Last year, at the Philadelphia Pokémon Regional Championships, Professor-Oak.com handed out commemorative ceramic burn/poison counters. These are custom made poker chips.

We're doing it again this year in April, and we need your help. So we're having and art contest. We're looking for your unique interpretation of "Burned" and "Poisoned".

The winner will have his or her art featured on the faces of the chip and his or her name on the edge of the chip along with "www.professor-oak.com"
The winner will receive 50 chips to do with as he or she pleases, approximately a $30.00 value, a booster box of the current English Pokémon set, and recognition on this website.

First, here are last year's chips.

No, there are no more of these chips available. Sorry.

Here are the files that were used to create them. You can click on them to see the full size art. This will help you see how the design translates onto ceramic.

The minimum DPI is 300, 600 DPI images are preferred. (that is, your image should be around 600 x 600 pixels.)

General Guidelines for best results:

Use your own ideas. Pokémon characters are prohibited, as are any other recognizable trademarked or copyrighted characters.
Don't put text in the art, this includes your name.
Don't put a border around your art. We'll do that, depending on what color we want the chip to be.
Be original and creative. Surprise us.
Pictures depicting cruelty to animals, or other illegal or offensive acts won't win.
Round art good, square art bad.
High contrast art is best. Simple designs boldly executed are preferred.

Most image formats (.png, .jpg, .pdf, .mac, .pct, .psd, .tiff) are accepted. Not all will formats will display on your browser. If we can't open your files, we'll e-mail you.

Contest Rules:

1. Contest deadline is February 28, 2012. All entries must be in the form of two separate images representing the concepts of Burned and Poisoned. No purchase necessary.
2. The winner will be announced March 15, 2012.
3. All entries must be submitted electronically in digital format using the following web form. Most common image formats are acceptable. Submissions after the deadline will not be considered and will be deleted.
4. All submissions must be wholly original works that are your own creative interpretation of the contest ideals. Works depicting Pokémon characters, or any parts thereof, or any other copyrighted or trademarked characters are prohibited and will be considered ineligible.
5. The winner will be determined by Professor-Oak.com solely based upon its determination of merit and suitability for the intended purpose, which is the promotion of traffic to this web site. There will be one (1) winner.
6. The winner will grant Professor-Oak.com a single one-time exclusive license to create, duplicate and distribute an unspecified number of ceramic chips bearing the winner's images and name, without any further compensation or consideration.
7. The winner will grant Professor-Oak.com an unlimited, non-exclusive license to display the artwork on the Professor-Oak web site so long as the artist is credited and notice of copyright is maintained.
8. The winner will receive as 50 (fifty) chips as compensation, comprising of 48 regular chips, 2 staff variant chips and 1 sealed booster box of the latest English Pokémon expansion set. Approximate retail value of $150.00 US. No other compensation, monetary or otherwise will be given. The winner may not elect to take cash in lieu of the chips or booster box.
9. The contest is open to anyone except where prohibited by law.
10. Images depicting cruelty to animals, or other offensive acts are ineligible.
11. Professor-Oak.Com is not responsible for lost images, computer crashes, viruses, lost or misdirected mail.
12. Non-winning entries cannot be returned and will be deleted.
    1. UPDATE: We will be asking permission to display non-winning entries. You all are being really awesome so far and we think it would be fantastic to show all the entries after the contest is over.
13. Submit as often as you like. Each submission must be accompanied by files with different names than any of your prior submissions. Files are restricted to be under 4 megabytes.
14. If you have a really great idea, and you tell a friend, and the friend draws it and submits it wins, then we're sorry, but there's nothing we can do about it.