I have a couple of tricks I use in Design Contest (or anything generator related) so I figured I might was well share mine

1. Have the your design size at &size=250 mainly because you can fit the male and female counterparts on the same level and it takes less time for all the images to load in image heavy threads

1.5. (personal preference)Always have the male and female counterparts because it looks nicer and a lot of contests have that as a rule (good habit)
1.5.5. Heheh gotta mention in the long image address for your design there's a part that says &gender=female well you can just copy&paste your code twice and add/delete the fe to make male/female

2. Have a template... seriously for me it saves a couple minutes setting up the colors so I can tell what gene is what and which color belongs to which slot, here's my template if you wanna copy and save it (it was a random species)


3. Yanno how a lot of genes/ mutations have a nice gradients but you can't think of one? Well fear not! Here's a Random Gradient Generator! Plus the colors codes work on Sylestia generator! There's probably others that work but I chose the top one and I like it

Alrighty! Commence tip sharing! It's always good to learn!