Haven’t heard of AFL – AngelCrusher’s Fighting League? Educate yourself be clicking the links to past AFL tournaments with links of over 700 fights over the past 2 tournaments. Also see who is in the running for AFL3, and sign-up yourself!

AFL1- [link]
AFL2- [link]
AFL3- [link]

It’s that time again for everyone’s favourite OC Fighting Tournament, AFL! Known across dA as ‘AngelCrusher’s Fighting League!’ This is the 3rd tournament and I expect it to be even bigger and better than our previous events! To keep AFL fresh and interesting, I will be using a new system for which you will do battle. AFL is still recruiting fighters up until January 31st. By then you will have to present to me a link to a reference picture of your original character, as well as producing an Invitation Submission dedicating your character to the tournament. This piece will simply be your character receiving an invite to AFL, whether it be a letter, a secret meeting, or a physical test, be creative. So let’s get on with the new rules.

System
Previous AFL tournaments have featured random battles and a group system that had structured battles. What if we combined the two for random group battles? Gone are the 6 groups phase, and hello to a mere 4 groups! What does this mean? More chance of random encounters, and more people qualifying from the groups. Whereas AFL2 saw only the top fighter with the most wins qualifying to the semi-finals, AFL3 will see the top 2 fighters go into a quarter final stage, resulting in 8 quarter finalist from the 4 groups. No fighter is eliminated if they lose a fight, they still continue to fight up to the maximum fight limit. Fighters are only eliminated after all fights have taken place and the top two fighters from each group go on to the next stage. From the quarter finals onwards, it becomes a knock-out tournament where if you lose, you are out.

Fights
AFL2 saw people frantically competing in 10 gruelling fights over the course of 1 month. This it seems was a little too much, so now AFL3 will take place over a 2 month period, to give more time for fighters to finish their maximum amount of fights, and to ensure that you try your best, improve your art and your fight pics working on quality as well as quantity. Currently with the amount of fighters in the groups, it would be fairer if the maximum fight limit be brought to 8. This works out a fight a week if you want to pace yourselves. Fights are randomly selected by myself. Once you finish one fight, I will randomly select your next opponent until you have reached your fight limit. It is still early days however with 75 fighters signed up. If the numbers reach closer to 90, then a 10 fight maximum limit will be introduced.
You can do literally anything in your fights, limited only by your imagination, and your environment, which will be explained later. The only rule for fights is 1 submission per fight. It can be a comic page, a single image or an animation, but it must be submitted as 1 deviation to reduce times of chasing up images and scrolling through lots of links. Since all fights are being taking over the course of 2 months, the deadline will be March 31st, with the quarter-finals expected to take place immediately on April 1st. However, if fights are concluded before much before March 31st, we can start the quarter finals early.

Judges
There will be a panel of 5 judges opposed to 3 in AFL2. I am always looking for more judges, so if you are on dA daily and can be impartial, then please apply for a role. Judges will give their opinion on a winner based on creativity, originality and effort. The judges relay their verdicts to me and I tally the votes. In the group stages, if numerous fighters are drawn in their scores, for example two fighters are joint second with 6 wins, then I will consult the judges on their opinion on who they would like to see qualify. The fighter with the most votes will then go through to the quarter-finals, to save time of a grudge match to see who would go through.

Arena Battles
As stated previously in the fight section, you will be limited by your fighting environment. This is simply to make each fight relatively consistent between the two competing fighters, and also challenges the artist to become creative in their given environment. There will be no visual reference to stick to so that you can still use creativity, there will just be an outline guide of the new arena. It will then be up to the artist to include this in their fight. Although huge amounts of detail will not be necessary, the artist can just imply the environment with a few props perhaps. Judges will be asked to consider the creativity of the environments when they are presenting their results. Anyone can draw someone punching another person in the face and just change the background, so try to incorporate the scene into your scenario. The different arenas will be announced either when AFL3 begins, or shortly before. Each fighter will randomly be generated an arena.

The Prize
Having 1 month dedicated to the winner as their character will be subject to the monthly theme where everyone will draw that character. I also hope to ask some dA admin possibly getting some subscriptions donated if its possible due to the amount of attention AFL gets and how good it is for the community. There is also the silly wrestling match-up where I will make the character in Smackdown Vs Raw and record the fight of the winner vs AngelCrusher or previous AFL winners. There is also a secret prize from myself which will be done when it is done. Previous prizes for AFL 1 & 2 winners are still being worked on and I just need to find time to really commit to it. If anyone would like to sponsor AFL and donate a prize, money or subscriptions, feel free to note me. Any sponsors will feature in the journal, for example: AFL is sponsored by

Hosting
AFL will still be hosted by myself under the AngelCrusher account rather than opening a new account and using it as a club. Reason for this is that I don't want to pay for a new subscription for something that will only be used for about 3 months a year. In 2009, AFL will only occur once to avoid annoying people with too much fighting. Instead my AngelCrusher account will be converted into an AFL account during the 3 months, with new icons and a new CSS hopefully. I suck at those things, but it would look much better and like a club if I do it this way.


That’s all the information I will give for now. If you’re interested, by all means get in touch and sign up your character in dA’s most explosive and frantic OC fighting tournament.