Wow, we have some amazing artists!

Vesemr - Sanctuary

Best congratulations to artist who won and made art in traditional way + not colored.
I kinda knew that most of winning arts gonna be made in computer.

I'm not saying it's bad and they shouldn't win, hell no. But if I would be judge.. I would create 2 folders. One for traditional arts and second for digital.

Once again, gratz to all winners and for future.. don't be scared to give your characters some emotional look on faces.

o/

shashahah

amazing drawing skills aside,

has any1 noticed some of the winners r ini-edited and nothing to be done about it? lol

besides, judging from the winning screens that were picked, the contest shouldve been limited to "digital art drawings only"
i mean ye, they did a great job, but imo its kinda unfair for all those who used watercolor or plain pencil art
next time pick 5 from each, ijs..

Xainou - Sanctuary

VenusArmani - Dreamweaver wrote: »

No N/S Wizard Hugs Dragon

That would be PheosNyx from Sanc b:chuckle Glad to see someone I know get so far


Also, amazing winners. But I wouldn't have wanted to be judge for this. So much amazing art .__. Grats, people.

VenusArmani - Dreamweaver

Xainou - Sanctuary wrote: »

That would be PheosNyx from Sanc b:chuckle Glad to see someone I know get so far


Also, amazing winners. But I wouldn't have wanted to be judge for this. So much amazing art .__. Grats, people.

Alrighty, I'll change it from "wizard hugs dragon," though I gotta say even the concept of that one was pretty awesome. And I agree, I wouldn't have wanted to judge it. A lot of amazing art, just no way to accommodate all the awesome stuff. I also loved the way that he blended the screenshot of his character and the drawing of it together. The tail of the dragon is part screenshot, part drawing and seems to leap from the screenie.

Namari - Dreamweaver

So...who wants to make me a siggy for the forums?

I loved so many of those, makes me wish I had some kind of drawing talent xD

VenusArmani - Dreamweaver

Namari - Dreamweaver wrote: »

So...who wants to make me a siggy for the forums?

I loved so many of those, makes me wish I had some kind of drawing talent xD

If you want a signature you can request one in the fanatics forum where there are multiple people making signatures for people. Alternatively you can make a request at my screenshot thread and I could try to make one for you. Although if you want the full customizable experience, I'd definitely recommend Silvy in the fanatics section.

Sagek - Sanctuary

Amazing, congrats to the winner!

Simply amazing how much talent floats around the forum/game. b:victory

Xainou - Sanctuary

VenusArmani - Dreamweaver wrote: »

I also loved the way that he blended the screenshot of his character and the drawing of it together. The tail of the dragon is part screenshot, part drawing and seems to leap from the screenie.

Ikr o_o I love the fact that she did something else than just put them next to each other and also used the map. Although I heard many many mobs died for it. b:chuckle

/Mangetsu - Dreamweaver

Asterelle - Sanctuary wrote: »

I am floored by how good the winning entries are from the "Draw your character" contest. I had no idea the community had such great talent. Congrats to all the winners!

Frankie, get these people to replace that weird winter loading screen!

Agree b:chuckle really good art works it makes me want to take a photoshop class hehe

liked the one with the sin showing off her daggs and the last two with the veno nd barb really cool pictures

Knownase - Heavens Tear

It's official, I'm entering the next one....if the rules and limitations don't......suck.

DeadRaven - Sanctuary

_blood_rain - Sanctuary wrote: »

It's not the fact that it's not a realistic style. It is very possible to make beautiful and charming cartoony styles(the plagiarized comic strip contest winner proves this), but even cartoon/animated/stylized works have to go by some rules. A cartoony style can only cover up a lack of talent and knowledge of basic "art" concepts to a certain extent, as mean as that may sound.
As much as I hate to say it, the Winter loading screen winner is just objectively ugly. I have not met anyone who said it looks nice because they actually thought it looked nice, and not because everyone else was saying it looked bad and they wanted to be the nice person. There are just so many things in that loading screen that invoke a genuine displeasure from the deep, primitive part of our animal instinct that judges if something is a mortal threat or not. Every time it pops up, my cat hisses. If you held it up in front of a baby, it would probably cry.

As the person said in the post you are replying to, art is subjective. I do not dispute your claim that many people dislike the picture, but many people do (or at least they did at one time). Perhaps you do not remember, or maybe you were on hiatus from the game when the picture first came out but I remember numerous people posting and chatting about how much they just loved it! People not only approved of its artistic merit but they also praised the change in screenshots. The problem now is summarized nicely in the quote below.

Xx_BeLLa_xX - Harshlands wrote: »

It's not about the fact it's ugly or not. People are just tired to see it cause it's represent winter/Christmas while we are not anymore in that period since a long time.

People are just tired of seeing it....they are tired of its representation of a holiday looonnngggg past by......and...

...the picture has become intimately associated with something that everyone hates....waiting for the game to load b:surrender

PheosNyx - Sanctuary

Xainou - Sanctuary wrote: »

That would be PheosNyx from Sanc b:chuckle Glad to see someone I know get so far


Also, amazing winners. But I wouldn't have wanted to be judge for this. So much amazing art .__. Grats, people.

b:cuteb:cuteb:cute

Bawww wuv yew too <3333 U like my pimp-hat BIDS? b:chuckle

VenusArmani - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Alrighty, I'll change it from "wizard hugs dragon," though I gotta say even the concept of that one was pretty awesome. And I agree, I wouldn't have wanted to judge it. A lot of amazing art, just no way to accommodate all the awesome stuff. I also loved the way that he blended the screenshot of his character and the drawing of it together. The tail of the dragon is part screenshot, part drawing and seems to leap from the screenie.

o-o i think my ego just swelled so much it ruptured

athenenoctua

Really nice entries indeed. I'm glad I didn't post my phail attempts, lol. Gratz not only to the finalists/winners but also to everyone who used "traditional" tools (like pencils and paper). You're awesome!

Nowitsawn - Heavens Tear

Anybody else noticed that at least one of the winning characters (can't say for certain on the others) has .ini edited eyes?

Seems a little odd to me if it's still supposed to be against the rules.

_blood_rain - Sanctuary

DeadRaven - Sanctuary wrote: »

As the person said in the post you are replying to, art is subjective. I do not dispute your claim that many people dislike the picture, but many people do (or at least they did at one time). Perhaps you do not remember, or maybe you were on hiatus from the game when the picture first came out but I remember numerous people posting and chatting about how much they just loved it! People not only approved of its artistic merit but they also praised the change in screenshots. The problem now is summarized nicely in the quote below.

Yes, many things about art are subjective, but there are just some things that are naturally attractive and pleasing to the human eye...none of which are in the Winter Loading Screen.

I was not on a hiatus during the time the winner was announced. I don't remember any sincere praise for the picture. Mostly just disappointment because there were such better entries out there.

VenusArmani - Dreamweaver

_blood_rain - Sanctuary wrote: »

Yes, many things about art are subjective, but there are just some things that are naturally attractive and pleasing to the human eye...none of which are in the Winter Loading Screen.

I was not on a hiatus during the time the winner was announced. I don't remember any sincere praise for the picture. Mostly just disappointment because there were such better entries out there.

How do you know the compliments were not sincere? If you dismiss any compliment of it as a being insincere then of course you'll never hear anything positive. That doesn't mean that nobody liked it though. It means that you refuse to listen to any other opinion on the matter, so you dismiss it as a white lie. There were people who liked it and it wouldn't have won if nobody liked it at all.

BanMePls - Heavens Tear

VenusArmani - Dreamweaver wrote: »

How do you know the compliments were not sincere? If you dismiss any compliment of it as a being insincere then of course you'll never hear anything positive. That doesn't mean that nobody liked it though. It means that you refuse to listen to any other opinion on the matter, so you dismiss it as a white lie. There were people who liked it and it wouldn't have won if nobody liked it at all.

I just want t0 kn0w what criteria it was rated 0n t0 recieve the winning sp0t.

_blood_rain - Sanctuary

They didn't seem sincere because they were posted very defensively and only after it was clear that most people were not happy with the results. Everyone who I've talked to about it off forums hates it.

Anyway, a lot of the "art is subjective" argument kind of crumbles when you look at the other pieces that the current winner had to beat to win the contest. It is both objectively and subjectively inferior to many of the runner-ups(runners-up? runner-ups?). I hate to be THE ******* but by any technical standards, the picture is horrible. All of the things one could use to view the picture subjectively do not appear to be artistic choices, but errors/lazy shortcuts.

As for why it won, well I think it's fairly obvious that PW art judges don't just choose winners based on talent. They need to include people from most ranges of ability in order to make these competitions appealing to as many people as possible. These contests would be extremely boring and unsuccessful if only the most skilled, trained, and naturally talented people were guaranteed to win. To be fair, I think people would have been less harsh on the winner if they didn't have to deal with it in the game.

VenusArmani - Dreamweaver

_blood_rain - Sanctuary wrote: »

They didn't seem sincere because they were posted very defensively and only after it was clear that most people were not happy with the results. Everyone who I've talked to about it off forums hates it.

Anyway, a lot of the "art is subjective" argument kind of crumbles when you look at the other pieces that the current winner had to beat to win the contest. It is both objectively and subjectively inferior to many of the runner-ups(runners-up? runner-ups?). I hate to be THE ******* but by any technical standards, the picture is horrible. All of the things one could use to view the picture subjectively do not appear to be artistic choices, but errors/lazy shortcuts.

As for why it won, well I think it's fairly obvious that PW art judges don't just choose winners based on talent. They need to include people from most ranges of ability in order to make these competitions appealing to as many people as possible. These contests would be extremely boring and unsuccessful if only the most skilled, trained, and naturally talented people were guaranteed to win. To be fair, I think people would have been less harsh on the winner if they didn't have to deal with it in the game.

Or maybe they posted defensively because they enjoyed the winner and didn't appreciate all the unnecessary hate towards it. And from a technical standpoint, if you want to be fair, some of the runners up did not follow the spirit of the contest rules. Which may have gotten there great work disqualified to begin with in more serious competitions that went solely based on expertise. It went by what looked good to the judges, and the judges clearly liked it. As did others.

Oh and I looked back at the poll for example. While more people would rather have liked some other drawing than the winner's picked is true. It's also true that more people voted in favor of the winner than lingzi/dokoro which were the two runners up that were featured most prominently in the poll and whose work was more defended in the thread.

So say the winner would have been changed based on that poll, on a winner take all system.

Winner=19 votes
lingzi/dokoro=17 votes
Other runner up=11 votes
Other=1 vote

The winner still would have been the loading screen because it received the most votes. And the winner take all system is used to decide the leaders of countries in many places all over the world, including the United States as a notable example since this company is based in the US. So if it's good enough for that, it's good enough for something trivial like a loading screen on a video game. How are we to know that the winner wasn't decided by some kind of office poll and the same thing happened? It's impossible to tell what their reasons for picking the winners are and different people have different tastes.

edit: Although I agree that PWI does make every effort to be inclusive by going for aesthetically pleasing over technically proficient.

_blood_rain - Sanctuary

I suppose some people may just have an insatiable aesthetic taste for anatomical incorrectness or lazy shortcuts.

I wouldn't rely on the poll. That's a simple forum poll, not a presidential election poll. It's very easy to fake votes, especially seeing as how the winner only has a few votes over the runner-ups. Also it's hard to get people to be honest when they are busy being "nice".

VenusArmani - Dreamweaver

_blood_rain - Sanctuary wrote: »

I suppose some people may just have an insatiable aesthetic taste for anatomical incorrectness or lazy shortcuts.

I wouldn't rely on the poll. That's a simple forum poll, not a presidential election poll. It's very easy to fake votes, especially seeing as how the winner only has a few votes over the runner-ups. Also it's hard to get people to be honest when they are busy being "nice".

I'm not relying on that poll. But imperfect or not, that poll demonstrates perfectly how something that doesn't enjoy the majority vote can still win any type of voting based contest. At the end of the day, for better or worse. That entry won the poll and it won the judges decision, so clearly somebody likes it.

And you can't know whether or not those people were just being nice or being honest. Maybe they felt personally insulted because you're implying nobody's personal taste could be that bad. Maybe they felt defensive of the work because they enjoyed it and hate to see it get ragged on. Maybe they are just being nice. It's impossible to know.

Sakubatou - Sanctuary

Did anyone else want to crop the white tiger from last years winter loading screen contest and put it next to a picture of your own barb in tiger form, then submit it as as drawn version of your toon?

I would have, but then pwi judges would have had to admit it sucked xD

Its not that I find that picture particularly disdainful, its just... good on a "kid's art on fridge" level.

The pictures they chose for this contest though are all amazing and professionally crafted. Really a treat to look at.

Lolgasmic - Raging Tide

well im late to the party, but i got to say those pictures really are awesome. it would be very cool to have them added to the loading screens.


Barb picture b:heart b:heart