Inktober is a month-long activity that encourages artists to challenge themselves as well as develop positive drawing habits. The goal is to create a piece of ink work each day, based on the provided prompt. We thought it would be fun to host an official Inktober activity this year in lieu of our usual Creative Circles - and in an effort to be inclusive to writers as well, we welcome you to participate with either artwork or writing!

• This activity will run from 00:01 ST on October 1st through 23:59 ST on November 1st.
• Each week of October will have its own Inktober thread, in which you will submit your pieces. Weeks run from Sunday 00:01 ST through the next Sunday at 23:59 ST.
  • With the exception of the first and last weeks, which are not full weeks - Week 1 will run from Tuesday through Sunday and Week 5 will run from Sunday through Friday.
• The current week’s thread will stop accepting submissions after 23:59 ST on Sunday, and the new week’s thread will start accepting submissions on 00:01 ST on Sunday. Note that this is a one day overlap. The next week will start while the previous week is still accepting submissions. This is to allow players more flexibility with the current week’s deadlines.
• Once a week is over, you may no longer submit any prompts from that period of time for credit. Not only does this allow us to tally up participation much easier, but it helps to keep the spirit of a small piece per day(-ish), rather than having folks burn themselves out by trying to rush 31 pieces at the end of the month.
• The final week’s thread will close at 23:59 ST ST on November 1st, which will mark the end of this activity. Prizes will be distributed during the week of November 1st.
• Discussion throughout the duration of this activity is welcome in this thread! :)

• Create a piece of art or writing for each day of October, based on that day’s prompt.
• Post your piece in the current week’s Inktober thread
• As this activity focuses on daily participation, we would like each of your pieces to be submitted in its own post.
• There are no minimum requirements for your pieces to meet - though we encourage written pieces to be kept relatively short; somewhere in the realm of 200-300 words.
• You may not skip ahead by posting prompts beyond the one for the current date, but may ‘play catch up’ by tackling previous days’ prompts - as long as they are submitted in the current week’s thread
• Though it is not required, we always encourage some level of relevance to characters that exist on Mycena Cave for activities such as this.

Different prizes will be earned based on the total number of days you participated.

• Less than 10 days: 1 gem
• 10-19 days: Inktober sticker + Inked Over Avatar Frame
• 20-30 days: Inktober sticker + Inked Over Avatar Frame + Bag of Wonders
• 31 days: Inktober sticker + Inked Over Avatar Frame + Bag of Wonders + choice of ‘secret coat’ mushroom **

**Secret coats are those available only through the use of a Glowing Changingshroom. You may choose between any of the already revealed secret coats (a handy guide is here), with the addition of one new coat, pictured in the spoiler below. Alternatively, you may request a Glowing Changingshroom as your prize.

Week One: 23:59 ST on Sun. October 6th
Week Two: 23:59 ST on Sun. October 13th
Week Three: 23:59 ST on Sun. October 20th
Week Four: 23:59 ST on Sun. October 27th
Week Five: 23:59 ST on Fri. November 1st
***Please note that, with the exception of the last week, each week has a Sunday deadline. This overlaps with the start of the next week. This was done intentionally to give players an extra day to get the previous week’s prompts submitted***

Yay inktober! I love that we can do writing instead of art as well.~

Does the art have to be physical ink drawings or can it also be digital? o:

Ashlar
It can be traditional or digital!

OOH this’ll be fun. :D The prizes and the Mycena theming are def enough motivation for me to try giving it a go!

(Mine are all gonna be mushrooms ^^)

Ooooohhh, really excited about this! I’m also really glad you guys included writing this year.

Questions:
1. Since there are tight week deadlines, does that mean we can submit BEFORE the actual date of? (Edit: to make more sense of this, is it basically like, MC time, absolutely or like…is a ~day or so okay on the prompt, but not like doing the entire week at once like what I assume the rules are trying to limit?)
2. Can we do writing for some days and drawing for others as the mood strikes?

Can crafting, such as cross stitch/hand embroidery count? And if so, how complex does it have to be to count?

I’m thinking of stitching little 3/4 inch diameter round cloth covered buttons/pins. They’d be the equivalent of like, a 16 pixel diameter circle, but in stitching. Something about the same size as one of these each day:

Show spoiler

For reference, each of those pieces of cloth is 1 and a half inches square, so teeny tiny. Each one took an hour or so to stitch, and haven’t been finished as pins yet.

Lala
1. You’re welcome to do as much as you’d like ahead of time. We released the entire prompt list so that players could work ahead if they know they are going to be busy at some point during the month. However, we ask that you don’t actually post the submission until the release day of the prompt you made the submission for.
2. You may switch between writing and drawing (or combining both).

KaceyCat
Crafting and alternatives to traditional inking and hand writing are welcome so long as the player can figure out a way for it to fall within the umbrella of the “Inktober” theme. For a cross-stitch project, maybe that means doing a black and white piece, or making doing cross stitch in the shape of calligraphy, etc, or combining it with some ink work or writing. You may have to get a bit creative with fitting it in, but we’d love to see some creative alternatives!

You may not skip ahead by posting prompts beyond the one for the current date, but may ‘play catch up’ by tackling previous days’ prompts - as long as they are submitted in the current week’s thread

So that means Saturday’s pieces must be posted on their designated Saturday, and won’t count if they’re submitted ahead of time (but within the same week) nor afterwards (because that’ll be a new week), right? :(

Is there any chance of a small leeway for those of us that might live on the wrong side of the dateline and get very mixed up sometimes? (I’m really hoping to do this as a quick brain-winding-down before-bed exercise and might not hit the minimum entry reqs or timing even if I pay attention to site time, but I’m looking forward to participating for my own self anyways!)

edit:
Sorry, just to be clear - Do submissions close at the following times? (edit: waugh I got mixed up, sorry.)
Week One: 23:59 ST on Sat. October 5th
Week Two: 23:59 ST on Sat. October 12th
Week Three: 23:59 ST on Sat. October 19th
Week Four: 23:59 ST on Sat. October 26th
Week Five: 12:00 ST on Tues. November 1st?

Or is the date in italics skipped?

I’m also really confused by this part

This activity will run from 00:01 ST on October 1st through 12:00 ST (noon) on November 1st.
[...]
Week 1 will run from Monday through Sunday and Week 5 will run from Sunday through Thursday.

October 1st is a Tuesday?

It can be traditional or digital!Crow

So we can do digital art, can it be any art style, or does it always have to be black lines on white?
And can it be abstract art?

Also for writing, there is no minimum requirement to meet? Or is the minimum 200 words?

Jacq
You’re correct in your closing date breakdown! As the threads will be locked manually, there may be a bit of grey area on the exact time that occurs (with the goal being 23:59 ST, but possibly being a bit later depending on who is availabile to do so). That said, it’s not a possibility I would suggest relying on for late submissions.

Also, you’re correct - October 1st is a tuesday. Which is something that I did not realize until the very moment I read your thread. :| I will fix that in the first post!

Marina
The official Inktober website has a very helpful faq, one of which might answer part of your question:

Q: Can I use markers or watercolors?
A: Yes. You can use markers as your inking tool or to color. You can also use watercolor. However, the Inktober challenge is about simplifying your options as an artist and seeing what you can create with a white sheet of paper and black ink. If you are going to use color try to limit yourself to just one color. Inktober FAQ

Abstract art is okay by me! As far as writing, there is no minimum requirement provided a healthy effort is made. If we see that players are submitting extremely sparse pieces of writing (ie., little more than a couple of sentences or a handful of words), we may have to impose a reasonable minimum.

That said, poetry obviously would fall into its own standard depending on style, which is part of the reason we would prefer to require no minimum word count.

Is the ‘no posting ahead of time’ a hard rule, or something we’re given leeway on? Because the combination of weekends being the cutoff and the noon time is absolutely horrible for me since my sleeping schedule makes it so I wake up at varying times, and weekends tend to be very busy for me and I’d hate to be barred the big prize just because I couldn’t get to the site to post, or otherwise accidentally post one of my submissions a day early.

It’s generally fine for most events since I’m always awake late at night when rollover happens but for this it’s very hmmm.

This looks like a great event, I’m very excited! The GCS choice prize is especially amazing and the new coat is beautiful!!

I also want to express the same concerns others have. I really think the “not posting before the actual prompt date” should be loosened up. perhaps by 2-3 days? The leeway would make this a lot more fun than frustrating. The weekend cut off schedule is going to be especially stressful to work around…

After some discussion, we’re going to go ahead and change each weekly deadline to 23:59 Server Time each Sunday rather than 23:59 Server Time each Saturday. The extra day is being added with the aim of providing more flexibility and giving everyone more time to get that week’s prompts in (particularly end of the week prompts). We do want to stick with only accepting submissions for a prompt after its release date, though players are free to work ahead and just hold the submission until the prompt is released.

This will be a bit more confusing since the previous week and the new week will have a one day overlap on Sundays, but hopefully worth doing for the reasons mentioned above!

For everyone’s reference, the updated deadlines would be:
Week One: 23:59 ST on Sun. October 6th
Week Two: 23:59 ST on Sun. October 13th
Week Three: 23:59 ST on Sun. October 20th
Week Four: 23:59 ST on Sun. October 27th
Week Five: 23:59 ST on Fri. November 1st (this was a noon ending, but we are pushing it back by 12 hours to match the rest of the extensions)

The weekend cutoff is honestly kinda stressful for me too because midnight mc time is actually right about when I like to start working on creative stuff. (Edit: Myla’s new post giving us an extra day is excellent thank you!) That said, I do really appreciate the clarification that we can work on things ahead of time if we’d like and that will definitely be of serious help in my schedule.

Also, can I just get a little elaboration on what kind of caligraphy would count? Because I would love an excuse to work on mine tbh.

Thanks so much for the extended submission deadlines! :D

edit: This is such a cool concept, too. I’ve never been able to complete an inktober because I get frustrated with my art a few days in and give up, but if we’re able to write for the Mycena Cave inktober I feel like I’ll be able to accomplish the 31 day goal for the first time ever!!!

I’m glad the change makes it more manageable!

Lala Any type would count (tbh I didn’t realize there were different types!).

I appreciate this change too! I admit I’m still a little worried about the dateline (I’m a day in the future), but I’ll do my best!

Good luck everyone! I can’t wait to see everyone’s entries :)

YES YES YEEESSSS

I AM HERE FOR THIS !!