puppylove - all entries are judged on a lot of different criteria: humour, originality, W&G-theme, techniques used, effort...
It means that you don't have to be the best artist in the world to stand a chance of winning, you just need to be creative and have a good imagination. I think all our winners have been very worthy of the prizes and certainly not "lousy".
We have a group of Aardman staff judging the entries to make sure everyone gets a fair chance. If we opened it up to a vote it would be very difficult to make it fair. For example, a regular W&G member may get all their friends to vote for their entry, whereas a new member to the site wouldn't have the same number of friends....
We could look at how the judging system works in future if people are still unhappy. It would be useful to hear what other members think, so please feel free to post below: