✨WINNERS✨ -🎨 Event - MoonToon Trails: Create your Best - 3.333 Followers

With the conclusion of the recent SideQuest Week, I want to launch another event right on its heels!

During the SideQuest, the 🐻 MoonArt Cauldron Mix (SDXL) checkpoint was the star of the show — understandably so, since 99% of the challenges focused on SDXL. But this left the 🐻 MoonToon Mix (Illustrious) feeling a bit neglected.

It’s time to fix that — and now’s the perfect moment to spotlight it, since 🐻 MoonToon remains available for OnSide generation until 🗓 July 17th, 2025 – 23:59:59 UTC.

🎉 This Is Also a Thank You Event

On July 10th, 2025 at 00:13 UTC, I reached 3,333 followers on CivitAI.
Even if I’m a few days late due to the SideQuest chaos, I want to say it loud and clear:

THANK YOU SO MUCH to everyone supporting and following me! 💜
This event is my little way of giving something back.

✨ What This Event Is About

This is a Moon Tournament – Category 3 event. (More on that below under 🌙 Moon Tournament Points.)

Let’s be clear:
I’m not looking for your everyday waifu/anime portraits — we see plenty of those already and this challenge is meant to go beyond the expected.

I want to see:

Unusual but beautiful concepts
Aesthetic, imaginative creations
One image, a thousand stories — let the viewer’s mind explode with interpretations
Art that makes people say: “Wait… THAT was made with Illustrious?”

Here are some examples that capture the kind of energy and vision I’m looking for:

🔗 Example 1
🔗 Example 2
🔗 Example 3
🔗 Example 4
🔗 Example 5
🔗 Example 6
🔗 Example 7
🔗 Example 8
🔗 Example 9
🔗 Example 10

These are just examples — not the limit.
Surprise me. Inspire me. Show me something even more extraordinary.

❌ I do not want to see:

Low effort
- Five nearly identical images with only minor pose or angle variations
- Clear remixes with no meaningful changes to the prompt or settings
- Obvious technical flaws (e.g., blurry eyes, broken limbs, watermarks, compression artifacts)
- Overexposed, overlit or corrupted images (unless clearly intentional and part of the concept)
Clear signs of botting or multi-account abuse — will result in a permanent ban from my events by simple blocking that user
- The same applies to repeated trolling by excessive low-effort submissions for example
Images that go beyond PG/PG-13 ratings (see rating note below)
Basic waifu/anime/manga pics without a WOW factor
Anything that violates CivitAI’s TOS

For clarity, here’s a post (created specifically for this event) showing what not to do:
🔗 Don’ts Examples (Comments on the Images)

Note: There’s no X or XXX-rated material in these examples — just low-effort, Clear R-rating or thematically/quality-off submissions meant to show what not to enter.

🗓 Event Structure

🔹 Phase 1: Submission Phase

🧵 Submit up to 5 images by commenting your links (just like in the SideQuest)
- There is a comment from me (first or second comment):
  "Entries section – Post your image links as "Reply" (link to the image, not the post!) - Phase 1" - This is the section where you submit your entries
🚨 All entries must use the 🐻 MoonToon Mix checkpoint
🧩 Any LoRAs allowed, prompts can be hidden (see Judging & Outcome below!)
⏰ Deadline: Wednesday, July 16th, 2025 – 12:00 UTC

🔹 Phase 2: Collection Phase

Starting Wednesday at 12:00 UTC, I’ll begin reviewing submissions
Accepted images will be added to the event collection
If a submission doesn’t meet requirements, I’ll reply with a "rejection" under your comment, with the rejected image link/number
❗ You can then replace rejected entries only once until the end of the event:
⏳ July 17th, 2025 – 23:59:59 UTC
- Accepted images cannot be replaced, as allowing replacements would greatly increase the workload. Therefore, please choose your submissions carefully.
- Example: If two images are rejected, you may submit two replacements — these replacements are final. No further replacements after that.
If you did not fill all 5 image slots in Phase 1, you may fill these slots during Phase 2, but you won’t get extra rejection replacements for them.
Final: Each user can have up to 5 images in the official collection.

🔸 Rating Requirements

All submitted images must be PG or PG-13.

Anything rated above PG-13 will be rejected
However: CivitAI’s auto-rating system is far from perfect
→ If you believe a misrated image should qualify, you can still submit it
→ I will personally evaluate all borderline cases before the end of Phase 1
→ If it clearly exceeds PG-13, I’ll reject it

🏆 Judging & Outcome

After the deadline, I’ll begin evaluating all final submissions.

The review period may take up to 1 week (depending on volume)
Any delays or updates will be posted as comments or edits to this article
In some rare cases, I might contact users privately to confirm generation data (totally optional unless you’re contacted)

✅ You can also optionally set your generation info to public — but this is not required for entry.

💡 Important Note:
This event will not be judged by AI or automated systems.
All submissions will be reviewed personally by me, with the help of a small panel consisting of friends, artists, media designers and creative professionals I trust.

🏅 Prizes & Rewards

The top 3 entries of The MoonToon Trials will receive the following:

🥇 1st Place – 3,333 Buzz + Moon Tournament Points
🥈 2nd Place – 2,222 Buzz + Moon Tournament Points
🥉 3rd Place – 1,111 Buzz + Moon Tournament Points

🎖 Honorable Mentions
Up to 10 additional participants will be handpicked for special recognition. These entries will receive:

Up to 250 Buzz each (depending on the piece and final review)
Moon Tournament Points (exact value TBD, will be explained in the upcoming Tournament Article)

🏆 All tournament points — including those for Honorable Mentions — will count toward the Moon Tournament Season Ranking, with full breakdowns and scores to be published in the dedicated Tournament overview article.

🌙 Introducing: Moon Tournament Points

Starting with this event — and retroactively applied to past events I’ve hosted — I’m launching the Moon Tournament Point System.

A dedicated article will explain the full rules and retroactive points — it will go live within the next few days or at the latest alongside this event’s winner announcement.

The system is season-based
Events are classified by difficulty and effort into:
- Category 1 = Low point potential
- Category 2 = Medium
- Category 3 = High (this event is Cat 3)
At the end of each season:
- The Top 3 scorers will receive additional rewards
- The #1 scorer will receive a Featured Image slot on the CivitAI homepage —
  👉 personally sponsored over the Get Featured form
  (⚠️not an official CivitAI prize⚠️)

❓ Why Not a Bounty Event?

Because honestly…
I don’t like the current Bounties system. 😅

Here’s why I prefer article-based community events:

Better visibility and flexibility
Easier uploads
More creative structure for multi-phase formats
I can curate collections — something that’s impossible with Bounties without duplicate uploads

So yeah — this stays old school. And better for it. 😊

📰 Coming Soon: Biweekly Moonbear News Articles

Once this event wraps up, I’ll begin publishing a biweekly news series.

Every 2 weeks, I’ll post an article that includes:

🧭 What I’ve been working on recently
🖼️ Image and creator spotlights
(not always mine! Although there is always at least one of mine^^)
🔍 Event teasers, plans and future updates
🧠 A Tips & Tricks section:
- Prompting ideas
- LoRA/model gems
- Daily Challenge tips
- Useful CivitAI features
- Or just a tool/model I discovered and found amazing

✅ Each edition will feature at least one tip — big or small

📅 The first news post will be announced in the info banner on my CivitAI profile as soon as I have a schedule: 👉 https://civitai.com/user/Moonbear_AIArt

Let’s see what this community can create when we step off the beaten path.
Surprise me. Inspire me. Show me what MoonToon is really capable of!

🎉 Let’s go!

Create, have fun & earn that Buzz!
Moonbear 🐻🐾

🐻 MoonToon Trails – Final Collection Pool

A huge thank you to everyone who joined MoonToon Trails and shared their creativity with the community!
We had 25 participants and in total, 84 images made it into the official collection.
Below you’ll find all participating users and the images that made it into the official collection. This is the pool from which winners and honorable mentions will be selected — decisions will be announced sometime next week. 🏆

Ouinche

🚫

Fafnir

🔗 https://civitai.com/images/88475116
🔗 https://civitai.com/images/88475114
🔗 https://civitai.com/images/88194324
🔗 https://civitai.com/images/88828544
🔗 https://civitai.com/images/88749833

Colorblind_Duck

🔗 https://civitai.com/images/88553303
🔗 https://civitai.com/images/88555709
🔗 https://civitai.com/images/88555725
🔗 https://civitai.com/images/88677734
🔗 https://civitai.com/images/88677755

Ghostajo

🔗 https://civitai.com/images/88487845
🔗 https://civitai.com/images/88469731
🔗 https://civitai.com/images/88571665
🔗 https://civitai.com/images/88485103

RVZX4649

🔗 https://civitai.com/images/88580236
🔗 https://civitai.com/images/88569251
🔗 https://civitai.com/images/88580306
🔗 https://civitai.com/images/88569372
🔗 https://civitai.com/images/88580055

Takec5031

🔗 https://civitai.com/images/88594633
🔗 https://civitai.com/images/88594637
🔗 https://civitai.com/images/88594636

NkGord0

🚫

tigerpiotta

🔗 https://civitai.com/images/88243259

MisterioM

🔗 https://civitai.com/images/88682211
🔗 https://civitai.com/images/88682205

AISLR

🔗 https://civitai.com/images/88684334
🔗 https://civitai.com/images/88872580

Mittows

🔗 https://civitai.com/images/88826722
🔗 https://civitai.com/images/88826795
🔗 https://civitai.com/images/88826805

Moritanik

🔗 https://civitai.com/images/88853346

🏆 MoonToon Trails – Winners Announcement

That was a tough one — seriously.
You all absolutely crushed it and I mean that from the bottom of my heart.
THANK YOU for pouring so much creativity, care and energy into this event! 💛

Before we reveal the winners, here’s a quick look at how the judging process worked:

I was responsible only for selecting which images made it into the final collection.
The actual ranking was done by a jury of four people:
Three professionals from the fields of IT, design and art — and one complete outsider.

Each of them judged independently on my computer, without seeing each other’s picks or rankings.
They opened their favorites in tabs, filtered for unique users and narrowed it down to 13 images.
Then they arranged their chosen images in order of preference.
Each judge did this individually and based on those rankings, an internal scoring was created — which ultimately shaped the final list of winners.

I was present for every session — not as a judge, but to answer questions and quietly observe how people reacted to the different artworks.

And I can tell you this:

YOU BLEW THEM AWAY! 😱🔥
The shortest session took 45 minutes – and the longest?
No joke: over 3.5 hours! 😅

🥇 The Winners of MoonToon Trails

1. tehalex86 – Image – 3333 Buzz

2. Semikey – Image – 2222 Buzz

3. 2N3055 – Image – 1111 Buzz

🎖️ Honorable Mentions

stephandroid – Image – 250 Buzz
RVZX4649 – Image – 200 Buzz
rickenhausen834 – Image – 150 Buzz
Colorblind_Duck – Image – 150 Buzz
Fafnir – Image – 150 Buzz
Darness92 – Image – 100 Buzz
Argiop33 – Image – 100 Buzz
Ghostajo – Image – 100 Buzz
TxMcl – Image – 100 Buzz
ScratchyStar – Image – 50 Buzz

✨ Special Mention

A huge shoutout to Semikey.
Not only did you make it into the collection with all five of your images —
you were the only user who had every single image appear in every judge’s shortlist during the review sessions.

Even though it didn’t result in first place, this absolutely deserves recognition.
That level of consistency and quality is something truly special. 🙌💫

Note: I haven’t finished the Moon Tournament Points article yet. The points you’ve earned will be awarded retroactively as soon as that article is published.