C.O.W. #192 costume creature (halloween round) voting

[(lark]

C.O.W. #192 costume creature VOTING.

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Round #192 VOTING

Topic: costume creature


Deadline for voting: NOV. 7th (9 pm pst.)

[SaintLConcept]

Artist: Art4all

Concept: pinkyboo


being pink and carnivore is pretty much the worst combination for hunting but this pinkyboo here is very smart, it acts more like a killer that stalks the prey for days, observing what habits they usually have, where the nest are, how many numbers living together, etc. and then ,after that pinkyboo will design a plan by disguising it self as one of the preys, tricking them to death. pinkyboo eats most rodents,birds...yes birds, and hates fish.

[Farquad]

Artist: Farquad

Concept: Pumpkin Snatch

The pumpkin snatch is a vile, poisonous creature that makes its home in the
husks of various gourds. It does this both as a makeshift home, and to blend
in. However, many people have lost limbs reaching for what they thought
was an ordinary pumpkin....

[(lark]

Artist: (lark

Concept: the sly sogyuluk, and the dim doreffus


The sneaky little sogyuluk has an interesting way of getting his dinner. He takes advantage of the poor idiot beast the doreffus by tricking it into thinking he's one of its kind. After killing a smallish slow doreffus, The Sogyuluk will don its pelt and face, making the rest of it a hearty meal. After wearing its new doreffus outfit, it proceeds to Hang arround the doreffus herd until it gets hungry again and takes down the best looking doreffus it can find (looking for the best potential new costum based on size and pelt durability) while the herd sleeps.

The doreffus are so moronic that they not only don't see through the barely passable costume, but never figure out why every so often their number decreases by one over night.

Left: the sogyuluk, middle: the sogyuluk wearing a doreffus costume, right: the live doreffus.
1092364

[Si_Swe]

Artist: Si_Swe

Concept: Gibbering Gibblion


The peaceful and lazy Ember Shuacock Bird stays huddled in small flocks pecking at the feed given them by muttering old men and women, and by children who are just a little bit too eager to see a bird eat a small chunk of stale bread. Skulking blatantly in the open is their chief predator, one so impressively stupid that it, indeed, believes that the sole reason it is ever able to catch prey is due to it's brilliant disguises. The Gibbering Gibblion will use the wings and tail feathers of a dead Shuacock Bird to "infiltrate the flock" so as to easily catch its prey. This is strange for two reasons. Firstly, the creature's size, shape and colour are all strikingly different than the birds', making the disguise rather obvious to spot. Secondly, in order for the Gibblion to create the disguise it must first have caught one of the birds without the aid of the disguise making the entire show a moot point. Even more baffling is the creature's intense belief that its disguise is brilliant and that it must be indistinguishable from the birds it is imitating. Using its additional arms to imitate the Shuacock Bird's wings and plumes, it will flap these around next to old couple (whilst gibbering in what, one must assume, is its imitation of chirping) in order to receive the bountious gifts of their bread crumbs. The Gibbering Gibblion would not even exist, due to its utter stupidity, but the Shuacock Birds have grown so equally stupid thanks to a combination of inbreeding and city life, that they are no longer able to recognize and take action against danger.

[haekel]

Artist: HAEKEL

Concept: Odor thief caterpillar
This particular caterpillar kill an ant, suck all her pheromone and go, disguised with false odor, to other ant to make them feed her, like any other real member of the colony.

[ninety9]

Artist: ninety9

Concept: COSTUME CREATURE aka the HALLOWEEN TERROR aka the extraterrestial nocturnal faceater


From planet alpha-garidius comes the halloween terror.
waiting for its prey on trees it jumps right onto your head, killing you with its deadly spike. after eating your nose and eyes (what this extraterrestial species consideres a delicacy) it removes the face´s skin with mandibles and tentacles to hide itself under it. it stretches the skin until it covers the whole body and, what a coindidence, stays undetected during its mating-season. the time that the HALLOWEEN TERROR visits earth is know as HALLOWEEN and perfectly covers the mating-season.

[(lark]

Voted for si swe. I really dug the comedic element to this one, and a pretty decent render to boot.

Best rendered is definately farquad but I think you missed the part of the brief about the creature dressing up in another creatures remains.

Thanks to those who particapated. It was a harder round, which is probably a good reason so few particapated. I'll try not to make them so vague in the future.

[emerging]

so little entries - everybody's too busy getting drunk lol
i voted for farquad because of a matching theme and rendering of this unique creature

[Farquad]

You got my vote (lark! Great use of the theme (although elements of your
creature seem a little recycled from previous COWS, :P).

DAMMIT! I suck at following directions. Why am I so dyslectic? (Not really the sun was
just in my eyes.....or sumthin) Anywhoozle, great round guys! Hope more people
participate next time. :/

[Si_Swe]

Ha ha, emerging, ain't that the truth.

Art4All - I think you executed the idea quite well. It follows the brief as it was meant. The illustration at the top clearly portrays the dynamic and the two view beneath it give us the impression of the vicious nature of the creature. What you needed to focus on more in this piece was values. There are very few dark tones in the piece and a lot of the forms feel flatter than they should as a result.
Farquard - You're fast, it seemed to take you only a short while to bust that out and it looks great. You have very nice rendering, and the creature is nice and ferocious. On the other hand, it doesn't really follow the brief. It may hide in pumpkins, but the idea was to disguise itself using the remains of its prey.
(lark - Did not need to think twice about voting for this piece. Perfectly illustrates the concept outlined by the brief, has a creepy elements but a I can't help but laugh at the dorrefus. Good rendering, I think there are some weaker areas on the fur, but it's not super noticeable. I'm unsure why they're being lit by turquoise light, though. Are they, perhaps, in near proximity to the aurora borealis? Or many computer screens running windows 98?
Haekel - Its a really cool concept to go with the pheromones of the prey as the disguise, but I feel like the concept really should have incorporated more of the physical elements of the prey as part of the disguise. While the front part of the creature looks great, the tail goes up at an odd angle and the tail stalks look a bit stiff and awkward. The tree itself has kind of a fuzzy look to it as well. Your stuff has been really solid so far and I'm really looking forward to seeing you continue to contribute to this activity.
ninety9 - Knowing some of your other work, this feels a bit rushed. The background with what I assume are the saucers looks scribbly to the point where at first glance I thought it was just a really blurred out rushed version of one of their heads. I would've loved to have seen the actual stretched facial skin, too, I feel like that was a missed opportunity.

[haekel]

My vote go to Si_Swe* for the very interesting vision of costume : for me his creature do not use a camo, but just enjoy the death of her prey, and mimic her with humour, as a final act of humiliation... The beginning of intelligence ?

Art4all : Very nice creature. Kawai and creepy, I love that.

Farquad : I dream every day to draw like you, but you seem a little bit far from the costume theme to gain my vote.

(lark : love your render. My second favourite here. Perhaps the order of your pic is not optimum : before reading your text, I read your series as a succession of evolutions. perhaps 2-1-3 was better ?

ninety9 : nice idea to explain ghost...


* thanks for your comment, my initial idea was to use more of ant body part to disguise my catterpillar, but my drawing skill are still limited. I hope to more successfully render my tought later, with training...

[porcupine]

Great round, shame I didn't have time to participate.

I voted for Si Swe's awesome concept with (lark as close runner-up. No time for crits tho, exams are killing me.

[ninety9]

haekel - u missed the directions a bit, but still a nice piece/study and good rendering.

si_swe - very comical and funny idea - thats why i voted for it since it was an interesting take on the topic.

(lark - i like your piece a lot, especially the rendering on the "original" animal is very good. u did follow the direction pretty well but i missed the WOHOO-effect and originality of the idea.

farquad - also a good one. very good textures and face but u didn´t really hit this round´s topic.

art4all - solid entry, if u learn to push the rendering more and become a bit more advanced your entries will really stand out. i almost voted for this one.

myself - as si_swe already notived i rushed my entry after finishing the actual alien creature. i don´t want to be conceited but i think my idea was pretty solid and original. to be honest my main goal in every round that i take part in is following the instructions/brief and come up with something really unique and original. that´s why i take part in COW because it really makes u think one step ahead.
i don´t take part to win but after i din´t even get at least one vote (out of 86) for last week´s arctic war beast wich i thought was pretty well, i kinda lost my motivation towards the end of the halloween round. didn´t feel it was worth putting many more hours into it to end up disappointed again although i will probably work out the skin-thing and the second creature later.
what i also disliked was giving crits to everyone while 80% don´t give any feedback, not in the WIP-thread, nor in the finals.
/PISSED-mode OFF :D

[SaintLConcept]

hi , ninety9, just want u to know that for me (dont know bout the rest) crits from u guys are exactly what i liked from this forum , but as you know i hardly give any crits back , its not because i dont want to , its just that i feel not skilled enough to give a constructive crits like u guys always do, but i'll try to do that on the coming rounds, and please dont let votes lose your motivation , great thing i loved about these weekly activity is that i get to see different ideas from various artists which already gives me the great 'wow' you know XD, and your entry was always one of the most unique ones, just so u know that eventhough u dont have votes sometimes (heck, arctic round was crazy , but totally fun cause i got the chance to see many epic concepts in the making) there are still people waiting to see what kind of concept u would come up with :),

ps, sorry for bad english please ignore if dont really get what i'm saying lol

[Si_Swe]

ninety9 - I understand a lot of where you're coming from, and I think you're taking a great approach to COW. Creating something as original as you have here and in the past has really gained you a lot of points in my books.
On the other hand, with large rounds like the war beast people end up with so many choices that a large portion never get voted for, it's unfortunate but it happens. Sometimes it's disappointing to have your creature receive zero votes, but it's very rarely because you haven't done a good job but because so many people have. We also don't know how often we're someone's runner up or third place, which is an advantage to the multivote. That said, I'm not sure I'd want to move us to a multivote because we get really inconsistent numbers of entries. Some round we'll get 6 (like this round) some we'll get 30-50 (remember how crowded the cookie monster round was?), so I don't think a multivote should be present when we average about 15-18 entries a round.

I feel you on the crits, though. I understand that people have busy schedules, but seeing more feedback is always helpful, regardless of experience.

[matejkovacic]

Si_Swe - voted for you, since I like the funny way creature uses to disguise

[Si_Swe]

Great round everyone. That was really close for a little while. Congrats to (lark on star number 3!