Introduction

Palette Battle League (PBL) is a long standing contest format on Planet Minecraft. Since its inception, the community has used forum threads to run polls to determine the outcome of a skin battle.

These polls are a core part of SSPBL and are taken very seriously. Before proceeding with this guide, here are our core values with these polls:

1. Integrity
   We have a strict policy against any form of cheating in SSPBL. These contests and the polls are supposed to be fun.
   Attempting to manipulate the poll outcomes will result in a ban from entering SSPBL.
   
   
2. Quality
   Your opponent in the poll likely tried just as hard as you to make a good skin. The quality of how you present both your skin and your opponents skin in the poll is very important to gaining balanced votes.
   Always present your opponent in the best light possible.
   
   
3. Sportsmanship
   SSPBL places great emphasis on being a contest that places fun first, competition second. When creating the poll, commenting on the poll, or talking to your opponent afterwards, always remember that SSPBL is about pushing everyone's individual skinning talents and skills. It is not about proving who is better. It is giving the community an opportunity to vote for which skin they liked the most.
   By creating a competitive edge using a bracket system, we push the skin artists even further to do the best job they possibly can with a limited color palette.
   It is never about winning a poll, it is about getting better.

Guide

The community posts their SSPBL polls in 2 locations in the forums.

Either the PMC > Events section.
Or the Communities > Skinning section.
We have no restrictions on where the poll should be posted.

Choose one of the above links. At the top of the page, under your exp bar you will see a button that says "Start Topic". Click this to start creating a new forum thread.
If you can not find this button, use one of the below links:
https://www.planetminecraft.com/forums/pmc/events/new/
https://www.planetminecraft.com/forums/communities/skinning/new/

Title

The title should include your contestant's name first, and then your name. For example: Bubz vs. Zitzabis
Following this, you should include information on what contest it belongs to, what season and what week.
The full title would appear as this:

Bubz vs. Zitzabis (SSPBL S4 W1)

Body

The body of the forum thread is where you will include:

• previews of the skins
• the skin title
• the artist who made the skin
• a link to the skin submission

Reveal the following spoiler to access a template for how a poll should be laid out. You are welcome to modify it to fit your needs, but it contains the core elements for a poll.

Please make sure you use the @ symbol and tag the SSPBL group along with all the participants in your poll. This allows the SSPBL staff to be notified of your poll creation, along with your competitors so they don't accidently make a duplicate poll.
To use the tagging system, type @ and a little pop up will display. Continue to type the username and once you have found the right user, click the profile or press Space.



A 3D preview is optional but highly recommended. There are a lot of skins that do not look their best in the 2D preview image. Including a 3D preview as a GIF helps present the skins at their fullest without requiring the user to click on the submission link to view it in 3D.
A guide for creating these 3D preview GIFs has been included below:
https://www.planetminecraft.com/blog/rotating-skin-previewer-tutorial/

Poll

To enable the poll feature on the forum thread, scroll to the bottom of the page and select the "Add Poll" option.
Add the skin titles under the Poll Options section. Each option needs to be on its own new line.

Be sure to also hide the poll results. The length for how long the poll should run will change towards the end of the season. To begin, just set it to run for 1 day.

Tips

To get the image links for the 2D preview, go to the skin submission and right click the preview image on the right. Select "Copy Image Address" to copy the image URL to your clipboard.
Use this URL to insert an image using the forum thread text editor.