Last month I announced an impromptu contest to see who could come up with the best interpretation of the Firefox 3 Beta 2 ‘robot’ artwork. I have to say, I was both surprised by and impressed with the volume and creativity of your comments. There were certainly a lot of great ones.

It took me a little longer than planned to determine the winners, but I’m pleased to report that after much careful deliberation, I have the results. Before I go any further, though, let me make it clear that these are not the “right” answers. There is no single “right” answer…it’s all just a matter of highly subjective interpretation, and these were the three that struck me the most (and won the t-shirts).

The “Extremely Thorough Analysis” award goes to Lim Chee Aun:
“The robot doesn’t seem like a bad guy. It’s actually a good guy! It’s beaming up the Firefox logo in the sky, just like in the Batman movies! It’ll fight off all the bad guys with its powerful boxing gloves and could run super fast like Flash (notice the Flash superhero symbol on the ears?). It’s built to be tough against any attacks, bugs and even evil UFO’s that shoot down buildings. ‘The world needs Firefox 3!’ The robot’s antenna (on the head) shall spread the news through all forms of telecommunication. Though it’s getting dark (notice the dark background and the sun sets), the robot shall not rest and will always fight till the end! Firefox rules!”

The “Should Have Been the Sequel to ‘the Matrix’” award goes to Lachlan:
“This is of course a picture taken at the mighty Firefox take over in 2011, Giant Robots will be built from rival software developers to destroy the Mozilla headquarters, but of course, the robots discover the power of their programs and preach holograms of Firefox and Thunderbird logos! Reminding the world to switch.”

The “Abstract Art Interpretation” award goes to Veekay:
“Well, here goes my thoughts… The robot is FF3 ! And the buildings are actually IE - look at the three buildings that look prominently - thats the ‘E’ lying down and the ‘I’ had already fled the place fearing the UFO’s that are the bugs that hit you hard due to non-standard HTML done by ‘IE’ gurus”

Thanks to everybody who participated…this was a lot of fun. And will we see the robot again in the future? Stay tuned!