Disappointig is the fact, that this person should be a man.
Why not a human? Man, woman, trans, anything you see…
Times are changing 
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This is completely sad and disrespectful to the people who submitted original art and took time and care for their creations.
It sounds like total amateurism from WPD staff not to do a double-check to see if this artwork had been published before.
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OMG! It’s very shameful! Did she think no one would find out?
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aight!
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Hi everyone! First time posting, relatively new to postcrossing.
I was so disappointed this year because I was unable to get my submission in on time. I was traveling and pushed my luck, working on the illustration until the last few minutes, but my spotty connection while traveling made it impossible to upload the file & the form before it closed. I did send it in via email a couple of minutes after, but was told it would be unfair for those that submitted in time. Glad to see they’re taking the plagiarism seriously for the winning entry. That’s definitely not fair to everyone who worked so hard. Anyways, here’s what would have been my entry for this year, I hope I can get it right next year!
(EDIT) Thanks everyone for the lovely response! I am so happy to know y’all love the design. I’ve made a full downloadable pack with my designed back available on my Ko-fi page. It’s free if you wish, and includes image-only and crop-marked versions. You can download it here: https://ko-fi.com/s/9d9f2cc590
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OMG! If I were a juror, I would vote for this postcard. I love rabbits and ducks.
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Thank you so much!
That image should be the right size/dpi for print, feel free to use it! I will be updating my design for last year and making it available as well. I learned about the contest after the winner was announced last year and made my own design outside of the theme.
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Beautiful work! 
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wow so much love in this card. Might consider priniting it too ^^ What do you want to be written on the back side as copyright? Only your forum name?
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That is a fabulous design! I can still not get over the choice they made, even without the plagiarism, so maybe your design was the actual winner, if you would have been able to be on time. I love it!
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That would be great! I will be making my own custom back for it soon and make it available on my website to download along with my design for last year. I can post an update here when it’s ready.
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Not that I love the winning design, but stock art is meant to be used by graphic designers in precisely this way. If she had submitted the vector art without any changes, then that would be plagiarism.
I’d argue that the rules for “original works” are vague enough where the entrant would classify her modifications as original. Lazy? Sure. Plagiarism? No. The judges need to make clear whether stock art is allowed.
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I wonder if the judges chose this year’s (temporary?) winner as it is a very different style from the previous two. Perhaps they wanted to avoid giving the impression that a certain design style or art style has a higher chance of winning?
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The problem is this:
When licensing an image you may have the rights to use it and modify it, even sell it, but rarely do you get the permission to transfer rights. This would disqualify the image even though it is slightly modified.
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I really like your postcard, such a kind and cute design. I would be glad to receive and send such a postcard, it is pleasant and positive emotions. 
Thank you for sharing your work.
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This one would from @gibbigabs be much better than the winner. Congrats to you, we were so unlucky that you couldn’t submitted on time.
I didn’t submit mine to the contest this year, and as I’m going to travel to participate in a WPD meeting in another state of Brazil than the city where I live, I made some changes in the design to fit to my special participation and I will print as special postcard to celebrate with the participants of the meeting.
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It is semantics but you are right. I used the word because others already did, but a better word would be - in this case - at least: unoriginal. I am not a digital artist, but looking at those two images side by side, it is literally completely the same, some colour changes and some little add-ons, emptying the background. How much time did it take her? Mine took me hours and some others here in this timeline by the look of it also, if not more than some.
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Yup, I was addressing the p-word elephant. Thanks to @gibbigabs to pointing out the transfer issue.
Regardless of the legal intricacies, it’s clear to me many commenters subliminally picked up on the missing “soul” vs. the other creative examples on this thread. And now we know why – because so much of it was started off by some other artist with no apparent ties to PC.
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In the initial rules they mention
“CONTEST GOAL
The World Postcard Day Design Contest is an initiative of Postcrossing. Its goal is to simultaneously promote the creation of original illustrations or graphic compositions in postcard format, and also to highlight postcards as a creative visual canvas.”
So, graphic compositions are allowed, but they don’t explain too much and that’s the problem… Collages are also a new art when you create a new design using it in your way.
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It’s beautiful
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