The New Yorker's Eustace Tilley Contest

Chelsie Gosk says: The New Yorker invites artists, designers, and readers of all ages to enter the Eustace Tilley Contest and create their own version of Tilley, the iconic dandy who appeared on the magazine’s first cover in 1925 and has returned for nearly every anniversary issue since.

Up to 20 winning entries will be published on newyorker.com to commemorate the magazine’s 83rd anniversary.

Show here, R. Crumb's 1994 interpretation of Eustace Tilley. Link

• [jtg]

  Begbie you can’t be serious. Have you ever read The New Yorker? Have you ever been to New York City for that matter?

• [Halloween Jack]

  You’d have my vote, Ape Lad, if I had one.

• [forgeweld]

  Looks like Bob is seriously irritated by the backwards baseball cap people.

• [Anonymous]

  Begbie, you may be confusing “The New Yorker” and “New York Magazine,” though the latter can be pretty good too sometimes.

  @Joe MommaSan “Why would anyone want to enter this contest?”

  Because it’s fun to read “The New Yorker” and it’s fun to draw pictures. Who cares about some silly prize?

• [anthropomorphictoast]

  w00t, here be my entry! ^_^ http://www.flickr.com/photos/22717109@N03/2184489755/

• [BaconWrapped]

  Hey, now. There’s always a catch:
  8. OWNERSHIP AND LICENSE. All entry materials become the property of the Sponsor and will not be acknowledged or returned. Entrant agrees that the submission shall be a work-made-for-hire within the meaning of the Copyright Act, and that Condé Nast Publications shall own all rights, including copyright, therein throughout the world. In the event any submission is deemed not to be work-made-for-hire for any reason, Entrant hereby transfers and assigns the entire copyright (for the full term of copyright including any extensions thereto) throughout the world, in any and all media and forms of publication, reproduction, transmission, distribution, performance, adaptation, enhancement or display now in existence or hereafter developed in such Submission to Condé Nast Publications. Entry into this Promotion constitutes entrant’s irrevocable and perpetual permission and consent, without further compensation or attribution, to use such Submission for editorial, advertising and publicity purposes by the Sponsor and/or others authorized by the Sponsor, in any and all media now in existence or hereinafter created, throughout the world, for the duration of the copyright in the Submission. Sponsor and/or others authorized by the Sponsor shall have the right to edit, adapt, and modify the Submission. Entrant acknowledges that The New Yorker holds the copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in Eustace Tilley, and that entrant will not violate or infringe on these rights in any way. The New Yorker grants entrant a non-exclusive, limited license to use the image of Eustace Tilley only for the purpose of creating a submission for the contest.
  Eustace Tilley is certainly a product of old media.

• [Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator]

  The New Yorker? Socialites? Wrong. That’s like confusing The New York Review of Books with the New York Times Book Review.

  Back to the subject.

  The New Yorker has always been pissy about rights. On the other hand, it’s extremely difficult for new artists to break into that market, and if you win, you get to play with TNR’s sacrosanct mascot and get paid for it.

  Besides, what else are you going to do with a portrait of Eustace Tilley?

• [Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator]

  Whoops, nearly forgot: Ape Lad, I love the scorched Tilley, but IMO it would work better if you had a stronger and more obvious light source. I lost a moment or two of joke-being-funny impact time to wondering why the butterfly had turned into a little floating gold ring.

• [Joe MommaSan]

  Why would anyone want to enter this contest? You’re essentially signing away all rights to your work – whether it wins or not – in exchange for a chance at a prize valued at . . . nothing. What a deal.

  As for the idea that this is a standard practice among “art sites” on the Internet, nonsense. Most “art sites” require only that you give them the right to publish your work on their site, not complete ownership of the work.

• [Egypt Urnash]

  Try reading the terms of use for any art site someday, Bacon. For the most part, they’re just as full of ambiguous transferral of rights. Lawyers stick ownership, or infinite license for all media past and present, into the terms for those things as a matter of course.

  (It’d be interesting to compare these terms with their standard illustration contract, though.)

  The subtle undercurrent I get from the rules to this contest is ‘we have no intention of ever actually putting this on the cover, or in the magazine except maybe as a tiny, crappy thumbnail’. The New Yorker has been a magazine full of illustration for its entire life; I figure they know how to avoid seriously pissing off artists by now.

  If you think it’ll be fun and quick, do it. I might. It’d be a few hours out of my life at the most, with a modest chance of their art department deciding to offer me a few gigs – that is the unspoken carrot, here.

  Or you could decide all art competitions held over the net are fundamentally evil and post a link to no-spec.com.

• [Anonymous]

  I’d be happy to give them ownership of my drawing of their mascot, if the result was seeing my work in the company of Crumb, Burns, Ware, and all of the others.

• [begbie]

  Every big city has pros and cons. One of the biggest cons of NYC is the head-up-there-ass crowd. They are sometimes called “socialites” and if you had to describe them in one word that word would be: embarrassing
  Well, they have a publication. It’s called “The New Yorker”

• [Ape Lad]

  Thanks, Teresa. That kind of bugs me too, I’ll do something about it.
  You can enter up to five so I’m going to let the idea for the fifth one stew for a while.
  Also, @#9, art directors receive mountains of promotional mailers and such from freelance illustrators like myself, so when a publication opens it’s door like this, and if you have the wherewithal, why not enter on the off chance they at least learn your name?
  @#10 Socialites loooove them some Roz Chast.

• [Gemini Gypsy]

  Go Ape Lad!

  If I could vote, I’d cast a thousand for Eustace Tilley-Bo. The New Yorker should fall to its knees in gratitude that you would deem to contribute your outstanding work to their venerable mag. Good Luck!

• [Gemini Gypsy]

  Sorry…I meant deign, not deem.

• [Ape Lad]

  I’m in.

• [Takuan]

  umgawa Ape Lad, umgawa

  not bad at all

• [gobo]

  Well, Ape Lad won four times, OF COURSE.

  Love the sizzled Eustace.

• [sonny p fontaine]

  @ #10 Begbie

  “socialite”(wag) at the tower 1 elevator in Homer Simpson vs. The City of New York
  “how very rude, I certainly hope someone stabs him in the eye”
  Please don’t comment about our fair city if you’ve never been here. And if you feel that way please do remain west of the Hudson.

• [jimh]

  Well played Ape Lad! Huzzah!