Pixiv - Characteristics - Formal Events

Formal Events

Formal events are periodically held on Pixiv to gather participation in formal events revolving around a common theme depending on the time of year; these events revolve around the user-submitted artwork. Throughout the year, seasonal events occur, such as tie-ins with the holidays Halloween, Christmas, New Years, and Tanabata. For a fixed period of time, a section of the website is dedicated to these seasonal submissions, and aspects of the website such as the logo design and star-rating system are altered; for example, the stars are pumpkins during the Halloween-tie in event. On and thereafter the Tanabata event in mid 2008, prizes are offered by either sponsors or from Pixiv itself for participants in the event whose art proves to be popular with the community. Other than during seasonal events, sponsors can also work with Pixiv on PR events, again offering prizes to the users with the most popular works. Pixiv has held an event called "Doodle 4 Pixiv", an event inspired by Google's Doodle4Google competition where participating members take the Pixiv logo and modify it in some way.

Before the Comiket 73 convention in December 2007, users set up a "Pixiv Edition C73 Catalog" on the website via the tags on the images, and following this Pixiv began setting up a section of the website for members participating at Comiket starting in preparation for Comiket 74 in August 2008. This enables users to search through a catalog by dōjin circles and by username which also includes information on where in the convention center a user's circle is located. Along the same lines, due to the high level of Touhou Project fan art contributions to the website (about 3.9% of all submissions), Pixiv also sets up a similar catalog for the annual Reitaisai Touhou convention.