifiable parental consent before covered personal-information collection, use, or disclosure. A checkbox alone is not the verification process.

Items to finalize before opening

Free entry and voting; dates and Arizona time zone; grade and homeschool definitions; comic-page and file limits; scoring and ties; voter eligibility; whether one artist can receive both awards; prize delivery and tax handling; response deadlines; privacy retention and deletion; and the final minor-consent and artwork-license agreement. Recommendations on this draft page are not yet enforced by the local prototype.