C.O.W. #208 ,The Titan Warbeast. Voting!

[emerging]

C.O.W. #208 the Titan Warbeast Voting!

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ROUND #208 VOTING

Topic: the Titan Warbeast


Deadline for the voting: April 12th

[MattGamer]

Artist: MattGamer

Concept: Selene

Cracking the earth with it's massive legs and used by moon goddess, Luna, to defeat the gods. This beast creates quakes in the earth that devastate all foe in its way.

[jolen]

Artist: Jolen

Concept: Ovita

These creatures are the warbeasts of Iapetus. During the day they're docile and mostly friendly, during the night they become highly agressive and unpredictable.
It is said that their blood bring life and the touch of their bone bring death.

1201092

[Sgt. Spanky]

TITAN WARBEAST

- Name: Cuddles
- Height: 387 ft.
- Weight: 1643 tons
- Favorite Food: Everything
- Favorite Band: The Pogues

The silohuettes are to offer an additional sense of scale.

1201124

[Farquad]

Artist: Farquad

Concept: Titan Warbeast

1201161

Edit: made some major changes to this, so I deleted the previous
entry. I didn't want it to be regarded as a placeholder, seeing as
I just got a bad case of poster's remorse. :)

[Flame_Unquenchable]

Artist: Flame_Unquenchable

Concept: Aessulukia

Aessulukia, Champion of Oceanus ruler of the bounding sea. The times when the Titans ruled the Earth were called the golden age of mankind by
the Ancient Greeks. Many have forgotten the ravages that plagued the sons of men when Aessulukia was released from the depths.
1201233

[scorge]

Artist: Scorge

Concept: Eclipse
"And Selene, the titan goddess, having been called to war against the gods, heralded her home and ally, the beast of the moon, known as "Eclipse". For the first time in its existence, Mount Olympus felt the cold dark of a shadow, its champion Zues dwarfed against the unfathomable brute. This would be known as the day that Olympus and the Gods fell.

[Si_Swe]

Artist: Si_Swe

Concept: Tethys' Rivers (Nilos)


When the Titans rose up Ares sent forth his forces into the foothills to head them off. Enyalius led this force, charging forward in his shining, pegasus-drawn chariot. When they reached the foothills they found the beasts.

Tethys, mother of the waters, wife of Oceanus, had taken the children of her Tiamat and transformed them into the great rivers of Greece. Now she had taken here children back for the sake of war. Greatest and fiercest among them was Nilos, the beast who was the River Nile.

Enyalius' forces scattered at the sight of the Titaness' river beasts. Only Enyalius remained, charging alone against Nilos; a mere white speck against the colossal river beast.

1202253
Note: How intimidating is it to post an image proceeding scorge?

[tmyohlaing]

Artist: tmyohlaing

[Draugth]

Artist: Draugth

Concept: Mahkilobreker

Once a proficient, dangerous, specie, the Mahkilobreker became hunted down by the titans, however Coeus decides to save the las one as his own pet and war beast, due its extreme aggression it was very dangerous, it's said it only got unleashed to fight the gods in the ancient war.

[GoodSoup]

Artist: GoodSoup

Concept: Borean Sun Bird

Helios Hyperion will strike from the East, but from the North will come screeching, a second sun, as bright as the first, so loud and so fast that will compel everything with a soul to flee in terror. And together they will strike as an arrow, tearing mountains and flesh alike.
Forgotten old fragment of the Titan Wars.

[metal_militant]

When the Lord of Time had to summon his army against his own son Zeus, Chronos wasted no time. Literally. He sifted through each grain of Time carefully, picking out the right creatures to come together and form one gargantuan bull-like creature. Known as the Chronotherion, this beast had the strength to jump cliffs in a single leap and was the result of millions of years of evolution, brought together in a fraction of a second.

[NoobConcept]

Artist: NoobConcept

Concept: Helios' Hound

Helios' Hound, born of a ray of sunlight and raised in Gaia's womb, awakens to his master's call to lay his wrath upon his foes...

[jrbarker]

Artist: jrbarker

Concept: Titan Oceanus Warbeasts


Oceanus created these amphibious Titan Warbeasts to come from the seas and destroy everything in their path on their way up to Mount Olympus. When they arrive these creatures will wage war on the gods themselves.

[Si_Swe]

I will post crits tomorrow, when, hopefully, the image manager will be back up and running so we can see everyone's entries. I will say that, for me, it was pretty much a give away to scorge, though. Super epic, creative design with great rendering.

[Rob Powell]

Hey guys! I'm new to CA and I must say the artwork here is very impressive. The creativity and rendering is excellent.

This round was tough, between scorge, farquad, si swe, and draugth. But I had to go with scorge, well done! The concept itself was awsome and he composition was done nicely, especially how i's darker near the bottom of the image giving the impression that the beast was blocking the sun much like it's name!

I'm looking forward to participating in future rounds!
:yayca:

[Snafu]

Nice round and tough choice, voted for MattGamer in the end, awesome work mate; great sense of scale and it's what I'd imagine a titan to be like, reminds me of Shadow of the colossus, one of my favourite games:)

[Eclectix]

I have not been able to get the image attacher to work for this thread, nor even to view the images others have already posted in it. Ah, well.

[jrbarker]

Yeah, I can't view any of the images either. I hope it's not just me.

[ninety9]

it´s not just you if that helps ;)

[NoobConcept]

Can't see a single image either... difficult to vote this way! :P

[emerging]

yeah can't see posts either.. i think the image server is down as chow moderator has mentioned yesterday

[Si_Swe]

For the moment, if all participants could upload their images to an image-hosting site and then PM me the link, I will gladly set up a post with everyone's images so all can be seen to vote on. In the meantime, I will extend the voting deadline by a week to allow the site to get it's image hosting back up and running. Sorry for the inconvenience, but the site is currently in the process of updating, and they are short the programmer hours to get 4.0 up quickly. Here is a link to the thread explaining what is going on:
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=218045

[Si_Swe]

Hey everyone, I only have 3 of the entries out of 13. If I don't have yours, send it along, please.

[NoobConcept]

Can view the images again! Yay! :D

Anyway, there have been lots of great entries, but in the end my vote went to GoodSoup I just love the colors, the style... everything! :)

Cheers!

[Flame_Unquenchable]

It was close between Scorge, Si_Swe, Farquad and GoodSoup, but in the end I had to cast my vote for GoodSoup. The others were right there too though, man some good entries this round.

[ChromaticCodex]

Great round! I had to give my vote to GoodSoup, on account of them colors. :yum:

[GoodSoup]

I was frankly torn between Si_Swe and Scorge. Both are great beasts of original desing .. but for some reason Si_Swe's ended up more appealing to me. I think it looks exactly like what it is: a vertiginous stream of destruction and badassness.. :P And I love that thing's bulky "snout" and tiny teeth. I only wish you would've developed the wing-let-thingies a little further. As for right now they look rather artificial and not quite belonging to the creature.

[Draugth]

i will have to go whit scorge, even thought a i really liked GoodSoup's entry. also Farquad creature is really nice, and very well executes, however i fell it lacks some aggression.

[Si_Swe]

Alright, here's this round of crits:

MattGamer - The strength of this piece is in it's sense of scale. It really does feel like a massive creature. There are a few things that turn me off, though. Firstly, it's design just doesn't really look capable of movement, with two stiffer legs in front and back with the one small leg that seems to have the greatest ability to maneuver, it seems like it wouldn't be going anywhere. In your lower piece, were we see many more legs, it looks a lot more like it could function in terms of locomotion, but I'm very turned off by how much of it is photo collage. Your b/w image shows that you have a strong ability to render, yet that image seems to be almost purely photo-manipulation. In terms of composition, that image is such that it gives a great sense of scale, but feels cut off and overly tense because the head is just touching the tip of the frame.
jolen - You have a strong composition but a poor sense of scale. Your creature seems like it's about the size of a deer or maybe a buffalo, where the town used as a scaling device seems like a miniature. Perhaps applying some atmospheric perspective to the creature, and getting rid of some of the black in the image would help the scale feel right.
Sgt. Spanky - You have very strong line-work and there's a lot of personality to the piece, but the way it's been rendered out flattens the image quite a bit. The lighting on the enviro seems to suggest a completely different lighting situation than what's on the creature, who seems to be lit from all directions. He's also feeling a bit squashed in, perhaps extend the canvas to the left a ways, so the creature has some breathing room.
Farquad - Very strong work, as usual. Nice, original design for the head. I kind of wish the plates on the chest were consistent all the way down, with the protruding element like on the collar of the creature, or perhaps if the collar protrusion was more subtle it would feel more unified with the rest of that carapace. There is a sense of lambence to the blue scales and I'm not sure if it was intentional or not.
Flame_Unquenchable - Overall, there is a problem with readability in your piece that could be solved fairly easily. Your first problem is that you have a lot of black in the image, which is flattening everything out. Black is an awful thing and is difficult to use well in an illustration. The second problem is the way that the space reads. It wasn't until my fourth or fifth time looking at it that I realized that building and that figure are supposed to be way in the foreground. Generally we tend to make our foregrounds darker and lighten up the background, following atmospheric perspective, because it gives a better sense of depth. The final issue of readability arrives with the palette, which uses one saturated hue that completely dominates over everything else in the image, and some subtle greens and browns that don't really come through at all. If you're going to apply colour to your image it should be visible throughout, not just on focal points. I'm assuming that you are colouring your images using multiply layers? Try using different layer types to colour with, I use a lot of different layer types to create colour in my pieces, with opaque layers worked back in on top. Try out color, overlay, color dodge and some of the different types of light when colouring a piece, in addition to multiply, just to see how it looks.
scorge - To me, this piece captured the subject really well. It feels like a war beast and it feels like it could be a colossal boss in a game like God of War or Darksiders or something. That said, I think that there are some things that could be improved. I feel like the arms aren't particularly interesting when compared to much of the rest of the creature, and I'm not sure how I feel about the two tentacles on the lower mandible. Overall I think it's beautiful work, and it got my vote.
tmyohlaing - You have a pretty good grasp on the creation of form within your creature, but it's very hard to read. I'm not exactly sure what is a wing, or just an odd protrusion. Where the mouth is, what the purpose of the area beneath it's neck is. These kinds of things are really important to be clear on, with creature design.
Draugth - Very nice rendering and excellent scale. To me it feels less like Greek mythology and more like, maybe, something out of Castlevania. I'm not a huge fan of creatures that taper off into just tail like that, in general, because I feel those creatures lack anatomical completeness. Elements like the tail and the pegasus feel like they could have been rendered a bit further. The details you have, though, are very nice, I very much enjoy the eye tattoo on its head.
GoodSoup - I really enjoy your style and palette, and your rendering is excellent. In a certain sense I wish there were more contrast in the front mountain and on the creature's body. My only real issue is with the way that it's right wing reads oddly: it seems like it becomes one with the underside of the creature's body. Other than that, fantastic work and I look forward to seeing your contributions to the competition in the future.
metal_militant - This is a definite improvement from your previous piece, but there's still a ways to go. Here are some things to keep in mind: Creature anatomy relies heavily on knowing the way that real animals are put together. Your creature's back legs, for example, would not function well. Make sure to do studies of real animals and animal bone and muscle structure. Edge quality. Right now all of your edges are too soft, up your brush hardness and opacity, really make sure to define the edges of objects. Value composition is really important, and it's one of the best reasons to work in b/w before colour. Your piece, at the moment, has very little in the way of mid-tones, and the placement of values gives us basically only white on one side and only darks on the other. Make sure that the structure of the piece takes your eye around the whole piece, not just across. Distributing where high and low values go will allow the eye to follow strong centers in the piece, and allows the viewer to see the entire piece, not just the focal point. My final piece of advice would be to avoid using straight black and straight white as much as you can. Black and white are very difficult to encounter in life, use them sparingly and only for areas of extreme darkness and areas that are not just light, but luminous.
NoobConcept - Good scale, dynamic scene, bad pose for it. Right now we get very little of the actual design of your creature other than what is, ultimately, a basic quadruped form. Bring the viewers attention to what's interesting about your creature in particular. What makes that creature unique.
jrbarker - You have a great sense of scale and an original design. I think my only real problem with it is that we get very little detail on the creature itself.

[Flame_Unquenchable]

Si_Swe: Normally I try to paint on over my greyscale with color either on an overlay layer, and merge it down, then start picking colors from the canvas, or color over the canvas with an overlay mode at say 20% opacity, then work with the colors on it after that using 80 -100 % opacity for painting. Maybe that's backwards, I don't know.

I have a lot of work to do with fading out the color as things retreat to the back it's been a niggling problem with my work that I'm trying to resolve.

Question though, so how do you get things like the figure and the building to pull forward when you strike them with light, instead of being pushed back and flattened?

[Si_Swe]

Well it's not necessarily backwards, there are a lot of methods to go about colouring a work, but, with what I've seen, I don't think it works exceptionally well. The effect you're getting at the moment is of a greyscale image with certain parts incompletely coloured. Overlay can be great, but you need to use it at higher opacities for it to really work the way it's supposed to. If you want advice on colouring using Overlay layers, I'm pretty sure that's the way that (lark converts to colour from greyscale.

As for getting things to push forward, think about the three properties of colour: Hue, Value and Saturation. High Saturations and warmer hues have a tendency to push forwards more. Yellows in particular push forwards a lot. Cooler hues tend to pull back. As a massive generalization, with a piece like this, things up front should have the highest colour saturation and warmth, as well as the lowest values when objects are in shadow. Things towards the back should be less saturated, with less contrast and cooler hues. Does that help?

[Flame_Unquenchable]

Yes, critiques always help, thanks for taking the time to reply. :D

I would love to discuss this more but I don't want to derail the voting thread. :)

[GoodSoup]

Thanks Si_Swe. Yeah, I'm sadly aware of the wing issue you mention... I struggled with that from the very beginning, and I wasn't able to solve it gracefully. ...Stupid wing.

[Nalot]

Hi, I think everyone who entered did a great job, hopefully one day I will be one of them.

As for my vote, it was a toss up between Farquad, Scorge and NoobConcept, I felt all had the titan warbeast idea and were well presented and worked. My vote went to Scorge in the end as it was my favourite out of the three.

Well done to everyone.

[Draugth]

thanks a lot for the critique, im taking all that into account.
im also going to try and comment every final piece the next time im participating, i hope i can help and in a way return the great favor. :)

nice entries everyone!