CGAN Nov. 2014 Challenge: Zombie Proof House, WIPs

Did a bit of work on this today and flipped it for once (I do forget to do that) and what do you know? I only went and spotted one of the biggest perspective errors of my entire life!!
The vanishing point going down the long street is much lower than the vanishing point behind the building. By a long way. A long, long way!

Tip number 5: Make sure all your vanishing points are on the same horizon or it looks as if your image is about to slide off down a hill. It made me think of those ludicrously gradiented streets in San Francisco where they have those Hollywood car chases. (And spell-check just tells me that gradiented isn't a word but let's just pretend that it is.)
All of this means that you definitely should plan these things first as a simple 3D mock-up would solve the problem before it appears.
But even so it's not too big a deal; I've just done a little unsaved test to prove that when the image is flattened a simply skew transform rectifies everything and makes it look surprisingly better! Flip or no flip.

Okay, Valence I'm here to rescue you from beeing the only one who tries this challenge.

It's not more than a better sketch so far but I hope you can see the idea behind. The zombies may overrun you fence but their too dumb for a little game to enter your house.

That's a fun idea Cherry!
Clearly I'm the type of zombie you're trying to avoid because I always feel compelled to try and do those Sudoku puzzles!

My first idea for this revolved around zombie stupidity but I just couldn't explain the idea in a single image and had to abandon it, so even with the sketch you've already gone one better than me.
And you've just made me realise that there are no zombies in my picture. What was I thinking leaving them out?

Maybe your house is that much zombie-proof they realized that they haven't any chance so they just run away?

I had very little time to do something for this "challenge", but yesterday I had to stay at my work till 00u00 for a cursed job. So when I had the chance I painted this. I suddenly had this idea, of a psycho-family. They are actually worse than the zombie-apocalypse.

Nice work Schizo. You never fail to do great characters and figures, always very believable and here I love the way they emerge from the textured paper. Really three-dimensional.

Time to dump some of mine. I joked in the last challenge about not doing much work but this month's effort has been the complete opposite, and last week I lost three hours of toil due to a couple of Photoshop crashes (ah, yes, that's why I don't usually use layers!) Then late last night something strange happened, after much frustration and annoyance I ... liked what I'd done. For the first time, right at the end. I kinda think it's OK. So perhaps it's the right time to stop. One minor problem is that I've got three versions of it and I'm pondering which one to call the Final one. I think I've made the decision but I'll post all three here to show the progression.

First this one. Here I corrected that sloping street perspective error and then worked the details; adding the post, the streetlights (actually one streetlight which was then copied ) adding more texture to the buildings and the road, putting in some foreground debris and "props" and cleaning up some of the distant edges using hard polygon selections. Oh and I put Kazky on the balcony in her super sniper outfit. (not the best likeness, but it's small, isn't it? )



Then, as I said I would, I had a go at tweaking the lighting to make it a little more dramatic. The previous colour scheme was a bit too yellow and flat. So I used a little trick of mine that takes almost no time and definitely no skill (I won't detail it here because this post's long enough as it is) and came up with this...



Finally I put in some explanatory graphics to sell all the lovely features of this charming house. I'm not quite sure if they're necessary or if their addition ruins the picture but... hmmm. Anyway I did this by drawing out the lines with the path tool and then selected Stroke Path using a brush that had the spacing set to over 200% to get the dotted line effect and then added some text.



And so, one way or another, it's done.

Very nice, Valence! You are surely number one in this challenge .
I couldn't post my paint. I had no internet this weekend, because I moved.
But anyway I'm not a big fan of the voting-system and I wasn't planning on doing anything for the challenge. In earlier challenges, some voters just placed there votes and didn't give any explanation, some vote only for friends I guess, some don't vote for somebody because they don't like the style (like I did, sorry cherry) , some... whatever.
I think the voting should be done by professionals, because only they have proven that they have a vision that can be sold.
But I enjoyed the challenges very much. It's just very frustrating putting so much work in a paint and then being negatively assessed by an amateur with no real talent. I know, I can be a mean person somethimes. But if you want to get somewhere, sometimes you have to be. And please don't think I'm not capable of accepting critique from a person with lesser drawing-skills than me. But when it comes to a vote, its a different story.
Enjoy the holidays, everybody!