Lousy_Day

I've always wondered how other artists would interpret animal characters, so I decided to take some screenshots of the alts I've been playing lately.

Acuskunkture

B

Bananator

Good luck and I hope you will be able to achieve your goal and more!

I never really left, but I am back. Good to see Wassy running this thing for 2010. I have no doubt she will do an awesome job. Seeing the topic for January is the Olympics and I live where it is going to happen in the city of Vancouver, I'm in.

Looking back to this year's competition (congrats Foo!), many artists were eliminated by simply failing to submit a piece, myself included. I think it may be a little harsh to be eliminated for the remainder of the year by missing the deadline once, especially if the topics for the following months were something you'd have enjoyed working on.

So I am here to suggest an alternative format: In keeping with the friendly nature of this competition, what if there were no eliminations at all? By allowing anyone to participate in any month, we'd see more variety of works submitted throughout the year. We would still vote to pick the winner of each month, but there will be no need to single out a "loser" in case everyone manages to submit a piece.

The biggest downside I see under these rules is that by getting rid of elimination you also lose the pressure of being eliminated, which may result in a very low turnout for any given month or submission of sloppy work. However, there are still incentives for doing one's best, as we will vote on the winning pieces of each month at the end of the year to decide the champion of the year. It would be a nice way of commemorating the best artworks produced in the year. (Does anyone remember the winning piece for every month of 2009?)

Also as a safeguard against producing one marterpiece and then dropping off the radar for the rest of the year, there should be a minimum number of submissions to be elligible for the champion title, like you should have made at least 6 submissions by the end of the year or something. Not to take anything away from Foo's victory, but I believe consistency was the single most important thing you needed to have a shot at the title this year. With these rules, quality and consistency will be equally important.

Does this sound like a good idea? I think it may actually be more competitive this way than with eliminations. You can't take a breather from a possible contender getting eliminated, and you have to try to outdo the winning entries from previous months. The rules for January are already posted so this may be too late to implement, but I just wanted to throw it out there to see what everyone thinks.

Hi everyone,

Sorry I didn't make it last month. I went on a cruise/tour to Alaska, and it got really busy after I came back. I just helped my sister sell her car, and I start moving tomorrow. I will be busy through the end of the month, but hopefully things will settle down and I will be able to get back to my art in the beginning of November.

Good luck to the remaining contestants!

I vote for Shia.

I hope September isn't the last month, since I will be away for the better part of the month.

Toxis Shia, great entry. I am very flattered by the Positron poster.

I thought the deadline was today at midnight. Was it yesterday?

Statesman's biggest fan.

I've been addicted to the game for the last couple of weeks. With the servers down, I am finally exploring the new forums.

Great job everyone, and thanks to all who voted for my piece. I will not let immunity stop me from giving it my best. I don't need it this month, but I may in September as I will be gone for two weeks.

Chris, thanks for the helpful critque and pointing out all the things that could be improved. He is letting go of his sword indeed, and I should have made it more clear as you suggested.

Sorry to hear that you are pulling out of the contest, Tacky. I will be looking forward to seeing other works from you in the future.

Now give me my server back, I need to check the market!

Juggertha has asked me to post his entry.

Transformation by Juggertha

"My wife has always said that I look far too similar to my characters - game or drawing. Even when I played a Trandoshan in SWG, she said he looked like me.

Well, now I've decided to see how right she is - and apparently, it's only 5 steps that differentiate myself and Juggertha."

I love it. Congrats on a great piece!

Since I don't have many artworks of my characters, I would like to give Time Killer a chance to fight Gray Huntress.

I would be happy with either her original outfit or my own design. Here's a quick background story:

Earth in the 22nd centrury is a desolate place. Mankind has exhasuted her natural resources, and consequent global catastrophes have pushed many species into extinction. Time Killer is a poacher from that distant but inevitible future, taking advantage of what little is left to be exploited. She has become known by that name for two reasons: She often takes life for no apparent purpose or reason other than to pass time. More importantly, when she travels through time, she has no respect whatsoever for the known history, ignoring how her actions could cause great complications.

Gray Huntress and the Proto-Deus part 5

This concludes the series. Gray Huntress wrote the story this time.

Awesome job, Projectionist! I love all the details in fullsize.

Grats!!!

Yeah that was a strange bug. Good thing it happened in the first mission. Congrats on the TF Commander! Cheese Fanatic got his too.

Another early submission from me:

Conversion of Scirocco

I am usually not this deligent. There are other projects I need to work on, so I had to get this out of the way first.

Ouch, 2 eliminations again? How many will we have left in December?

A futuristic secret agent concept for my alt Time Killer. She is my only human character on Victory, but I love her. I am going to design a vehicle for her as well, and use them in a painting. She just happened to hit lvl50 last night after like 3 years. I guess she has a lot of reasons to celebrate.

Congrats to you both, and to Crestent for the kiss!

Feedback received and very much appreciated.

It hurts my eyes trying to read, so I will be no fun and not type backwards. After all the discussions on digital inking, the first thing I noticed when I saw this piece was that on the smoke and the legs, inked lines were colored for a very cool effect.

I don't know why you left out the next two sentences out of the quote, because I basically acknowledged that it is my failure as an artist if my helmet didn't make other people think of Posi, which for Chris it clearly didn't.

I never said I was happy with the piece. Other than the logo, it is not one of the pieces I am proud of. I just felt I should explain that making it look as close to the real thing as possible wasn't the main concern, because Chris's critique focused on the inaccuracies in detail, which is fine. My drawing teacher taught me that once you put your work out there for critique, don't think of it as your work so you can be more objective. I am sorry if it sounded like I was defending my piece. The helmet actually looked pretty boring when I looked at it after my last post.

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Lousy Day - Loved the textures and the font for the word Positron but the helmet looks nothing like posi to me. Wrong shape, the visor shouldn't dip down at the sides (it's straight across), the receivers are too thick and the base where they attach to the helm should be more squared, and the "lighted veins" happen at the cheek, jaw and cranium... pretty much everywhere except the mouth area where it's lit in his poster... is this artistic license? Is there perhaps an earlier version of Posi's helm I'm unaware of? You definately nailed the "teaser poster" aspect though.


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Your observations, while accurate, are not necessarily what I thought was the most important for this piece. I was going for a very dark and solemn mood, to set the stage for an impending grim future, and the challenges a hero must face to prevent that future. Lighted veins running through "pretty much everywhere except the mouth area where it's lit" just didn't work for me to accomplish that. I could have just said the helmet wasn't powered on since he is not wearing it and used no blue lighting at all, but then it would have been too dark and looked like mars with horns. So I moved the lighting to his mouthguard to more clearly define the form as well as create a connection between the logo and the helmet. Grey Pilgrim said it didn't pop out enough for him, but personally I wouldn't have minded the light areas(where you see the receivers and the top of his helmet) being even darker. What I was interested in wasn't revealing accurate detail as much as building anticipation, which I think is sometimes better accomplished by showing just enough, but not everything.

I am sorry if it looks nothing like Posi to you, because it comes across to me as something he could have easily worn at some point. I think I mentioned that my movie was set during the time of Rikti War, which I believe to be some time ago. So think of this version as my impression of Posi, rather than a poor replica of the one he is supposed to be wearing in Steel Canyon. When I think of Posi, I think of the dark orange helm with those receivers. I hope there are enough similarities to remind others of Posi, because I would have failed completely otherwise.

I just wanted to explain some of my thought processes in making of this piece, since Chris decided to point out all the inaccuracies in detail, which weren't the focus of my piece. He would have been completely right if this month's theme was to render a CoH character as accurately as you can. I do appreciate when someone evalutes all the pieces, like he did this month and Alex last month.

That is a great deal! A quick google search showed a bunch of websites where you can order online and get the same rebates until July 1st, but the offer is only valid in the US and Puerto Rico. What a bummer...btw I believe it is 2.5, not 9.5.

I think there should be as few hard rules as necessary, and what few rules we have must be followed. That means no mere suggestions as it could get confusing as well as limit creativity.

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IMO, if it's not in the requirements, it should be allowed. If the requirements are vague, the artist should contact the host in PM (or post in the thread) before going along with their idea in case it goes against the requirements.


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That's kinda what happened this month. I asked if it was ok to do something, and I took what was said after as a rule, while others saw it as a suggestion.

I vote for Juggy. I love the color scheme, and of course that kid with a balloon. I happened to watch Up a day or two before I saw Juggy's entry, and it made me think of how much I loved that movie. He did something really mean, though. With the movie still a year away, that kid is going to be crying about it for a long time.

I am surprised and disappointed by the way Alex went out this month. I would have expected him to be one of the last to be eliminated.

Electagonist, I am not sure if anyone is really against you or traditional media. Wassy clarified what I meant to say. What you need to do is build a solid foundation upon which to express yourself, regardless of the medium. Right now it may be a little easier to do that with traditional media, because there's just a lot more resources available. Books, old masterworks, techniques and knowledge handed down and improved upon for hundreds of years, teachers who learned from their teachers, etc.

As LJ has been saying, there is an entire new generation of artists (some already accomplished, many just learning to speak now) who have/will have learned the theroies on their computers, not because it is better or worse, but just from computers being a natural part of their lives. And it is not to say they are only good artists when working digitally. Children can just do stuff without consciously thinking about working traditionally or digitally. It is like language, children can learn multiple languages no problem. Once you are past certain age, you really have to make a lot of efforts to learn another langauge, and you still may never be as good as a native speaker.

I think kids who grow up to be native speakers of both digital and traditional art will really challenge what we know of as art now. 20 years from now, I may even be too closed-minded for the stuff they will be doing and reminisce the early days of speedpainting. But for now, it is very exciting to see where things are going. I just have to try frantically so I don't get left behind in the dirt.