DOUBLE HAPPY - Creature Design Challenge (Rules & WIP)

[skrobart]

thanks guys for taking the time for the critics

[DoubleHappy]

No problem Skrobart. We figured that everyone deserved some sort of acknowledgement

[DoubleHappy]

Hi folks. After much collating, deliberating, typing, deleting and then typing again. The critiques are ready to be viewed.
Below are the critiques for VertexBee and Barkal as first place and runner up and you can see critiques for all five winners over at the Double Happy vs The Infinite Sadness website.
While you are over there, register and sign up for the newsletter which will let you know about upcoming competitions and other Double Happy news. We've loved being visitors over here for a while...come and visit us, hopefully you'll enjoy it just as much

So without further ado...

The Winner : VertexBee


This is a great package. You know this guy means business at the first glimpse. The pose tells us he's a fighter, the helmet tells us he can take a beating. The staff tells us we're probably already dead.

This is a great example of pushing anatomy to achieve a good design. It's very easy to underestimate how far you can push the extremes of a pose before it starts to fall apart. And usually the best results are right out there on the edge before it all goes pear shaped. We do have one tiny nitpick in that the arm is masking the torso so we miss out on any design elements there, but knowing that it obviously exists in the geometry it is somewhat of a moot point. We just wish we could see it in the final!

There are nice Japanese elements in the costume, so imagining this guy whipping around causing chaos is pretty easy once those archetypes have been put in place. And just in case, we've got some nice breakaway poses to show his movement style. BOOM indeed!

The same goes for the other breakaways as well. We get a good all round view of what makes up the character.

Nitpick time! Although, there's nothing we are going to say here that isn't just a tiny tweak. We felt it would be great to have a breakaway showing the head without the helmet just to get a look at that anatomy and perhaps a little bit more colour or surface variation in his skin.

Overall this is a stunning design, and beautifully presented. A worthy winner!

Runnerup : Barkal



Ultimately you need characters to tell a story, and this piece does exactly that. We've got a large, obviously predatory Oolark crouched and ready to pounce on any Shyala unlucky enough to be discovered. The difference between the two races is clear and we can see this in the poses, the costumes, the expressions. It's all working to tell the viewer exactly where these characters sit in the wider ecology of Pharos.

The Oolarks pose is nice and dynamic, with the weight of his body balanced nicely over the legs. The hand grasping the log gives the character a lot of power and asserts him on the scene. That's an important touch. He does feel a little cramped up in that top corner, we think opening up the top right of the composition would allow the pose to breath a bit more, and also give us a good look at the silhouette of his backpack, which has some great shapes.

The expression on his face is reading nicely, and we feel that you've taken a bit of artistic license and lit his face with the spot light so we can see it clearly.

The Shyalaa hiding away under the rock look absolutely terrified, so mission accomplished on that one! There's just enough detail in their faces to inform that reaction, but not too much that we start to get distracted from the Oolark.

The rendering is really nice in the areas of detail and shows off some of the design decisions you made for the Oolark and we think the overall design is very cool. There's some excellent hi tech machinery in that backpack and the spear, but the leather and lack of any other large items of clothing show us he's very mobile and still quite primitive in many ways; this makes a nice link with the Shyala.

You've chosen a very limited palette, which we feel does a good job of making the world seem very dead and oppressive. Maybe a few little colour variants here and there would have been nice too, but that's a nitpick.

We'd love to see the end of the spear in a bit more detail too, it looks vicious, but that could be something to tackle in a separate image.

At the end of the day you've come up with an image that shows off a strong design that also has a solid narrative, so well done.

[barkal]

when is the next competition ?

[Polygoblin]

Barkal, the next tournament is going on right now: http://www.game-artist.net/forums/gr...allenge-3.html

[RavenX]

Congrats to the VertexBee!

I know it's all finished but as I promised to finish mine, I did and here it is (I did a few weeks ago but forgot to post it)
Late, I don't care, but it was really fun to participate in this contest. Looking forward for more contests (and time to do them)

My finished Oolark.

[Polygoblin]

@RavenX - Cool! Love how it turned out! Glad you stuck with it and shared the finished design with us Well-done!

[RavenX]

Thanks Polygoblin!