Another year has come to a close, so here are the winners of our annual contributor contests! A quickie correction: we've mentioned a couple times that this is the "tenth annual" polling, but that just refers to the Fan Project of the Year question. The Web Site of the Year award has been around for twelve years now.
Here are the picks for 2010!
The 2010 Fan Project of the Year is Astro Commander's Mini Models! Astro's adventure started later in the year when he came to the CIC looking for information on how to obtain physical Wing Commander ships. After learning there was no readily available source, he got busy and found his own way to make this happen! Work started with 3D models and then a rapid prototyping service was found to "print" the ships in plastic/resin. The designs were made available for others to purchase at cost, and Astro's own airbrushed craft are gorgeous. A massive fleet of ships is now available.
The runner up for Fan Project of the Year is sol_hsa's DirectDrawHack. The project began as a simple graphical tweak to WC1 in Kilrathi Saga, but it soon grew to encompass all of the Kilrathi Saga, the Windows edition of Wing Commander 4 and the PC Gamer WC1 Release.. Several different graphics-enhancing options were developed, and the patch even fixes some harrowing bugs and compatibility issues. Finally, the source code and debug tools were posted online for all to continue troubleshooting and expanding the program's features in the future.
The 2010 Web Site of the Year is Paper Commander! The site had clever and crafty releases in the beginning, middle and end of the year, and new 2011 designs are already coming out. One of the most impressive things is always the breadth of the Wing Commander series that the site covers. Rather than focus on any one game or timeframe, Paper Commander hits everything from Wing Commander 1 to Wing Commander Arena, with ships even coming from Super Wing Commander and Armada! And anyone with a printer can start building now!
The runner up for Web Site of the Year is Frontier - Prelude to Darkness! While the story and setting itself is an original creation, the style and character of the fan movie are heavily inspired by Wing Commander. Many WC fans voice a variety of characters and make suggestions on how the serial will evolve. The project's website is particularly attentive to fans with frequent status updates, questions for its fans and behind-the-scenes features posted regularly.
Congrats to all the winners! Every nominee received numerous votes and brought much credit to the community over the last year. Thank you all for the hard work, and here's looking forward to a fantastic 2011!
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