CGAN Jan 24 - Grimoire - Final entries

Grimoire

Brief: Feel the power of the challenge title and conjure up some magical imagery. 

Deadline: Midnight on Wednesday the 31st of January. 

This thread is where you post your final entries, WIPs (work in progress) should be posted over here:  cgartnexus.com/index.php/forums/challeng...jan-24-grimoire-wips


Challenge rules and guidelines:
cgartnexus.com/index.php/forums/challenge-rules

Rules in brief:
- All challenge entries must be your own work.
- You should post at least two WIP images that are clearly different from your final entry and each other.
- Your final entry should contain your image (inserted so it shows up full size) and at least two links to your WIP posts on the forum.
- No chatter in the finals thread – if you have questions, post them in the WIP thread or PM an admin.
- Feedback is allowed & encouraged together with the voting and in the WIP thread.
- Deadline is given in UK time (midnight UTC) with a grace period of 5 minutes for getting the post sorted.
- Each member may cast one vote.
- No cheating! Admins may decide to disqualify an entry that does not adhere to the above rules.


WINNER - VALENCE

Six days to go?
I've already been sitting on this for two days so I may as well dump it here instead of forgetting about it later.

Book Wizard.  
Book Monster.  

Book Book.

 

WIP 1: cgartnexus.com/index.php/forums/challeng...-grimoire-wips#48950
WIP 2: cgartnexus.com/index.php/forums/challeng...-grimoire-wips#48951
WIP 3: cgartnexus.com/index.php/forums/challeng...-grimoire-wips#48974
WIP 4: cgartnexus.com/index.php/forums/challeng...-grimoire-wips#48980

Final:

 Voting is open. Cast your vote for one of the following entries:

• Valence
• Banj

Voting ends at midnight of Thursday the 8th, and voting will be counted up on the 9th (unless it isn't). 

I vote Banj because of hands!!
Hands!
Hands in close-up!
Two Hands and not just one that's then copied, flipped, transformed and pasted.
Hands that are not hidden. Not even out of focus.
Hands up if you vote for Banj. ✋

And the book is pretty good too.
The way that the magic Swedish text fits to the page in both form and value is very nice and having so much focus on that book makes it fit the brief a bit better than mine.

I vote Banj. ✋

And I vote for Valence and his Gandalf Moses holding up his book of electricity with his pair of nicely painted hands. I particularly like the rocky texture of the erm, rocks 

And I hate that I pretty much always end up with the deciding vote... Here's hoping more people will join in the voting for once...

I too like the rock texture of the rocks and how the Balrog seems to be sneaking up behind Gandalf with him unawares even though he's obviously using the Book of Balrog to make him appear.

And I also like the impressive hands, the look of the book and the magic swirlies in Banj's image...



I think my vote goes to Valence for the somewhat more epic scale of the pic.

Congrats Valence, what a surprise win

I have remembered that voting was over several times and then got side tracked on my way here to deal with it each time 

Congratulations Valence 

Thank you!

And for those people that liked the rock textures, I used some custom brushes that I made from these two Z-Brush alphas...
 
 
You can use them as brush heads with a bit of scatter and random rotation or as a progressing grain.