CGAN July 2014 Challenge - The Big Ad Job

It's tuesday evening for me and as promised it's time to tally up the votes!

Microscopi 20
CherryGraphics 5
Kodabble 13
oaktree 3
Claude Crow 31

And the winner of the first CGAN monthly challenge ever and ever, a chance that will never come again, is Claude Crow! Congratulations!!!

I also thought I'd take the opportunity to add some feedback for once. Smolin's right that the combination of a design and an art challenge makes it odd and probably more difficult than usual (erm, usual as in the old forum challenges...), both to participate and to judge/vote.

microscopi - I really really like the landscape with all it's details, but at the same time since a banner would not be viewed at a very large size and all those details make me want to bring out a magnifying glass, I think it might have been an idea to include less detail and also maybe make the rendering a bit crisper. For a real banner the text would need to be bigger and more legible as well. But I still love it!

Cherry - I love this too! All the details and things happening would make this a wonderful image in a storybook. For a banner ad however, it gets a bit too busy. There's a paper within a paper within a paper for instance which becomes a bit much for an ad but at the same time I think it's a fun idea! Her face and the lion's expression are wonderful but her anatomy looks a little strange (I think her legs are too small?)

Kodabble - I think it's a great idea and love the stone like lettering of Nexus, being part of the landscape. Epic! Like others I'm not so sure about the font choice for the CG Art bit and also I think maybe it would have been even more epic without the large framing mountains in the foreground and a lower eye level? Just a thought, though. (Also not quite sure about the U waterfall - it looks a bit like we've sprung a leak! )

oaktree - I like the idea of the wizard brining it all together (you could almost have done this for the current challenge too! ) and the bubbles and the little details and extra characters, but you have all bubbles on one side and all characters on the other. I'd have prefered a greater mix, maybe even with characters inside the bubbles (say a mix of fantasy and sci fi characters/items etc instead of galaxies inside the bubbles). Also, while the wizard's expression is great - he looks so happy and content - he could have used more contrast and colour variation in his skin tones - especially darker darks.

ClaudeCrow - A favourite! You could see the potential in this one from the very first sketch! I still think the two sides are somewhat unbalanced with the "sci fi side" looking more sketchy and less detailed (comparing the two foreground characters) but other than that I think it's really nice and I like the muted colour palette. Also it's somewhat sketchy which I think adds to ones curiousity, a very good thing in an advertisement I think!