The bonus free spins are just recently added on the rules, started last May with the theme Roo Rock the Cosmos. This is due to the AI arts submitted of some users who joined
this contest. Hence, it is added so the artists can show their work in progress as proof that it's not made through AI. Anyway yes, it's been a while since we last saw @so98nn participated on art contest with his pencil carving skills. Do you still have plan to join again?
They started to award more participants as much as possible and giving the free bonus is their way to appreciate the luck and real participants. There’s a lot of artist who skip the recent contest, I guess its because of the theme or maybe they