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Greetings S4 Leaguers,

Welcome to the first issue of the Monthly Netsphere!

Every month from now on, you will find content from our team over in Aeria Games, from our GS and even from you! Your feedback will have great importance in the continu-ation and expansion of the news-paper, so please let us know if you liked it or how we can improve it!

As this is our test flight, we’re going a bit easy, but still packed! You will find an interview with one of the commentators of our community, a behind the scenes look at our draw-ing contests&latest winners and a two page comic strip!

We have so much planned for you for the coming months and we are really excited to present you more in the coming months. Once again, we’re looking forward to hearing your feedback!

Now, without further ado, I present you the Monthly Netsphere #1!

-Your scoundrel editor, Karasakal

CONTENT:

4 Behind the curtain

8 Interview with Contagious

10 Bubble’s Bubble

Thanks to: Bubblespoof, [GS]Kitsune, [GS]Hatsukoi, S4 League Team, Aeria Games Design Team.

Profile Art by Bubblespoof

s4league.aeriagames.com

facebook.com/S4LWestern

twitter.com/s4league

Twitch.tv/s4League

dA official: s4l-artworks.deviantart.com

dA group: s4league-artworks.deviantart.com

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Behind the curtain:

ART CONTESTS

TAKE A GLIMPSE AT THE EVENTS

FROM THE OTHER SIDE

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T The most vital component to holding an art commu-nity together is passion, something you can not buy, sell, or force.

And in S4 League, we have a thriving group of people that amaze us at every turn!To support this beautiful, passionate community, we’ve been running events and awarding our artists regularly. In fact, we can no longer imag-ine any holiday or special occa-sion without an art contest!

The first step in the journey is to decide the theme. Our lovely art leader GM Tully usually comes up with a cool concept that she shares with the rest of the GM team and we finalize it together. Once approved by our dear Prod-uct Manager, we prepare the texts, graphics, and transla-tions for each language so ev-erything is ready to be posted when the time comes.Typically these contests are run in our forums. Once the deadline is up, we collect all the entries and, if necessary, remove pictures that don’t follow the rules. Our awe-some GS team often provides assistance in this effort.

After that, we use a very com-plicated, hi-tech system (...online spreadsheets) to vote for all the participants. So, ev-ery single GM sees the hard-work put in every single piece of art and we sincerely love it! We laugh together when it’s a funny picture, giggle at a stickman drawn to get the participation reward or roll over to each other’s desks to appreciate the jaw-dropping pieces!

Winners of “It’s Pumpkin Time” Contest:

p. 4: 1st Place - Wiki234

p.5: 2nd Place - Bubblespoof

p.6: 3d Place - MaGeXPP

p.7: Honorable Mention - Gaalen1

p.8: Honorable Mention - Ozzuu

“we can no longer imagine any holiday or special occasion without an art contest!”

“To celebrate more of the brilliant art that we receive, we recently added the Honorable Mentions category.”

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While it’s impossible for all of us to be physically together, during the voting sessions we feel really close to all our artists.However, it can be really chal-lenging to choose between all the great drawings. To cele-brate more of the brilliant art that we receive, we recently added the Honorable Men-tions category to our list, re-warding and promoting more artists per event!Once the votes are in and choices are finalized, we send the rewards and announce the winners. Of course, sometimes things just don’t go as planned, like

with our recent Halloween event. We voted for our initial set of winners, only to discov-er that the first place partici-pant had not follow the rules!

Thanks to the proof presented by our dedicated community, we were able to re-announce our list of winners, the art of whom you can see in these pages.

We are really inspired by our community’s passion, talent, and brilliance and will keep doing our best to improve and expand our efforts. Our deviantArt page&group are available to all and constant-ly being improved, we have plans to make sure both traditional and digital artists feel welcome. And of cource we’re doing our best to listen to your feedback!So thank you for being with us, keep up the awesome work, keep giving us your feedback, and let us share our passion together!

“We are really inspired by our community’s passion, talent, and brilliance...”

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Interview with

CONTAGIOUSHave you ever wondered what it’s like to be a commentator or a streamer? Awesomely enough, we had the chance to interview some familiar names you might recognize. In this issue, you’ll find the answers to our questions from none other than the notorious Contagious.

Q1: How long have you been commen-tating S4 League?Q1: A long time actually, despite it not being hugely popular even for S4 stan-dards, I was commentating personally for a friend’s clan, to help them improve. Then I did some S5 (Now S4 Source) tour-naments such as the World Cup. I can’t give an exact date, maybe early 2014? Perhaps.

Q2: What is it like being a commenta-tor?Q2: It’s great, actually, hard, and de-manding at times but fun. Really. It’s good to actually be thought of as en-tertaining it makes me happy, honestly. I miss doing it, and wish I could more often. It’s a lot of pressure though, you have to be ready and prepared to sit there and just imagine yourself talking in front of an audience, you can’t really go quiet, you NEED to talk, be interesting, say relevant things, it’s a lot harder than people give it credit for.

Q3: Do you have any stories or experi-ences to share?Q3: Not really. Most of my moments were with the same audience such as SuperSonic, and Exodus. Oh, but I did sing “Let it Go” during the World Cup finals I believe. Sung the entire thing too

if I recall correctly, not even sure If the music was playing for the stream, I was just bored of waiting and said “Let’s sing Let it Go” and did. lol. Looking back I’m sure I looked foolish and probably em-barrassed myself beyond belief, but hell I had fun.

Q4: Are there any tips you would give to someone interested in becoming a commentator?Q4: Like I said, you can’t go quiet. You need to always come off as a very smart and experienced player, but also as an outgoing likeable person. Robotically stating everything play-for-play isn’t correct, but going off topic and not discussing anything relevant for too long is bad. Find a right balance. Solo commentary is a lot harder than duo commentary, but you need another good mouth to provide banter and tips and such about the game. I could go on but I’d rather not rant.

Q5: Is there anything you would like to add?Q5: Not really to be honest, I’m com-mentating the upcoming tournament Leviticus, so I’m quite excited to finally be back to doing what I enjoy. Thanks for reaching out and hope I answered the questions well enough.

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