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CGAN Monthly Challenge Winners

03 Jul 2014 15:29 - 12 Nov 2014 16:30 #131 by webmaster
This thread contains the winning entries for the regular monthly challenges, starting July 2014.

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07 Aug 2014 17:45 - 12 Nov 2014 16:30 #4945 by Charlotte
ClaudeCrow won the very first monthly challenge on our forums, the Big Ad Job



ClaudeCrow's thoughts on the challenge:
When I started sketching out a layout for this challenge I came up with the overall design pretty quickly. For me the hardest part was taking the sketch to the final rendered image.

I knew that I wanted a half and half split between fantasy and sci-fi and aimed to try and give a bit of variety within each side. Trying to incorporate all the different elements was a bit of a struggle. I ended up removing a few things from the fantasy side to try and de-crowd it a bit but finding the balance between creating an interesting image and not drawing too much away from the text was probably the biggest challenge in this uh.. challenge. Simultaneously trying to separate the different characters and merge them into one form was a bit tricky and really I should have probably cleaned up their edges a bit more. That said I didn't want to lose the rougher feel of it.

Keeping a slightly more painterly look was something I really wanted to achieve with this piece. I felt that that would help sell the idea that it's an advertisement for an art site and not for some sort of multi-genre game.

About ClaudeCrow:
Currently a second year student in Staffordshire University doing VFX (at least I will be when we start back in September and since we only have two terms I have more time off than on... Costs just as much mind you...) The course is about a 50/50 split between 3D and 2D but in the 3rd year we'll stick to the one area we hope to move into after Uni. If all goes to plan after that I'm hoping to move into concept art, for games preferably. The next couple of years I'm going to be really pushing my work and trying to cram as much information in as I can so I can get into concept work as soon as possible (and start paying off those student loans, which are thankfully subsidised due to the Welsh Government )

Any an all misspellings are henceforth blamed on the cats.
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09 Sep 2014 17:34 - 12 Nov 2014 16:29 #6046 by Charlotte
microscopi won our August challenge, Ode to Banj



Microscopi's thoughts on the challenge:
My main focus of this challenge was to bring every character into one scene with as much detail as I could give to each design. The perfect way for me to acheive this was with a movie poster theme.

I came up with the initial idea through a rough black and white sketch. Then started to slowly work each character up enough to start adding color. It was a challenge to get half human and half animal parts into the designs but I was happy with the results. Next step I just focused on the composition, placing each character in the right spot and with the right dimensions. I wanted the color scheme to show these characters were high royalty, so I focused on using gold and silver colors and textures.

I kept the brush strokes rough to keep a consistant feel to everything but worked to tighten up the main focus of the characters.

About microscopi
Currently not studying art at a professional institute but rather on my own. I have plans to attend school very soon, and am working very hard towards a portfolio I can use to apply to various schools, specializing in concept art. I have been drawing most of my life, and have started making digital art with 3D software programs, such as 3D Studio Max and Zbrush. Then I picked up a copy of Imagine FX and immediately swtiched to 2D and Photoshop, which I felt matched my working style and creativity better. I like to focus on sci fi, fantasy landscapes and character designs.

Any an all misspellings are henceforth blamed on the cats.
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24 Oct 2014 15:06 - 12 Nov 2014 16:28 #6825 by Charlotte
Banj won the September challenge, Wrath of Kat



Banj's thoughts about the challenge:
My initial thought was to create the character as a Panther, but it eventually occurred to me that a far better idea would be to base him on Shere Khan from Disney's Jungle Book. As the character in the brief is a parody of Khan from Star Trek it make more sense than my Panther idea, both in terms of name, and the fact that the Trek Khan was Indian. I also decided to base the look on the original TV series incarnation of Khan rather than the Film route, partially due to colour choices I was making.

The image began in Corel Painter with a rough line sketch which was gradually refined. This was then painted with greyscale values defining form and lighting. Once the greyscale image was complete it was then coloured with colour mode layers and eventually painted over to bring everything together. The final stage was to add the rim light and add the detailing around the costume (these were painted flat then transformed and warped into place in Photoshop).

Any an all misspellings are henceforth blamed on the cats.
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12 Nov 2014 16:27 #7074 by Charlotte
Valence won the October challenge Dead of Night



Valence's description of progress through this challenge and a bit about himself:
When I saw the brief for this challenge my first thought was to do a trick or treat image involving a small child with a zombie companion. I still think there's an idea in that but my first sketches went somewhat awry so I ditched it and left the challenge alone to do a couple of portraits.

After seeing the fantastic progress of others I was tempted back into action (the great thing about challenges is the encouragement, motivation and inspiration you get from the works and thoughts of others.) This time though I decided to go for something more orthodox and familiar and the word Graveyard came to mind.

After searching for reference I made a start in ArtRage laying in some green colour to create a retro horror mood. I was initially thinking of doing a confined, shallow image but I experimented with a moonlit sky and liked the split blue/green color combination, realising I could put a creepy mist where they meet. I then started to work on the ground and had what artists call a Happy Accident: without realising I'd put in a light diagonal stroke rising from the bottom left. I thought that this could split the ground plane in two creating a foreground that dipped out of view and then emerged into the middle distance. This kind of undulation is a great way to create depth and interest in a picture and with this in place I knew that the image could work and was worth saving.
It was then a case of working the details using the drippy airbrush and the wet palette knife to create the texture of the nearby grass and using the soft airbrush to make the smooth transitions in the distance.

Even though I was committed to doing a deep, open image I still felt it would benefit from being closed in a little to create a sense of being trapped. I considered some distant church buildings but thought some spooky angular trees might suffice. Sadly this is, I think, the weakest part of the image; the trees are a little too flat, the branches and their angles a little too contrived, but compositionally they serve their purpose.

The zombie mob was put in quite quickly, it's always easy to paint things that are half obscured in mist, and then I set to work on the groping hand using reference that I had created in the Android app Pose Tool but even after redrawing it three times I began to encounter some problems here and elsewhere: the hand didn't seem to fit the mood or composition and some areas of the picture seemed unbalanced and vacant. It was at this point that the beauty of challenges and the feedback they offer came to my rescue.

I took the advice given: Firstly, by cropping and then resizing the image I could remove the dead space on the right side and this then allowed me to move the hand into a better position that was a little less disconnected and also in shadow so that it boosted the contrast around the fingers. Secondly, I greyed the flesh, dirtied it a little and made it thinner to make it seem more like the dead hand it was intended to be. And thirdly, I decided to put some text on the most obvious gravestone. I initially wanted to use that familiar biblical quote "I am the Resurrection and the Life..." etc but it was a little too wordy for the available space and resolution. So instead I went for a bit of Dylan Thomas and one of my top four favourite poems of all time (Pointless Aside: my other three would probably be in no particular order, The Raven, Invictus and slightly more nerdy, Mr Data's glorious Ode to Spot. Aah they don't write them like that anymore. But I digress...)

So I typed out Death Shall Have No Dominion (whilst listening to the splendid-voiced Richard Burton doing his stuff on YouTube) painted some nice highlights, transformed it into place ... and then noticed it didn't fit right because the perspective wasn't quite right on the gravestone. But it was far too late for a repaint so I called it done and hoped that no-one would notice. And I'm quite pleased with it but I'm even more pleased with the excellent feedback and advice that finally helped me to create the image that was in my head. Thank you all.

About moi?
I am a self-confessed third-rate amateur scribbler who occasionally gets lucky. I guess this is one of those occasions.
At this point people usually mention their education and art school but sadly I failed even GCSE Art (for non-UK readers GCSE is the bog-standard, Mickey Mouse exam that every dunderhead is supposed to effortlessly pass at the age of sixteen. But I'm super good at Maths and Physics, so don't judge me too harshly.) Eight years later I was encouraged to have another go but instead of the financial sinkhole of university or college I went for the book-learning, self-taught route via that glorious institution known as The Library. It's free, you know!!

And so, thanks to the ever-familiar Loomis, I draw, doodle and paint using pencil and acrylics (and occasionally gouache until I remember how hard it is to mix dark colours) but I do prefer the digital medium with its distinct lack of brush washing and the magnificent Undo button (surely the greatest human invention since ...erm.. plumbing? Yes, plumbing, you've got to get rid of that sewage somehow. But I digress, again...)

And with that digital work I will happily use any 2d or 3d software that will deign to run on my antique PC (especially if it's cheap or free) but my current favourite is ArtRage despite its eternal slowness.
And at this point people also like to mention how they'd like to break into the concept art industry or freelancing but I'm way too aware of my own limitations for the professional world. My only real ambition is to perhaps get a little bit better. I guess I'm easily pleased but yet frequently frustrated.

Any an all misspellings are henceforth blamed on the cats.
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07 Dec 2014 10:22 - 07 Dec 2014 14:20 #7535 by Charlotte
And Valence again, won the November challenge Zombie Proof House


And here's all the stuff Valence learned (and you can learn!) from this entry:
First of all, thank you to Charlotte for the subject of this challenge. It was a challenge in the true sense of the word that really pushed me to try things that I'm not used to, both in terms of ideas and technique. It's a subject that's deceptively difficult; it's one thing to come up with these ideas and concepts but another thing entirely to express and explain these ideas in a single image. Perhaps at this point we should take a moment to think of all those poor concept artists who have to do this kind of thing every day! …. Then again, they do get paid for it so let's not worry about them too much.

My first idea was something humorous involving the stupidity of zombies: a normal house where the long garden path was replaced by a conveyor belt like a long supercharged treadmill. Seeing as the zombies brainlessly like to walk in straight lines they would be stuck marching on the spot or, if you turn the speed up, whisked away before they could sink their teeth into you. This idea made me think of IFX favourite Nickillus who is brilliant at these kinds of images that express a narrative situation while still being witty and/or creepy. Sadly this style proved to be beyond my skill-set and many a sketch was doodled and ditched before I gave up on the idea and had a rethink.

After a bit of an internet search for inspiration and reference I instead decided on something more orthodox: a more architectural image showing the house and its features in a post-zombie-apocalypse landscape. I thought the contrast between the sturdy building and the ruined surroundings would emphasize the significance of the zombie-proof features in a static yet still narrative way.

Although I currently prefer ArtRage I thought that this project would be more suited to Photoshop and with that I started off with a simple line sketch which I then blocked in using greyscale. I then began to build up the colour and add detail but the image continued to look loose and sketchy so again I needed a rethink. I searched through magazines and the internet, reading tutorials and watching videos and slowly I began to learn of new techniques and skills. The first thing I did was to ditch my trusty round brushes. Instead I used a square brush with pen-pressure set to roundness (Square? Roundness?? In this case the setting refers to aspect ratio but it's still called "roundness" for some reason.) This brush makes it easier to draw hard straight lines with sharp angles and easing off the pressure makes edges disappear in a nice perspective way.

The other technique I made use of was to paint details flat on a separate layer and transform them into the correct perspective. With these skills I was finally making progress and having blocked in the picture I then began to add more details by switching on the texture option in the brush settings.

I was soon faced with another problem though; after flipping the picture I noted that the whole image leaned in an unintended way. On a new layer I drew out a framework of guidelines (I should really have done this at the beginning but I do like to sketch rather than plan) and discovered that my two vanishing points were not on the same horizontal horizon. I quickly fixed this by selecting all the layers and then skewing using free transform and the image improved instantly. I continued adding detail and layering texture and when I was satisfied with that I decided to improve the lighting to add a bit more variety to the colour scheme and make the scene a little more dramatic.

For this I used the much-maligned and often-despised Lens Flare. Now, now, don't be rolling your eyes and shaking your head. Lens flare is indeed awful when used in an obvious and inaccurate way but if used with a bit of thought it can be a really quick and simple way to transform the lighting and mood. The trick is to use it in a way that doesn't look like a lens flare (especially if the light source is not depicted on screen, like in this picture where the sun is behind your left.) First, do not use it directly on your image, instead create a new layer and fill it with a dark colour, for this picture I just used black. Then apply the lens flare filter to this layer, you can then manipulate it without destroying your painting. Next do a large Gaussian Blur. This removes all those telltale bright rays and circular artefacts that stretch across the screen and tell everyone that you've just used a lens flare. Instead you're now left with a lovely graduation from light to dark right where you want it and to me it looks a lot more convincing than the Lighting Effects filter. Now you can change the blending mode of the layer to Soft Light or Overlay and play about with the opacity. If some areas go too dark or light then a soft eraser can bring back the original detail. In this way you can change the lighting and mood in a quick and controlled way and it doesn't look like a lens flare!

So for this picture I did two of these lens flare layers, a big one to the left set to Soft Light and a smaller one set to Overlay just above the horizon on the right. This gave me the over-exposed look to the brighter sky areas that I was trying for and made the house seem a little more three dimensional. Finally I experimented with some overlaid text to explain the features in a blueprint style but in the end I decided against it for superficial reasons. If anyone wants to see that version I did post it in the WIP thread.

The picture was a struggle for me but the effort was rewarding in two ways. First it forced me to seek out some new ideas and skills and second, despite early frustration I did grow to like it as it came together at the end, all of which is very satisfying and improves your confidence for whatever image you may do next.

Although I do now like it, if I look at it objectively I do see two main issues that bother me:
One. I previously mentioned how I wanted to express and emphasize the difference between the building and the surrounding ruins but I do think that the discrepancy in detail and especially style is too great. Perhaps this is due to the fact that I was learning techniques as I went along and was unable to go back and treat all parts of the image in the same way with the same methods. Then again maybe my lack of consistency is a bit more fundamental than that.
And Two. The truck isn't quite up to the standard I wanted and looks a bit too much like a chunky little toy. This nags at me quite a bit because I did do a better version of it (well, slightly better) and lost it due to a computer crash (damn you and your inadequate memory!) And sadly I could not reproduce my earlier effort a second time. So forgive the repetition but… maybe my lack of consistency really IS a fundamental flaw!
But the crashes taught me another obvious thing. Save often. Save very often.
But overall, I think it works. I would like a little more realism to the details but I surprised myself by completing it to this level and learning new stuff along the way is always a bonus.

Any an all misspellings are henceforth blamed on the cats.
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09 Jan 2015 18:41 - 09 Jan 2015 18:46 #8067 by Charlotte
CherryGraphics won our December/Christmas challenge Season's Greetings


And here's a few words from our winner:
This challenge was perfect for me because I really love christmas and all the time around. But I've got a lot of friends who seem to hate it or who have negative feelings about all the glitter and decoration. So I decided to paint something which includes me and all the little self-styled grinches I know.

I played around with some ideas and then I came up with the idea for a couple of christmas lover and hater. The male centaur - I called him Thorin - has the poor destiny to be Elma's christmas tree. He seems to be not amused but stands there and waits for the end of this little joke. She really knows that he hates it, bad little girl. ^^ But she really wants to decorate him and so she ignores his grumpy face. She could be me. Just with red hair instead of blonde :lol: [and two legs instead of four, presumably - Admin's note]. I decided to put the image in a card design to send it to my friends so I've chosen a biiig font and gave the image a christmassy border.

Myself, I'm a graphic designer who paints less than I would like. I work for a company which allows me to create deco vases, tableware and stuff like that. :) Fortunately they like my paintings so I put them on a lot of these things. :cheer:

I've painted my whole life but digital painting started just 6 or 7 years ago. Privately I've moved and my new home is my new canvas. I want to paint a lot of black and white figures and quotes I like at one wall. Unfortunately it steals my little time which I have to paint digitally. It's a pity. :lol:

Any an all misspellings are henceforth blamed on the cats.
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09 Feb 2015 18:02 - 09 Feb 2015 18:04 #8855 by Charlotte
January 2015 was "White as Snow" and was won by Valence !



And the ahem few words from Valence :):
The title of this challenge made me think immediately of pale, porcelain skin and after a bit of thought I began to remember a Q&A Workshop in an old ImagineFX magazine (Issue 70 for any collectors out there) about painting portraits with little or no shadows. So I then set myself the task of doing such a portrait and trying to do my best to reproduce that Melanie Delon style, although sadly not the quality (I wish!)

What then ensued was rather strange: I'm quite happy with the end result but not with the way that I got there. In the finals thread which links to the WIPs I made reference to the fact that the first mistake, which was the root of all my early difficulties and the cause of many subsequent gaffes, is right there in the first line drawing. Well done again if you spotted it and if not then let me point out that in that first sketch the nose and the chin are actually pointing in different directions!! Such a face is never going to work! If only I'd just put a centre line down the face I would have seen it instantly and saved myself the resulting hours of frustration, grief and stress. Instead I foolishly proceeded to add details to the eyes and the nose. I could see that it wasn't working and that something somewhere was very wrong but I couldn't work out exactly what the error was. When this occurs you tend to (well, I tend to) start compensating for the error rather than actually correcting it (because you don't know what to correct.) In this case the "compensating" took the form of selecting the detailed features and moving them around slightly, trying to find the correct positions and angles that would balance the face out even though this was not actually the problem. It's a bit like trying to lay a badly-fitting carpet: you hammer down the lump only to find that it pops up again behind you. And so instead of correcting the mistake you end up just moving it around.

After realising this I got very angry with myself for falling into this trap and then made an effort to fix it once and for all. I managed to do this with a bit of finger-painting on my tablet in Sketchbook Pro. This was a good idea in two ways, 1: Tablet apps are often not that great when it comes to selections and tranformations so this forced me to paint properly instead of relying on Photoshop-style tweaks. And 2: When painting with my fat fingers focussing on fine details is almost impossible so it forced me to concentrate on the larger forms and structures of the face. And so with a large, soft airbrush I finally managed to find the correct chin, jawline and cheek, I put in a proper mouth instead of the sketchy, smiley placeholder that was there before and finally I darkened the eyes which suddenly made the face look a little more realistic rather than the naive, representation of a face that I was previously struggling with. (Aside: It never stops being amazing to me how dark the whites of the eyes really are. You think they'd be the brightest thing in a face but they're not. They're really not!)

(Another Digression: One of my pet peeves is when you see a tutorial in a magazine and the picture accompanying Step One seems more than 50% complete and often better than my finished work! What happened to the struggle before that? Are professional artists really these geniuses or do they make the same kind of elementary mistakes I do but just don't tell anyone? I would love to have sent my first few WIPs down the drain but sadly contemporaneous posts in a challenge are different from a retrospectively written tutorial. And perhaps documenting and analyzing errors can remind myself and others to Don't Do That Again!)

Once the mistake had eventually been corrected the rest of the painting, while not easy, became a lot less stressful and I could see it would turn out OK. It was then just a question of warming out those grey tones, expanding the canvas to include some kind of body and adding the necessary details. And for the completion of those details I should also thank Domtopia and Kodabble for their excellent advice and demonstrations regarding hair and snowflakes respectively.

Like I said many words ago, I'm kind of happy with it although I think the face still does bear the scars of the earlier mistakes; the eyes still look a little awkward and even though some people disagree I think it looks horrific when flipped; then again such imperfections give the face some kind of character that wouldn't be there otherwise but that's just a consequence rather than the intent. But it's difficult to judge for me, indeed I'm not entirely sure I made the right decisions at the end. It's difficult when you've finished your efforts and you end up with several different versions of the image, each with a slight difference of feature or colour or dimension, and you can see no rational reason to pick one over the others. In the end I went for the uncropped one with the snowflakes as that seemed to fit the analogy of the title and gave context to her expression. But I don't know, after all those hours you just start to see it as a load of shapes and staring for so long and so late at such bright, near-white colours the eyestrain and headaches kick in. Perhaps I just need some time in a darkened room to recover.

Any an all misspellings are henceforth blamed on the cats.
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10 Mar 2015 17:47 #9499 by Charlotte
February 2015, "Letting off Steam" was won by CherryGraphics !



Some words from Cherry about the challenge:
I always liked Steam Punk Style but never did a picture with Steam Punk elements in it before.
So this was a great chance to see how it works for me. I thought about a typical scene, a typical woman, typical clothes.

It was a lot of fun to do the research for the style and try out what works for me. The opposites between wide long blouses and a corset full with wheels was interesting enough to give it a go.
It seems like an obsession to give my women red hair, maybe because I'm a redhead too and I want to put a "small me" into my pictures as I did when I've drawn the gummy bear fight for a previous challenge. ^^
The parrot and his little hat also were a lot of fun even when I had a few mistakes painting the little feet of the parrot the right way.

I wasn't sure what I want to have for the background but thought a map could give the air pirate princess the right direction. As I haven't so much understanding of technical things I asked my friend to help me a bit to paint an airship that really could fly. :laugh: And it works!

To give the final piece the color touch and lights I want is always the best part of painting to me. To play around with settings and little spots is relaxing for my soul and bringing colors to shine is like a sunny afternoon to me. :)

So thanks a lot that you've voted for my little Isabella :)

Any an all misspellings are henceforth blamed on the cats.
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