The Lab has entered into the spirit of New Year with an avatar makeover competition with a L$5000 first prize, plus runners-up prizes.

The announcement reads, in part:

An Image is Worth a thousand words – and sometimes it can be worth L$5000, too! Out with the old and in with the new – show off your dramatic Second Life makeovers with a before-and-after picture that highlights a new look you will be rocking this year in Second Life. There will be one grand prize winner (L$5000) and three runners-up (L$1000 each). Think of all the shopping you can do with that kind of allowance!

And goes on:

How to participate: Take a before and after image of your virtual makeover. It’s as easy as taking your before snapshot and placing it on a prim, then stand in front of it with your new look and taking another snapshot, or stitching together two images – one of you before your Second Life makeover, and one after. Save the image to your computer so you can upload your submission for the contest. Keep an eye out for the contest to go live in the People Forum.

The winners will be on the basis of popular voting by users – with only one vote per avatar. Entries will be available for viewing from today through to the 18th January.

Those wishing to enter need to visit the “New Year, New You!” Picture Contest Wiki page. There’s also a link to the Knowledge Base article on taking good snapshots in SL.

…such a shame I completed my make-over in 2010; ah well, I can still be self-indulgent and publish a “before” and “after” set of pictures!

IMPORTANT NOTE

Several people have IM’d me (and one has commented here) that they’ve been unable to submit entries, as the NEW ENTRY button on the contest pages is greyed-out, and they get a message “Sorry, you do not have permission to post media to this contest”.

If this happens to you, you need to sign-in to the forum pages (user name and password), using the link at the top right of the page (see below).

Once you’ve logged-in, the button will be enabled, and you should be able to post your entry.