Battle Ribbon: Vote | Shia vs. CR

Battle Ribbon submissions have been submitted so it's time to vote. No 1,2,3 format here. The artist with the most votes will receive the cash prize and title of 2010 FArt Champion.

- Christopher Robin's Entry -








- Shia's Entry -




Voting ends on 5:00pm October 7th. Good luck to both contestants. 1 vote per poster. Only votes placed in this thread will count.

Shia of course

Shia

EDIT: A bit of explanation for why I chose Shia's piece over CR's. As much as I like CR's work, I couldn't honestly vote for him as creating a winning entry for this months contest. I thought things looked overly familiar so I went back to CR's thread and found Buddy Caemgen and Grey Ming from the postings at the beginning of September, Laser Pointer and Darth Delicious from postings in August, Masked Shrike from July, and the cleaned up Kilotonnage pencils from July (cleaned up apparently from a colored posting from September of 2009). Seeing all these previously created pieces (6 of the 9 characters in the piece) made me wonder how much if any of this was new work, including the other 3 characters in the piece. Is the 13-½ hours you listed in the other thread including the time spent creating those previous works you included here? Was that just counting the time for photoshopping in the old artwork and adding whatever new artwork may be in the piece? Saying on your DA page that you literally started this the night before the deadline makes me curious about the time spent on it.

Is Shia's piece fully original? I don't know, but I know that it isn't anything I've seen posted here in the forums. I haven't looked at Shia's DA page (if one exists) so I don't know if this is something previously posted there. Without it being anything I recognize as having seen before, I have to accept in my head that it's artwork created specifically and fully for this contest entry. EDIT 2: After a bit of searching, I found Shia's DA page and I see nothing there that makes me think this wasn't fully created for this month's contest entry.

Sorry, this just feels too much like CR just photoshopped an entry together out of previously created art instead of either creating an original piece for the contest or just bowing out for whatever reasons.

It's great that both went whimsical in the finale. So after thinking too much I thought I'd vote on that basis.

I was inclined to say buddy Caemgen for the win, but ... well, tying up heroes and leaving them with the local law authorities... yeah.

But in the end I think I'll go with my first impression and vote for all the priddy colours... Shia. Shia, if you win and donate part of your win to a worthy charity I'll match it

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Ok new problem now that I've had a chance to look at both pieces Shia doesn't have a valid entry.

It breaks Bayani's rule #1 of "Keep It Clean- All entries must be direct-linkable on the boards. If its worse than PG-13, you will be disqualified." and Shia's pic is straight up bondage porn.
Pain, humiliation, (it even says it in the text), degradation, forced submission poses? And unless Swan has the ability to blush more on one side of her face than the other she looks to have been smacked around too. Shia did try to pretty it up by putting bows everywhere but come on Swan has her hips and ankels tied to her torso in a way that puts her down on all fours but won't allow her to support her weight on her hands (ouch?) and Sister Psyche has a freakin ball gag?!

Plenty of other sites you can go to see this kind of **** but all of them are X-rated and require that you be at least 18 years old to enter, even the cartoon ones.
Sorry dude it's a nice pic but IMO no way that's PG-13 or less.

P.S. It'll be very telling to see what the people who gave CR so much **** for a tiny black line last month have to say about this.

Shia, bondage catgirls get my vote
Just wish it would've been mine!

@Warlord Mars.
I appreciate the time you spent going over my piece and I probably should've mentioned it somewhere but I was just so tired after being up most of last night. Heck I'm still in zombie mode now (braaaaains!) but I assure you that's an accurate approximation of how long it took me to do that piece. It is not artificially inflated in any way nor does it include time spent on any previous drawings (Buddy Caemgen etc). If you did look through my thread you surely noticed I post up how long the all my drawings take in real time and that should give you a fair idea just how long these entries take. What you may not know is that each individual piece of these designs is drawn really large and fills up an 8.5x11 page so I can get lots of detail work into them. So Xllusya's head is on it's own separate full page and took almost 2hours alone, Xllusya's figure is full size on another sheet, the curtains another, the wings (mirrored) fill another page etc. etc. Then all of them have to be scanned (multiple times along the way too so I can post up the WIP stages later for people who've asked me nicely to show my steps), cropped, resized, cleaned up (removing scanner dots by hand sucks ), brightness contrast adjusted so they match all the others parts and then shuffled around/seamed up into place.

Plus while I would love to say every drawing I attempt comes out perfect and in it's finished form the very first try that's just not the case. Some parts take many drafts to get something usable and there is a minor mountain of crumpled up paper balls (drawings that didn't make the cut) overflowing my little trash can now as a result. On top of that I made a few costly mistakes along the way like one of the wings being too big for the page so the tip feathers were cut off. I tried to fix it in PS but it stuck out like a sore thumb (like the unfinished runway does compared to the rest of the design) so I ended up drawing the last few feathers multiple times on a separate sheet until I got it to fit and then seamed it onto the rest of the wing... you can still see the line if you look close but I did my best to hide it.

If anything that 13½ hour time estimate is a little conservative.

Finally I knew everyone would recognize that some of the faces in the crowd were drawn previously as I don't really make a secret of my free gift artz, birthday sketches or contest prizes (my new artz thread is the 2nd most viewed art thread on the forums after David Nakayama's) but what it came down to in the end was time.

I had half a dozen new figure sketches started (including the Malleable Mechanic, Nezumi-ko, Sapphic Neko, TA, a Burnt Matchstick etc and I briefly entertained the idea of starting a thread to see if anyone else wanted in as I have done in the past) that I wanted to use to fill out the crowd but several hours of work into them I knew they wouldn't be complete in time so I either had to shrink the stage/curtains/composition and have it be close in on Xllusya with Amerikatt flying past with the crown and ribbon while the Lounge Crooner sang Miss America (Paragon) off from stage left or find a way to fill in the crowd faster. There was nothing against it in the rules and several other pieces submitted in this years contest used their own previous work as background or filler so I chose to go with the filled in crowd so my piece didn't look so sparse. It's my own fault for being away for so long and then trying to pull off something of this scale with less than one day until the deadline... I accept that. I did the best I could with the time I had.

Ironically, I thought if the seating gallery looked too empty people would think I hardly spent any time on this.

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after a detailed and respectable explination like that, I give my vote to CR, plus bondage just ain't my thing, no offense Shia

It was a really tough call this month, but I have to give my vote to ChristopherRobin for his highly-detailed, photorealistic artwork.

vote = christopherrobin

wlm - i dont see where the rules say anything has to be brand new

dj1 - in other setting maybe but here theyre not overly sexual less your mind is there anyway ya pervert


dj1 fd and cr - i dont think yous actually stated a vote

Well it wouldn't be a good FART finale without some controversy and DRAMA!!!! OOOOooooOOOOOHHHHH

I like both pieces for different reasons, so it's hard to choose.... Shia's is humorous as always which I enjoy. CRs is very detailed and tells a story in one image (vs the comic book style that I didn't enjoy as much previously).

As for the controversy:
Shia's piece is very suggestive if you decide to take it there but it is clearly within the rules of the boards AND isn't something you couldn't see in a PG-13 setting. Is it pushing it? Probably but that's part of Shia's appeal...
CR's piece has elements that were PhotoShopped from previous art. Well earlier in the competition I believe other entrants used complete PSed images of screenshots and were allowed to continue. CR at least used his own art.

So who do I vote for? This is tough for a Libra.... Okay okay... I think with the Arachnos twist that makes the piece feel like a handout in the Arachnos base helps to tie it to the game more...

So my vote is Shia.

I'd have loved to help out CR's charity because it's a noble cause but in the end I have to go with my over thinking gut. Good Luck and grats to both of you!

Buddy Caemgen still makes me laugh out loud. Since CR actually showed up at the end and came through, I'm going to bow out of voting since I think both ideas area pretty equally matched. Honestly, that was a really creative way to make use of the theme.

Holy smokes, this didnt' fizzle after all! Sweet. Nice entries, but...

my vote is for Shia.

Two thumbs up for Warlord and DJ making me LOL. This thread made my friday morning!

While I like the realism of CR's entry, the non-realistic torso-less busts along the cat walk and just an over all lacking of a "finished" look has made my decision for me.

I Vote for Shia not only is his work finished but also do you realize the amount of skill and effort Kinbaku takes?

CR

'Cause Lounge Crooner is awesome and I can vote for whatever capricious reason I want, drama be damned.

It's been noted earlier, and I have to agree. The top work (Christopher Robin) looks... unfinished. And while I'm *not* a super artistic type, the proportions don't mesh up right. The sight lines of the various characters, for example, do not focus on 'Your True Ideal' but instead seem to be distracted. Also, the cat looks like an afterthought, tacked on perhaps to accomplish some sort of requirement.

The second picture (Shia) the proportions are solid, there is color, and the Arachnos pamphlet-style format all lend a level of mirthful cynicism that tends to permeate Rogue Isles. The addition of three main signature-type characters yet tastefully done only helps to highlight this style.

My vote is for Shia.

Shia.

Reasons:
While I like the crisp clean lines of CR's figures, the picture has some major problems:

• The central figure's left arm, holding the flowers, looks twisted to my eye as her entire body seems to be facing in the opposite direction.
• The horned face on the left hand side is placed in a way which looks like it is growing from the shoulder of the armored figure.
• Four of the "bust" figures are obviously not looking anywhere near the central figure.
• The stage which the central figure is standing on is barely even sketched in. In fact it looks as though it was drawn with a crayon which detracts and distracts from the whole picture.

• It has been composed to look like an entire picture (well, advert) rather than disparate bits.
• There is a nice use of color between the three sections, but the spill over helps hold it together as a whole rather than three parts.
• The detail on the 1st is nice and the yellow ribbons on 3rd suggest the girl beneath them nicely.

Frozen Death. Bayani hasn't commented but he has been absentee most of the time for whatever reason. I would have said something before but I hadn't looked at Shia's pic yet.
You didn't chime in on CR's dark line until long after the fact. What kept you from saying something earlier hmmm? Like when there was still time to fix it?
Would have taken CR what, 30 seconds to fix and repost? But instead you helped try to disqualify him after it was too late for him to do anything about it.

Dude lots of people are tryin to sway the vote but you tried to get CR kicked out so there couldn't even BE a vote. Wanna tell me again how I'm the one with an axe to grind?
And just cause Shia's pic has been up for a little bit without comment don't make it not bondage porn. Something you seem to be avoiding commenting on.

DJ1--

LOL. I never at any point tried to get Chris disqualified from this competition. Go back and read what I said. The point is/was that the disputed line looked like a nipple. It does. Do I care? No. But that is what I see and the artist can't tell the viewer after the fact that they are seeing the image wrong.

As for the rope binding, many people consider it an art form in itself. It may or may not be sexual in nature. Regardless, all three of Shia's characters are more clothed than Chris' Battlemaiden if you want to draw yet another comparison. It's fine if this sort of thing is not your cup of tea--don't vote for it. But trying to get it disqualified is laughable and you should take it up with Bayani--or maybe even ask Chris is he wants you campaigning this way.