I'm happy I tried out the contest, it was challenging but helped me get past a lot of doubts about what i am able to do. Made one additional episode on top of the required minimum. But i had started out not quite sure i'd even make it halfway. It's been a worthwhile experience all in all. Good luck everyone!
@momojiji The fact you made it past the minimum requirements is a great achievement. Congratulations!
My friend made a few predictions on the "winners" of the contest from the way webtoon is featuring contest entries...
Take all my money; ph got featured almost 5 times- there's no way it doesn't satisfy that "40% popularity" completely.
It's more than that. No hate on Sophism. She's been in the game for more than 2 years and been consistent with her updates. Her art improved tremendously.
Her composition and storytelling are good. The story seem basic but her execution is great. All and all, she pretty much hit all of Webtoons' checklist.
Call me crazy, I just find it REALLY unsettling that she somehow copied quimchee's style.
I mostly checked the most epic category, and my bet is Masked Caravan.
Chrysopoeia seems pretty nice, too! But then again, I spent most of my time drawing, not reading all the other webtoons 
It may be someone less popular, too. I would think the more original ideas may have more of a chance - something that isn't too similar to what has already been featured. Although... well, who knows 
I really hope they choose more original ideas than things we've seen on Featured. Then, again, who knows? :)))
Purple Hyacinth is definitely up there for winner considering how much it was pushed. It feels like this contest was decided on pretty much from the beginning which made it hard to compete.
Not to mention all the junk comics that were just Google images and stolen art pushing down legitimate entries because they had good engagement even if that was only, "boo! This has stolen art lol!"
But it did spur other creators to start their projects and I've found new favourites which might not have even seen the light of day had they not been encouraged by the contest. So if only for that I'm glad we had the platform.
I actually still strongly believe there will be at least one "underdog" type comic that places. As in a comic that didn't gain much traction by their "popularity" standards, or may not have even gotten promoted by them, but I guess we'll have to wait and see!
the last contest the most popular entry was Unordinary but she didn't even win. Instead some no name comic that I still don't even know the name of won.
Also a part of me feels they'll do it just to avoid the accusations of "You promoted all these people to victory", "this contest was decided from the start" "you didn't even read all the entries" If they have atleats one little guy they can be like- "See we looked at all entries"
My guess is also that all the winners, maybe not even the most of them will be the obvious choices, most popular ones. The popularity only makes 40% and I read in their rules that they would take in account how long the comic has been there. Several of the most popular ones are comics that have been only reposted or are from already popular authors, so I think the judges will take that into account. Also it was never written that the popularity scale is how they are going to judge the audience engagement. They are going to look at comments and likes for example as they wrote it. Which may mean whatever. Ultimately I think they will pick titles they themselves find the best or most fitting the category and other set criteria and the smaller part will be about how the audience reacted to them. My guess. It can then be even a less popular comic, that wins. So I agree with beta 1042
I mean they get at least 8 winners, which means although the majority should definitely be comics they see as safe money makers, it gives them the leniency to one or 2 "gambles". y'know high risks can yield high rewards.
I just don't think people should give up hope until it's over.
@beta1042 I see, so a kind alleviation-of-accusations pick? In a sense a pick like that is both patronizing and samaritan, I guess.
It's interesting to try and pick apart their criteria; they've made it vague enough that they have enough wiggle room, but not too vague where all you're grasping is straws.
But wow, 6887 comics (last I checked) ... good luck to the judges. They can't possibly look through each and every one though, right? Even if we're generous and say only half actually made the requirements...wow.
I imagine they have a computer program than can weed out obvious comics that don't qualify tho. Like atleast something basic like -removed all comics that don't have the min number of updates. A lot of those comics really don't qualify so I'm sure that helps XD But yeah it's a lot.
These are my thoughts and guesses too, given the heavy promotion all these have had at some point, and mostly Purple Hyacinth was the one who received 3 months nonstop promotion whether in plain sight or hiding in the personal recommendation of readers for who knows how many months now, sure its popularity is probably the highest at the maximun for the 40% readers engagement. then what about the comics that has around 15-20k? Their popularity must be around 5% seeing they have set the bar so high with purple hyacinth'having 40% max and being so high at about 180k subs. These is just an estimation. Bottom line: no one can compete with Purple Hyacinth. it's the obvious winner and it has been so since June. There was never a competition.
I really wish audience participation wasn't part of the score! I understand why it was included, but it is really tough for the underdogs who have a limited following to get any traction, and it gives already successful artists an unfair advantage.
I tried to not let the numbers get me down since they were out of my control and just focus on creating quality episodes and tried to engage with my audience the best that I could!
I agree. Purple hyacinth will definitely be in the top 8 no doubt. With how heavily they promoted the series (5 or 6 times? I lost count but it was a lot. The most I've ever seen), and the amount of subscribers it garnered as well as likes, views and comments, it definitely set the bar high for popularity. I don't think webtoons will risk not having Purple Hyacinth win after investing in it through promotion and with that many subscribers. Plus, Sophism has a huge following on Instagram now (10k+ followers) and made an ost for the comic. So I think that is pretty much set in stone.
As for the other categories, I believe Lalin's curse has a high chance in "most gripping" due to the promotion once again (I think it got promoted 3-4 times). Fantasy might be a toss up as I didn't really notice a consistent promotion of any series and same with comedy. But in the end I think they'll choose 1 "obvious" winner for each category and then one "not obvious" winner in conjunction so it will seem Webtoons is judging fairly somewhat. But that's just my theory
I agree with you Zushi, they might throw in 1 or 2 more average comics to hide their dirty cheating ways and make it look like they were fair.
Even without all the promotion Lalin's curse deserve to get in the top 8. If Lalin's curse doesn't get into the top 8 I'll be really pissed.
If I remember correctly, The Badguys won the superhero contest.
Superhero contest result was:
1 The Badguys
2 Supersonic Girl
Unordinary and idk what the other one is
3 of those aren't Manhwa/Manga style and was quite an underdog back then? So Don't give up
Edit wait. I confused the 2nd sci-fi contest winner with the superhero one lol Also the past contests always had underdogs in the prizes.
Lol! Interesting, to see my comic on your friend's predictions, ofc sorted by "popularity". But I wanted to say that Webtoons didn't even promote my comic on recommended until like a few days before the deadline, and this when they were rotating a bunch of other contest entries too. I know it only got a lot of subs because I advertised it on my other main webtoon. There are a ton of really really great entries in the Epic category that I definitely think needed more attention. Even now, I'm still unsure who will win in this category because I can't place what WT is looking for/what their story criteria is.
I've personally read your series. Kudos to you, you pull off the action sequences really well. I do disagree with your claim, though, that being promoted later has a different effect from being promoted earlier. Last week was still well within the contest duration, and being featured on Recommended Titles still has the same pronounced effect on views/subscriptions and such. Also, the fact that you were promoted at all proves that you're part of Webtoon's consideration pool, so I wouldn't argue that things are as unsure as you say.
Ahh I wasn't claiming that me being promoted later was a different effect, I just wanted to point out that it's a case by case scenario. Any promotion in general is better than none, but I don't want people to feel like my subs were gained because of "Early official promotion" like some people are saying about other titles. It was mostly because I advertised it a bunch of times from my other webtoon, which already has a large following. And ofc it helped bring it up under the radar, no doubt about that. If they noticed that then I'm sure they will put that consideration in judging about the engagement. I just wish the best of luck to other titles because they really need to be seen too, I'm definitely rooting for some of the underdog ones
Having a webtoon with already a large following is the greatest advertisement one can get, I suppose. Lucky you I haven't gotten to reading your comic, yet, but the art seems nice from the first glance, so I am definitely going to. Good luck with the contest, too
As for the promotion thing, I got promoted, too, to my great surprised as at that time I had like 43 subs and therefore were somewhere far away on the popularity scale. It just means, however, that the Webtoon team really goes through all the submissions, which is great. It must be a lot of work
I really wish they didn't include audience engagement as a major part of the judging process.
:)) Then again, it's their contest.
Good luck to everyone!
Thanks so much! And congrats on the promotion There's really some great series I've noticed on the recommended reel, under 1k subs. The contest is really bringing out some of the best. I'm kinda all into that spirit, no matter if people think it's rigged or not 
I've had a lot of fun at least.
I have to disagree with you on that, what's the point in Webtoons featuring a comic that nobody likes, just because a few people at Webtoons HQ thinks it's good, doesn't mean that the average reader will also like it.
It would be a waste of time and money to try to shove a bad series down our throats
I could have worded it differently. As it stands, audience impact takes 40% of the judging.
(Side note: Lezhin's contest doesn't take into account audience engagement)
Usually, audience impact only accounts for 10-20% of the contestant's score, sometimes even lower. The judges who know more about the industry ultimately get to decide if your comic has what it takes.
Hmm. Iâm not a creator but even i could tell the competition was biased and unfair. Im obsessed w/ reading webtoons and read so many great contest entries (there are so many good ones who entered!!!) but i have to say some of the webtoons at the top of the list have a really mediocre story. Subs and views were just maximaised because of the heavy and biased promotion + amazing art. Now these webtoons are relatively easy to find; a webtoon with good art and a large audience can easily fool us readers into thinking that the story must be amazing as well.
These webtoons are still at a huge advantage despite having alright stories. Letâs consider a webtoon recieves a whopping 40% on the audience engagement criteria. However, lets say on genre specific attributes/pacing/clarity/strong narrative and characters, it recieves ..just a 35%. This webtoon would still have 75% overall!!
Now idk how theyâll judge the popularit ranking because it was DEFINITELY biased. They might make it relative to each webtoon (compring likes with own comments with own subs and own views) or they might make it linear where the webtoon with most subs has 40% and the webtoon with least has 0%. But this would be incredibly unfair. It says they judge âaudience engagementâ so i reckon they might judge it through interaction of readers thru comments and how often they return to that specific webtoon, and not by how popular it is. However popularity still helps achieving this, and this is where webtoon was too biased with some of the comics.
Letâs just imagine they do end up judging where the webtoon with most subs+comments+views has 40%
and the least has 0%. If a webtoon with 10k subs is compared with the one who has most (182k subs i belive.) it would recieve around 5% in the audience engagement criteria. Even if it scored 60% in the other part, the biased webtoons would still win.
By that logic you could also ask why are they allowing old discover comics( and their fanbase) as contest entries. I mean, there're many super popular webtoons on discover since months or even years ago, and they weren't picked as featured. Why would Line choose them now just for being in the contest, especially when they're looking for new stuff they didn't find on discover? It just doesn't make sense. It's probably just to generate more traffic at the cost of discover authors' fanbase, but they're not real options to win.
I think the underlying reason behind the contest was because they want those popular discover artists to make comics that align more with what they want in a featured artist. Essentially- they're not 100% in love with their original ideas(for whatever reason), but what could they make in the name of a contest geared toward getting featured? In other words, what do these already popular people think is gonna make them even more popular?
As well as it's a test to see which ones have fanbases that will follow them the creator regardless of what comic they make. My guess is they want a lucrative comic but even more they want a marketable creator.
Exactly, which brings again the topic about the unfair contest for newbies. Old discover entries and new artists are just filler.
There's a chance that webtoons may take that into account. I think the biggest thing is that it's hard to say how this contest will go purely because of the "engagement" factor. Also the fact that the entries have not been equally promoted. I followed some really excellent series which were promoted only to then not qualify for the contest as they didn't do enough episodes when there were others that had qualified but did not receive a look in.
All in all I will say that the opportunity has been good but the way it has been run has left some with a sour taste in their mouths.
I really think that this wouldhave been a great opportunity to promote older series on the site outside of the contest and allow the contest entries to compete a smidge more fairly.
