As you can see, I dragged my friends along on this one! (L-R: Kyra, moi, Lisbeth, Shannon, Bengi.) The idea was a live advertisement for the Somers' Bedstore in town. When I volunteered to help out, they suggested we hold an outdoor pyjama party to advertise their gorgeous new summer line of PJs and sheets. They even let me take the yellow dotty set home as a thankyou gift!
#2: Tom's Tech Support
Tom's Tech Support is a small local business near me, specialising in both hands-on and over-the-phone help with IT. I had to pop into Tom's when my laptop stopped working in the middle of a gigantic Graphics project, and he was more than helpful and had it up and running in less than a day - he even rescued all my files! The business is run by Tom and two understudies, with his wife on finances. I thought, what better way to show my appreciation than providing them with a new advert while building my portfolio at the same time. As usual, it was really fun dressing up, and even though they're not shown in the photo I had another excuse to wear my lovely white cowboys. You might be able to tell we went with a "Tron" theme, especially the textual parts (which I did myself!), cleverly (or so I think) inverting a lot of the colour relationships while sticking to the blue glowy effect. I hope you like!
ETA: Have now read the judge comments, and I think they're completely fair Thank you for being honest. I probably could have explained the second shot better, but it was hard in the character's own words. It was also the very first time I have ever used poses; I would have had a much easier time if we were allowed to "pose" from ingame animations as I'm more experienced with capturing a moment manually than with dealing with the mismatching face/body poses that are released. That said, I know that was not the point the judges were making and I believe all of your reasoning still stands.
ETA2: Please note that Round #2 Image #2 is intended to have been "inspired by" as opposed to "portraying" or "endorsed by" the film (as many small businesses do to get attention), and it is intended as entirely the creator (Ramona)'s thought process seeing as the story goes that she puts together all her pieces in this bizarre way. Will somebody please tell me if there's a problem with this? I can remove the reference if you're that bothered.
(Can't I add spoilers or make particular parts of my text smaller? I would have liked to avoid cluttering my contest post for the judges' sake, without doubleposting.)
I should really do Part #1 now (or some coursework), but all this Tron has put me in the mood to waste today on Audiosurf!