This is mostly an explanation for my friends but if you're a Pixiv user and wonder what exactly are those Pixiv Fantasia artworks you see on Pixiv, here's a little briefing on it for you. (And lol, I just realized my briefing weren't exactly that correct, narugami ;;)

You see a lot of "collaboration projects" on Pixiv and Pixiv user "arohaJ" can proudly say Pixiv Fantasia was one of the earliest collaboration projects to be invented on Pixiv that became very big. Check the 企画目録 tag and you'll notice that PF's "project catalog" is in the very last page, being bookmarked by more than 900 people.

How it works is that the project leader introduces a fantasy world with 3-5 countries in it (plus maybe some extra forces, as seen in PFII) and it's your job as an artist to create the inhabitants of any country of your choice. Each country has their own traits and specialties so the inhabitants you create will have to follow the traits of that country (like how one country is pretty much Asian while the other is full of wizards and witches and the other brings up magic knights, etc). The inhabitant (/artwork/submission) you create will eventually gain Views by passerbys, of course, so the amount of views your artwork gets will be the amount of "points" it has. The project leader will visit every submission in each country to count how many points each artwork has, and then accumulate those points to total into the country's points. So the main premise of the project is to see which country has the most amount of points in the end, and granted as the "winner".

This doesn't just go into one straight line, of course. There are story "events" sometimes that goes in limited periods so the character with the most points at the time would "find the 7 Legendary Orbs" or "beat the Giant Grungnir" or something funny like that. :P What's interesting is that some of these artists that have popular characters that make it into the "story" would always draw down a comic or something similar about it (for example, Maruco's Rokka beat the great Grumand and he got into the newspapers and this let his sister knows about his whereabouts, so Maruco made a "travel digest" for Rokka that connects this series of events) so it's nice to see how active artists are in joining the project. It's like an RPG in the form of artworks!

Not only that, as people play around, they also start to make their own guilds, unions or factions or blabla the list goes on, so this increases communication between the artists and their own characters with other artists/characters, thus also increasing the amount of artworks for the country they're in, therefor more points! But people don't care much about which country wins, anyway. The whole point is that if you love the fantasy genre and love creating OCs, you'd msot likely enjoy this project. If that's not enough for you, you can also "RP" your character through artworks/comics too! Or even more, you get to interact with other artists, maybe even your favourite artist! That, and your character might get into awesome group fanarts like this.

So, yeah, it's quite a fun project to watch. :) I didn't follow Pixiv Fantasia II too much besides what my fave artists made, but Pixiv Fantasia III just started today so I think I'm gonna try to follow it a bit more closely this time. Maybe even create a character and try to join it for the heck of it if I have the time.

And holy shit, after Kashiwa joined in yesterday, Rakuchii, Maruco and Usao joined in today!! XD Pretty much most of my fave artists are in now, so waiting for you now, Ebira-saaaaaaann!! Maruco recycled Rokka again but I like how Rocca can turn into his original adult self now YES!!! I'll be waiting for the fanarts, ﾊｧﾊｧ. Usao's Pirate King is pretty much Moon who isn't a NEET anymore XDDDD てかCVカオスｗｗｗｗ

LOL, and for honorable mentions:
A guy(?) who got turned into an orb
How cute! Portable library! XD

References:

arohaJ's account, for concept art and info on the project and countries (there's even a world map!)

the country scores as of April 1st 2009:

Country	Submission Count	Total Country Strength (Score)
Windrant	1698	793626
Gigandal	1551	662299
Akatsuhara	1431	529683

current ongoing Event as of April 1st 2009:
ヴルツホルン開戦 - Windrant (score: 56266; 186 submissions) VS Gigandal (score: 65598; 205 submissions)
風見鶏の戦い - Windrant (score: 22730; 77 submissions) VS Akatsuhara (score: 38146; 91 submissions)
ベイダオ北領戦 - Gigandal (score: 39462; 125 submissions) VS Akatsuhara (score: 46601; 166 submissions)
Akatsuhara's winning, whohoo! Just still not winning in overall scores. ww

This event ends on April 5th 2009.

Also, arohaJ has confirmed that the guy on the middle far left of Gigandal's concept art is indeed Gilliam from Pixiv Fantasia II. OMGGGGG GILLIAAAAAAMMM OKAERRRIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!!!1111 I wish this means Michael would make a cameo too... ;A; As celebration of this comeback, have this awesome Gilliam fanart!



Sorry that I still haven't replied a bunch of comments. ;; This may take a while...

EDITTED @ April 1st 2009
Updated again on PF3's current events.

EDITTED @ April 23rd 2009
Not gonna update on the latest events anymore, if you haven't noticed. Anyway, for those who are curious about each country's description, ultra_butterfly made a neat write-up on them here. :D