C.O.W. - #130: Household Pest - VOTING!

[yoitisi]

ROUND #130 VOTING

Topic: Cave Dweller


Deadline for the voting: Monday, 02 February 2009

Posting thread (closed): C.O.W. - #130: Household Pest


------------------------------------------------------------------------

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. Your vote will be seen.

[Jack Nugget]

REJECTED - NOT IN THE POLL
Reason: No description added

Yeah! My first COW! ^^



Artist: Jack Nugget

Concept: icecrepper
your-description

[Bralt Hannicart]

Artist: Bralt Hannicart

Concept: Bulbeater
The first Bulbeater eggs were brought back home after an interstellar space mission to locate alien lifeforms on planet Rah in the year 2312. The specimens were subjected to many tests and examinations by Dr. Lawrence Reise. Unfortunatly he forgot to write down all the results because he was always very...very drunk.

One day, the eggs had hatched but the lifeforms were nowhere to be found. Days went by and Reise was unable to locate them until suddenly, during a sober moment, he noticed that the lightbulbs in the lab were not shining as bright as they used to. One of the critters was blocking the light from a bulb while hanging from the ceiling. It made Dr. Reise wonder why, in these modern ages, mankind still used these archaic lightsources but he quickly forgot about that and returned to his binge drinking and Bulbeater examinations.

Reise found out that the critters have a special metabolism which allows them to "feed" on light and heat from the bulbs. Special cells equiped with chlorophyl on its "belly" and vein-like organs around its "mouth" allows the Bulbeater to do so. It has heat vanes that quickly cool down the critter if things get too hot and two strong arms to cling to the ceiling. In and around it's mouth, the Bulbeater produces a smelly saliva that cools down the areas of it's body that touches the bulb. The saliva smells like concentrated onions and rotten meat making these pests even more annoying to have in the house while having over friends and/or relatives for a nice calm night of poker or Guitar Hero CXII on the Cyberbox 3000 GameStation, for example. Reise also found out that these critters are very strong and can sting with their small tail spike when touched. Trying to remove them always results in destroying the lamp, parts of the ceiling and a nasty infection from it's sting. The smell can linger for years after succesfully removing a Bulbeater.

Unfortunatly for Reise, Bulbeaters breed like rabbits and they quickly spread out from the lab. In less than a year, our entire planet got infested with these pests. Though harmless, they can leave homes in the dark if not dealt with quickly. Even streetlamps, neonlights and other lightsources are "preys" for the Bulbeater.

Reise was arrested while screaming "I'm...ze...innocent you!...idi-idiots...shizz happ...fens!" Needless to say, Reise left behind a penetrating alcohol stench and a pandemic infestation of Bulbeaters. Thank you, Dr. Reise. Thanks a lot.

[Seabreeze]

REJECTED - NOT IN THE POLL
Reason: Failed quality check (sloppy/rushed/unfinished artwork and/or insufficient artistic quality)

Artist: Seabreeze

Concept: Toiletbowl-harpoonist
This beast crawls into people's toilets with it's small three-toed legs and sticks the tail in the hole. Then it waits, and harpoons it's victim with it's sharp tounge.

[Nadiamoon]

Artist: Nadiamoon

Concept: Crocosaurus
This is a household pest that attacks not just crops, food, livestock, but also other household pests.

[ChrisG]

Artist: Chris G

Concept: Mane Pormose

Common Name: Mane Pormose / meyn 'pɔr məs /

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Rodentia
Family: Muridae

The Mane Pormose is a very unique breed of mouse, its most defining characteristics being its spikey mane, large eyes and even larger ears for nocturnal navigation. This is a particularly advanced species of mouse, defensively speaking. Their mane is actually made up of tiny quills that much resemble a porcupine's. This makes it particularly difficult for their infants to hitch a ride on their backs, though they compensate by having an excessively long tail for the little ones to cling to.

In spite of their small size and "cute" disposition these critters can be quite burdensome, having a knack for getting into food supplies and gnawing through important wires (ever wonder why certain outlets in your house don't work?). They also have a tendency to shed their quills while squeezing under doors, making for some unwelcome hidden carpet surprises. Fortunately the quills are not poisonous; They are simply annoying. Still, like most wall-dwelling rodents, they are exceptionally unsanitary when it comes to droppings. Contaminated food should be disposed of immediately and cupboards should be thoroughly cleaned to avoid ailments such as Hantavirus.

The Mane Pormose tends to breed in small litters (or "mischiefs", i.e. "a mischief of Pormose) consisting of no more than three pups per litter. Being polyestrous, they breed all year round. They have a gestation average of twenty-five days (slightly longer than the common mouse), though larger species of Mane Pormose have been known to gestate for up to 40 days.

What differentiates them the most from common mice (apart from their quills) are the ornamental whiskers on their feet and ears. These features are simply the flare they use to attract mates. The longer their whiskers are, the more likely they are to mate successfully. Another strange feature of the Mane Pormose is the tendency for slightly older pups to travel with the father to find sustenance, since the mother is usually pregnant and nursing younger pups.

When domesticated, the Mane Pormose makes for a fairly sociable pet. If they are used to being handled by humans, they will resist the urge to flare up their quills in defense. They are exceptionally quick, however, so be warned if placing them outside of their cage of ANY length of time.

[zimfin]

Artist: zimfin

Concept: Golden Flake Bug
My creature was named the "Golden Flake Bug" after entomologists discovered there species on a secluded island near Indonesia. The entomologists, first discovering the fallen flakes and suspecting they were gold, tracked them to the source, the bugs. They brought them back to Europe for studies but were unable to contain them. Upon their escape the bugs spread, everywhere, and can now be found all over the world eating all kinds of fabrics and materials.

Studies have since shown that these "Gold" flakes are dropped by the male of the species after mating. The female then eats them, for the special chemicals they contain are necessary for reproduction. They have short life spans, (around 3 Months) but in that time the females can produce up to 6 times, each with eggs numbering in the Hundreds. At their largest, they grow to 2 Inches in length.Golden Flake Bugs are voracious eaters. Mostly, they dine on fabrics, both synthetic and natural.There colonies can be enormous, numbering up to 500,000. They are very fast movers and very sensitive to vibration thanks to the feeler threads on the legs. They are protected by a strong exoskeleton and if speed can't get them out of danger, they will roll into a ball shape and wait out trouble. When rolled into a ball, their armour backed eyes fit snugly into their shell protecting them from harm.

[Janos]

Artist: Janos

Concept: Common Closet-mole (Talpa blattaria)
The Common Closet-mole is a small-sized, sixlegged mammal spread mostly in central Europe and northern America. It is covered in bluegrey fur and has very lightsensitive eyes. Its size ranges from 10 to 15 centimeters.

It lives of moths and other small insects found in clothes and other dark corners in closets and wardrobes. He uses his feelers to detect his pray and then uses his long and sticky tongue to catch them. If a cupboard is filled with mothballs it hoards them in a secluded corner of the closet and covers them with his urine to prevent their smell of keeping of moths.

If threatened it flees to the darkest corner of the closet it currently lives in and rolls up into a neatly shaped ball. It raps its feelers around his fluffy tail and can thus easily be mistaken as a common lavenderbag, used to keep of moths.

Though the Common Closet-mole is nonhazardous to humans it can be a big nuisance due to the fact that it frequently eats away at woolen jumpers, socks and other clothing. The resulting holes are often falsely attributed to the Common Moth. If taken from its habitual surrounding the Common Closet-mole can be domesticated to a certain degree, though if confronted with wool its natural instincts to destroy are easily reawakened.

[Anthis]

Artist: Anthis

Concept: Mirpil

The Mirpil (Dolota myrilla) is a fairly small, rodent-like creature living in in and around cities and human populated areas. They actively search for their food within kitchens and storages, often in small packs. Cunning and combined effort allows them to open cupboards and even fridges, after which they wreak havoc in the food supply. They can store foodstuffs in the large sac underneath their neck, and often move between houses. Despite sporting a pair of fleshy wings, Mirpil prefer to quickly scuttle around on their legs. Mirpil can cause substantional material damage as they search for food, leaving droppings, devouring and destroying food, and leaving a general mess. They are otherwise harmless, and cats will send them fluttering and fleeing.

[IVIATT]

Artist: IVIATT

Concept: PlugBug
Spending most of its time in the plumbing of an unsuspecting household, this creature nests in water piping and absorbs any water that would normally circulate through the tubes. This water is stored in several large organ sacs which inflate along the plugbug's body. In many cases, the bug inflates so much that it may rupture plumbing, causing nasty leakages and flooding. It is recommended that plumbing be inspected regularly for infestations of PlugBugs.

[fury03]

Artist: Fury03

Concept: Sock Beetle

Anobium Serricorne, Commonly known as the Sock beetle, has a colorful extieror to give warning of its poiesonus interior. As indicated by its common name, the sock beetle is a pest of mostly dirty socks. It is attracted to and searches out the salty wet cotton threads. The beetles carry a symbiotic yeast, Symbiotaphrina kochii, that is transmitted to the next generation superficially on the eggs and carried internally in larvae and adults in the mycetome, a specialized organ that is linked to the gut. The yeast cells assist in the digestion of less nutritious foods, supply needed B-vitamins and sterols, and provide resistance to most toxins and pesticides.

[Atastrophea]

Artist: Atastrophea

Concept: Giant Slipper Weevil


The Ginat Slipper Weevil is hermit-crab-like in that it has a soft squishy body which it protects by adopting a favourite slipper or shoe and crawling inside, it then creates a hole in the sole of said footwear for its own legs to poke out through, lifts the item with its spindly forelimbs and scuttles off to a dark and distant corner where it feels marginally safer.

If no shoes/slippers are available it will resort to using a sock although this is a desperate measure and missing socks may more commonly be attributed to its aquatic relative (which lives in washing machine pipes and requires less robust protection....)

If a PAIR of shoes ever goes missing this will be due to the creature performing its mating ritual in which the male displays its great strength to the female by dragging the second shoe as far as possible and leaving it in a desirable spot for the female to move into and lay its eggs.

Other than hole chewing and footwear theft, their most irritating habit is that of leaving their small gritty droppings in any shoe they have not appropriated, causing the wearer great discomfort and requiring much cursing and hopping on one leg to rectify.

p.s sorry this is a tiny bit late posting, I had computer issues and thought it had posted when it hadn't

~^-^~

[Tommoy]

CLOSE TO REJECTION
Reason: Borderline for a couple of reasons. First would be the 'blob rule': Drawing a blob for a design is not allowed for C.O.W., but the fact that you gave it a little more shape saved you there. Secondly though, the creature is a bit hard to read as the painting itself doesn't solely focus on the creature. However, since it's part of the concept I've let it slide this time.



Artist: Tommoy

Concept: Artflip also known as Artfart
In 1978 Albert spiffy created a specie called the Artflip. Mixing dna from several animals the Artflip had the unique capability of changing itself into different kind of shapes but more so different kind of colors. Properly trained the Artflip was capable of changing into real pieces of art. Some of them could even copy the old masters like Rembrandt or Vermeer, others were specialized in impressionism. It became a trend to have one or more Artflips in your home decorating the walls. In june 1986 a virus completely overrun the Artflip population, making them go insane, forgetting all that they've been thought. Nowadays the Artflip sporadically pops up on walls or couches leaving gooey stains.

[Edward B]

Artist: Peg

Concept: Household Pest


The size of an average rat the tropical pest hunts in packs.

These tropical pests terrorize local villages wherever they go. They raid any food storage it comes across and is able to carry heavy loads of loot in its two forearms, whist still beeing able to maintain a speedy sprint thanks to its flexible tail.

[blobs]

By purdy

Artist - Blobs

Concept - VOMBUG

The Vombug is a nasty little creature that once infests your house is very difficult to eliminate.
It uses it's vomit, much like a fly to convert it's food into a digestible form. The problem for us is that the acid within the vomit will disintegrate your wood, stone, carpet, metals, plastics.. practically anything within your house. And the Vombug eats almost anything.
We suggest using Vombug-Gleem to rid your house of this very destructive pest!

[yoitisi]

No entries past this post...

Rejected entries: Jack Nugget, Seabreeze

Close to rejection: Tommoy

The reasons for the above can be found in the original posts of the entries.

Next round will be up soon, in the meantime feel free to comment and vote in here

[IVIATT]

Anthis because his design was very 'chimera-like' and combined many different aspects of different animals. The head is quite different as well. Only criticism is that I would like to see a greater range of color to really make it stand apart from the usual browns and earth tones.

[sticmann]

I voted Anthis. Great concept and very well executed. ChrisG and blobs were very close. Good work guys!

[zimfin]

Bralt got my vote. No hesitation!
Well done to all though. Some superb entries.

[Jack Nugget]

im sorry of on successful being to put the description, but with l' English, since use translator I made hard work to explain the concept… will be for the next one!
exscuse my bad english ^^

Very Nice creature! I have voted Bralt Hannicart!!!!!!!!!

[Lege1]

Wow I totally missed the boat for the voting on this one...work and school,***shakes head*** anyway, there's always next time right. My vote went to Bralt but I loved the stuff that other folks brought to the table too like Blobs, Peg, and Anthis...Awesome work everybody!

[Moai]

I voted for Anthis. Very charming and attractive design.
Bralt Hannicart was a close second. Very nice rendering, neat design.

[Seabreeze]

Voted for Bralt's, because it i s a unique concept and well painted.

[Tommoy]

Honestly didn't know about the blob rule.

I've voted Anthis, very believable creature and well executed. I think the bony torso works great. Bralt and Blobs entries came very close.

[zimfin]

Just out of curiosity, I'd like to know, does my lack of Background affect peoples opinion of my work? I get the feeling it does but I am not sure.
Thanks.

[Bralt Hannicart]

Backgrounds wouldn't hurt your chances, I'd say...I rarely spend much time on those, as it's about the concept, not about depicting a scene or telling a lengthy story... thx for the votes people!

[ChrisG]

Originally Posted by sticmann

I voted Anthis. Great concept and very well executed. ChrisG and blobs were very close. Good work guys!

Thanks to sticmann for the mention. This was my first post afterall. I threw my vote to bralt, though. That creature is mad pimp.

[Deon]

It was between Bralt and Anthis for me - beautiful work, guys - Anthis's one one just seemed more like vermin to me, it looks like it carries disease, so it got my vote.

[chuck18mp]

I voted Bralt!
Nice concept!
I like it

[Anthis]

No crits yet? we could do with some more crits this round! Tried to mention some of the strong points, and a suggestion or two.

Pretty close round, Bralt Hannicart. Already yours though. Hoping to see you more often, very unusual creature.

Jack Nugget; Welcome (as it's your first entry). Nice bug, I can see you had some nice ideas with those markings. Your creature looks more like a mechanical critter to me, I'm not sure if that was your intention. Also, I'd advice not to use a pure white background as it can be very overpowering.
Bralt Hannicart; Nice job on an original pest, and a clear concept and image. The smooth, slimy skin just below the mouth looks very convincing. I believe the part where your creature attaches to the light bulb could be better. You could do nice things with that, like having the light shine trough the skin, some veins still visible perhaps. The little lines of the overlayed texture are also very visible.
Seabreeze; Shame you didn't finish yours. A creature living in toilets would be pretty original, and also challenging.
Nadiamoon; So your creature would attack ours huh? I think you did a good job on the 'pest' look of your creature. It's not particularly pretty, fast, or strong, but a genuine pest. My crit would be that your creature could use some more colour variation. It doesn't have to be colourful, but shadows, different textures and skin tones can create some variation.
ChrisG; Just noticed this is your first post, welcome. I think those quills were a nice idea, as it really illustrates a creature that indirectly harms humans. Really nice presentation too, although the term 'fig' is used for separate pictures. On the technical side- be careful with using pure blacks for the shadows.
zimfin; Your creature is most important, and a background is not required. It can really add to your piece though, you can use it to create more realism, a sense of scale, better lighting, etc. You've got a pretty nice background story, and the mammal-like anatomy details make your creature more interesting. Your creature is missing some sense of focus. Lowered saturation and less crisp lines could help you.
Janos; Everyone knows how much of a pain it is to run out of socks. The surroundings really add to the mood too, nice illustration, it really looks like he's about to be discovered. Having a 6legged mammal is pretty nice, but it's a shame you can't see the whole creature. I also think the fur could use more polishing, although that can be tough.
IVIATT; Pretty unusual creature, and a funny concept. Your piece looks a lot better now with the correct settings. You can't really see whether your creatures skin is soft, tough, spongy, or anything else. You could use textures, highlights, and everything so that you can really 'feel' the skin.
fury03; Same as with Janos, seems like a really annoying creature. Nice to see it directly feed on those socks. The front leg looks a little as if it's attached to the head. Also, I think your creature looks much like a normal bug. By the way - you've got some great textures in there, very diverse.
Atastrophea; You've got an amazing concept, but unfortunately I don't think you can see it in the picture. Shoes gone missing because of those creatures...
Tommoy ; Very clever idea, and a clear and crisp image. Unfortunately, a bit of a tough project because of your creatures' nature. There is not much to look at as far as the creature goes, unless you would pick a very interesting background. Nice job no the creature's habitat.
Peg ; Nice use of colour, on the almost metallic skin. Your creatures have gotten quite a bit better. Be careful not to stick to your comfort zone, many of your creatures have this kind of wrinkled skin, alien-looking mouths, and are often eyeless. Nice job on the foreshortening.
blobs ; Creature really looks as if it would crawl around at night, messing up your house, spraying acid and destroying everything. I take it he is sucking it up right now, but I am not sure - the stream seems a little shapeless. I also can't really see how big your creature is. There's some wood on the left, but it doesn't quite help out.