FrozenDeath

The environment on these forums has always been somewhat poisoned--not by "drama", but by people wanting nothing more than to police a strict code of etiquette on the proceedings and maintain a perpetual saccharin friendliness. City of Prozac.

Caegmen's posting of his thoughts (and the fallout) is not drama. It's the best thing to possibly happen to this thread. I spent a little over 2 weeks working on my entry. When I finished it, I thought to myself "this painting represents everything I've been working to improve over the last year." Then I read with horror as some guy categorically rejects it from consideration based on some personal interpretation of the rules that I could not foresee.


That's a ****** but to an artist, it's invaluable. You need to know what someone else is thinking. You need to know how an audience might view your work, in contrast to how you intended it to be viewed.

If you're voting in this competition, you don't need to justify your opinion. You can just have an attitude "I just like what I like." But if you do voice an rationale and it pisses people off, that's an opportunity to see things from a different perspective. Maybe your opinion will evolve as a result, maybe not. Whatever the outcome, heated exchange of ideas shouldn't be written off as drama.

Btw, I've always felt the people shouldn't be commenting on the art during the voting. But it's happened during every one of these competitions and this is the first time I've really noticed it being raised as an issue. And I agree with Chris, realistically speaking prohibiting it from this thread will just shut the communication down. The whole thing is already spread over multiple threads and multiple sites.

Hi guys,

Just a reminder that my livestream is tonight. I'm going to be talking about the development process for my pinup piece (similar to the talk I gave about the Massacre Melanie piece I did). In the process, I hope to cover a lot of composition principles and touch on some things like the golden ratio, golden spiral, etc.

It's 10:15 pm EST, www.livestream.com/bwbabble

Is there a chat function or something for this?

Mogo stepped back to make room for the cards, which stretched out over the ground like pale shadows until the faces were near life size, the eyes of the royal figures shifting back and forth as they looked out into the three dimensional world above them.

The thug with the wrench yelled as a shiny white hand peeled off a card and grabbed his ankle. He tripped and pitched backwards landing on other cards which stuck to his body like flypaper. As he flailed his arms and scrambled to his feet, the motion pulled other figures out of their cards. The scene was repeated all throughout the courtyard, as the men tried to pull themselves away or beat the cards with their weapons. The very effort to pull free caused the cardmen to come to life, and as they emerged they began to organize around Mogo, fighting off the various assailants.

The squat numbered diamonds formed defensive lines, pushing the crazies back as they tried to get closer to the magician and deflecting all attacks. They clanked solidly as the knives and pipes and rocks impacted harmlessly on their surface. The Jack of diamonds waved his sword in the air, deflecting the objects thrown at them from a distance. The king and queen each grabbed a man and then slammed their bodies together, knocking the fight out of them.

In contrast, the clubs didn't emerge from their cards. Rather they waited until someone stepped over them, then physical objects would rise out of the surface. Five of the men found themselves caged with iron bars or trapped within boxes formed by upright cards that had joined together to form makeshit prison cells.

Mogo smiled at the confused brawl in front of him. The diamonds and clubs had almost subdued the mob before the spades had even entered the field. His overconfidence almost cost him dearly as a bullet slammed into his left shoulder spinning him around violently so that he lost his footing and sprawled to the pavement. The searing pain spiked for a moment then suddenly abated in the midst of a pink glow that was encompasing his body. He leaned up and nodded to the Queen of Hearts who wagged her finger at him disapprovingly.

"My apologies my lady. I'll be more careful from here on out." He knocked three times on the ground.

"Spades, get up please. Let's get this done."

If you're not working in at least a bajillion pixels, you're not fit to be in my crew.

I think I'm going to discuss the evolution of my February competition entry. It will be more along the lines of analysis than actually drawing something, but I think people might find the process instructive. I'm not sure exactly how long that will take. If there's time left I'll do a recap/summary of last Thusday's livestream with different examples.

Sorry I can't help commenting on this as well:

Any requests for this Thursday's livestream?

If that's your thing, memorizing various image sizes in terms of pixel measurements, by all means knock yourself out. Most people think in terms of how big they would like the image to be in real world terms, most likely inches in North America.

Once you know how big you want the image to be in real world terms, you just pick the resolution you need--72dpi for web graphics, 300dpi for print. Let photoshop figure out how many pixels that is, my clients don't care. I don't measure things in pixels in Photoshop. I don't even know if you can in my 3d apps.

I generally work at 300dpi.

I'm going to officially withdraw from this competition, so I think you guys don't need to sweat the elimination thing until next month. Good luck all!

Sorry I had to bail early Eddy!

No problem, Foo wanted me to design a naughty mecha and it kinda went downhill from there. And he's not around to deny it either.

Check your email Suichikichigai.

Damn, does that happen a lot with Livestream? I just checked and its not there.

Ok tonight I will be discussing skintight outfits and furniture design (I blame you Suichi!).

10:15 EST, www.livestream.com/bwbabble

I think you have the wrong link for the colors Kat.

It's almost time for another livestream! Suggestions?

It's great to experience an artwork firsthand, but the majority of things you will need to learn to become educated about that object don't relate to being in it's presence (ie. it's history, cultural context, method of production, critical interpretations, etc.). I lived in the heart of Kyoto for a year and experienced medieval architecture every day I was there. I can't build a temple and can't really explain how they did it either. Zanen dakedo.

That picture with the maids is pretty hot. Recast it in cox terms and voila!, magic!

Red Carpet


The wall was plain. Just red brick meticulously stacked and mortared in place, like any other turn of the century office building. And that's why, once he really looked, it stood out like a sore thumb. No graffiti. No bird crap, erosion, wear and tear. No aging. Something was clearly out of place, but you probably had to be a local to see it without knowing what you were looking for.

Mogo laid the rolled up carpet at his feet, and within moments the wall began to fade revealing an alley. Of its own accord, the carpet began to roll forward and he followed closely behind.

"Looks like we were just in time."

The walls on either side were a mishmash of different buildings from different eras. Their physicality was indeterminant, sometimes just a grey blur. Space and distance were distorted, at points Mogo made no forward progress at all despite keeping a brisk pace to follow the roll of fabric. Eventually it emerged from the alley into a square courtyard of buildings. The carpet stopped. Mogo waved his hand and it sank into the ground, becoming a strip of color on the surface. Looking back the way he came, it appeared to stop several feet into the alley, but he knew that it remained there out of sight. His tether back to everyday reality.

The courtyard smelled of rot. The walls circling the place were dirty and sometimes charred from fire, the windows mostly broken with shards of glass littering the ground. Mogo covered his nose as he spotted a freshy dead body off to the left. A vagrant keeled over in a heap along the wall, dark wet stains underneath and spattered on the wall overhead.

"Lovely. I guess this is the right place."

As he started moving deeper into the square, other bodies caught his eye, as well as people hunched over near small fires or leaning against the wall staring vacantly into the sky. It wasn't long before one of them spotted him and let out a short, barking laugh. And almost in unison, all of them began to rise and move towards him, pulling blunt weapons like lead pipes from their ratty garments or stopping to pick up large fragments of glass or stone from the dirty ground.

Mogo took his tophat by the brim and reached inside as he spoke, his voice amplified as bright sparks poured out around his hand.

"You have this one chance people. Move away and you won't be hurt."

The mob paused for a moment. They smiled and stared at the sparks, which caught the glint in their glassy eyes. The vagrant nearest Mogo mumbled.

"Only this time Pops...just got one chance to make a good first impression." He waved a

large iron wrench into his free hand. Another man pointed.

"How you gonna stop us..you can't stop us.."

Mogo started backing away as the first few drew closer. In the background he could see more figures emerging from an alley. The were snarling and mumbling incoherently as they made their way towards him. Suddenly the hat launched itself like a rocket off of Mogo's hand, a bright jet of sparks propelling it into the chest of the nearest thug and knocking him off his feet. It bounced high in the air, spinning and spraying smokey whisps of light that hovered there, even as the hat flew back and spun into Mogo's free hand. Long flickering shadows stretched over the courtyard as the whisps swam through the air like neon tadpoles. Mogo bowed.

"Ladies and gentlemen I apologize for any discomfort you may experience during tonight's performance. If you would like to avoid being beaten senseless, feel free to exit the courtyard at any time."

A rock flew over Mogo's head. He counted about 15 men in the mob, their faces pale and shifting in the wavering light. They were hesitating, caught off guard by the strange lights and shadows which caused the magician to bend and flicker in front of them, his actual position hard to discern. The man who had been bowled over by the hat wrenched himself to his feet, gripping the wrench tightly with both hands.

"It's gonna take more than sparks and hat to stop us all from caving in your skull."
"Quite correct my good man. I actually feel a bit dodgy about this..it seems a bit unsportsmanlike..but you see, I brought my own gang."

Mogo flicked his right wrist and a deck of cards appeared in his palm.

"As far as I can tell, I have you louts outnumberd 3 to 1." He extended his arm and the cards flew off the deck, littering the ground in front of him until only 2 remained in his hand.

"And I hope I don't have to resort to these two." Mogo peeked at the faces of the cards in his hand and shuddered dramatically.

I went back and redid the Dragonberry chibi in a more traditional animation pose, which will make it easier to sculpt and possibly animate at some point. Here you can see the ZSpheres and the preview mesh:

Nope, pretty much Protector and Freedom.