Now that my entry for the IDBM Contest #3, the Everflight, has made it all the way to the final poll (to be honest I'm really surprised; I thought I might make it past the first round if I was lucky), I'd like to share the ideas behind my entry.

When I found the topic in the S&T forum (it wasn't that hard since it was pinned), I thought "why not, I'll try it out". I've participated in a few contests here at BZP but the only ones I've ever stood a chance in were the story writing ones. But I had experience making profiles in the RPG forum so I thought I'd see just how far these RPG skills would take me.

I brainstormed a bit and looked at the picture provided for the contest. There wasn't much info to go on, so a lot of it was up to our own interpretation, for which I was glad.

A few points I noticed about the picture:

1) The bird had wings for blades. That was the most prominent aspect of the picture, however, so I figured lots of participants would write about that. Sure enough, a quick check through previous entries yielded lots of results when I entered 'blade' into the Ctrl+F function. So I decided not to write about its wing-blades.

2) The bird's color scheme, red and yellow. A bit bright for a bird living in the desert, so I thought it might have originated from somewhere else (Bota Magna perhaps?). In the end, hoping to keep my entry simple, I left out that detail.

3) The bird had no claws. This was strange, but the more I thought about it the more I liked the idea of basing my entry around that. A bird that doesn't have claws, can't land on the ground, so has to keep flying in the air..."Everflight". I knew of some species of sharks that swam while sleeping, so I took that aspect and borrowed for my concept.

The process:

Making the profile was fun. I enjoyed every aspect of it, though in retrospect I should have let the idea sit for a while and then return to it. That might have led to improvements.

The polls:

As I mentioned earlier, I didn't expect to make it so far. The first round was close so I figured I'd be creamed in the semifinals round. I was pleasantly surprised to win the second round (thanks for all the votes!), but I'm struggling in the final round, which is to be expected.

In retrospect:

I should have made use of the word limit, filling out the entire profile and cramming in as much info as possible. The Everflight had only the "uniqueness" factor going for it IMO, so against a particularly well-thought out entry like Hot Pants's, it lost its appeal.

Thoughts:

There's still chance for a comeback, so I'm hoping for the best. If I lose though, I won't mind: the Cave Shrike was a really cool entry which I voted for twice, and I'd be content with it being the canon bio for the bird.

Conclusion:

If you haven't voted yet, go vote! However, please vote for the entry you genuinely believe is the better of the two.