C.O.W. #141 Porous Exo-Skeleton!! -- VOTING!!

[Michael Jaecks]

ROUND #141 VOTING

Topic: Porous Exo-skeleton!!


Deadline for the voting: Saturday 9 May 2009

Posting thread (closed): http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=156418.


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OK - before voting/posting read this!!!

1. Please give c&c or a reason why you voted for the image!

2. Feel free to comment on any or all entries, the artists will appreciate it!

3. No voting for your own entry!!! If a participants votes for his own entry, every member has the right to call him a stupid lame moron in this thread! And i will delete his/her vote anyway...
4. The poll is public and everyone will be able to see who votes for whom. No self-votes.

[Snarfevs]

Artist: snarfevs

Concept: Macroporous Chirlak
The Chirlak carries its larvae under its perforated carapace and is able to discharge them into nutrient-rich regions at will, by means of peristaltic undulation of its intestines. The bulk of the Chirlak's body and the fronds of its gills offer a sheltered environment for the larvae to feed until they are large enough to survive the open ocean.

[3mMajster]

Artist: 3mMajster

Concept: Chernobyl Arachnida Queen

On 26 April 1986 01:23:45 a.m. reactor number four at the Chernobyl plant exploded, and the resulting fire sent a plume of highly radioactive fallout into the atmosphere and over an extensive geographical area. Four hundred times more fallout was released than had been by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Only bugs could survive such catastrophe, and that resulted in creating a new dangerous and highly venomous spider. These spiders live in dark parts of the Chernobyl plant that was abandoned. The queen spider caries a bag with thousands of eggs. The spiders grow inside of the queen, leaving through the pores. The spiders kill the queen spider when they are ready to reproduce.
http://i652.photobucket.com/albums/uu248/trimmajster/Chernobyl-spider---FINAL.jpg

[sketchius]

Artist: sketchius

Concept: Petrosae Cavus


A slow and deliberate herbivore that is commonly found in desert climates. It is easily startled, and when threatened will often draw up into a ball, though it has been known to charge when sufficiently provoked. The creature is covered in an exoskeleton of hard plates. During the creature's infancy, these plates are vulnerable to a particular bacteria, which feeds upon the plates and gives them their distinctive porous appearance.

660523

[waynedavis1977]

Artist: waynedavis1977

Concept: Pelagic Dentata
The Pelagic Dentata is a bottom-dwelling crustacean which has a symbiotic
relationship with the seaweed living in its pores. The plants provide the creature with camouflage and lull nearby fish in a false sense of security.
When the creature detects a fish, it opens its large mouth, drawing in water
and expelling it out the larger pores around the periphery of its carapace.
This sucks the fish in, and the water rushing by the plants' root provide
them oxygen.

[Crowsrock]

Artist: Crowsrock

Concept: Brugganaut

A predatory creature which lives on the remote planet of Perogorn VIII. It hunts by ripping into herds of herbivores feasting on those who remained dead and wounded.

[paradoxba]

Artist: Paradoxba

Concept: Еntombment bug
Big mouth and pores that play the role of eyes.This carnivore bug can be found half buried in the ground,waiting for victims,detecting them with the help of the pores that react on smell.

[Pic]

Artist: Pic

Concept: Reeffish
As the Reeffish ages it collects debris from the seabed to cover its rapidly expanding body, secretions from it's skin coat and glue the particles together to create a semi-rigid, translucent exoskeleton.
Slow moving and silent, growth is encouraged on its outer surface, until eventually it supports an entire ecosystem on and around it's back.
The Reeffish sustains itself through waste matter falling onto its porous nutrient absorbing exoskeleton. As the Reeffish rarely moves after reaching adulthood, large gill sacks circulate the water so the Reeffish doesn't suffocate from lack of oxygenated water.
Unfortunately they are prone to invasion from parasitic plants and are slowly dying out.

[Pixie Trick]

Artist: Pixie Trick

Concept: Pneumopod
See image for description.

660904

[Reymus]

Artist:Reymus

Concept: Pyric Mudspider


Several planets undergoing terraforming begin to develop lifeforms that are unique to the makeup of the nature of the planet's theme. Volcanic planets for example, begin to churn into continents of ash and rock, with lava oceans. The Pyric Mudspider is a direct result of the planet's transformation, an organic exo-skeleton formed out of ash, and with the feel of pumice, this organism roots itself in place on the fiery beaches of it's homeworld and through metamorphosis ,develops the planet's first plant life at maturity, the porous shell allows the inner flesh to absorb the heat and minerals in it's environment.

[lkjhgfdsa]

Artist: lkjhgfdsa

Concept: Levitus Mantissa
The porous exoskeleton of this rare jungle dwelling insect draws helium from the atmosphere and stores it in vaccuoles within the exoskeleton. The helium allows for manouverable low level flight as well as the large size of the creature when mature.

[scorge]

Artist: Scorge

Concept: Gressch
Born with chitinous skin, the Gressch's slug like body coils, its pores leaking the acid that will eventually eat away at its outer shell, revealing a beautiful but deadly creature. Officially my worst description ever.

[Michael Jaecks]

No cuts this week.

3mMajster: No, you don't have to have a frame. That's I think a rule over at CHOW, but not here. Next time though PM me with a question rather than posting it in the finals thread. --Thanks.

New round is on:

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?p=2239381#post2239381

[Pic]

lkjhgfdsa got my vote, i like the helium concept and his lighting and the fact he placed it in an environment. It gave me a more rounded view of the creature as a whole. It anything bothered me it was that the idea of 'pourous' exoskeleton wasn't put forward enough visually (im guilty of the same)

I've got to admit Scorges was cool but Ikjhgfdsa seemed to flesh his out more fully concept wise, I got the feeling scorge designed the creature first and then thought of a concept for it afterwards. That being said the his design is wonderful!

Reymus
Yours is conceptually sound but i don't think enough consideration what into its overall visual appeal, whereas in some of the others entries your eye is drawn to certain focus points on the creature, I'm not sure yours really does this as well.

Pixie Trick
I like the look of the creature and the concept seems sound, but there is something about it that i find unbelievable, it might be the fact that it is a underwater swimming hunter and has such large appendages that seem difficult to drag around.

paradoxba
The teeth disturb me, but that's not a bad thing. Looking through your sketchbook it seems you rushed it conceptually!

Crowsrock
The creature looks cool, and is visibly porous but i cant see a reason why it is and you haven't explained one. I like the predatory nature of it, it puts that across very well.

waynedavis1977
I think you have the colour spot on in this piece and your concept is entirely believable but i think you could have pushed the visuals on this if you had tried, its not as visually interesting as it could be concept wise.

sketchius
I really like the bacteria concept of yours, i like the idea of the exoskeleton becoming porous rather then starting that way and i like the desert environment, and i like the watercoloury approach you have taken, but it dosn't feel as finished as some of the others.

3mMajster
Nicely executed and believable concept ( i know some animals in real life incubate young in this way) but i feel like I've seen it before somewhere, maybe the fact that the concept of it is heavily influenced by a spider and it hasn't really grown from that.

Snarfevs
Nicely done, believable, not much i can see wrong with it, maybe some parts are more finished then others, I think it was mainly a case of being outdone by lkjhgfdsa and scorge!

[rushwolf]

scorge - incredible work man. You stole my vote.

[sketchius]

Great work everybody! This was my first COW and I had a lot of fun both creating my piece and watching everyone else's develop. :)

Snarfevs - I like the illustrative style and use of color. The only thing that kind of bothers me is that all of the pores on the back seem to lie on the same plane because they are all handled with similar lighting. It makes that part of the creature ends up looking somewhat flat. Maybe if the pores curved around the form of the back.

3mMajster - Some things are working well in your piece. It's good to see you paying attention to light and shadow on the form, but in some places it seems a little confusing. For instance, on the on the abdomen it looks like you wanted to show light coming from two different directions, but it reads to me as a light from a single source with a shadow running through it. I like the texture on the abdomen. Look at the pores on the top edge though. They're shown as circles, but actually they would foreshortened and turn into ellipses. 661440 <-- Like that. Think of looking at a manhole cover on the street twenty feet away. Overall, good work. I'm new here too. Hope to see you in the next COW. :)

waynedavis1977 - Your piece is very well unified in terms of color palette and value structure. The head of the creature is very nicely executed. I like the variation in the seaweed. Very solid piece. I actually don't have any criticisms.

Crowsrock - Your Brugganaut got my vote because I enjoyed the design of it. :) The anatomy feels very believable for me. I particularly enjoy the 'striking limbs' that are coiled up in the back. The only thing that bothers me a bit is that all of the pores are seem to be facing the side. I'd have liked to have seen some of them curving around the form in places to create more depth.

paradoxba - Your piece has some good lighting and development of form, but it seems to be overall a bit underdeveloped. Two things I might change are: The teeth a little too bright of a white for not having a light shining directly on them. And some of the magenta colors feel a bit too saturated, especially considering they would probably be in a less well-lit area.

Pic - Thanks for the feedback. :) I enjoy the concept in your piece and the attention to detail. I have a couple of overall suggestions for it. First, I would have liked to have seen a slightly more powerful direct light on the foreground form. As it is, the form feels too uniform in value which is flattening it out a bit. Another thing that bothers me a little is that the background is such a different color than the creature, it doesn't really read as underwater to me. Look at how well unified the colors are in waynedavis1977's piece. One thing that you might try--and I was experimenting with this in my piece for this COW--is to mess with Color Balance in photoshop to give the entire scene a bluish-cyan feel to it, kind of like how it looked in your first WIP. Great job though overall. I think you executed your concept very well.

Pixie Trick - Nice concept and illustration. I think you could have taken the painting one step further. It doesn't look quite finished. I like your attention to lighting and the background. This one might also be able to use a bit more unified colors (see what I said to Pic). Good piece.

Reymus - I think your concept and creature design is quite strong, but I think the piece could have been taken a little bit further in terms of rendering. It feels like it's just not quite there. I think what would really help would be some more texture on the surface, like what is starting to happen on the spine that's sticking out on the lower-left. Great creature design. :)

lkjhgfdsa - This is a fascinating piece. I love how the parts of the creature fit together so nicely and I love the play of scale in the design. I particularly like the subtle reds and blues you put in different places. The only real criticism I have is, as Pic already pointed out, it doesn't follow the topic as well as it could have.
the exo-skeletal surface should have a VISIBLY porous (sponge, swiss cheese) texture.
Overall it is a beautiful piece. Great stuff!

scorge - Awesome stuff. Your piece was my second choice, just because I really liked the design of Crowsrock. Your design is very nice as well. I can't see anything wrong with how you rendered the creature. It's very well-done. Great job, can't wait to see more of your creatures!

[waynedavis1977]

This was my first COW (and photoshop painting) and it was lots
of fun. Can't wait for the next one.

Scorge gets my vote. As he admitted the concept may be
weak but damn that creature is awesome.

lkjhgfdsa is a close second. Love the environment, unified colors,
sense of scale.

[paradoxba]

Pic and sketchius tnx for the feedback ,really appreciate it :)

Voted for Scorge only because he got the porous thing going,second best lkjhgfdsa...

[Deon]

Scorge - incredible design - porous-licious!

[geronimo66]

I know its late, but I wanted at least get it up here and get some feedback. I would have liked a background but oh well.

The concept is a giant turtle that lives in swamps. Its body is littered with crystals that grow out of its skin and collect solar energy to help warm the creature.

Its shell has large solar crystals that can extend to the tree canopy to reach sunlight and collect it.

The crystals are collected by poachers making the turtles a greatly hunted creature, and near extinction.

[scorge]

I'm a little speechless right now.:jawdrop: And to think that I was considering not finishing. Thank you very much to everyone for the comments and the votes. Seriously stunned.

My vote went to Snarfevs. I liked it from the moment it was first posted and still think it's an awesome example.

lkjhgfdsa: Man you were this close to getting my vote, but the lack of any visible pores made me go a different direction. Those mouth parts are badass as well as the color and background.

I have to admit I'm sorry to see that the number of comments these days is next to nil. What happened?

Anyway, thanks again guys. See you in the next.

[Edward B]

Voted Scorge, man that is a slamdunk of an entry!
If there's anything i'd comment on it would be the pose of the legs, it seems to sit at an akward position. The rendering however is superb and it really pops out.

Runner up: lkjhgfdsa
I like the atmopshere of the image and the interaction with the priestly looking humanoid and the "insect" :]

[Michael Jaecks]

Congrats to Scorge! Your second star will shine as bright as the first!