TELLUS IV - One of the most exciting events to hit Second Life recently, if participation is a good measure for excitement, is the 12avatars contest. The contest will pick twelve avatars and publish their likeness in a calendar that will be available for free in-world, and for sale in the real world. Ten of the avatars are to be chosen by the companies sponsoring the calendar contest, but two were to be chosen by popular acclaim through an interesting and unique voting process.

Today, in a packed press conference, Monkeyface Woodget and Fallon Winnfield, whose companies, Apollo and Centric, are behind the contest, announced the winners of the contest. Grand prize winner Babyhoney Bailey will receive L$20,000, a professional photoshoot, for her avatar, ten copies of the calendar and a spot as one of the calendar girls. Runner up yolesa Palen, will receive L$10,000, the photoshoot and a spot in the calendar.

Both winners outlasted an incredible number of entrants. According to Winnfield there were 940 entries total, 624 of them by unique avatars as people were allowed to enter more than once. Contestants' pictures were then assigned to one of 77 numbered kiosks spread out among four sims, with eight pictures per kiosk. Because it was spread over four sims, contestants took to handing out landmarks with their name and letter designation to potential voters so that people could TP into the sim directly next to the specific entry.

Early in the contest, the scale of the field became an obvious problem as over 500 avatars descended on the sims to cast their vote at once. Lag and sim crashes marked the earliest day of the contest, but as time passed and adjustments were made, performance improved.

Babyhoney Bailey collected 403 votes for her picture, with yolesa Palen collecting 378. The third and fourth place winners earned 271 and 247 votes respectively. Of the entrants, 557 received votes with the average vote total at approximately 20. To collect that many of the 11,179 votes cast, the winning avatars worked hard to earn votes.

Bailey is very pleased to win, but humble about the accomplishment. "Once it reached a certain number of votes it became a "wow" factor for me too - all I can say is that I have the most amazing and supportive friends a girl can ask for," she said.