Official fanart contest results are in!

[Murphie]

Re: Official fanart contest results are in!

I didn't say my art was better either (It's different, and entirely subjective, as it's not fan art). I said that if anyone is going to be asked to provide "credentials" in order to validly state their opinion, then everyone should have to.

[Chveya]

Re: Official fanart contest results are in!

I think the pink eyeshadow'd beastwoman in that god-awful piece is supposed to be an orc.

Out of the winning selections, I liked the Bard one, the Women of Vana'diel watercolor, and the Star Sybil one the best. I thought all the pieces were pretty good except for one or two.

[Taskmage]

Re: Official fanart contest results are in!

I dislike the naked beast(wo)man pic because the handdrawn pieces are at my own level of of skill which I've made no effort to ever develop and consider to be far FAR from worthiness of recognition in a contest including many other obviously skilled artists. The computer generated aspects of the piece represent a similar level of aptitude in Photoshop, at which I consider myself to be quite skilled for a hobbyist. The textures are all done with no more than two filters at entirely inappropriate, if not default settings. The text in some cases is practically illegible. In a broadly artistic impression of the image itself, it is devoid of the use of any compositional forms, illiciting no mood through color, focusing attention and drawing the eye in no particular way, overall doing nothing to provoke a response from the viewer other than to the concept of nude female monsters.

Moreover, the piece is drawn from the psychological perspective of someone who still finds nudity amusing in and of itself, which I do not appreciate. This is not to say that I am above crude expression or uses of nudity, but even the smut on nekosentai at least employs some understanding of what we culturally find provocative, characterizes and forms empathy with its subjects through expression and posturing, and in some cases go as far as to manipulate eyeflow and form space and perspective through use of color, line and shape, rather than simply relying on their subject matter to attract attention.

The other mentioned "bad" piece, The Beauty That Is Mithra, isn't really so much bad as it is not good yet. I don't really consider myself qualified to go into detail as to what about it is bad since I don't consider myself to be greater in skill than the artist, but I'll try anyway. Some features seem out of proportion and the placement of features on the face isn't consistent with the oblique angle at which the head is positioned in relation to the viewer's frame over reference. It's as though the face is just projected from the front, rather than actually residing on the head. The difference is small, but noticable and unnerving. Also the artist hasn't defined a light source through the adequate use of highlights and shadows. This may be a personal stylistic choice, but in my opinion it detracts from the work, as the shape of the mithra's head isn't clearly defined the three dimensions. This person is a good deal more skilled than myself, but still not skilled enough in my opinion to merit mention in as large a contest as this one, which solicited entries from across the internet. This causes me to believe that the volume of entries was really not that great.

The other pieces I like to varying degrees, as the varying styles resonate to greater or less degree with my personal opinions of beauty. In any case I can appreciate the differences as personal choices about how each artist wishes to express him or herself and I get the impression that their intents are adequately conveyed in the final work. The piece I most enjoy, the Mythril Prize—Women of the Republic: 7 Ornamented Steps, isn't my favorite because of exceptional artistic skill or clever composition, merely because I find the characters charming, the montage of humorous scenes provided is amusing, and because the piece as a whole is a reference to a bit of Japanese culture that I only recently became aware of, which is personally gratifying to me.

[Aksannyi]

Re: Official fanart contest results are in!

Very well thought out observations. There were some pieces that I liked and some that I disliked, but I also do not feel the need to post any of my own work before making criticisms. However, if you would like to see my skill as an artist just out of your own sheer curiosity, you can check my deviantArt page, however, I, too, do not to fanart. My own work.

At any rate, I'm not one to harshly criticize others' work. I'm too much of a nice person in general.

And wow, Shiva is beautiful. I love that piece!

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Official fanart contest results are in!



I liked this one in particular because while it's not the most refined effort, it says something rather endearing about how people look at their female characters.

I've noticed even male players have a tendency to doll-up their female characters as though they were giving gifts to a lady (as opposed to the base assumption they're role playing some tranny fantasy). And female players also want to be seen as beautiful and feminine, so they'll do the same. I'll even admit I'm biased toward my female character over my male one and I think its just because i was raised to be a gentleman (despite what my posts may imply at times )

Just says something about the appreciation of women in general and how we like to make them feel special. And in some cases, I think we just like our characters to feel more human, so we do things like this to humanize them rather than leave them as some simple online avatar.

[Spiritbear]

Re: Official fanart contest results are in!

Murphie hit it spot on with what I was trying to say. If you followed your advise you can't even complain about what you dislike about this game because you didn't make a MMO of your own(if you did, impressive).

And I probably would say it to their face. I'm a very brutally honest person.

Are you a Sagitarius by chance??? I'm also brutally honest, ask my fiance. I'm not above telling anyone what my thoughts on something are but I do it respectfully and I certainly would tell anyone something to their face.

I'm just disappointed that I can't see the pics while I'm at work. I would like to see what you all are talking about.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Official fanart contest results are in!

I'm not above telling anyone what my thoughts on something are but I do it respectfully and I certainly would tell anyone something to their face.

That's pretty much my point, you can make a statement about art without tearing an effort to shreds, if you're just going to tear somone's work down then you'd better have something better to show.

I'd like people to talk about what the images say more than what the image looks like. Whether the artist intends a message or not, there usually is one there to express part of themselves or something on their minds. Don't just go with the first impression, either, look a little deeper and see what else it says to you. Art is subjective, tell me what it says, don't just tell me its not pretty look at. Art doesn't have to be pretty.

A lot of people are picking apart the "beastwomen" picture and I'll admit its not be pretty to look at, but it does ask and attempt to answer a question we might not usually think about, which is, "Where are the beastmen's women and what would they look like?"

People talk all the time about what a male mithra would look or be like since we were never given the option to choose one, yet people don't ask the same question about the beastmen. That picture tries to make up an answer.

There's more to a picture than the image itself, you know, "A picture is worth a thousand words" and all that.

[Taskmage]

Re: Official fanart contest results are in!

I agree and I don't. Looks aren't everything, but they definately are something. The reason we have the expression "stripper with a heart of gold" is because more people look at them for long enough to develop an interest and attempt to ascertain their character than other classes of people. The heart of a work of art is the message, but if you want a chance to put that message across to the great majority of ultimately shallow humanity, you have to appeal to their baser senses and hold their attention.

I agree with your appraisal of the taru and mirror picture for instance, but while I got a sense of the message you detailed just from looking at the picture, I was repulsed by the eye and resultingly didn't give it enough thought to fully appreciate. The meme died in me and I wouldn't have propogated it, whereas it clearly succeeded with you and you did share it. I suppose that means I'm more of a superficial person than you are, but I think it's part of art's job to penetrate the shallow exteriors of most people's concious lives and awaken something deeper.

[Nakti]

Re: Official fanart contest results are in!

My favorites were...

"Four Goddesses of Vana'diel" - I liked the gentle atmosphere. The pastels/muted colors really add to the relaxed feeling.

"Taking a Walk" - Gives the Star Sybil added depth to her personality. (I don't see much of her since I'm from Bastok.) And I'm a sucker for baby chocobos. I think the balance and composition is excellent.

"Autumn Assault" - I liked the Kenshin Himura feel of this picture. The expression of the face isn't battle hungry, it's determined. Makes me feel that she didn't pick the fight, but she's intent on finishing it.

"The Scent of Spring" - I liked the very polished, minimalist look. This made me think of the artist (can't remember the name off-hand - the one who did the Hitchcock profile) who drew profiles of people with 7 pen strokes.

***********************************

Runners Up for me...

"My Empress" - Very cute

"AZIMA!!" - Classical look (based on woodcut look?) very well done. I'm not a fan of orange, but the palette fits the piece perfectly.

"Dressing Up" - Not as polished as some of the others, but that adds to its charm. Simple composition, simple coloring, but the subject makes me smile.

"Women of the Republic" - A lot of nice mini-montages of Vana'diel life.

************************************

I'm glad they chose a variety of styles and mediums. It's boring when everything looks like it was done by a professional. Everyone has to start somewhere. Clearly it was up to the judges to decide if something was "good enough" for a prize.

I noted that the Mithra face was the only pencil drawing. The Beastwomen picture was a bold departure from the usual "ladies of Vana'diel". Neither picture was polished, but I give props to the artist of "Minority women" just for trying something different.

btw, is "Irisjis Callard" (artist of "Minority women") the same one that has posted on Dreams?

[Hyrist]

Re: Official fanart contest results are in!

This is not friggin art. This is some crap some 10 year somewhere thought would be cool to draw. Ha. Haha. Hahaha.
NO.
Please. Stop drawing. It hurts my eyes and my brain cells die a little everytime I see this. *sniff*

You might not want to say that so harshly. Because that belongs to Irisjir Callard, MY FIANCE! Who had the audacity to do it, and won a place on the PoL site for it.
You wanna keep something like that off the site, do something better with the same theme.

__Reasons why the picture was not "Polished"__ (for those who wonder)

First off, this entire thing was constructed on a Laptop PC through Photoshop only. It was designed as a secondary submission to her primary one (which was much better done, but not as controversially acclaimed.) It was more of a gag and was not really expected to get featured, but it DID.

When I mention Laptop PC, It also means no mouse or electronic drawing utensil.

She did, however spend quite a few long hours on some of the more detailed pictures of it. She also had to face with the difficulty of file sizing (which cropped the picture down a lot).

To top it all off, while creating a preview to show off, the original file became damaged, and she was not able to return to editing it. What you see is actually the preview piece she was going to touch up.

Flatly, she went through hell showing that work as it is, and it was never ment as her primary submission to begin with. Her primary was never featured, but you've seen a cut-out of it on her sig before.

And yes, this Irisjir Callard is a DiV poster.

[Taskmage]

Re: Official fanart contest results are in!

Haha I apologize, Hyrist, for my scathing appraisal of your fiancee's character. The image gave me the impression that I stated, which should be taken just as much as a reflection of my myself. If nothing else I give her full credit for being bold and actually putting that out there.

[Eohmer]

Re: Official fanart contest results are in!

If Medusa were on there, it'll be a different story... :D

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Official fanart contest results are in!

I think it's part of art's job to penetrate the shallow exteriors of most people's concious lives and awaken something deeper.

People have to do that for themselves, the artist can't do that for them.

[Kholdstare]

Re: Official fanart contest results are in!

I personally think that "Lu the Reaper" was my favorite. Partly because it was a very well-made femme fatale type of piece, (as opposed to the, although nice, rather common "cherry blossoms" pictures) and partly because when I saw it, I would have honestly thought it was made by Yoshitaka Amano.




^ One of Amano's work, for comparative purposes.

other ones I found particularly nice were the Shiva pic, the Doll Festival picture (I had to laugh at some of these, the DRG with the seek marker was a great touch) and the picnic. Something about a taru trying to eat such a big (for her) sandwich is quite funny.

[Hyrist]

Re: Official fanart contest results are in!

If Medusa were on there, it'll be a different story... :D

A poster of Medusa was in the background, but got cropped out do to picture size limitations.